Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

s p o n t a n e i t y
from the outside. By itself, the working class is capable only of
a restrictive, “pure-and-simple trade union consciousness.” As a
result, the working class needed a party, led by an elite vanguard,
by dedicated intellectuals who would make revolution their calling,
who would purge the movement of its spontaneity, dictate a
tight, tactical program of action, especially “to rebellious students
… to discontented religious sectaries, to indignant school teachers,
etc.”
The Marxist–Leninist campaign against spontaneity, Lefebvre
laments, has “been waged in the name of science, in the name of
insurrection viewed as a technique, and in the name of organization”
(p. 69). This had a catastrophic effect on looser, populist
protesting, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Indeed, certain
strains of Marxism followed Lenin’s edict that spontaneity
was devoid of value, that it was essentially irrational. Spontaneity
lacked the military discipline Lenin wanted, lacked his centralist
take on organization, regressed into “tailism,” with the tail wagging
the dog, the masses steering the party, and a “slavish kowtowing
before spontaneity.”
Lefebvre’s humanist Marxism bonds with Luxemburg’s,
mirroring Louis Althusser’s antihumanist bonding with Lenin.
(Althusser’s Leninist-inspired Reading Capital appeared one year
after The Explosion.) While Lefebvre’s loose, energetic, rapid-fire
formulations and spontaneous outpourings attracted student–militant
readers, the clinical rigor and paired-down style of arch-
Leninist Althusser likewise had appeal (especially in the post-’68
period when street spontaneity quieted). What Lefebvre articulated
in weighty tomes, stretching for hundreds of playful pages,
Althusser laid down solid in a chapter. The tight, disciplined, tactical
theoretical and practical program that Lenin preached underwrote
Althusser’s best texts like For Marx, Reading Capital, and
Lenin and Philosophy, where he constructed a “scientific” Marxist
theory, grounded in concrete concepts, a veritable analytical tool
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