The group originated in the
Trotskyist Fourth International, where Castoriadis and
Claude Lefort constituted a
Chaulieu–Montal tendency – so called after their pseudonyms "Pierre Chaulieu" (Castoriadis) and "Claude Montal" (Lefort) – in the French
Parti Communiste Internationaliste in 1946. Castoriadis had links with the group known as the
Johnson–Forest Tendency (a 1945–1962 Trotskyist
tendency in the United States associated with the
Soviet-critical theorists
C. L. R. James and
Raya Dunayevskaya). In 1948, the group experienced their "final disenchantment with Trotskyism", leading them to break away to form Socialisme ou Barbarie, whose journal began appearing in March 1949. Castoriadis later said of this period that "the main audience of the group and of the journal was formed by groups of the old, radical left:
Bordigists,
council communists, some
anarchists and some offspring of the German 'left' of the 1920s." SouB developed parallel to, and were in dialogue with, the Johnson–Forest Tendency, which developed as a body of ideas within American Trotskyist organisations; one faction of this group later formed
Facing Reality (1962–1970). The early days also brought debate with
Anton Pannekoek and an influx of ex-Bordigists into the group. The group was composed of both intellectuals and workers, and agreed with the idea that the main enemies of society were the bureaucracies which governed modern capitalism. They documented and analysed the struggle against that bureaucracy in the group's journal. The thirteenth issue (January–March 1954), as an example, was devoted to the
East German revolt of June 1953 and the strikes which erupted amongst several sectors of French workers that summer. Following from the belief that what the working class was addressing in their daily struggles was the real content of socialism, the intellectuals encouraged the workers in the group to report on every aspect of their working lives. Socialisme ou Barbarie was critical of
Leninism, rejecting the idea of a revolutionary party, and placing an emphasis on the importance of
workers' councils. While some members left to form other groups, those remaining became more and more critical of
Marxism over time.
Jean Laplanche, one of the group's founding members, recalls the early days of the organization: The
Hungarian Revolution and other events of the mid-1950s led to a further influx into the group. By this time, they were proposing the fundamental point as This became characterised as a distinction between the
dirigeant and
exécutant in French, usually translated as
order-givers and
order-takers. This perspective enabled the group to extend its understanding to the new forms of social conflict emerging outside the realm of production as such. That was also the case for the
1960–1961 Winter General Strike in
Wallonia.
Post-1958 splits and influence After the
May 1958 crisis and an influx of new meeting attendees, disagreements on the organisational role of a political group led to the departure of some prominent members including Claude Lefort and
Henri Simon to form
Information et Liaisons Ouvrières – ILO ("Workers' Information and Liaison"; 1958–1960); after Lefort's departure in 1960, that group became
Informations et Correspondance Ouvrières – ICO ("Workers' Information and Correspondence"; 1960–1973). By 1960, SouB had grown to around 100 members and had developed new international links, primarily in the emergence of a sister organisation in Britain called
Solidarity. In June 1963, disputes within the group around Castoriadis' increasing rejection of Marxism led to the departure of the group around the
Pouvoir Ouvrier (
PO;
Worker Power) journal; the group of the same name (whose members included
Jean-François Lyotard) existed from 1963 to 1969 and believed that a revolutionary organisation was necessary to help bring about the establishment of workers' councils. The
SouB journal continued publishing until a final edition in 1965, after which the group became dormant and announced its indefinite suspension in June 1967. The Italian social movement of
Autonomia was also influenced, but less directly. Castoriadis' ideas as expressed in
SouB were a significant influence on participants in May 68 – a fact acknowledged by
Daniel Cohn-Bendit. In 1975, Simon was involved in ICO's successor group (or simply Échanges). After Simon's death, Échanges disbanded in 2025. == Members ==