Re-collecting our past - La Banquise

"Most of this issue of La Banquise is devoted to a summary of the modern revolutionary movement. Summing up the past, including the recent past, and taking soundings of the contemporary period in order to recognise some of its basic tendencies, is essential in order to know who and where we are. You will only find an assessment here, not the complete global summing up which will only be possible after the world revolution. Each revolutionary grouping can only take stock by starting from its own position, formation and particular experience. This text is not a group introspection, nor is it an assertion of general principles and movements which we pretend to describe as a whole, instead it seeks to be both universal in its basis, through the aspirations and struggles of which it is the product, and also particular, because its authors participated in the world communist movement in specific places and circumstances."

The text surveys the Italian and German lefts, Socialisme Ou Barbarie and the Situationist International and describes the theoretical development of the French ultra-left - and includes a long account of the notorious Faurisson affair in which some communists became involved in a public controversy concerning Holocaust revisionism, with accusations flying back and forth.

Translated from le roman de nos origins - La Banquise No. 2 (1983)

Translation by the administrator of the John Gray website; http://www.reocities.com/~johngray/