Libertarian Marxism

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Libertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism[1] and its derivatives, such as Stalinism, Ceaușism and Maoism. Libertarian Marxism is also often critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France;[2] emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation.[3] Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.[4]

Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as council communism, De Leonism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Lettrism/Situationism and workerism/autonomism, Democratic Socialism, Centrist Marxism and parts of the New Left.[5] Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, C. L. R. James, E. P. Thompson, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Fredy Perlman, Ernesto Screpanti, Raoul Vaneigem and Yanis Varoufakis[6], who claims that Karl Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist[7].


Marxism started to develop a libertarian strand of thought after specific circumstances. "One does find early expressions of such perspectives in Morris and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the SPGB), then again around the events of 1905, with the growing concern at the bureaucratisation and de-radicalisation of international socialism".[8] William Morris established the Socialist League in December 1884, which was encouraged by Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx. As the leading figure in the organization Morris embarked on a relentless series of speeches and talks on street corners, in working men's clubs and lecture theatres across England and Scotland. From 1887, anarchists began to outnumber Marxists in the Socialist League.[9] The 3rd Annual Conference of the League held in London on 29 May 1887 marked the change, with a majority of the 24 branch delegates voting in favor of an anarchist-sponsored resolution declaring: "This conference endorses the policy of abstention from parliamentary action, hitherto pursued by the League, and sees no sufficient reason for altering it".[10] Morris played peacemaker, but sided with the anti-parliamentarians, who won control of the League, which consequently lost the support of Engels and saw the departure of Eleanor Marx and her partner Edward Aveling to form the separate Bloomsbury Socialist Society.

20th century[edit]


In the emerging Soviet state, there appeared left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks which were a series of rebellions and uprisings against the Bolsheviks led or supported by left wing groups including Socialist Revolutionaries,[11] Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists.[12] Some were in support of the White Movement while some tried to be an independent force. The uprisings started in 1918 and continued through the Russian Civil War and after until 1922. In response, the Bolsheviks increasingly abandoned attempts to get these groups to join the government and suppressed them with force.

The POUM is viewed as being libertarian Marxist due to its anti-Soviet stance in the Civil War in Spain.






In the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 1967, the terms "ultra-left" and "left communist" refers to political theory and practice self-defined as further "left" than that of the central Maoist leaders at the height of the GPCR ("Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"). The terms are also used retroactively to describe some early 20th century Chinese anarchist orientations. As a slur, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has used the term "ultra-left" more broadly to denounce any orientation it considers further "left" than the party line. According to the latter usage, in 1978 the CPC Central Committee denounced as "ultra-left" the line of Mao Zedong from 1956 until his death in 1976. Ultra-left refers to those GPCR rebel positions that diverged from the central Maoist line by identifying an antagonistic contradiction between the CPC-PRC party-state itself and the masses of workers and "peasants"[17] conceived as a single proletarian class divorced from any meaningful control over production or distribution. Whereas the central Maoist line maintained that the masses controlled the means of production through the party's mediation, the ultra-left argued that the objective interests of bureaucrats were structurally determined by the centralist state-form in direct opposition to the objective interests of the masses, regardless of however "red" a given bureaucrat's thought might be. Whereas the central Maoist leaders encouraged the masses to criticize reactionary "ideas" and "habits" among the alleged 5% of bad cadres, giving them a chance to "turn over a new leaf" after they had undergone "thought reform", the ultra-left argued that cultural revolution had to give way to political revolution "in which one class overthrows another class".[18][19] The emergence of the New Left in the 1950s and 1960s led to a revival of interest in libertarian socialism.[20] The New Left's critique of the Old Left's authoritarianism was associated with a strong interest in personal liberty, autonomy (see the thinking of Cornelius Castoriadis) and led to a rediscovery of older socialist traditions, such as left communism, council communism and the Industrial Workers of the World. The New Left also led to a revival of anarchism. Journals like Radical America and Black Mask in the United States, Solidarity, Big Flame and Democracy & Nature, succeeded by The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy[21] in the United Kingdom, introduced a range of left libertarian ideas to a new generation.


Autonomist Marxism, neo-Marxism and situationist theory are also regarded as being anti-authoritarian variants of Marxism that are firmly within the libertarian socialist tradition. Related to this were intellectuals who were influenced by Italian left communist Amadeo Bordiga, but who disagreed with his Leninist positions, including Jacques Camatte, editor of the French publication Invariance; and Gilles Dauve, who published Troploin with Karl Nesic.

Notable libertarian Marxist tendencies[edit]

First English edition of Vladimir Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International for delegates to its 2nd World Congress,[23] in which Lenin attacks left communists and council communists

De Leonism[edit]

De Leonism, occasionally known as Marxism–De Leonism, is a form of syndicalist Marxism developed by Daniel De Leon. De Leon was an early leader of the first United States socialist political party, the Socialist Labor Party of America. De Leon combined the rising theories of syndicalism in his time with orthodox Marxism. According to De Leonist theory, militant industrial unions are the vehicle of class struggle. Industrial unions serving the interests of the proletariat will bring about the change needed to establish a socialist system. The only way this differs from some currents in anarcho-syndicalism is that—according to De Leonist thinking—a revolutionary political party is also necessary to fight for the proletariat on the political field.[24]


Council communism[edit]

Anton Pannekoek, one of the main theorists of council communism



The Russian word for council is soviet and during the early years of the revolution workers' councils were politically significant in Russia. It was to take advantage of the aura of workplace power that the word became used by Lenin for various political organs. Indeed, the name Supreme Soviet, which the parliament was called and that of the Soviet Union itself, make use of this terminology, but they do not imply any decentralization.

Furthermore, council communists held a critique of the Soviet Union as a capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a bourgeois revolution when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Although most felt the Russian Revolution was working class in character, they believed that because capitalist relations still existed (i.e. the workers had no say in running the economy) the Soviet Union ended up as a state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. Thus council communists support workers' revolutions, but oppose one-party dictatorships.


Left communism[edit]



Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Current and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. Different factions from the old Bordigist International Communist Party are also considered left communist organizations.

Within Freudo-Marxism[edit]

Wilhelm Reich, Freudo-Marxist theorist who wrote the book The Sexual Revolution in 1936


Wilhelm Reich[27][28][29][30] was an Austrian psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Sigmund Freud and one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry. He was the author of several influential books and essays, most notably Character Analysis (1933), The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and The Sexual Revolution (1936).[31] His work on character contributed to the development of Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936) and his idea of muscular armour—the expression of the personality in the way the body moves—shaped innovations such as body psychotherapy, Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic analysis and Arthur Janov's primal therapy. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals—during the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at the police.[32] On 23 August, six tons of his books, journals and papers were burned in the 25th Street public incinerator in New York, the Gansevoort incinerator. The burned material included copies of several of his books, including The Sexual Revolution, Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Though these had been published in German before Reich ever discussed orgone, he had added mention of it to the English editions, so they were caught by the injunction.[33] As with the accumulators, the FDA was supposed only to observe the destruction. It has been cited as one of the worst examples of censorship in the United States. Reich became a consistent propagandist for sexual freedom going as far as opening free sex-counselling clinics in Vienna for working-class patients[34] as well as coining the phrase "sexual revolution" in one of his books from the 1940s.[35]

Herbert Marcuse, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, was an influential libertarian socialist philosopher of the New Left[36]

On the other hand, Herbert Marcuse was a German philosopher, sociologist and political theorist associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His work Eros and Civilization (1955) discusses the social meaning of biology—history seen not as a class struggle, but a fight against repression of our instincts. It argues that "advanced industrial society" (modern capitalism) is preventing us from reaching a non-repressive society "based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations".[37] It contends that Freud's argument that repression is needed by civilization to persist is mistaken as Eros is liberating and constructive. Marcuse argues that "the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle) and Eros (pleasure principle), but between alienated labour (performance principle) and Eros".[38] Sex is allowed for "the betters" (capitalists) and for workers only when not disturbing performance. Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the poor and without as strong a suppression of our sexual drives—it could replace alienated labor with "non-alienated libidinal work" resulting in "a non-repressive civilization based on 'non-repressive sublimation'".[38] During the 1960s, Marcuse achieved world renown as "the guru of the New Left", publishing many articles and giving lectures and advice to student radicals all over the world. He travelled widely and his work was often discussed in the mass media, becoming one of the few American intellectuals to gain such attention. Never surrendering his revolutionary vision and commitments, Marcuse continued to his death to defend the Marxian theory and libertarian socialism.[39]

Socialisme ou Barbarie[edit]

The journal Socialisme ou Barbarie

Socialisme ou Barbarie ("Socialism or Barbarism") was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period, whose name comes from a phrase Rosa Luxemburg used in her 1916 essay The Junius Pamphlet. It existed from 1948 until 1965. The animating personality was Cornelius Castoriadis, also known as Pierre Chaulieu or Paul Cardan.[40] The group originated in the Trotskyist Fourth International, where Castoriadis and Claude Lefort constituted a Chaulieu–Montal Tendency in the French Parti Communiste Internationaliste in 1946. In 1948, they experienced their "final disenchantment with Trotskyism",[41] leading them to break away to form Socialisme ou Barbarie, whose journal began appearing in March 1949. Castoriadis later said of this period that "the main audience of the group and of the journal was formed by groups of the old, radical left: Bordigists, council communists, some anarchists and some offspring of the German 'left' of the 1920s".[42] The group was composed of both intellectuals and workers and agreed with the idea that the main enemies of society were the bureaucracies which governed modern capitalism. They documented and analysed the struggle against that bureaucracy in the group's journal. As an example, the thirteenth issue (January–March 1954) was devoted to the East German revolt of June 1953 and the strikes which erupted amongst several sectors of French workers that summer. Following from the belief that what the working class was addressing in their daily struggles was the real content of socialism, the intellectuals encouraged the workers in the group to report on every aspect of their working lives.

Situationist International[edit]




After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions,[43] the SI was dissolved in 1972.[44]


Solidarity was a small libertarian socialist organisation from 1960 to 1992 in the United Kingdom. It published a magazine of the same name. Solidarity was close to council communism in its prescriptions and was known for its emphasis on workers' self-organisation and for its radical anti-Leninism. Solidarity was founded in 1960 by a small group of expelled members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. It was initially known as Socialism Reaffirmed. The group published a journal, Agitator, which after six issues was renamed Solidarity, from which the organisation took its new name. Almost from the start it was strongly influenced by the French Socialisme ou Barbarie group, in particular by its intellectual leader Cornelius Castoriadis, whose essays were among the many pamphlets Solidarity produced. Solidarity existed as a nationwide organisation with groups in London and many other cities until 1981, when it imploded after a series of political disputes. The magazine Solidarity continued to be published by the London group until 1992—other former Solidarity members were behind Wildcat in Manchester and Here and Now magazine in Glasgow. The intellectual leader of the group was Chris Pallis, whose pamphlets (written under the name Maurice Brinton) included Paris May 1968, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control 1917-21 and The Irrational in Politics.[45] Other key Solidarity writers were Andy Anderson (author of Hungary 1956), Ken Weller (who wrote several pamphlets on industrial struggles and oversaw the group's Motor Bulletins on the car industry), Joe Jacobs (Out of the Ghetto), John Quail (The Slow-Burning Fuse), Phil Mailer (Portugal:The Impossible Revolution) John King (The Political Economy of Marx, A History of Marxian Economics), George Williamson (writing as James Finlayson, Urban Devastation - The Planning of Incarceration), David Lamb (Mutinies) and Liz Willis (Women in the Spanish Revolution).[46]


Antonio Negri, main theorist of Italian autonomism

Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist (operaismo) communism. Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio, Mario Tronti and Paolo Virno.[47]


It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide social centre movement and today is influential in Italy, France and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists and anarchists. The autonomist Marxist and autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves as autonomists. The Italian operaismo ("workerism") movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver, John Holloway, Steve Wright and Nick Dyer-Witheford.




The term is still used in this sense in France today and has spread into English usage as a result of the translation of texts by Gilles Dauvé and Théorie Comuniste, two key figures in this tendency. However, in the late 1990s a close but not identical sense of "communization" was developed by the French post-situationist group Tiqqun. In keeping with their ultra-left predecessors, Tiqqun's predilection for the term seems to be its emphasis on communism as an immediate process rather than a far-off goal, but for Tiqqun it is no longer synonymous with "the revolution" considered as an historical event, but rather becomes identifiable with all sorts of activities—from squatting and setting up communes to simply "sharing"—that would typically be understood as "pre-revolutionary".[49] From an ultra-left perspective such a politics of "dropping-out" or, as Tiqqun put it, "desertion"—setting up spaces and practices that are held to partially autonomous from capitalism—is typically dismissed as either naive or reactionary.[50] Due to the popularity of the Tiqqun-related works Call and The Coming Insurrection in the United States anarchist circles it tended to be this latter sense of "communization" that was employed in U.S. anarchist and "insurrectionist" communiques, notably within the Californian student movement of 2009–2010.[51]


  6. ^ Varoufakis, Yanis. "Yanis Varoufakis describes himself as a "libertarian Marxist"". Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  7. ^ "Yanis Varoufakis: We leftists are not necessarily pro public sector – Marx was anti state". Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  13. ^ Noam Chomsky Notes on Anarchism
  18. ^ See, for instance, "Whither China?" by Yang Xiguang.
  24. ^ "How the Socialist Labor Party Differs From the Industrial Workers of the World". Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  25. ^ "Council communism - an introduction". Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  26. ^ "Left-Wing Communism Subject Archive". Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  33. ^ Sharaf 1994, pp. 419, pp. 460–461.
  36. ^ Douglas Kellner Herbert arcuse
  39. ^ Douglas Kellner "Marcuse, Herbert" Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine
  45. ^ Now collected in a book, Maurice Brinton, For Workers' Power.
  46. ^ Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (2000-01-01). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. ISBN 9780826458148.
  47. ^ Cuninghame, Patrick. "AUTONOMISM AS A GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT". WorkingUSA. 13 (4): 451–464. ISSN 1089-7011.


  • ‹See Tfd›(in French) L'Autonomie. Le mouvement autonome en France et en Italie, éditions Spartacus 1978.
  • Beyond post-socialism. Dialogues with the far-left by Chamsy el- Ojeili. Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.

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