Daniel Guérin (May 19,1904-April 14,1988) was a French anarchist and author. He is best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the mid-19th Century through the first half of the 20th Century. He is also known for his opposition to fascism and colonialism, in addition to his support for the CNT during the Spanish Civil War, and his work for gay rights (he was bisexual).

Early on, he was attracted to the ideas of Trotskyism. He traveled to Lebanon (1927-1929) and Indo-China (1929-1930) and became a passionate anti-colonialist. After a brief period of membership in the Socialist Party he left, disgusted by its electoralism, and in 1932 he joined the Confédération Générale du Travail, a syndicalist organization. In 1933, he traveled to Nazi Germany, an experience which inspired him to author Fascism and Big Business, in which he detailed the roots of fascist thought, and its ties to capitalism. Gradually, his ethos edged further left, eventually developing into a combination of Marxism and anarchism. In his essay Libertarian Marxism?, he stated a belief that Karl Marx's philosophy should be judged complete at the Paris Commune, in which he appended his original plans for a two-step revolution, first abolishing class, then abolishing government, into a more immediate, libertarian process. A brief summary of his ideas can be found in his own words:

To call oneself a libertarian marxist today is not to look backwards

but to be committed to the future. The libertarian marxist is not an

academic but a militant. He is well aware that it is up to him to change

the world - no more, no less. History throws him on the brink.

Everywhere the hour of the socialist revolution has sounded. Revolution -

like landing on the moon - has entered the realm of the immediate and

possible. Precise definition of the forms of a socialist society is no

longer a utopian scheme. The only utopians are those who close their

eyes to these realities. (Why Libertarian Marxism, 1969)

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, he was quick to support the Republican forces, but within a year, after internal rifts in the Republican army erupted into actual combat, the Stalinist PSUC on one side, and the Trotskyist POUM and anarchist CNT on the other, he had lost a great deal of faith in the Soviet-supported factions.

In 1946, Daniel Guérin went to the United States, and was appalled at the treatment of African Americans, and their lack of equality with their European American counterparts. He witnessed the Civil Rights Movement, and chronicled his experience in his book Negroes On the March.

Additional credits include his participation in the May 1968 uprisings in Paris, France, as well as his calls for Algerian independence from France. His writings were very prolific in France, but English translations are lacking. Guérin was the subject of the French film Daniel Guérin, Combats Dans le Siècle (1904-1988), made by Patrice Spadoni and Laurent Mulheisen.

List of writings (incomplete)

• Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
• Class Struggle in the First French Republic
• Fascism and Big Business
• Proudhon: Oui ou Non?
• Anarchism and Marxism
• For a Libertarian Marxism
• Towards a Libertarian Communism
• Negroes on the March
• No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism

External links

• Daniel Guérin, personal biography page (http://www.danielguerin.info/en/index.html)
• Anarchist Encyclopedia Article (http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/sinners/GuerinDaniel.htm)
• Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (http://www.zabalaza.net/texts/anarchism_guerin/contents.html)
• Anarchist Archives (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/guerin/index.html)
• French Wikipedia Article ()fr:Daniel Guérin