Loughborough University
Browse
DG for B&R FINAL.pdf (202.52 kB)

The search for a libertarian communism: Daniel Guerin and the ‘synthesis’ of marxism and anarchism

Download (202.52 kB)
chapter
posted on 2017-03-17, 15:22 authored by David Berry
Concerned that his reinterpretation of the French Revolution, La Lutte de classes sous la Première République (1946), had been misunderstood, Daniel Guérin wrote to his friend, the socialist Marceau Pivert in 1947 that the book was to be seen as ‘an introduction to a synthesis of anarchism and Marxism-Leninism I would like to write one day.’2 This paper aims to analyze exactly what Guérin meant by this ‘synthesis’, and how and why he came to be convinced of its necessity—for as Alex Callinicos has commented, ‘[g]enuinely innovative syntheses are rare and difficult to arrive at. Too often attempted syntheses amount merely to banality, incoherence, or eclecticism.’

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Politics and International Studies

Published in

Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red

Pages

187 - 209

Citation

BERRY, D. 2017. The search for a libertarian communism: Daniel Guérin and the ‘synthesis’ of marxism and anarchism. IN: Prichard, A., Kinna, R., Pinta, S. and Berry, D. (eds.) Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red. London: PM Press, pp. 187 - 209

Publisher

PM Press

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2017

Notes

This is a chapter from the book, Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red, published by PM Press.

ISBN

1629633909;978-1629633909

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC