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(en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #28: Pier Carlo Masini and Georges Fontenis: two experiences of struggle for class anarchism edited by Paolo Papini (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Date Wed, 2 Oct 2024 09:09:13 +0300


In the post-war period, anarchists had to deal with the hegemony of the Stalinist parties over the workers' movement, seeing their space for political action reduced to a minimum. ---- In 1945, the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the French Anarchist Federation (FA) were formed, organizations of synthesis in which humanist and classless positions, on the one hand, and class communist positions, on the other, were opposed. ---- Young worker militants, both in Italy and in France, were supporters of this latter tendency. They claimed a revolutionary and organized anarchism, potentially capable of competing with Stalinism and reformism for influence among workers, and contested idealistic and anti-organizational anarchism, which rejected political intervention in the factory and in the union.

The reference to the history and theory of class anarchism, starting from Bakunin, and the rediscovery of the Platform of the Anarchist Communists of 1926, were the basis on which those comrades of ours took on the task of the ideological and organizational renewal of the movement. Having encountered resistance from other currents, they gave life to two new tendency organizations: the Gruppi Anarchici d'Azione Proletaria (GAAP), born in 1951 from the break with the FAI, and the Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL), born in 1953 from the evolution of the FA. Pier Carlo Masini and Georges Fontenis, among the main protagonists of these political experiences, closely intertwined with each other, offer us a testimony of this in the interviews that follow.

Pier Carlo Masini: the divergences in the FAI and the birth of GAAP

«I personally collaborated with the magazine "Volontà" with[...]an interpretation of Malatesta entitled Malatesta vivo . I must say that this last work was clearly in contrast with the direction of the magazine and with the thinking of its editors.

They had published a collection of Malatesta's writings in the editions of "Volontà" that valorized Malatesta the moralist and humanist more than Malatesta the revolutionary agitator and organizer, who for me in those years was much more important and above all more real. This was the first crisis in our relationship that would lead to an open polemic at the FAI Congress in Livorno in 1949.

The editorial of the magazine[entitled]"Antipolitica" published on April 15 of that year was the fuse that lit the fuse, causing the conflict between two opposing ways of conceiving anarchism to explode. On the one hand, an anarchism that was wary of any form of permanent organization and programmatic political commitment, much more attentive, with innovative ideas, to marginal issues such as birth control, pedagogical experiences, and social reforms; on the other, people like me who worked for a renewal of traditional anarchism. We cared a lot about the political commitment of anarchism, proposals, programs[...]. The antipolitical anarchism proposed by "Volontà" appeared to us young people as a faded flag, by disarmed prophets, a negative anarchism, to which we opposed an organized movement, committed to propaganda and proselytism, present in the factory and in the unions» (1).

«I was and still am a convinced organizer, in the sense that the movement must be defined in its contours, defined ideologically, by a programmatic basis, which unites the adherents to this charter of principles, call it what you want, program, in which everyone is convinced that this program, to be updated from time to time, is what unites this group. This group has defined contours, whoever is in is in, whoever is out is out, there is no freedom of access in the sense of "I'll take a little tour of the anarchist movement and then I'll leave".[...]I have had bitter experiences and therefore a certain defense is needed. Also from the entry of anomalous elements, in the sense that, rejected by all the parties for their spirit of instinctive irregulars, they find the open doors of anarchism and slip in. They find welcome, human sympathy, etc. Some become good comrades, good militants, others are elements of disruption, of discord, of continuous brawling within the movement.[...]

The Italian anarchist movement was for half a spontaneous movement born from the territory, from the environment, from the political circumstances of the Italian tradition, and for the other half it was a projection of the American comrades and above all of[their]powerful, I don't know if I should call it an organization, association in fact and in law. An association based on the charismatic power of the editors of "L'Adunata dei Refrattari" who through picnics and other types of meetings, collected funds throughout the United States, from Italian immigrants of libertarian spirit. Because there has never been an organized movement there, at most, at the level of a group, of a nucleus, but even that was little.[...]

This American movement, with its own characteristics, has always had the aim of influencing the Italian movement inspired by

" Galleanist".[...]It is one of the many currents that populate the anarchist world and if it is spiritual, ideological, intellectual influence: it is fine. But if you send trustees to the Italian movement to delegate and try to direct the anarchist movement in an underground, non-visible, non-transparent way, having a monopoly on funds, contacts that are more important than funds, etc.: then this is worse than the overt organization. Because it is the sectarian, conventicular organization that is good for the Freemasons[...].

At a certain point, however, dissent arose and they unleashed the campaign against me.[In 1951]the GAAP, Gruppo anarchici di azione proletaria (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) were formed – an organisation in its own right – which in my view of things, could coexist.[...]For example, we paid more attention to trade union activity, it was enough that they let us work since there was no one else.[...]Instead, they got it into their heads to expel me[from the FAI].[...]So expelling us, considering us outcasts, heretics: this was what the Americans thought, who were afraid of communism, of Marxism while we had something of Gramsci's culture. We had discovered consonances with some of the

our positions, because there were some usable elements in Gramscism (even if not all of them, others are incompatible). We had become the most intransigent, the hardest" (2).

Georges Fontenis: The Divergences in the FA and the Birth of the FCL

«When the libertarian movement met at the October 1945 congress in Paris, we chose to call ourselves the Fédération Anarchiste (FA), but it was really a federation that tried to unite people who were too different from each other, it was precisely the "synthesis". There were those we called "the charlatans", there were the anti-religious who engaged in activities against religion, there were some trade unionists, there were the literary people, the half-philosophers like Charles-Auguste Bontemps... There were basically two currents. On the one hand, those we could call the "intellectuals" and on the other, the young people and the workers.

It was among these that one could glimpse the mentality that corresponded roughly to the Platform, which was close to the memories, still alive among the older ones, of the struggles of the 1920s around the Platform. Let us not forget that the Union Anarchiste (UA) before the war was strongly influenced by the Platform, especially between 1927 and 1930[...].

Thus, the coexistence of these two tendencies became impossible. Those in Bordeaux, for example, were only interested in anticlericalism, and when anything else was discussed they simply disappeared. They organized conference tours that had no

no specific anarchist content, just anti-religious and free-thinking talk. I'm not saying that all this was wrong or useless, but that it wasn't enough. I remember some socialist militants in my neighborhood telling me, "You're bogged down in the swampy waters of your preachers!", and I didn't know what to say. They were mostly right.

From the beginning there was a false union between two currents that were very different. On the one hand, people like Aristide Lapeyre and his friends who were content to make the apologia of wild anarchism and on the other all the young people who were restless with anger and demands. There were meetings where we confronted each other. I remember one at 10 Rue de Lancry in Paris, where Aristide Lapeyre spoke at length about the freedom of Man, with a capital "M", when Nédélec, a Renault worker of the revolutionary current, began to attack him without hesitation: "Things are not like that, at Renault. There we have to fight, struggle", he said. To which Lapeyre replied: "But comrade, we can all see that you are young and impatient, but we are the only ones who are right, while you are throwing yourself into adventure", and so on. Poor Nédélec, he was left without an answer and left. And I wanted to leave too.

We were in the same organization, but in reality we were two organizations: the platformists and the humanists, to simplify a bit. Soon the situation of opposition worsened.[...]Eventually we reached a situation in which the humanists admitted the possibility of being able to form internal currents. And they made their own current, although they never talked about it. They always talked about our current,

the platformist tendency Organization-Pensée-Bataille (OPB), but they never spoke of their current organized in the Commission d'Études Anarchistes (CEA).

In fact there were two tendencies, two ways of writing, two ways of acting, two ways of doing activities. Things went on like this until the next congress with increasing and violent clashes. We got to the point of telling each other things very clearly, as is done in the family, and the FA entered a phase of survival. Until the Bordeaux congress in May 1952, when someone walked out. The first to leave were those we called "charlatans".

At the Paris congress in May 1953 there was a split[from which the FCL was born], because our platformist comrades from the groups of Paris-Nord, Aulnay-sous-Bois and others presented revolutionary documents that the synthesists did not accept. So we asked them: "Do you accept them, yes or no? We are the majority

gioranza, yes or no?", and they walked out. Because it wasn't really a split. It was called a split for convenience, but what happened was that the purists and the synthesists went away and left us alone.

For our part, we had the most active groups, at Renault and Thomson, for example, or those in the working-class neighborhoods and suburbs of Paris, at Aulnay-sous-Bois, Bondy, Paris-Nord, Paris-Est. Some members of these last two groups were certainly platformists, even if the term was not used much at the time. We also had active comrades in the provinces, where some had heard of the Platform and had contacted us. However, despite the split

with the humanists, the FCL remained a strong organization compared to the FA, and new groups also arrived.[...]

As for the purists, they formed their[new]anarchist federation in 1953 but they had nothing in common with each other. Maurice Joyeux had nothing in common with someone like Aristide Lapeyre, for example.[...]Among the purists of the FA there were mainly small traders, street vendors, small artisans.[...]For them the proletariat had no meaning, what was important was "Man". "Man" with a capital "M": "Man must be free", and so on. Instead, those who stayed in the FCL were workers, young people and students» (3).

Notes:

(1) Taken from the interview with Pier Carlo Masini edited by Lorenzo Pezzica, in "Volontà", special issue Fifty Years of Volontà. Indices 1946-1996 , 1997.

(2) Taken from the interview with Pier Carlo Masini edited by Alberto Ciampi, in "Bergomum", year XCVI, n. 3, 2001.

(3) Excerpt from the interview with Georges Fontenis by José Antonio Gutiérrez, Reignac-sur-Indre, 19 February 2005, https://www.anarkismo.net/article/17353.

Bio-bibliographical information:

On Masini see Maurizio Antonioli et al. (dir.), Biographical Dictionary of Italian Anarchists , vol. II, BFS, Pisa, 2004.

On Fontenis v. Marianne Enckell et al. (dir.), Les anarchistes. Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement libertaire francophone , Éditions de l'Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2015.

In the pictures:

F1. IV National Convention of the FAI (Canosa di Puglia, 22-24 February 1948). On the right Pier Carlo Masini, on the left Cesare Zaccaria of the "Volontà" group (Masini Family Archive, Cerbaia Val di Pesa);

F2. News of the National Anarchist Conference "For an oriented and federated movement" (Genoa-Pontedecimo, 24-25 February 1951) in which the GAAP were formed ("L'Impulso", year II, no. 11-12, November-December 1950);

F3. News of the VIII National Congress of the FA (Paris, 23-25 May 1953) in which the FCL was established ("Le Libertaire", year LVI, no. 362, 28 May 1953);

F4. Paris, mid-1950s. Georges Fontenis, center in profile, with other militants of the FCL (Fonds d'Archives Communistes Libertaires, Montreuil).

The following AL/FdCA publications are available on this topic:

Guido Barroero (edited by), The Sons of the Workshop. The Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action (1949-1957) , Franco Salomone Documentation Centre, Fano, 2013.

Nestor McNab (ed.), The Anarchist Communists' Organizational Platform: Origin, Debate, and Meaning , La Giovane Talpa, Cernusco sul Naviglio, 2007.

Nestor McNab (ed.), Manifesto of Libertarian Communism: Georges Fontenis and the French Anarchist Movement , Franco Salomone Documentation Center, Fano, 2011.

Request from: ilcantiere@autistici.org.

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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