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The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising
How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed?
Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.
When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our communist horizon, which would-be revolutionaries, then as now, must negotiate one way or another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism, Jasper Bernes synthesizes from a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent mission of the world proletariat.
Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.
When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our communist horizon, which would-be revolutionaries, then as now, must negotiate one way or another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism, Jasper Bernes synthesizes from a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent mission of the world proletariat.
235 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 29, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 21, 2025
A decent reflection on the history of the self described ultra left, but as one might expect from such an idealistic project, the author leaves you with a very frustrating lack of grounding in the political realities of real world on the ground organizing. The idea that the answer to "What is to be done?" is "nothing, lest we overly interfere in the spontaneous outbreak and development of workers self activity" is ludicrous on its face. And when the only response after being confronted with the demonstrative failure of "Prefigurative Politics" and reliance on spontaneous formations in the Arab Spring and George Floyd Uprising is "But what if there's a universe where it worked?" it's pretty hard to take much of this seriously.
May 3, 2025
Communisation at its best and more
Would also recommend people read this review - https://prometheusjournal.org/2025/04...
Would also recommend people read this review - https://prometheusjournal.org/2025/04...
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May 3, 2025There is so much to like about this book; its historical reconstruction and exposition of councilism and ultra-leftism (albeit a very specific strand of this lineage!), and its particular strategy for orienting militant activity toward both communism and inquiry, and how to develop that necessary skill, of attuning ourselves to the dialectic between the two. It is also frustrating in its degree of abstraction regarding militant inquiry, the forms it can take today and how it might relate to possible political composition - the difficult questions of relating different sites and modes of inquiry, within and without the workplace and the wider social field, these are what remain the challenge, if we take inquiry as a fundamental practice for addressing the current moment, and a central task for 'partisans of communisation'. I also think it perhaps dodges or evades some of the starker edges of communisation theory, which really make it a unique intervention into the current revolutionary millieu - periodisation and subsumption (and thus, refusal and insurrection); these are addressed with greater equivocation/less clarity than elsewhere. This is obviously a tactical, textual move, and has its benefits, of course - an expanded capacity to engage positively the many swirling currents and forms which make-up revolutionary social upheaval - but also becomes a looser position, as a result. An address of 'workerism' - in any real substantive sense - and its readings of class composition and militant form in the post-68 era is what would have certainly drawn some of this out, and I think a missed opportunity (we can't have it all...). Most regrettable is the emission of any reading of the wealth of more recent communisation writing that reckons with questions of gender head-on, from Gonzales to Vishmdit, and so tackles more thoroughly the relation between communism and social life at large (and so the future of revolution itself!)
~
One enjoyable element of working through his exposition of contemporary struggle lies in gauging how Bernes mirrors, and extends, what he was attempting to make sense of in the wider cultural field back in his 2017, The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization, a book which he concluded with the reflection that "...more and more struggles emerge in the space of circulation rather than production, undertaken by those who are surplus to capital’s need for employment or whose opportunities for struggle in workplaces have been foreclosed. Their means are riots, blockades, occupations of public and private space, and their ends are access to the necessaries of life independent of the mediation of the wage. Workplace struggles will continue alongside these forms, without a doubt, but the poetry of the future will increasingly have to find its reasons and its weapons beyond production."
~
One enjoyable element of working through his exposition of contemporary struggle lies in gauging how Bernes mirrors, and extends, what he was attempting to make sense of in the wider cultural field back in his 2017, The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization, a book which he concluded with the reflection that "...more and more struggles emerge in the space of circulation rather than production, undertaken by those who are surplus to capital’s need for employment or whose opportunities for struggle in workplaces have been foreclosed. Their means are riots, blockades, occupations of public and private space, and their ends are access to the necessaries of life independent of the mediation of the wage. Workplace struggles will continue alongside these forms, without a doubt, but the poetry of the future will increasingly have to find its reasons and its weapons beyond production."
May 30, 2025
hard to really say what was being accomplished here and i think his conversation around workers councils/council communism is a bit too muddled to really provide any sort of useful model. labyrinthic but contained in its own world; there is truly no context here. more notes than narrative; bernes starts and ends the book with very little certainty of premise or argument.
still, deeply communist and somehow very readable. will re-read.
also most funny example of Verso marketing totally disjointed from the book's actual content. Paris Commune and GFU literally mentioned for 2 pages.
still, deeply communist and somehow very readable. will re-read.
also most funny example of Verso marketing totally disjointed from the book's actual content. Paris Commune and GFU literally mentioned for 2 pages.
January 5, 2026
Why have the many risings against capitalism over the past two centuries left the system essentially intact even if constantly modified? After all, the glimpse as to what was to replace it was, according to Marx and his followers, seen way back in 1871 in the form of the Paris Commune. Prior to that date things had been hazy, with alternatives to exploitation and class oppression taking the form of either democratic republics energised by universal suffrage and thus accountable to the will of the people, or experiments in social engineering of the phalange-type advocated by the utopian socialist Charles Fourier.
The Paris Commune provided a down-to-earth example of the construction of an alternative form of social organisation driven by the urgent needs of the working class during a phase of outright revolution. It was recreated almost spontaneously in other moments of heightened class struggle in the form of the soviets forged in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, and in parallel events in Germany in the early 1920s, Italy and Spain. The model of the workers' council inspired a robust current in socialist theory and activity, described as council communism. But did it ever grasp the nettle and begin the task of dismantling the dynamical forces that drove capitalism and which have allowed for its reconstitution why periods of crisis have been overcome?
The insistence on the council form has had its detractors within the socialist and communist movements. Some of this surfaced at times when revolutionary movements were in danger of exhausting themselves in debating arenas which had allowed space for petty bourgeois perspectives to divide the working class. At such moments the dominant party structure has shown willingness to dissolve councils and replace them with the direct rule of the apparatchiks, with the reaction of Stalinist rule from the late 1920s onwards standing as the clearest example. But it was challenged from a more theoretical perspective as well, with the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga setting out his views on the need for the party to provide leadership throughout the revolutionary period without the distraction of councils.
Bernes takes us through the debates around these issues in some detail. For the councilists the importance of the structure was its rootedness in the processes of value production in factories and workplaces where the capitalist mode, was established and re-established on a constant basis. But this meant challenging the core aspect of exploitation - namely the expropriation from the worker of the product of her labour, with compensation coming in the form of a wage which was less than the cost of the value of the commodities she had been making. Pure communist doctrine predicted the replacement of wages with a system based on 'from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs'. But this implied the relative abundance of the goods and services needed to secure the standard to life for everyone, which could not be presumed as existing at the time of transition from capitalism to communism. What would function as compensation for labour during this period of transition which did not operate on the same basis as a wage was a matter never fully resolved by the council communists. Closest to a solution could be found in the work of Jan Appel whose Grundprinzipen considered a scheme for reorganising production under two categories: first 'productive establishments' which would produce goods which would be distributed through a system based on 'labour certificates' which certified the labour inputs provided by the worker; and establishments provided for general social use (GSU)' which would be distributed freely and without reference to the individual's labour input or lack thereof.
All of this constitutes a 'test of value' as the measure of how far along the road to communism the revolutionary process has moved society. The more goods and services allocated to the GSU category, the closer society has moved towards communism.
Bernes judges it to be an inadequate test for reasons which are both technical and political. Technical referred to the difficulties associated with the goods circulating in the productive establishments category and the use of labour certificates. More generally, it was in danger of reducing the transition to communism as an economic formula rather than a matter of qualitative change. What is elaborated instead is a 'test of communism' which is related to the social transformation which was being advanced by revolution. The measure then becomes the task 'to overcome all egoizing structures and to communize consumption and production, to render visible our common interdependence, in direct, collective provision of basic needs in which decisions about what to generate and what to consume are brought together in conscious planning bodies.' (p.126)
This hardly simplifies the tasks facing the communist movement but at least ties the author's sympathies closer to the councilists in their comm on concern in being guided by a consciously democratic process in which the subjective state of the working class is integrated into the process of change, and not merely directed from above by the all-seeing party leadership.
The Paris Commune provided a down-to-earth example of the construction of an alternative form of social organisation driven by the urgent needs of the working class during a phase of outright revolution. It was recreated almost spontaneously in other moments of heightened class struggle in the form of the soviets forged in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, and in parallel events in Germany in the early 1920s, Italy and Spain. The model of the workers' council inspired a robust current in socialist theory and activity, described as council communism. But did it ever grasp the nettle and begin the task of dismantling the dynamical forces that drove capitalism and which have allowed for its reconstitution why periods of crisis have been overcome?
The insistence on the council form has had its detractors within the socialist and communist movements. Some of this surfaced at times when revolutionary movements were in danger of exhausting themselves in debating arenas which had allowed space for petty bourgeois perspectives to divide the working class. At such moments the dominant party structure has shown willingness to dissolve councils and replace them with the direct rule of the apparatchiks, with the reaction of Stalinist rule from the late 1920s onwards standing as the clearest example. But it was challenged from a more theoretical perspective as well, with the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga setting out his views on the need for the party to provide leadership throughout the revolutionary period without the distraction of councils.
Bernes takes us through the debates around these issues in some detail. For the councilists the importance of the structure was its rootedness in the processes of value production in factories and workplaces where the capitalist mode, was established and re-established on a constant basis. But this meant challenging the core aspect of exploitation - namely the expropriation from the worker of the product of her labour, with compensation coming in the form of a wage which was less than the cost of the value of the commodities she had been making. Pure communist doctrine predicted the replacement of wages with a system based on 'from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs'. But this implied the relative abundance of the goods and services needed to secure the standard to life for everyone, which could not be presumed as existing at the time of transition from capitalism to communism. What would function as compensation for labour during this period of transition which did not operate on the same basis as a wage was a matter never fully resolved by the council communists. Closest to a solution could be found in the work of Jan Appel whose Grundprinzipen considered a scheme for reorganising production under two categories: first 'productive establishments' which would produce goods which would be distributed through a system based on 'labour certificates' which certified the labour inputs provided by the worker; and establishments provided for general social use (GSU)' which would be distributed freely and without reference to the individual's labour input or lack thereof.
All of this constitutes a 'test of value' as the measure of how far along the road to communism the revolutionary process has moved society. The more goods and services allocated to the GSU category, the closer society has moved towards communism.
Bernes judges it to be an inadequate test for reasons which are both technical and political. Technical referred to the difficulties associated with the goods circulating in the productive establishments category and the use of labour certificates. More generally, it was in danger of reducing the transition to communism as an economic formula rather than a matter of qualitative change. What is elaborated instead is a 'test of communism' which is related to the social transformation which was being advanced by revolution. The measure then becomes the task 'to overcome all egoizing structures and to communize consumption and production, to render visible our common interdependence, in direct, collective provision of basic needs in which decisions about what to generate and what to consume are brought together in conscious planning bodies.' (p.126)
This hardly simplifies the tasks facing the communist movement but at least ties the author's sympathies closer to the councilists in their comm on concern in being guided by a consciously democratic process in which the subjective state of the working class is integrated into the process of change, and not merely directed from above by the all-seeing party leadership.
July 31, 2025
Ett kommunistiskt manifest för vår tid. Aktuell analys, upplyftande av de viktigaste händelserna och tankarna som fanns kring dessa. Om aktualiteten av råd, av uppror och av kommunism.
June 17, 2025
I got a C on the communism test
August 28, 2025
Good intellectual history of a set of communist ideas I personally disagree with. Don't read expecting serious suggestions for how to put these politics into practice. Years ago I would have tied my brain into knots to like this stuff, now it just strikes me as fundamentally unserious.
June 18, 2025
One of the great contemporary Marxist thinkers, alongside Saito, Mau, Perry Anderson, Malm, and others. The core of this text is an analysis of the council-idea, its historical examples, how particular revolutionary moments have advanced the council-form in different ways, how the council-idea has been criticized, and Bernes' assertion that the council-commune is THE form of working-class revolution.
July 31, 2025
I have been a great fan of his work, and his essays on value-form theory have introduced and deepened my knowledge on this particular reading of Marx. This book lacked a clear argument and focus, and I was often reading very niche debates without having a good idea why they're important. I think his book is stuck between (insightful!) historical analyses of the commune and worker council, and his political theory of revolution. Of course, they support each other in important ways, but clarity is needed on how they're autonomous theories, and how they're interconnected.
That said, this book has some insightful ideas on the practice and potential of communes and worker councils as revolutionary practice. The historical analysis of the revolutionary battle in Germany post WWI, with the "Red Army on the Ruhr", or the plans for revolution on 9th of November 1918, just two days to late! and yes, too late, because in precisely that week the social democrats took power and the revolutionary window of opportunity closed, or the dissection of the Revolution in Portugal in the 1970s.
I also liked his idea of the socialist 'despotic central planner' versus the communist 'transparant central bookmaker'. In his depiction of communism, by free, local association and creating bonds, connections and exchanges could be done without the visible hand of an authoritive planner. Rather, the role of the central institution would be to track and clear the goods and services done.
That said, this book has some insightful ideas on the practice and potential of communes and worker councils as revolutionary practice. The historical analysis of the revolutionary battle in Germany post WWI, with the "Red Army on the Ruhr", or the plans for revolution on 9th of November 1918, just two days to late! and yes, too late, because in precisely that week the social democrats took power and the revolutionary window of opportunity closed, or the dissection of the Revolution in Portugal in the 1970s.
I also liked his idea of the socialist 'despotic central planner' versus the communist 'transparant central bookmaker'. In his depiction of communism, by free, local association and creating bonds, connections and exchanges could be done without the visible hand of an authoritive planner. Rather, the role of the central institution would be to track and clear the goods and services done.
July 14, 2025
Five stars because I have nothing against it. "The Future of Revolution" critiques past communist uprisings and evaluates them on their organization and viability. Bernes' "test of communism" is well explained and justified, but the best part is the analysis of post-1968 workers' struggles at the end. Workers have literally just not been seizing the means of production, and Bernes knows exactly why that is. Maybe he doesn't quite know where to go from here, but who does? He at least provides some pretty good ideas.
July 3, 2025
a revolution derived from the 21st century, taking from the 20th, but not imitating it. have to do something new if we’re gonna win
July 10, 2025
I think what stands out most about this book is its ability to separate the wheat from the chaff in communization. There is quite a bit of "vibes based" theory when it comes to the ultra-left, such as when Dauve tried to make the point that the GIC proposals somehow retain the law of value because they measured labor-time. Bernes corrects a lot of this, and adds his own takes on top as well. The history of the council/commune form(s) was very very good. He is able to put together a list of criteria to show just why it was that all these movements have failed. Compared to Endnotes 1, this is a stark (and much more readable) improvement.
Bernes then spends most of the books after this critiquing the GIC, in an attempt that feels slightly forced. In arguing that the GIC is a clock without a spring (in the words of Chris Arthur), he claims that its proposals overlook the need to have a mechanism in society to discipline producers. But this is what bothers me about communization. What begins as a fair critique, inevitably winds up having more in common with Leninism than anything else. Lenin misunderstood Marx's CotGP, and inputted the need to struggle in lower stage communism (what he called socialism), and for a state to smash the contradictions of this society together. Bernes, having the same general idea but not wanting to sound scary, just says yes there will be struggle in this early phase, but we just have to skip straight to high stage communism to make it work. Citing Paul Mattick's vibes-based intro to the Fundamental Principles, Bernes says we already have everything we need to make this leap. But this is where he should have engaged with the part of the CotGP where Marx gives us a laundry list of reasons why you can't just do this. It's a matter of subsumption, not just of the f*cked capitalist production apparatus, but of our philosophies and world views. There is quite a bit that needs to happen before we can get to this point.
As another note, it is quite funny that Bernes uses Arthur to make this point about the GIC, because what Arthur is really saying in that essay is you need to have a set of rules that naturally wither away for the structuring of early communist society. The GIC gives us exactly that.
Great book though, and I would say it's one of the best espousals of communization yet (take that as you will).
Bernes then spends most of the books after this critiquing the GIC, in an attempt that feels slightly forced. In arguing that the GIC is a clock without a spring (in the words of Chris Arthur), he claims that its proposals overlook the need to have a mechanism in society to discipline producers. But this is what bothers me about communization. What begins as a fair critique, inevitably winds up having more in common with Leninism than anything else. Lenin misunderstood Marx's CotGP, and inputted the need to struggle in lower stage communism (what he called socialism), and for a state to smash the contradictions of this society together. Bernes, having the same general idea but not wanting to sound scary, just says yes there will be struggle in this early phase, but we just have to skip straight to high stage communism to make it work. Citing Paul Mattick's vibes-based intro to the Fundamental Principles, Bernes says we already have everything we need to make this leap. But this is where he should have engaged with the part of the CotGP where Marx gives us a laundry list of reasons why you can't just do this. It's a matter of subsumption, not just of the f*cked capitalist production apparatus, but of our philosophies and world views. There is quite a bit that needs to happen before we can get to this point.
As another note, it is quite funny that Bernes uses Arthur to make this point about the GIC, because what Arthur is really saying in that essay is you need to have a set of rules that naturally wither away for the structuring of early communist society. The GIC gives us exactly that.
Great book though, and I would say it's one of the best espousals of communization yet (take that as you will).
November 11, 2025
I tried, I really did, but 100 pages in I just couldn’t take it anymore and gave up. What was particularly frustrating to me was the complete disconnect between the title and the actual content of the book. I thought I was going to read some kind of historical materialist analysis of “communist prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd uprising,” a theoretical work grounded in the review of real existing examples of “communist prospects” that might illuminate what “the future of revolution” could look like.
Instead, I got a book that lacked any clear direction or strong argument, and that mostly took the form of an endless, extremely abstract review of very niche debates about “workers’ councils.” In themselves, those might not have been particularly disqualifying issues. I don’t mind abstract, theoretical books (for instance, I loved Mau’s Mute Compulsion), and I’d be really interested in learning more about workers’ councils and their relation to post-capitalism. But, I don't know, for me, the way he approached those questions ended up being extremely off-putting. I felt like the book lacked a clear direction and a strong guiding argument. It might be a me-issue, but personally I found that the text did nothing to illuminate the niche debates it was reviewing. I kept wondering over and over: “What is he trying to say?”, “Why does it matter?”, “Where is this going?”
And so, after 100 pages of this and with no sign of improvement in sight, I decided to call it quits. Clearly, the book wasn’t for me, but if the title hadn’t been so misleading, I might not have picked it up in the first place.
Instead, I got a book that lacked any clear direction or strong argument, and that mostly took the form of an endless, extremely abstract review of very niche debates about “workers’ councils.” In themselves, those might not have been particularly disqualifying issues. I don’t mind abstract, theoretical books (for instance, I loved Mau’s Mute Compulsion), and I’d be really interested in learning more about workers’ councils and their relation to post-capitalism. But, I don't know, for me, the way he approached those questions ended up being extremely off-putting. I felt like the book lacked a clear direction and a strong guiding argument. It might be a me-issue, but personally I found that the text did nothing to illuminate the niche debates it was reviewing. I kept wondering over and over: “What is he trying to say?”, “Why does it matter?”, “Where is this going?”
And so, after 100 pages of this and with no sign of improvement in sight, I decided to call it quits. Clearly, the book wasn’t for me, but if the title hadn’t been so misleading, I might not have picked it up in the first place.
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October 1, 2025I actually liked this a lot (fml) particularly pulling together the disparate threads floating around the ultraleft mirrorverse. I found a lot of the ideas near the end quite clarifying. The inside/outside workplace parts were pretty interesting. That being said, I think even Bernes would admit that the sketch of a communising process he offers is a bit schematic - it isn’t meant to be read as the plan (for a plan) for revolution.
Frustratingly, he explicitly allows for organisation building in the long term prior to spontaneous upheaval, but leaves that part undeveloped compared to the more speculative aspects - that seems like quite an important part of the equation!
I was on board with his argument for the importance of inquiry, but his strategy of let a thousand endnotes bloom isn’t quite what I had in mind. Maybe something a bit lighter on the value theory would work better. Notes from Below should start a tiktok to get correspondence into the 21st century. They can do some funny dances while occupying a factory.
Having made similar arguments to some of this i feel a struggle session is in order. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r0fPOel...
Frustratingly, he explicitly allows for organisation building in the long term prior to spontaneous upheaval, but leaves that part undeveloped compared to the more speculative aspects - that seems like quite an important part of the equation!
I was on board with his argument for the importance of inquiry, but his strategy of let a thousand endnotes bloom isn’t quite what I had in mind. Maybe something a bit lighter on the value theory would work better. Notes from Below should start a tiktok to get correspondence into the 21st century. They can do some funny dances while occupying a factory.
Having made similar arguments to some of this i feel a struggle session is in order. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r0fPOel...
December 28, 2025
I hadn't expected this book to be so theoretically heavy, and I'm sure I missed quite some bits because of a lack of knowledge in these specific discussions.
Nonetheless, there was quite a bit of inspirational stuff in here and some serious introspection that is very welcome.
Nonetheless, there was quite a bit of inspirational stuff in here and some serious introspection that is very welcome.
May 20, 2025
So, apparently there is a moderate wing of communization
June 21, 2025
I have some problems with Bernes characterisation of the problems that the spanish revolution faced (although he’s mostly correct), but overall a very good book!
July 10, 2025
a fine book but marketed a bit strangely for commercial tastes. for example, the subtitle has the George Floyd Uprising in it but it is actually only discussed for four pages.
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