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The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement
The original essays included here were first written between 1969 and 1972 by people involved in the most radical aspects of the French general strike and circulated among left communist and worker circles. Over the years these three essays have been published separately in various languages and printed as books in both the U.S. and the UK with few changes. This third English edition is updated to take into account the contemporary political situation; half of the present volume is new material. The book argues that doing away with wage-labor, class, the State, and private property is necessary, possible, and can only be achieved by a historical break, one that would certainly differ from October 1917, yet it would not be a peaceful, gradual, piecemeal evolution either. Like their historical predecessors, the authors still believe in revolution.
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First published January 1, 1973
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About the author
Gilles Dauvé
31 books26 followersGilles Dauvé has worked as a translator and a schoolteacher. He is the author of essays and books on the Russian, German and Spanish revolutions, and on democracy, fascism, war, morals, crisis, and class.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 10, 2012
On Communism:
"Communism is not a set of measures to be put into practice after the seizure of power. It is a movement which already exists, not as a mode of production (there can be no communist island within capitalist society), but as a tendency which originates in real needs. Communism does not even know what value is. The point is not that one fine day a large number of people start to destroy value and profit. All past revolutionary movements were able to bring society to a standstill, and waited for something to come out of this universal stoppage. Communization, on the contrary, will circulate goods without money, open the gate isolating a factory from its neighbourhood, close down another factory where the work process is too alienating to be technically improved, do away with school as a specialized place which cuts off learning from doing for 15 odd years, pull down walls that force people to imprison themselves in 3-room family units - in short, it will tend to break all separations."
The Proletariat:
"If one identifies proletarian with factory worker (or even worse: with manual labourer), or with the poor, then one cannot see what is subversive in the proletarian condition. The proletariat is the negation of this society. It is not the collection of the poor, but of those who are desperate, those who have no reserves (les sans-réserves in French, or senza riserve in Italian), who have nothing to lose but their chains; those who are nothing, have nothing, and cannot liberate themselves without destroying the whole social order. The proletariat is the dissolution of present society, because this society deprives it of nearly all its positive aspects. Thus the proletariat is also its own destruction. All theories (either bourgeois, fascist, stalinist, left-wing or "gauchistes") which in any way glorify and praise the proletariat as it is and claim for it the positive role of defending values and regenerating society, are counter-revolutionary. Worship of the proletariat has become one of the most efficient and dangerous weapons of capital. Most proles are low paid, and a lot work in production, yet their emergence as the proletariat derives not from being low paid producers, but from being "cut off", alienated, with no control either over their lives or the meaning of what they have to do to earn a living."
"Communism is not a set of measures to be put into practice after the seizure of power. It is a movement which already exists, not as a mode of production (there can be no communist island within capitalist society), but as a tendency which originates in real needs. Communism does not even know what value is. The point is not that one fine day a large number of people start to destroy value and profit. All past revolutionary movements were able to bring society to a standstill, and waited for something to come out of this universal stoppage. Communization, on the contrary, will circulate goods without money, open the gate isolating a factory from its neighbourhood, close down another factory where the work process is too alienating to be technically improved, do away with school as a specialized place which cuts off learning from doing for 15 odd years, pull down walls that force people to imprison themselves in 3-room family units - in short, it will tend to break all separations."
The Proletariat:
"If one identifies proletarian with factory worker (or even worse: with manual labourer), or with the poor, then one cannot see what is subversive in the proletarian condition. The proletariat is the negation of this society. It is not the collection of the poor, but of those who are desperate, those who have no reserves (les sans-réserves in French, or senza riserve in Italian), who have nothing to lose but their chains; those who are nothing, have nothing, and cannot liberate themselves without destroying the whole social order. The proletariat is the dissolution of present society, because this society deprives it of nearly all its positive aspects. Thus the proletariat is also its own destruction. All theories (either bourgeois, fascist, stalinist, left-wing or "gauchistes") which in any way glorify and praise the proletariat as it is and claim for it the positive role of defending values and regenerating society, are counter-revolutionary. Worship of the proletariat has become one of the most efficient and dangerous weapons of capital. Most proles are low paid, and a lot work in production, yet their emergence as the proletariat derives not from being low paid producers, but from being "cut off", alienated, with no control either over their lives or the meaning of what they have to do to earn a living."
August 8, 2019
this is a sober assessment of the highest level reached by the previous movements (which in duave's opinion is the critique of WORK and the work/leisure-time distinction as such). not really an intro to communism or marxism. still there are good bits on the secret complicity between councilism and leninism (both fall victim to the lure of management, capitalism is a mode of production not a mode of management). i especially enjoyed the parts where dauve stresses the ambiguous and sometimes contradictory aspects of marx's thinking and writing, at the same time staying true to the spirit of ruthless critique ("we're not appraising the master's legacy as a mere pastime..."). fun and engaging, dauve's writing style certainly does not disappoint
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May 24, 2017Jean Barrot, also known as Gilles Dauve. This collection was put together in 1997 and is proving really good so far...
October 11, 2011
Good overview of left-communism/ultra-left - critiquing the (leninist) party method, detailing the basis for capitalism in Russia and asserting against this the potential of workers spontaneity.
August 24, 2014
Good early communisation stuff. I dug it.
September 4, 2025
"Communism is neither democratic nor dictatorial. The essence—and limit—of political thought is to wonder how to organise people’s lives, instead of considering first what those to-be-organised people do"
"The course of history is neither piecemeal nor gradual: revolution is a cut, a break-through. 'The gate is straight, deep and wide,' but we still have to cross the gate to get to the other side."
"In post-1919 Germany, when Gorter stressed the loneliness of the proletariat, by which he meant industrial workers, he was acknowledging the inability of the revolutionary to offer to the clerk, shopkeeper, or small farmer a better future under socialism other than to become a factory worker."
"The problem is not that in Canada or Italy the proles would now have more than “their chains to lose,” because they would be caught up in consumption and credit, and be therefore “integrated” into capitalism, whereas in Bangladesh or China the proles would have only their chains to lose and would therefore fit in with the Communist Manifesto’s definition of the revolutionary proletariat. Berlin metalworkers in 1919 enjoyed a “better” life than Lancashire textile workers in 1850, yet they rebelled against the bosses and the State [...] Communist revolution is a joint rejection of the worst actually imposed by capitalism and of the best it offers and wants us to dream about. This fusion supposes a social context where the two types of reality, misery and wealth, coexist and face each other, so that the proletarians can attack both."
"The highest level of 1960s and ’70s radicalism could be summed up in one word: autonomy, i.e. the rejection of all mediations (State, union, party, or ideology) by a militant proletarian minority, which tried to act outside and against mediators"
"Nevertheless, as a future communist revolution would be an unprecedented phenomenon, its warning signs might well be indecipherable, even to the most farsighted, so we cannot neglect the possibility that some more or less near future would come to us as a positive surprise."
"Our concern is that it could end, by a communist revolution that has to arise in a society shaped and torn by the interaction of proletarians and bourgeois. Our “problem” is how class struggle will be able to produce something else than its own continuation."
"The proletarians are placed at the same time inside and outside capitalism, and act accordingly. They straddle two worlds: they are in this world and not of this world. The bourgeois live, prosper, and stay inside a social logic which is beneficial to them. Only the proletarians have the potential leverage to transform the present order of things . . . Which does not mean that they will. Resisting oppression and exploitation is not the same as doing away with oppression and exploitation altogether. We are not dismissive about what is called cash-and-hours agenda: we just say such demands fail to bring the proletarians together. Convergence will only take place against wage-labour and the society based upon it.
There are better dreams."
"The course of history is neither piecemeal nor gradual: revolution is a cut, a break-through. 'The gate is straight, deep and wide,' but we still have to cross the gate to get to the other side."
"In post-1919 Germany, when Gorter stressed the loneliness of the proletariat, by which he meant industrial workers, he was acknowledging the inability of the revolutionary to offer to the clerk, shopkeeper, or small farmer a better future under socialism other than to become a factory worker."
"The problem is not that in Canada or Italy the proles would now have more than “their chains to lose,” because they would be caught up in consumption and credit, and be therefore “integrated” into capitalism, whereas in Bangladesh or China the proles would have only their chains to lose and would therefore fit in with the Communist Manifesto’s definition of the revolutionary proletariat. Berlin metalworkers in 1919 enjoyed a “better” life than Lancashire textile workers in 1850, yet they rebelled against the bosses and the State [...] Communist revolution is a joint rejection of the worst actually imposed by capitalism and of the best it offers and wants us to dream about. This fusion supposes a social context where the two types of reality, misery and wealth, coexist and face each other, so that the proletarians can attack both."
"The highest level of 1960s and ’70s radicalism could be summed up in one word: autonomy, i.e. the rejection of all mediations (State, union, party, or ideology) by a militant proletarian minority, which tried to act outside and against mediators"
"Nevertheless, as a future communist revolution would be an unprecedented phenomenon, its warning signs might well be indecipherable, even to the most farsighted, so we cannot neglect the possibility that some more or less near future would come to us as a positive surprise."
"Our concern is that it could end, by a communist revolution that has to arise in a society shaped and torn by the interaction of proletarians and bourgeois. Our “problem” is how class struggle will be able to produce something else than its own continuation."
"The proletarians are placed at the same time inside and outside capitalism, and act accordingly. They straddle two worlds: they are in this world and not of this world. The bourgeois live, prosper, and stay inside a social logic which is beneficial to them. Only the proletarians have the potential leverage to transform the present order of things . . . Which does not mean that they will. Resisting oppression and exploitation is not the same as doing away with oppression and exploitation altogether. We are not dismissive about what is called cash-and-hours agenda: we just say such demands fail to bring the proletarians together. Convergence will only take place against wage-labour and the society based upon it.
There are better dreams."
August 19, 2020
Very uneven. There's an interesting attempt to locate the core of capitalism (and the flaw in Actually Existing Socialist states) in the value-form, which would probably be more meaningful to me if I could finally finish the Capital trilogy. There's also some interesting critiques of the primary strains of left-communism, i.e. Bordigist and Councilist thought.
Will probably track down more from this tendency at some point, if for no other reason than to try and understand what they actually advocate
Will probably track down more from this tendency at some point, if for no other reason than to try and understand what they actually advocate
July 20, 2024
This is such an odd book for me. I've read and reread select chapters from it for several years now, suggesting that I would love the whole book, but upon finally reading the work in full... I'm a bit let down. Maybe it's because the left's crisis of organization has occupied my thoughts for the last few years and it is on that matter in particular that this book is at its weakest, but I can't help but feel that this book has little to offer that can't be found elsewhere in better forms.
October 20, 2020
Absolutely essential reading for any communist skeptical or critical of Really Existing Socialism and looking for a path forwards. This book neatly aligns with reignited discourse surrounding Marxian value and goes further by gesturing towards a praxis that’s both theoretically sound and instantly digestible. In our time of global crisis, the world may finally be ready for these ideas.
December 6, 2024
“It is no use endlessly proving the permanence of a confrontation that is plain to see. Our concern is that it could end, by a communist revolution that has to arise in a society shaped and torn by the interaction of proletarians and bourgeois. Our “problem” is how class struggle will be able to produce something else than its own continuation.”
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February 21, 2017Too much of this went over my head to synthetize or fully digest the contents, but to a political novice this (free!) text provides a useful introduction to ultra-left thought.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews