Inquiry and Organization

Join us Sunday, February 5th at 12pm PST, hosted by Jasper Bernes and Red May

«You know nothing about organization unless at every step you relate it to its opposite, spontaneity. It is meaningless without that co-relative, its Other», wrote C. L. R. James.

Session 5

Inquiry and Organization

The march toward World War II and the Stalinization of the left meant that council communists and left communists–principally opposed to Popular Front politics–wandered in the dark for most of the 1930s and 1940s.

A revival of interest begins after WWII, in part spurred by the novel interventions of CLR James and his associates, who manage to connect it to new ideas of “workers’ inquiry” that will be taken up in France (Socialisme ou Barbarie, Tribune Ouvrier) and Italy (Quaderni Rossi).

Illustration for risograph, quote extracted from James, C. L. R. Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Motive. London: Allison & Busby, 1980. 7-11, 113-119. | archive: ahuehuete.org

Sunday, February 5th at 12pm PST, hosted by Jasper Bernes and Red May.
Join us, register here.

Reading material:

James, C. L. R. Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Motive. London: Allison & Busby, 1980. 7-11, 113-119

Johnson, J. R. The Invading Socialist Society. New York: Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1947. (chapter 5)

Romano, Paul, and Ria Stone. The American Worker. (introduction and preface)

Claude Lefort. “Proletarian Experience.” Viewpoint, no. 3 (September 2013).

Supplemental

Stephen Hastings, King, Looking for the Proletariat

Haider and Mohandesi, “Workers’ Inquiry: A Genealogy”

Henri Simon, “Workers’ Inquiry in Socialisme ou Barbarie”

Nick Chavez, “Technical Expertise and Communist Production”

Angry Workers, “Insurrection and Production”

Viewpoint’s special issue on Workers’ Inquiry.

Watch previous sessions:

More here, thanks to Red May Seattle for sharing and hosting the recorded sessions.

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