Gilles Dauvé
French communist, fusing and critiquing the various strands of left communism and former co-editor of La Banquise.
To work or not to work? Is that the question? By Gilles Dauvé
The changing nature of work and resistance to it.
Letter on animal liberation, by Gilles Dauvé
This is a letter sent by French readers to the authors of Beasts of Burden (Antagonism Press, 1999, c/o BM Mahkno, London WC1N 3XX (www.geocities.com/CapitalHill/Lobby/3909).
This pamphlet has the merit of addressing a vital question: If communism is to transform the whole of daily life, it can't leave out our relation to animals and the way we eat. Beasts of Burden forces to rethink the whole "primitivist" debate. We hope to tackle this some day.
Grey September - Gilles Dauvé, Karl Nesic and J-P Carasso
The underpaid washer-up and the overpaid white collar who both died in the World Trade Center died as footsoldiers of a system that exploited their death (treating them as heroes of free trade and the free world) as it had exploited their life. They had little time to appreciate the much vaunted security they'd bought in exchange for their submission.
The Story of our Origins
Dauve traces the emergence of the ultra-left current in the aftermath of WWI and the failure of the Russian and German Revolutions.
The Story of our Origins
(Gilles Dauve - from le roman de nos origines - La Banquise No. 2, 1983)
From the German Left to Socialisme ou Barbarie
A communist movement, universal in nature, which had set out to conquer the world in capitalism's footsteps, had been led into not taking the offensive except in the centre of Europe. Now it was necessary for it to engage in drawing up an assessment, beginning with itself and with the contradictions of the counter-revolution.
The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin - Gilles Dauvé
Dauvé traces the development of Lenin's ideas from Karl Kautsky and situates them within both the historical context and the Second International.
Publication Details
This article originally formed an afterword to an article by Karl Kautsky "Les trois sources du Marxisme" (The three sources of Marxism) which was reprinted in French in April 1977 by editions Spartacus. (serie B No.78).
When Insurrections Die - Gilles Dauvé
Gilles Dauvé's pamphlet on the on the failures of the Russian, Spanish and German Revolutions, and the rise of fascism in Europe.
Brest-Litovsk, 1917 and 1939
"If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."
Critique of the Situationist International
Gilles Dauve's analysis of both the Situationists' theoretical strengths and weaknesses.
Ideology and the Wage System
Capitalism transforms life into the money necessary for living. One tends to do any particular thing towards an end other than that implied by the content of the activity. The logic of alienation : one is an other; the wage system makes one foreign to what one does, to what one is, to other people.
Intakes: Fascism/Anti-Fascism - Barrot Replies
'Jean Barrot' responds to our review of his influential text Fascism/Anti-fascism: 'The proletariat is not weak because it's divided: its weaknesses breed division.'
Class war in Barcelona - Jean Barrot, 1973
The following text is the translation of a pamphlet of the group Mouvement Communiste, written in 1973 by Jean Barrot (aka Gilles Dauve), as a means of solidarity for some Spanish revolutionaries arrested in Spain facing harsh penalties.
Undercurrent #8
Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement
A book by Francois Martin and Jean Barrot (AKA Giles Dauve), quite influential since the 1970s in the English-speaking world of radical theory. A restatement of communist revolution as self-organised class struggle - that abolishes markets, states and classes.
Original edition published by Black and Red, Detroit 1974.
This revised edition published by Antagonism Press, London 1997.
