Socialisme Ou Barbarie

Socialisme ou Barbarie (SoB) - France, 1948-1965
aka Socialism or Barbarism
SoB was a libertarian socialist group which had broken from Leninism following World War II. Strongly influencing the British group Solidarity, it argued that the bureaucracy which governed capitalism was the main enemy of society.

Links on libcom.org
The Socialisme ou Barbarie archive
SI archive
SoB search results on libcom.org [It could be worth searching for the English name also]

We have tried to show[1] that socialism is nothing other than people's conscious self-organization of their own lives in all domains; that it signifies, therefore, the management of production by the producers themselves on the scale of the workplace as well as on that of the economy as a whole; that it implies the abolition of every ruling apparatus separated from society; that it has to bring ab

Very detailed article by French libertarian socialist group Socialisme Ou Barbarie on "the development of modern society and what has happened to the working-class movement over the last 100 years" and how they "have compelled us to make a radical revision of the ideas on which that movement has been based."

The Story Of Our Origins

Some sections of "le roman de nos origines" from La Banquise No. 2 ( 1983 ) in english translation.

These three sections are from the second part of the article.

From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Idea of the Proletariat's Autonomy

Letter from Anton Pannekoek to Socialisme ou Barbarie

The Break with Marxism

Could we, while saving the substance of these analyses and positions, continue to clothe them in the vestments of Marxism and claim that they constituted its continuation and were preserving its true spirit? In a sense, modesty aside, they did so, they are the only ones to have done so. But it had come to the point where continuation had required destruction, the survival of the spirit required that the body be put to death.

The Working Class & Organisation (A)

by Cornelius Castoriadis, 1959

WHAT REALLY MATTERS

In issue number 3 of Pouvoir Ouvrier, a schoolteacher posed the following question: Why don't workers write? He showed in a profound way how this is due to their total situation in sociey and also to the nature of the so-called education dispensed by schools in capitalist society. He also mentioned that workers often think their experience "isn't interesting."

The Contradiction of Trotsky

By Claude Lefort

Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution
Theses on the Chinese Revolution (1967)

THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

The marxist theory of history claims in the first place to be scientific, i.e. to be a generalisation susceptible to validation or challenge at the level of empirical research. As a scientific theory, which it undoubtedly is, it was inevitable that it should share the fate of every important such theory.

The post-modern French philosopher who died on April 21 is of little interest to us as revolutionaries. We wish to recall his time as a revolutionary before the pressures of a career and the ebbing of post 1968 hopes turned him into a darling of the sociologists.

Cornelius Castoriadis was born Kornelios Kastoriades in Istanbul to a Greek family. Growing up in Athens he joined the Young Communists in 1937 and the Communist Party in 1941.