Charles-Auguste Bontemps

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Guy Antoine and Ch.-Aug. Bontemps, “What is Situationism?” (1966)

April 4, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

Nine years ago, a movement was born, similar in many respects to the libertarian movement and very distant in others. Why isn’t it being discussed? It seems to be linked, on the one hand, to the highly developed theoretical aspect of the Situationist International’s texts and, on the other, to Situationist concerns, which seem to interest only a small minority. What are the causes? Among them, one of the most important is undoubtedly that professional revolutionaries from Lenin to Bakunin always separated political-economic action from action in culture. In their view, it was first necessary to change the material basis of life and only address the rest (the problem of art and lifestyle) in a second phase, without realizing that they were thus leaving “culture” in the hands of the bourgeoisie. […]

Working Translations

Charles-Auguste Bontemps, “The Libertarian Spirit” (1945)

May 27, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

A libertarian, from whatever discipline he claims to be, defines himself as essentially individualist and non-conformist. The libertarian spirit, according to the views that I propose to lay out, manifests itself in a constant desire for clarity, realism, objectivity. However, the initial structure of human societies was, as we know, strictly communitarian. One cannot, consequently, study the behaviors that are appropriate to a libertarian spirit, without having previously situated the individual with the group. […]

Working Translations

Charles-Auguste Bontemps, “The Sustainability of Anarchism” (1967)

March 25, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

I am reminded that some libertarian communists or socialists, who claim to be revolutionaries in the politico-social sense of the term, have renounced or demand that those of their tendency renounce what they call the anarchist label. That anarchist label, from their perspective,  conceals a very questionable sort of anarchism. They are disturbed by it and disturb still more the propagation of a specifically anarchist philosophy. […]