France

A complete English translation of a book first published in France in 1999, a post-mortem on May ’68, discussing the various ways that the most popular demands voiced in May were recuperated by capitalism in its post-1968 “revolution from the right” (Pasolini) and incorporated into a consumerist lifestyle of selfish hedonism, pseudo-individualism, phony libertarianism and permitted rebellion (the “triumph of situationism”) as part of the restructuring of the global workforce and the creation of a “new man”, concluding with a call for “a new civilizing phenomenon” and “a revolution of the spirit” similar to the movement led by Christianity during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

In this 1957 text drafted for the Partito Comunista Internazionale, Amadeo Bordiga, with his usual acerbic wit, restates some of the “invariant” principles of Marxism, denounces the idea that communism means collective or individual “property” or “ownership”—terms he subjects to historical analysis as transitory juridical forms—argues in favor of social usufruct as the concept most adequate for the future classless society, ridicules the “metaphysical and idealist” error of the “immediatists” who hold that “socialism is a struggle for the individual liberation of the worker” and, just to rub it in, condemns drinkers and smokers as “usufructuary traitors” against the health of the species.

The Mutu Network have developed a successful new model for French radical media, with 15 websites across the country embedded in their communities, reporting on local struggles and fighting back against the monopolisation of activist news by social media corporations.

This is a review of the famous anarchist-inspired French auteur Jean Vigo.