The following text was read by the author on 23 May 2024 at the panel discussion “Lenin’s (dissenting) contemporaries, Lenin’s (unorthodox) heirs: from Kautsky to Luxemburg, from Gramsci to Anderson”, together with Josep Maria Antentas, Michal Koxzlowski, Michael Löwy (panelist and chair) and Massimo Modonesi, held as part of the international series of events Leninist Days / Jornadas leninistas (27 January to 25 May 2024), organized in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Vladimir I. Lenin. It is presented now in a revised and slightly edited version.

On Perry Anderson’s and Daniel Bensaïd’s Peculiar Leninisms

At first glance, Perry Anderson (1938-) and Daniel Bensaïd (1946-2010) have something important in common: an effort to respond to the challenges posed to Marxism at the level of ideas. That effort becomes clear in their corresponding critical interactions with French post-structuralism and analytical Marxism in the context of the crisis and the hope of a new beginning. This parallelism between the two is even more relevant considering that they have followed two different paths – one of observation and Olympian distance, and the other of close combat and encounters with enemies on the battlefield – leading to two very different intellectual attitudes: that of an uncompromising realism, and that of a slow impatience. Anderson and Bensaïd were two of the most significant figures of the second half of Twentieth Century Marxism and part of the same global political generation marked by the rise of the New Left, experiencing different emancipatory events and the realities of defeat and resistance.

At the beginning of their careers, we find similar experiences of cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and extraterritoriality, which eventually lead them to the world of leftist ideas and radical-emancipatory politics. However, as I have already stated, there are clear differences between them. While the approach to that world would turn Anderson into an independent historian, editor of a prestigious journal, and eventually and academic, it would make Bensaïd a disciplined political activist and leader, as well as an essayist and philosophy professor. Though, there are important similarities regarding the characterization of the period opened up from 1968. Certainly, this is where the legacy of Leninism comes into play, as such characterizations were influenced by Ernst Mandel and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International – as it is well known, Bensaïd’s Revolutionary Communist League was the French section of that Secretariat, and Anderson’s New Left Review (NLR) was at a time closely linked to the British section, the International Marxist Group.

But, in turn, within this convergence around Leninism and Trotskyism, there is an important divergence. Anderson’s perspective was indeed selective, idealized, imaginary, and presented itself as a line of extended continuity from Lenin and Trotsky to Mandel through brilliant intellectuals like Roman Rosdolsky and Isaac Deutscher. In contrast, Bensaïd’s standpoint was much more realistic and eventually plural – for someone like him, it would never have been possible to speak singularly of that precious “heritage with no instruction manual,” and of which barbaric Trotskyists like J. Posadas, Guillermo Lora, and Nahuel Moreno are also a fundamental part.[1]

I would like to emphasize a bit more what are the points of contact that exist between one and the other. Although their styles differ, both were (and Anderson still is) remarkably gifted writers who are united by the experience of defeat, disappointment, and failure. Bensaïd may have faced it in a somewhat more tragic way, as he witnessed firsthand how the substitutionism and the guerilla warfare that the United Secretariat irresponsibly promoted in Latin America turned into the disappearance, torture, and murder of countless comrades. But the missed opportunities and squandered chances by Trotskyism (which seemed to be more faithful to Lenin’s legacy) in its attempt to generate an alternative, coherent, and creative Marxism, also had deep consequences for Anderson – after taking a detour through the laboratory of historical forms and settling scores with Western Marxism, Antonio Gramsci, and E. P. Thompson, he resigned from the editorial committee of the NLR, which at the early 80s was undergoing a (new) process of reorientation.

During these troubled times, Anderson and Bensaïd shared a sort of diagnosis: the opportunity for a reunification of theory and practice in a mass revolutionary movement was lost, and the materialization of such reunification seemed to be for the moment far away. They also agreed on the premise of this diagnosis regarding a failed reunification of theory and practice, driven in both cases by Mandelite Trotskyism. The fact that Anderson, Bensaïd and so many other Marxists talked (and in a way still talk) about a reunification implies that theory and practice would have once been unified, evoking a Leninist mantra which warns that there cannot be a revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory (and vice versa).

This assumption of a contingent and therefore not necessary split between theory and practice, which refers to a classical problem in the tradition of modern critical thought and which has attempted to be resolved in Kantian formalist, Hegelian absolute-idealist and Marxian materialist terms, is the cornerstone of Anderson’s Considerations on Western Marxism (1976). This classic essay starts and concludes with Lenin’s thesis according to which “a correct revolutionary theory […] assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement”.[2] It could also be found in Bensaïd’s oeuvre, and by that I do not just mean the author’s period of hasty Leninism that includes works like La notion de crise révolutionnaire chez Lénine (1968), but also the more recent period of a melancholic wager in which the problem of the break of a priori unity between theory and practice was restated in the sophisticated terms of a discordance or a contretemps.

Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that neither of them took account of one of the most important lessons of Marxism, which suggests that the project of any complete unity would ultimately be idealistic, and that there is no such thing as a pure theory and a pure practice ready to converge – while the former is always practical, the latter is always theoretical. Indeed, Anderson and Bensaïd failed to grasp that the endeavor for a total fusion between theory and practice is an impossible and, in a sense, absurd task, condemned to failure from the very beginning. In this respect, it could be stated that they did not acknowledge enough that practice is underdetermined by theory, and theory is overdetermined by practice.[3] This means that a specific theoretical thought could never be in a position to guide the strategic and tactical dimensions of any radical-emancipatory politics, and at the same time, that such a politics may require more than one theoretical source to articulate these dimensions effectively. It is evident that nowadays there exist a thousand Marxisms, a similar number of non-Marxist critical theories, and a plethora of forms of radical-emancipatory politics shaped by different strategies and tactics. While the united front of all this is desirable, aspiring to a kind of pure unity is as unrealistic in terms of factual reference as it is illusory in terms of inner normativity.

In any case, the important thing here is that, faced with the non-materialization of the (impossible) unity between theory and practice, Anderson and Bensaïd did very different things. Taking seriously what Trotsky suggested, on more than one occasion, that it was impossible to conquer new positions when the previously conquered ones are not correctly defended, Anderson opted to take a distance and target the currents of French thought that he himself had helped to disseminate from the pages of the NLR. In this path, Anderson debated with various contenders who aimed to replace historical materialism from the left, the center and the right; revisited and reconsidered the historical studies he had conducted earlier. On his part, already suffering the effects of the virus that would indirectly end his life in 2010, Bensaïd dedicated himself to putting down everything that activism had so far prevented him from writing. Books like Marx for Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique (1995) provide evidence that, in times of darkness, Bensaïd engaged in a defense of Marxism as bold as Anderson’s. It could even be said that at one point, his defense was more radical than that of the British historian, as it was never constrained by a “farewell […] to the revolutionary tradition”.[4]

Shortly before his death, Bensaïd supported the self-dissolution of his organization into the New Anticapitalist Party, being criticized for betraying Leninist principles and rituals. The boldest decision Anderson has made in recent decades, when world history, political cultures, and international relations seemed to be more important to him than Marxist intellectual history or leftist ideas as a whole, is returning to the NLR as editor. While the safe ground of the watchtower and the laboratory have led Anderson to contemplate the spectrum of world ideas and experiment with the forms of history, the uneasy dimensions of strategic reason and profane politics have led Bensaïd not to die stuck in the barricades but to invent the necessary weapons to turn the defeat into victory.

Committed not only to the legacy of Trotsky but also to the stoicism of Gramsci, Anderson has always sought to balance “moral resistance” with “political innovation”.[5] In his view, defeat has always been “a hard experience to master”.[6] Because “the temptation […] to sublimate it” arises again and again when defeat occurs, Anderson has indicated that “it is necessary to be able to look theoretical adversaries in the face, without either indulgence or self-deception”.[7]

Everything he wrote stemming from the experience of defeat is based on this conviction, which in more than one sense invokes Trotsky and the Leninism that is embodied by Trotskyism in a most faithful way. In the context of the fierce neoliberal hegemony from the end of the 1990s and the beginnings of the 2000s, Anderson called this conviction “uncompromising realism”.[8] Differentiating it from positions such as “accommodation”, “consolation”, or “resignation”, the author referred to this political-intellectual attitude as a point of view with which it is possible to refuse “any accommodation with the ruling system”, and to reject “every piety and euphemism that would understate its power”.[9]

In the last two decades, Anderson has remained faithful to what was outlined in that editorial from the year 2000, wherein Trotsky would have been the object of a vindication as particular as it was unthinkable, and consequently, the protagonist of (another) posthumous victory. It is true, however, that if his most recent production is compared with his writings of the 1970s and early 1980s, it is clear that he is now a different thinker. Both the moment and the author himself have changed drastically. Nevertheless, the epoch that is now upon us has not deprived Anderson of resisting the direction of the time.

Some fellow travelers of the British historian have found fault in his uncompromising realism for allegedly being influenced by a kind of fatalistic pessimism. However, reducing his attitude to abjection and apathy is, at the very least, an error, as the Andersonian vantage point has nothing to do with the lugubrious and melancholic ivory tower. His peculiar realism cannot be assimilated into either socialist realism or capitalist realism. It is evident that the author concluded his saga of studies on Marxism a long time ago and bid farewell to the revolutionary tradition, inevitably becoming a different thinker as a result. Still, he ultimately remains part of the group of the “heirs of Trotsky” (and Lenin) described towards the end of Considerations.[10]

It may be that, like Trotskyists, the true Leninists of the past and present, the author’s work is the product of defeat. However, Anderson, the uncompromising realist, remains well aware that “to be defeated and to be bowed are not the same”.[11]

It would be even less unproblematic to argue that Bensaïd belongs to a hypothetical group of heirs of Trotsky and Lenin. The best way to describe the French thinker and activist is by comparing him to that old mole who burrows and digs. Having been defeated on more than one occasion, Bensaïd never chose to surrender, wagering to undermine the foundations of the existing state of affairs. He was a disciplined yet realistic militant who, when necessary, admitted defeat and acknowledged that the balance of power was unfavorable. But he never ever opted for giving up, relinquishing, or disarming. Against the current, in the last decades of his life, he adopted from Dionys Mascolo and George Steiner the political-intellectual attitude of “a slow, intractable impatience”, “an urgent patience”, with which he managed to extract victories from defeats, eventually paving the way for “victorious defeats”.[12] Once again, the comparison with the founder of the Fourth International himself is inevitable here, because, as the greatest of his biographers once stated, “Trotsky’s defeat was pregnant with victory”.[13]

More generally, it could be affirmed that Bensaïdian Marxism constitutes “a critical theory of social struggle and the transformation of the world”, a thought on permanent revolution and uneven and combined developments, a meticulous reading of “the discordance of temporalities” and the “non-contemporaneity” of contradictions.[14] This Benjaminian way of conceiving Marxism and particularly history clashes head-on with the kind of Andersonian conjectures and analogies because, according to Bensaïd, the scientific pretense of forecasting the future is ridiculous. The only certainty is that history is uncertain. At all times, the author embraces Gramsci’s hypothesis according to which the only thing that could be scientifically forecast is class struggle.

Nevertheless, even this foreseeable struggle is unsure – its outcome is never certain. Therefore, what should be done in a moment like the present one where historical analogies would be irrelevant? For someone like Bensaïd, the answer could be to adopt the model of a figure like that of the Marrano. Like the early Christians who conspiratorially practiced their new faith, like those true Leninists who were the Trotskyists, the Marranos, Sephardic Jews persecuted during the times of the Inquisition, turned a pejorative term into a sign of moral strength. Forced to convert to Christianity, they continued their traditions and practiced their rituals clandestinely. Resisting, learning to live in secrecy, they mastered the art of what Bensaïd called slow impatience. Both faithful and unfaithful, the Marranos waited long enough to turn defeat into victory.

Through figures related to that of the Marrano, such as the ghost or the mole, Bensaïd reflected on the ticklish issues of inheritance and transmission until the very end of his life. An Impatient Life (2004), an autobiographical testimony which, as in the case of Victor Serge or Trotsky himself, was written “to help in understanding what we did and what we desire”, highlights the importance both of these issues had for him.[15] Like Noah, the protagonist of The Quest for Fire (1911), the French revolutionary militant dedicated his final efforts “to protect the spark and keep the flame alive”.[16] The recent publication of a work like Darren Roso’s indicates that he managed to avoid what E.P. Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity”, indeed leaving us much.[17]

To conclude, I would like to point out that this brief racconto makes it clear that the strategies employed by Anderson and Bensaïd to defend and renew Marxism and the Leninist legacy diverge. While one proceeds from the heights of the watchtower, the other does so from the very ground where the struggles take place; while one maintains an undisturbed gaze that nothing affects, the other constantly engages in openness and encounter; while one reveres the stoic waiting that is characteristic of a truly uncompromising realism, the other avoids, through the practice of a slow impatience, the stench and decay of stagnation.

Bensaïd’s Leninism was a hasty one, which he had to adopt in the context of May 1968. In a certain sense, this also applies to Anderson, who, along with the editorial committee of the NLR, explored the entire spectrum of left-wing political orientations in a few years to eventually arrive at Mandelite Trotskyism. In both cases, therefore, Leninism eventually took place through the legacy of Trotsky. It may be that one of those peculiar Leninisms was briefer, more imaginary and, consequently, less realistic than the other, but the truth is that, until the very end, Perry Anderson and Daniel Bensaïd have remained in a sense faithful to them.

Notes

[1] Daniel Bensaïd, Strategies of Resistance & ‘Who are he Trotskyists?’ (London: Resistance Books, 2009), p. 38.

[2] V.  I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism – An Infantile Disorder”, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 25.

[3] See Omar Acha, Marxismo e historia: Reconstrucción y deconstrucción del materialismo histórico (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2023).

[4] Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement (London and New York: Verso, 1992), p. xi.

[5] Perry Anderson, English Questions (London: Verso, 1992), p. 11.

[6] Perry Anderson, Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (London: Verso, 2005), p. xiv.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Perry Anderson, “Renewals”, New Left Review (II, 1: 5-24), p. 14.

[9] Ibid., pp. 13, 13, n. 5, 14.

[10] Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1979), p. 98.

[11] Anderson, Spectrum, p. xvii.

[12] Bensaïd, Strategies of Resistance, pp. 137, 139.

[13] Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940 (London: Verso, 2004), p. 418.

[14] Daniel Bensaïd, Marx for Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 18, 35.

[15] Daniel Bensaïd, An Impatient Life: A Memoir (London: Verso, 2014).

[16] Ibid.

[17] E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 12. See Darren Roso, Daniel Bensaïd: From the Actuality of the Revolution to the Melancholic Wager (Leiden: Brill, 2024).

 

Featured image: Richard Serra. Snake (Sugea). 1994-1997. Weathering steel, three units, each comprised of two conical sections. Each section: 13’2″ x 52′ (4 x 15.85 m); overall: 13’2″ x 104′ x 22′ 4 1/2″ (4 x 31.7 x 7.84 m); plate thickness: 2″ (5 cm). Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.

Santiago Roggerone