In the (post-)ultra-left nebula, some people are bestowed with a special aura. I wouldn't call them leaders (we like to think we have a critique of hierarchy). Nor gurus (mustn’t exaggerate). They are not exactly figures (what did Pannekoek or Castoriadis look like?). I'll call them magnet people.

Magnet people attract. They are at the centre of groups and form nodes in networks. Some attract because of their total commitment to the struggle, to the cause, to the group. Others by the extent of their knowledge — practical, historical, geopolitical, strategic. Others by their inventiveness, their genius (sometimes bordering on madness). What attracted me to Henri Simon was his practical knowledge of struggles, his enthusiasm for passing it on, and his never-satiated curiosity. But let's stop there (and not fall into hagiography).

Magnet people repel. They are jealous of each other. They don't like to share their magnetic field. The closest currents seem the most opposed. The justifications they give for this opposition are often only political: accusations of reformism, Leninism, attentisme.

I first met Henri and other participants in the Échanges et mouvements network at a summercamp in the Netherlands in 2006.1 I'd been sent an invitation, but I went there with some anxiety. I was 23 and didn't know any of the participants. There were several magnet people and several magnetic fields, between which there was a certain balance, and I felt good there. I found the exchange of views across borders particularly rich, allowing for a more global understanding of capitalism, and an analysis of the common features (and differences) between struggles taking place in countries more or less far away. But also the exchange of points of view between close but different political groups. When such a balance exists, each participant is able to develop their thoughts more freely and to charge themselves with a certain magnetism.

This balance did not last. Although summercamps continued to exist year after year, they fractured on the basis of political disagreements, as well as magnetic incompatibility or jealousy. Sometimes the fragments were partly welded back together again, for mini-summercamps gathered around a single current proved rather boring for everyone.

The political dissensions most often revolved around the question of a specific role for ‘revolutionaries’ (us?) in struggle. Échanges, for its part, has always been suspicious of the avant-gardes, which could only play a negative role in the class struggle. I would tend to agree with Sam Moss that they probably play none.2

Current movements are themselves suspicious of leaders and those who claim to speak for them. But have they emancipated themselves from magnet people? These people clearly help in their initial formation, but tend to slow down their subsequent mutations. In order to develop, current movements are often forced to question the role of magnet people and their own magnetic susceptibility.3 For example, when some of its participants question the division of tasks (and spheres of activity) that has become entrenched in the organisation of the struggle.4 But it's not easy to reorganise the magnetic balance of a group without making it explode.

Some political projects depend on magnet people to continue to exist. Others don't. The magazine Échanges will now disappear, what does the future hold for the summercamps?

1. These Summercamps bring together participants from several groups (as well as individuals) belonging, despite their differences, to a common political movement, or at least to a common project.
2. His position, developed in the text Impotence of the Revolutionary Group, is summarized as follows in ‘We Unhappy Few’ from issue 5 of the journal Endnotes: “Separated from their fellow workers who don’t share their concerns, the “revolutionists” tend to unite outside of the workplace with others like themselves, people who are interested in changing society. Yet these groupings, in wishing to influence the class struggle in non-revolutionary circumstances, are faced with a dilemma: either they can have an effect but only by adapting themselves to the limits of the movement — thus no longer being revolutionary — or they can maintain their revolutionary principles but their intervention will thus be lacking in effect.”
3. The magnetic susceptibility of a material is its degree of response to a magnetic field (the higher it is, the more sensitive the material is to the applied field). The force of attraction of magnet people depends on the magnetic susceptibility of the individuals around them.
4. See, for example, the documentary ‘Un moment sans retour’ from Raymond Macherel, who films (without directly commenting on) the internal dynamics of a group of yellow vests in Rennes called ‘les lapins jaunes’.