From: johngray-AT-geocities.com
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:49:53 +0000
Subject: Re: French Bordigists


obu-AT-teleport.com wrote:

>But the sins of the step-children shouldn't be placed upon the
>parents.

True enough - but equally those who don't learn from mistakes are
condemned to repeat them. 

> I believe that the origional Bordigist article, "Auschwitz ou le
> Grand Alibi", didn't claim the Holocost hadn't occured or occured at
> a much smaller rate. The main thrust of the Bordigists was the
> Holocaust was being used as an after the fact excuse for World War
> 2. Even though the Allies knew about the systematic extermination of
> Jews, Gypsys, etc. and did nothing to stop it. After the war, when
> the real reasons (economic) for the war would be revealed, the
> holocost became the justification (the "big Alibi") for the war.
> Much the same way as slavery is the "reason" for the US Civil War.

The article mainly develops an extremely reductive "materialist"
explanation for "imperialist anti-semitism". This is reasonably
summarised by Pierre Vidal-Naquet in "A Paper Eichmann"  [ on line at
http://www-old.ircam.fr/~fingerhu/anti-rev/textes/ ]

<QUOTE>
Thus it was that in 1970 La Vieille Taupe published a brochure
entitled Auschwitz ou le Grand Alibi, the reprint of an anonymous
article which had appeared in 1960 in Programme Communiste, the organ
of another Marxist sect (founded by Amadeo Bordiga). The "grand alibi"
of the antifascists was the extermination of the Jews by Hitler. That
crime alone establishes the distance separating the democrat from the
fascist. And yet, according to the Bordigists, this is by no means the
case. For the anti-Semitism of the imperialist era must be given the
requisite economic and social explanation. "As a consequence of their
prior history, the Jews today find themselves for the most part in the
middle and petty bourgeoisie. But that class stands condemned in
advance by the irresistible advance of the concentration of capital."
The reaction of the petty bourgeoisie to that condemnation lay "in
sacrificing one of its segments in order to thus save ensure the
existence of the others." The German petty bourgeoisie "thus threw the
Jews to the wolves in order to lighten its load and save itself."
Large capital, for its part, was "delighted by the boon; it could
liquidate a section of the petty bourgeoisie with the agreement of the
petty bourgeoisie." As for demonstrating how the "petty bourgeoisie"
was more threatened in 1943 than in 1932, the brochure does not choose
to take up the question. But at least it attempts to account for the
methodical nature of the endeavor: "In normal times, and when only a
small number are at stake, capitalism can allow those it ejects from
the process of production to die on their own. But this was impossible
to do in the middle of a war and for millions of men: that much
disorder would have issued in a general paralysis. Capitalism had to
organize their death." But with what profit? "Capitalism cannot
execute a man it has sentenced if it does not extract some profit from
that very punishment." Profit will thus be sought through the
exhaustion of workers, and those incapable of working will be
massacred directly. But is it profitable? "German capitalism could
resign itself to murder pure and simple only with difficulty . . .
because it brought no revenue." The authors of the brochure this
expatiate on the famous mission of Jo=EBl Brand, who left Hungary with
the blessings of Himmler, to exchange the Hungarian Jews slated for
the "mill" of Auschwitz for ten thousand trucks. The authors do not
for an instant appear to notice that we are then in 1944, not 1942,
that Himmler had good reasons to realize that the war has been lost,
and that the time has come to attempt to make use of the legendary
"Jewish influence" on the Western allies. The Jews, despite such
attempts, were destroyed "not as Jews but as rejects from the process
of production, useless for production." </ENDQUOTE>

> I must also warn our anarchist comrades not to get too smug about
> this. The English translation of the ultra-left revisionist leaflet
> "Notre royaume..." was translated and published by the Seattle
> anarchist group "Charlitan Stew" and distributed by the Fifth Estate
> newspaper.

I didn't know that. I'd be interested to see it.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that there were two french texts with
similar titles - the first the 1980 leaflet referred to, the second a
1981 article by L'Insecurite Sociale which has no relation to
revisionism. The latter was also translated into english. (Ultra-Left
Review - 1982)

The only contemporary english language  translation of ultra-left
revisionist material I knew about before this was a short article
about Claus Barbie by Le Frondeur which appeared in Intercom No 3.
(Its only fair to point out that the group which translated it didn't
appreciate where it was coming from, or that it related to the
revisionist debates in France).


Mr Nobody wrote:
> 
> John Gray's information on ultra left revisionism was very
> interesting,

> However, it could be read from the post an implication that "John
> Barrot"  had supported these positions. In fact I know that he
> replied to the original Le Monde article pointing out that he was
> mainly involved in supporting Sans-Papiers these days. Also he had
> long ago broken with a former comrade in Veille Taupe who had
> adopted these positions. CA Canny's summary of Bordiga's positions
> sounds pretty similar to Barrot's own published position, (which is
> of course based on Bordiga's).

> Baring in mind the bourgeois campiagn underway at the moment, I
> think we need to be extra careful about what we say about this.

If you're suggesting that we should be careful to state the facts
rather than contributing to rumour/slander I entirely agree. If you
mean we should avoid what is undoubtedly an uncomfortable issue I
don't.

I've re-read the post and can't myself see the implication you refer
to. However to make it quite clear - Gilles Dauve who in the 70's
wrote as Jean Barrot did indeed break with Pierre Guillaume in 1980
over Guillaumes support for Faurisson. (He seems to have been one of
the first in those circles to do so - he was also one of the first in
those circles to criticise it publically in La Banquise). He was not
party to the leaflet I quoted from.

This question came up on this list back in February - on 17/2/97
HENSI1 posted a long account of the background which is well worth
reading - available in the list archive.

Dauve himself has written about this affair - most recently an essay
in "Libertaires et "Ultra-Gauche" Contre le Negationnisme", which
aside from making his views on revisionism clear, also makes some
criticism of the bordigist text "Auschwitz ou le Grand Alibi".
(Incidentally while Bordiga may have written that text I've never
heard that is definitely the case - its publication was as a party
text which like all other ICP texts was unsigned. Clarification one
way or the other welcome). Dauve also discusses critically some of his
own previous writings.

This essay (in French) is now on the John Gray website.

http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/dauve.htm

Further material from this booklet will be posted shortly, (next up
should be Serge Quadruppani's piece) and we hope to try and translate
some of it.

I think this affair has two aspects which demand some attention. The
first is the intellectual and political origins of this strand of
ultra-left revisionism. (The background to the revisionism developed
particularly by Guillaume and La Guerre Sociale) and how it related to
earlier discussions of related issues  (for example in relation to the
issue of genocide, Cambodia, in relation to the issue of camps the
Russian Gulag, in France generally the re-examination of WW2 in the
seventies - issues of collaboration, the myths surrounding the
resistance etc). 

The second which I touched on in the previous post is the way in which
a broad swathe of ultra-left and anarchist groups took many of these
ideas up fairly uncritically, both in their own journals and/or by
signing up to and distributing "La Guerre Sociale"'s leaflet. In many
ways I find this second aspect the more troubling. 








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