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Militancy - Highest stage of Alienation tags:
OJTR July 24th, 2005 by libcom Since
the
occupation movement of May '68, we
have seen
a whole collection of small organisations
which claim to follow Trotskyism, Maoism
or anarchism, developing to the left
of the
Communist Party and the C. G. T [1].
Despite
the tiny percentage of workers who
join their
ranks, they pretend to compete with
the traditional
organisations for control of the working
class, of which they proclaim themselves
the vanguard.
The ridiculousness of their pretensions
might
make you laugh, but laughter is not
enough.
It is necessary to look deeper, to
understand
why the modern world produces these
bureaucratic
extremists, and to tear away the mask
of
their ideologies in order to reveal
their
true historical role. As far as possible,
revolutionaries must distance themselves
from leftist organisations, and show
that
far from threatening the old world
order,
the action of these groups can at best
only
lead to its reconditioning. Starting
to criticise
them prepares the ground for the revolutionary
movement, which will be obliged to
liquidate
them, or else risk being liquidated
itself.
The first temptation which presents
itself
is to attack their ideologies, to point
out
how archaic or exotic these are (from
Lenin
to Mao), and to expose the contempt
for the
masses which lies concealed behind
their
demagogy. But when you consider there
are
enormous numbers of organisations and
tendencies,
all of them anxious to affirm their
tiny
ideological originality, this would
soon
become tiresome. Moreover it would
amount
to placing yourself on their level.
Rather
than their ideas, it is more appropriate
to take on the activity which they
deploy
"in the service of their ideas"
: MILITANCY.
If we take militancy as a whole this
is not
because we deny the differences which
exist
between the activities of the various
organisations.
But we think that despite -- and even
because
of -- their importance, these differences
can only be adequately explained by
taking
militancy as their origin.
The various ways of being militant
are only
different responses to the same fundamental
contradiction, a contradiction which
no one
has a solution to.
In taking the activity of the militant
as
the starting point of our critique
we do
not underestimate the importance of
the role
of ideas within militancy. But from
the moment
that these ideas are put forward, without
any connection to activity, it becomes
important
to know what they conceal. We will
show the
discrepancy between them, we will connect
the ideas to the activity and reveal
the
impact of the activity on the ideas
: seeking
behind the lie the reality of the liar,
in
order to understand the reality of
the lie.
While the criticism and condemnation
of militancy
is an essential task for revolutionary
theory,
it can only be done from the "point
of view" of the revolution. Bourgeois
ideologues can treat militants as dangerous
hooligans or as manipulated idealists,
and
advise them to occupy their time with
work,
or in getting away to Club Méditerranée;
but they cannot attack militancy in
depth,
for that would expose the misery of
the activities
permitted in modern society. We don't
intend
to hide our bias, our criticisms will
not
be "objective and valid from all
the
points of view".
This critique of militancy cannot be
separated
from the construction of revolutionary
organisations,
not just because the organisations
of militants
will need to be fought without relaxation,
but also because the struggle against
the
tendency towards militancy must be
taken
to the heart of even revolutionary
organisations.
Clearly this is because, at least initially,
these organisations are likely to be
made
up from a significant proportion of
"repented"
former militants, but it is also because
militancy is rooted in the alienation
of
each one of us. Alienation is not eliminated
by waving a magic wand and militancy
is the
special trap which the old world sets
for
revolutionaries.
What we say about militants is firm
and without
appeal. We are not prepared to compromise
with them, these are not revolutionaries
who have made a mistake, nor are they
semi-revolutionaries,
they are people who remain on this
side of
the revolution. However this doesn't
mean
(1) that we exempt ourselves from this
critique,
for if we make a point of being clear
and
sharp we do so firstly with regard
to ourselves;
or (2) that we condemn militants as
individuals
and make this condemnation a matter
of morality.
It is not a question of falling back
on a
separation of the good from the bad.
We don't
underestimate the temptation to say
"the
more I mouth off about militants, the
more
I prove that I'm not one, and the more
I
shelter myself from criticism!"
MASOCHISM
Lets try to overcome the boredom which
militants
naturally generate. We won't bother
to decipher
the phraseology of their leaflets and
speeches.
Instead lets question the reasons which
impelled
them personally into militancy. There
is
no more embarrassing question for a
militant.
In the worst cases they will witter
on interminably
about the horror of capitalism, about
the
misery of third world children, about
cluster
bombs, about rising prices, about repression...
At best they will explain how having
once
become conscious of the true nature
of capitalism
-- how they value this famous "raised
consciousness" -- they decided
to fight
for a better world, for socialism (real
socialism
of course, not the other kind). Filled
with
enthusiasm by these exciting prospects,
they
couldn't resist the desire to throw
themselves
on the handle of the nearest duplicator.
Lets look deeper into this question
and focus,
not on what they say, but on how they
live.
There is an enormous contradiction
between
what they claim to want, and the misery
and
the ineffectiveness of what they do.
The efforts which they demand of themselves,
and the degree of boredom which they
are
capable of putting up with, leaves
no doubt
: these people are primarily masochists.
It's not just that in view of their
activity,
one cannot believe they sincerely want
a
better life, but that even their masochism
shows no originality. While certain
perverts
may put into a body of work an imagination
which ignores the poverty of the old
world's
rules, this is not the case for militants.
Within their organisations they accept
the
hierarchy and petty leaders they claim
they
want to rid the world of, and the energy
which they expend spontaneously takes
on
the form of work. Because militants
are the
kind of people for whom eight or nine
hours
of daily degradation are not enough.
When militants try to justify themselves,
they only succeed in showing off their
lack
of imagination. They cannot conceive
of something
different, of a form of activity other
than
that which currently exists. For them
the
divisions between the serious and the
amusing,
between ends and means, are not tied
to a
specific period. These categories are
held
to be eternal and unsurpassable : one
can
only be happy later on by sacrificing
oneself
now. The sacrifice without reward of
millions
of militant workers, the generations
of the
Stalinist period, stirs nothing in
their
tiny minds. They do not see that means
determine
ends, and that by agreeing to sacrifice
themselves
today, they prepare the sacrifices
of tomorrow.
One cannot help being struck by the
innumerable
resemblance's which bring together
militancy
and religious activity. The same psychological
attitudes can be found : the spirit
of sacrifice
but also the intransigence, the will
to convert
yet also the spirit of submissiveness.
These
resemblance's extend to the domain
of rituals
and ceremonies : sermons on unemployment,
processions for Vietnam, references
to the
sacred texts of marxism-leninism, the
cult
of emblems (red flags). Don't the political
churches also have their prophets,
their
great priests, their converts, their
heresies,
their schisms, their practising militants
and their non- practising sympathisers!
But
revolutionary militancy is only a parody
of religion. The richness, the insanity,
the excesses of religious projects
are beyond
it; militancy aspires to seriousness,
it
wants to be reasonable, it believes
that
in exchange for this it can win a paradise
here below. It doesn't even achieve
this
much. Jesus Christ is resurrected and
ascends
into heaven. Lenin decomposes in Red
Square.
If the militant can be compared to
the believer
in terms of the ingenuousness of his
illusions,
it is another matter with regard to
his real
attitude. The sacrifice of the Carmalite
nun, who imprisons herself to pray
for the
salvation of souls, has a very limited
effect
on social reality. The situation is
quite
different for the militant. His sacrifice
is likely to have distressing consequences
for the whole of society.
THE DESIRE FOR PROMOTION
The militant talks a lot about the
masses.
His activity is centred on them. He
acts
to convince them, to make them "achieve
consciousness". And yet the militant
is separated from the masses and their
possibilities
for revolt. This is because he is separated
from his own desires.
The militant feels the absurdity of
the existence
that is imposed on us. In "deciding"
to become militant, he tries to find
a solution
to the gap which exists between his
desires
and the life which he really has the
possibility
of living. His decision is a reaction
against
the misery of his own life. But he
commits
himself to a dead end.
Although he is dissatisfied, the militant
remains unable to recognise and face
his
desires. HE IS ASHAMED OF THEM. This
leads
him to replace the promotion of his
desires,
with the desire for promotion. But
the feelings
of guilt which he maintains are such,
that
he cannot contemplate a hierarchical
promotion
within the framework of the system,
or rather
he is only ready to fight for a good
position,
if at the same time, he can obtain
an assurance
that this is not just for his own benefit.
His militancy enables him to elevate
himself,
to place himself on a pedestal, without
this
promotion appearing to others, or even
to
himself, as what it really is. (After
all,
the Pope himself is only the servant
of the
servants of God!).
Putting oneself at the service of ones
own
desires doesn't mean retreating into
one's
shell, and has nothing to do with petit-
bourgeois individualism. On the contrary,
it can only proceed through the destruction
of the armour of selfishness, which
confines
us in bourgeois society, and the development
of a true class solidarity. The militant
who claims to place himself at the
service
of the proletariat ("the workers
are
our masters" Geismar [2]), only
places
himself at the service of the idea
that he
has of the proletariat's interests.
Thus
by a paradox which is only apparent,
in truly
putting oneself at the service of oneself
one comes back to helping others, and
doing
so on a class basis, while in placing
oneself
at the service of others one comes
to protect
a personal hierarchical position.
To be militant, doesn't mean trying
hard
to transform ones daily life, or directly
revolting against oppression, but on
the
contrary means fleeing this terrain.
However,
once it is understood that our everyday
life
is colonised by capital, and ruled
by the
laws of commodity production, this
is the
only revolutionary terrain. In politicising
himself, the militant is in search
of a role
which places him above the masses.
Whether
this "above" takes the form
of
"vanguardism" or of "educationism"
changes nothing. Already he is no longer
a proletarian who has nothing to lose
but
his illusions; he has a role to defend.
In
revolutionary periods, when all roles
crumble
under pressure from the desire to live
without
restriction, the role of "conscious
revolutionary" is the one which
survives
best.
In being militant he gives substance
to his
existence, and his life finds a meaning.
However he does not find this meaning
within
himself, in the reality of his subjectivity,
but in his submission to external necessities.
In the same way that at work he is
subjected
to goals and rules which escape him,
as a
militant he obeys the "necessities
of
history".
Obviously one cannot put all militants
on
the same level. Not all of them are
as deeply
affected. Among them one finds naive
individuals
who, not knowing what to do with their
spare
time, possessed by loneliness, and
deceived
by revolutionary phraseology, are led
astray;
they will seize the first excuse to
leave.
Buying a television, meeting your hearts
desire, working overtime to pay for
the car,
all decimate the ranks of the militant
army.
The reasons which impel people into
militancy
are not products of modern society.
On the
whole they are the same for militant
trade
unionists, Catholics and revolutionaries.
The reappearance of revolutionary mass
militancy
is related to the current crisis of
commodity
societies and the return of the "old
mole" of revolution. The possibility
of a social revolution appears sufficiently
serious that militants take a gamble
on it.
This is all reinforced by the collapse
of
religions.
Capitalism no longer needs systems
of religious
compensation. Having arrived at maturity,
it no longer has to offer an extra
portion
of happiness in the hereafter but all
happiness
in the here-below, through the consumption
of its material, cultural and spiritual
goods
(metaphysical anguish promotes sales!).
Bypassed
by history, the religions and their
faithful
can only move on to social action or....
Maoism.
Leftist militancy primarily affects
those
social categories which are in the
process
of accelerated proletarianisation (high-school
pupils, students, teachers, socio-educational
personnel....), who have no possibility
of
fighting concretely for short-term
advantages,
and for whom to become truly revolutionary
presupposes a very profound personal
reassessment.
The worker is much less complicit in
his
social role than the student or teacher.
For the latter, being militant is a
compromise
solution which enables them to shoulder
their
fluctuating social role. In militancy
they
find an importance that the deterioration
of their social standing denies them.
To
call themselves revolutionaries, to
occupy
themselves with the transformation
of the
whole of society, permits them to minimise
the transformation of their own social
status
and personal illusions.
Within the working class, trade unionism
has a virtual monopoly of militancy,
it assures
the militant immediate satisfaction,
and
a position whose advantages can be
concretely
measured. The worker who is tempted
by militancy
will most probably turn to trade unionism.
Even the anti-union committees of struggle
tend to become new style trade-unionism.
For militant workers politics is only
an
extension of trade union action. Militancy
hardly attracts workers, especially
young
workers, since they are the most clear-
sighted
proletarians when it comes to the misery
of their work in particular and of
their
life in general. Little tempted, as
a whole,
by trade unionism, they are even less
attracted
by the nebulous advantages of leftism.
That said, when the reign of the commodity
and of consumption dissolves during
a revolutionary
upheaval, trade unionism, whose importance
is based on wage demands, will be ready
to
survive by turning to revolutionary
militancy.
It will take up the most extreme slogans,
and will then be much more dangerous
than
the leftist groups. Following May 68,
we
have already seen how the CFDT [3]
blended
the term self-management into its neo-
bureaucratic
gibberish.
POLITICAL WORK
The militant devotes the "free"
time, which his professional or educational
obligations leave him, to what he himself
calls "political work". Its
necessary
to print and distribute leaflets, manufacture
and stick up posters, hold meetings,
make
contacts, prepare rallies... But this
sort
of activity considered in isolation
is not
enough to characterise militant work.
The
simple fact of composing a leaflet,
with
the aim of printing and distributing
it,
cannot in itself be considered a militant
act. If it becomes militancy it is
because
it forms part of an activity which
has a
particular logic.
It's because the militant's activity
is not
the extension of his desires, it's
because
it obeys a logic which is external
to him,
that it approaches work. Just as the
worker
does not work for himself, the militant
is
not militant on his own behalf. Thus
the
results of his action cannot be measured
by the pleasure he gets from it. Instead
it will be by the number of hours spent,
the number of leaflets distributed.
Repetition
and routine dominate the activity of
the
militant. The separation between execution
and decision reinforces the civil servant
aspect of the militant.
But if militancy approaches work, it
cannot
be assimilated to it. Work is the activity
on which the dominant world is based,
it
produces and reproduces capital and
capitalist
relations of production; militancy
is only
a minor activity. By definition, the
results
and effectiveness of work are not measured
by the satisfaction of the worker,
but they
have the advantage of being economically
measurable. Commodity production, by
means
of currency and profit, creates its
standards
and instruments of measure. It has
its own
logic and rationality, which it imposes
on
producer and consumer. By contrast,
the effectiveness
of militancy, "the advancement
of the
revolution", still hasn't found
its
measuring instruments. Their control
evades
militants and their leaders. Assuming,
of
course, that the latter still worry
about
the revolution ! So they are reduced
to counting
the material produced and distributed,
the
levels of recruitment, the number of
actions
undertaken; obviously none of these
measure
what they pretend to. Naturally enough
from
this they come to imagine that what
is measurable
is an end in itself. Imagine a capitalist
who could not find a means of evaluating
the value of his production, and so
settled
for measuring the quantity of oil consumed
by machines. Conscientiously, workers
would
empty oil into the gutter in order
to produce
an increase in... production. Incapable
of
pursuing its proclaimed goal, militancy
only
gives itself the name of work.
As they conscientiously endeavour to
imitate
work, militants are very badly placed
to
understand the prospects which are
opened
up, on the one hand by the increasingly
widespread
contempt for all constraints, and on
the
other by the progress of knowledge
and technology.
The most intelligent of them line up
alongside
modernist bourgeois ideologists, in
order
to demand that hours of work are reduced,
or that repugnant activity is humanised.
Whether they speak in the name of capital
or of the revolution these people are
unable
to see beyond the separation between
work
time and leisure time, between activity
devoted
to production and activity devoted
to consumption.
If we are obliged to work, the cause
is not
natural, but social. Work and class
society
go hand in hand. The master wants to
see
the slave producing because only what
is
produced can be appropriated. The capitalist
doesn't give a shit for the joy or
the pleasure
which can be found in any activity,
and which
cannot be capitalised, accumulated,
or translated
into money. When we work we are entirely
subjected to authority, to an external
law,
our only reason for existence is what
we
produce. Any factory is a racket, where
our
lives and our sweat are squeezed out,
to
be transformed into commodities.
Time spent at work is time in which
we cannot
directly satisfy our desires, but which
instead
we must sacrifice, while waiting for
the
subsequent compensation of a salary.
This
is exactly the opposite of play, where
the
unfolding and rhythm of what you do
is led
by the pleasure you take in it. In
emancipating
itself the proletariat will abolish
work.
The production of the foodstuffs necessary
for our biological survival will no
longer
be anything but the pretext for the
liberation
of our passions.
THE OBSESSION WITH HOLDING MEETINGS
A significant characteristic of militancy
is the time spent in meetings. Lets
leave
to one side the debates devoted to
grand
strategy : where are our comrades in
Bolivia,
when will we have the next world economic
crisis, is the construction of the
revolutionary
party being advanced...
Instead lets be content to consider
those
meetings concerning "everyday
work".
It is perhaps in these that the misery
of
militantism is best displayed. Aside
from
a few desperate cases, militants themselves
will complain of the number of these
"meetings
which make no progress". Even
though
militants like to bask in one another's
company,
they cannot fail to suffer from the
obvious
contradiction between their will to
act on
the one hand, and on the other, the
time
wasted in fruitless discussion and
endless
debate. But they are condemned to remain
in this dead end because they are only
attacking
"meeting-itus", without seeing
that it is the whole of militancy which
is
called into question. The only way
they have
of ending the obsession with meetings
amounts
to retreating into an activism with
less
and less grasp on reality.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE ? HOW SHOULD WE
ORGANISE
OURSELVES ? These are the questions
which
underlie and give rise to meetings.
However
these questions can never be settled
and
their solution gets no closer, because
when
militants put them to themselves, they
pose
them as if they were separate from
their
own lives. Answers are not found because
the questions are not raised by those
who
possess a concrete solution to them.
You
can meet for hours and rack your brains
but
this won't conjure up practical support
when
ideas are lacking. While these questions
are trifles for the revolutionary proletariat,
because for them the problems of action
and
organisation arise concretely and form
part
of their struggle, for militants they
become
THE PROBLEM. An obsession with meetings
is
the necessary complement to activism.
In
fact, the problem which arises is always
the same : how to merge with the mass
movement
while remaining separated from it.
The solution
to this dilemma is either for them
to truly
merge with the masses, through finding
the
reality of their desires and the possibilities
for their realisation, or else to reinforce
their power as militants, while lining
up
against the proletariat at the side
of the
old world. Wildcat strikes show that
there
are risks!
Militancy reproduces its internal failings
in its relationship with the masses,
in particular
the obsession with meetings. You gather
people
and you count them. For some groups
like
the AJS [4] to present themselves and
to
count heads becomes the height of the
action!
These questions of action and organisation,
already separated from the real movement,
are then mechanically separated from
one
another. The various tendencies of
leftism
concretise this separation. On one
side we
find the Maoists and the former Gauche
Proletarienne
[5], the pole of action, and on the
other
we find the Trotskyists and the Ligue
Communiste
[6], the pole of organisation. In order
to
leave the dead end, which militancy
is plunged
into by separating from the masses,
they
either fetishise action or else fetishise
organisation. Each protects its particular
idiocy while mocking the orientation
of rival
groups.
BUREAUCRACY
Organisations of militants are all
hierarchical.
Some organisations not only don't hide
this
fact, but pride themselves on it. Others
are content to talk about it as little
as
possible. Finally some small groups
try to
deny it altogether.
In the same way that they reproduce,
or rather
ape work, militant organisations have
a need
for "bosses". Unable to build
their
unity starting from their concrete
problems,
militants are naturally led to believe
that
the unification of decisions can only
result
from the existence of a leadership.
They
don't imagine that a common truth can
emerge
from particular wills, or as they see
it,
can come out of the shit, instead it
must
be weighed and imposed from on high.
So by
necessity they represent revolution
as a
clash between two hierarchical state
apparatuses,
one bourgeois, the other proletarian.
They know nothing about bureaucracy,
about
its autonomy or about the way in which
it
resolves its internal contradictions.
Grass-
roots militants naively believe that
conflicts
between leaders can be reduced to conflicts
of ideas, and that when they are told
there
is unity, there is indeed unity. Their
great
pride is to have been able to distinguish
the organisation provided with THE
best leadership.
While adhering to this or that chapel
they
will adopt a system of ideas in much
the
same way as one slips on a costume.
Without
having verified its basis, they will
still
be ready to defend all of its consequences,
and respond to any objections with
incredible
dogmatism. At a time when priests are
torn
by spiritual crises, militants keep
the faith.
Forced to take account of the increasingly
widespread contempt for any form of
authority,
militancy has produced offshoots of
a new
kind. Some organisations claim not
to be
organisations, and in particular conceal
their leadership. The bureaucrats hide
themselves
all the better to pull the strings.
Some traditional organisations try
to set
up parallel forms of organisation,
some permanent,
some not. They hope in the name of
"proletarian
autonomy", to co-opt or at least
to
influence people who otherwise would
have
escaped them.
One could mention Secours Rouge, the
OJTR
and the Assemblées Ouvriers Paysans
du PSU...
[7] In the same way, some independent
newspapers
or satellite organisations claim only
to
express the point of view of the revolutionary
masses, or of the autonomous rank and
file
groups. For example, "Cahiers
de Mai"
[8], "Le technique en Lutte",
"L'outil
des travailleurs"... Wherever
people
refuse to clearly raise questions of
organisation
or theory, on the pretext that the
hour for
the construction of the revolutionary
party
has not yet arrived, or in the name
of a
bogus spontaneism ("we are not
an organisation,
but a gathering of nice guys, a community"
etc. etc.), one can be certain that
there
is a bureaucracy and quite often that
one
is dealing with Maoism. The advantage
of
Trotskyism is that its fetishism of
the organisation
forces it to display its true colours;
it
co-opts while saying that is what it's
doing.
The advantage of Maoism (we're not
speaking
here of pure, archeo-stalinist Maoism
of
the Humanité Rouge variety [9] ) is
that
it creates the conditions for its own
supercession;
playing at being acrobats of co-option
they
will certainly tumble to the ground.
OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY
The systems of ideas adopted by militants
vary among the different organisations,
but
they are all undermined by the need
to mask
both the nature of the activities they
conceal,
and their separation from the masses.
So
at the heart of militant ideologies
one always
finds a separation between objectivity
and
subjectivity, conceived in a mechanical
and
a-historic manner.
Even if he does not deny that his activity
has subjective motivations, the militant
who devotes himself to the service
of the
people refuses to attach any importance
to
them. In any event what is subjective
must
be eliminated, in favour of what is
objective.
Refusing to be driven by his desires,
the
militant is reduced to invoking historical
necessity, considered as something
external
to the world of desires. Thanks to
"scientific
socialism", the congealed form
of a
degenerated marxism, he believes he
has the
power to discover the direction of
history,
and to adapt himself to it.
He gets drunk on concepts whose significance
escapes him : productive forces, relations
of production, law of value, dictatorship
of the proletariat etc. It all enables
him
to reassure himself about the seriousness
of his agitation. Setting himself outside
of "his critique" of the
world,
he condemns himself to understand nothing
of its movement.
The passion which he does not manage
to put
into his everyday life, he displaces
into
his imaginary participation in the
"world
revolutionary spectacle". The
earth
is reduced to the level of a Punch
and Judy
show, where the nasty and nice, the
imperialists
and anti-imperialists clash. He compensates
for the mediocrity of his existence
by identifying
with the stars of this planetary circus.
The height of ridiculousness was reached
with the worship of "CHE".
Nutty
economist, pitiable strategist, but
a good
looking guy, at least Guavara would
have
the consolation of seeing his Hollywood-style
talents rewarded. A record in poster
sales.
What is subjectivity, other than the
residue
of objectivity, which a society based
on
commodity reproduction cannot integrate
?
The subjectivity of the artist objectifies
itself in the work of art. For the
worker
who is separated from the means of
production
and from the organisation of his own
production,
subjectivity remains a state of mania,
of
fantasy... he is made objective by
the grace
of capital, and even becomes capital.
Revolutionary
activity like the world it prefigures
goes
beyond the separation between objectivity
and subjectivity. It objectifies subjectivity,
and subjectively invests the objective
world.
The proletarian revolution is the irruption
of subjectivity!
It is not a question of falling back
on the
myth of a "real human nature",
or of the "eternal essence"
of
man, repressed by Society, and which
would
seek to return for all to see. But
if the
form and goal of our desires vary,
they cannot
be reduced to the need to consume this
or
that product. Historically determined
by
the evolution and necessities of commodity
production, subjectivity by no means
yields
to the needs of consumption or production.
Commodities must constantly adapt in
order
to co-opt the desires of consumers.
But they
still remain unable to satisfy the
will to
live by completely and directly achieving
our desires. Shop windows, the avant-garde
of commercial provocation, increasingly
undergo
a critique by paving stone!
Those who refuse to take account of
the reality
of THEIR OWN desires in the name of
"Materialist
Thought" risk not seeing the weight
of Our desires land in their face.
Militants and their ideologists, and
even
university undergraduates, are less
and less
capable of understanding their own
time and
of being consistent with history. Incapable
of secreting a thought that's the slightest
bit modern, they are reduced to searching
the dustbin of history to co-opt ideologies
which have long since given evidence
of their
failure : anarchism, leninism, Trotskyism...
To render this more digestible they
season
it with a little badly understood Maoism
or Castroism. They invoke the name
of the
workers movement, but confuse its history
with the construction of state capitalism
in Russia, or the peasant-bureaucratic
epic
of the "long march" in China.
They
claim to be marxists, but don't understand
that the marxist project for the abolition
of wage labour, commodity production
and
the state is inseparable from the seizure
of power by the proletariat.
"Marxist" thinkers are increasingly
incapable of taking up the analysis
of the
fundamental contradictions of capitalism
which Marx began. They bog themselves
down
on the terrain of bourgeois political
economy,
while endlessly repeating stupidities
about
the law of value, work, the tendency
of the
rate of profit to fall, the realisation
of
surplus-value. In spite of their pretensions,
they do not understand the progress
of modern
capitalism. Believing themselves obliged
to use a marxist vocabulary, for which
they
don't possess the instructions for
use, they
cut themselves off from those few possibilities
for analysis that still remain within
political
economy. Their "researches"
are
not worth those which the first disciples
of Keynes produced.
MILITANTS AND WORKERS' COUNCILS
Militant organisations make themselves
autonomous
from the masses which they claim to
represent.
They are naturally led to consider
that it
is not the working class which makes
the
revolution, but "the organisations
of
the working class". Thus it suits
them
to reinforce the latter. In extreme
cases
the proletariat becomes mere raw material,
the manure from which will bloom the
red
rose of the Revolutionary Party. The
necessities
of co-option require that they say
little
about this externally; that is where
the
demagogy begins.
The autonomy of the objectives of the
militant
organisations must be concealed. Ideology
is used for this purpose. They loudly
proclaim
that they are at the service of the
people,
that they don't act for themselves
and that
if ever they were obliged to take power
for
a short time they would never abuse
it. Once
the working class had been well educated
they would make haste to return power
to
them.
The history of workers' councils shows
that
the so-called workers' organisations
systematically
sought to play their own game, and
extricate
their own chestnuts from the fire;
for the
best of reasons of course. To ensure
their
own power they sought to limit, co-opt
and
destroy the forms of organisation which
the
proletariat had given itself : territorial
soviets and factory committees.
The Russian soviets were first bribed
and
then liquidated by the Bolshevik party
and
state. In 1905 Lenin had attached no
importance
to them. In 1917 by contrast the Bolsheviks
proclaimed : "all power to the
soviets".
In 1921 the soviets which had served
as stepping
stones to the seizure of power became
troublesome;
the workers and sailors of Kronstadt
who
demanded free soviets were crushed
by the
red army.
In Germany, the social-democrat government,
the "peoples stewards", undertook
to liquidate the workers' councils
in the
name of the revolution.
Once again, in Spain the Communists
took
care to make the forms of popular power
disappear.
This was done to better develop the
fight
against fascism! There is no point
in multiplying
examples. All historical experiences
have
confirmed the antagonism which opposes
the
revolutionary proletariat and the militant
organisation. The most extremist ideology
can conceal the most counter-revolutionary
position. If certain organisations
like the
Spartacus League and the anarcho-syndicalist
CNT-FAI could fight at the side of
the proletariat
until their common defeat, nothing
proves
that these organisations would not
have started
to fight for power for themselves once
their
opponents had been overcome.
For all that they have cloistered themselves
in politics, militants are no less
social
individuals, subjected to the influence
of
their milieu. When things heat up,
many may
cross over to the revolutionary camp.
After
all we have seen union representatives
take
charge of sequestrations! But the massive
desertion of militants will be all
the more
likely since the councils and revolutionary
councilists will be the stronger. The
movement
may be helped in its successes by the
reinforcement
of many militants, but in the event
of mistakes
or hesitations the pendulum will swing
in
the opposite direction. The militant
organisations
will then be reinforced by proletarians
seeking
to reassure themselves.
The liquidation of the workers' councils
was made possible by their weakness,
their
inability to apply internally the rules
of
direct democracy, and to effectively
take
power while crushing all the powers
outside
them. Militant organisations in fact
are
merely the proletariat's own weakness
exteriorised,
and then turned back against them.
Workers will make mistakes again. They
will
not immediately find the most appropriate
form for their own power. The fewer
illusions
the masses have about militancy, the
more
the power of the councils will have
a chance
to develop. Discrediting and ridiculing
militants,
this is the task that falls to revolutionaries
today. This task will be completed
by the
criticism in deeds represented by the
birth
of councilist organisations. These
organisations
will know how to do without a leadership
and a bureaucratic apparatus. A product
of
the solidarity of combative workers,
they
will be free associations of autonomous
individuals.
They will demonstrate through their
ideas,
and especially by their behaviour in
struggle,
that they will never venture to pursue
their
own interests, as distinct from those
of
the whole of the proletariat.
The development of modern capitalism,
which
results in all social space being occupied
by commodities, in the generalisation
of
wage labour, and also in a degradation
of
moral values and a contempt for work
and
for ideologies, will increase the violence
of the clash. Proletarians will go
much faster
and much further than they did in the
past.
While in the past organisations of
militants
could perform a revolutionary role
for a
time, that will no longer be possible.
At
the time of the next great battles
of the
struggle, these organisations can only
rapidly
become more and more counter-revolutionary.
NOTES
[1] CGT -- Confédération Générale du Travail,
trade union federation traditionally having
close links to the French Communist Party
(translators note).
[2] Alain Geismar -- a member of the Parti
Socialist Unifie (a small left socialist
party) and president of a university teachers
union at the start of May 1968, Geismar became
one of the most prominent personalities created
by the May movement. After it ended he became
close to the March 22nd Movement and in early
1969, along with other members, he joined
La Gauche Prolétarienne (GP) the leading
group in the activist wing of French Maoism.
(See footnote 5) He became a public spokesman
for GP and a cause célèbre in his own right
when he was imprisoned in 1970 for incitement
to riot. In later years he was able to resume
his career as an academic and by the end
of the century was a ministerial advisor
to the socialist government (translators
note).
[3] CFDT -- Confédération Français Démocratique
du Travail -- French trade union federation.
After May '68 (which it was more sympathetic
to than the Communist Party linked CGT) it
developed strong ties to the Parti Socialist
Unifie and became strongly identified with
the cause of workers management ("autogestion").
In later years has moved closer to the Socialist
Party (translators note).
[4] AJS -- Alliances des Jeunes pour le Socialisme
-- Founded in 1969 as the youth movement
of the (lambertist) Organisation Communiste
Internationaliste (OCI). In 1968 the OCI
was the most 'old left' of the French Trotskyist
groups, (it was a member of the International
Committee of the Fourth International along
with the Healyite Socialist Labour League
until it broke with Healey in 1971). It achieved
the notable feat of calling on young people
to tear down the barricades in 1968, and
then still getting briefly banned by the
government. Its youth wing, the AJS, acquired
an unenviable reputation for its manipulative
frontism. See Roland Biard, Dictionnaire
de l'extrême-gauche de 1945 à nos jours,
belfond, Paris, 1978., pp. 23-26. and on
the OCI, A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and
Maoism -- Theory and Practise in France and
the United States, Autonomedia, New York,
1988., pp. 64-73 and Chap. 7 (translators
note).
[5] Gauche Prolétarienne (GP). Formed in
September 1968 by former members of the Union
de Jeunesses Communistes (marxiste- léniniste),
an Althusserite maoist group which had split
from the UEC, the Communist Party's official
student group, in 1966. At the start of 1969
they were joined by a number of members of
the 'spontaneist' March
22nd Movement, and for the next three or
four years GP became the most representative
group within activist 'non- party' Maoism.
This current -- which had few parallels outside
France -- is described in detail in A. Belden
Field's book (the relevant chapter is on
line at the link below). GP was characterised
by the number of 'personalities' which it
both attracted as sympathisers (including
Sartre and the publisher Maspero), and which
it created -- in France it exemplified the
practice of 'radical chic'. Its organisational
practise exemplified what was to become described
in the US and the UK as the tyranny of structurelessness.
Banned by the government in 1970, GP continued
to function through a variety of fronts and
networks of groups, and by attempting to
take over or control other projects. See
Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche
de 1945 Ã nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978.,
pp. 23-26, 253-7 and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism
and Maoism -- Theory and Practise in France
and the United States, Autonomedia, New York,
1988., Chap. 3 (translators note).
[6] Ligue Communiste. If the OCI (see footnote
4 above) represented the "old left"
within Trotskyism, the Ligue Communiste represented
the "new left" basing itself on
the 'new vanguards' of youth, students, black
nationalism and national liberation movements.
Ligue Communiste was the name adopted in
1968 when the (frankist) Parti Communiste
Internationaliste (PCI) and Jeunesse Communiste
Révolutionnaire (JCR), the student group
it dominated, were banned by the government.
As the French section of the Unified Secretariat
of the Fourth International, the PCI had
practised entrism inside the French Communist
Party until 1968. Its influence inside the
party's official student group led to the
formation of the JCR in 1967. The JCR was
one of the most active student political
groups during May 68, and its success in
promoting itself was the springboard for
the formation of the Ligue. See Roland Biard,
Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche de 1945
à nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978., pp. 206-9,
199-200,
266-70 and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and
Maoism -- Theory and Practise in France and
the United States, Autonomedia, New York,
1988., pp 49- 64 and Chap. 7
(translators note).
[7] Secours Rouge, the OJTR and the Assemblées
Ouvriers Paysans du PSU...
Secours Rouge ('Red Aid') was formed in 1970
by a committee of "militants and personalities"
(Biard) including the ubiquitous Sartre.
Its purpose was to be a unitary body for
organising practical defence and struggle,
theoretically to be controlled by popular
local meetings. It attracted the support
of a number of Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist
groups and organised activities ranging from
demonstrations to attempts at practical solidarity
of different kinds. In reality Secours Rouge
was primarily an initiative by the Maoist
Gauche Prolétarienne which by then had been
banned by the government and existed through
networks of groups and organisations which
it either started itself or else co- opted.
(See footnote 5) The scene of in fighting
amongst the various groupings from the start,
one by one the Trotskyist groups and the
left socialist PSU broke away, leaving the
militants of the "ex-GP" in control
before it broke up completely. See Roland
Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche
de 1945 Ã nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978.,
pp. 345-346 and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism
and Maoism -- Theory and Practise in France
and the United States, Autonomedia, New York,
1988., Chapter 3 pp. 108- 109.
Assemblées Ouvriers Paysans du PSU. The Parti
Socialist Unifie (PSU) was a small left socialist
party formed in 1960. Strongly divided over
its direction following the 1969 elections,
and facing strong pressure from sections
of its membership (it had picked up a lot
of younger and more militant recruits following
May '68), the party's National Council decided
to convene Assemblies of Workers and Peasants
across the country. The novel element was
that these would be open to non-members of
the party, and would be charged with formulating
strategy documents to go to the party's Congress
at Lille in June 1971. Unsurprisingly the
Assemblies promptly became the scene of in-fighting
for control by the various factions in the
party, and the texts which finally went to
the congress represented the factions rather
than the 'voice of the struggling masses'.
See Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche
de 1945 Ã nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978.,
pp. 280-309 particularly 295-300.
The OJTR (Organisation des Jeunes Travailleurs
révolutionnaires) were the group which produced
this text -- presumably this is either a
joke by the authors or a misprint in the
version this has been translated from (translators
note).
[8] "Cahiers de Mai" -- Journal
founded in June 1968 by some militants from
around Nantes, which originally set out to
express the viewpoint of the Action Committees
formed in May. As the movement which sprang
into being during May 68 died away the journal
became a forum for discussing and popularising
workers struggles. In January 1969 it initiated
a debate on the theme "How can we help
the workers take revolutionary action ?".
This debate involved workers as well as militants
and a number of study groups were set up.
In 1972 an attempt was made to formalise
this through an association of friends of
Cahiers de Mai, devoted to championing new
forms of organisation and action and promoting
autonomous struggle. However as Biard puts
it : "(...) the notion of the autonomy
of the working class is closely bound to
the notion of the organization of revolutionaries.
What are the relations between the autonomous
movement and the revolutionary groups? Depending
on the answer that one gives -- from the
negation of the revolutionary groups to the
recognition of their vanguard role --, there
is an infinity of possible positions".
The journal ceased publishing in 1975. See
Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche
de 1945 Ã nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978.,
pp. 57-58 (translators note).
[9] Humanité Rouge -- journal of the
Parti
Communiste Marxiste- Leniniste de France
(PCMLF). Centralised Maoist party formed
in December 1967 by a number of former
Communist
Party (CP) members. Unlike the Althusserite
UJCML which broke from the CP's student
group
and was the seedbed for the 'non-party'
Maoist
current such as Gauche Prolétarienne
(see
footnote 5), the PCMLF was primarily
composed
of ultra-stalinists opposed to what
they
saw as the 'revisionism' of the CP.
Active
during May '68, it was banned like
many other
organisations and subsequently operated
clandestinely,
its public face and name becoming that
of
its journal Humanité Rouge. See Roland
Biard,
Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche de
1945
à nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978.,
pp. 270-273
and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and
Maoism
-- Theory and Practise in France and
the
United States, Autonomedia, New York,
1988.,
Chap. 3. (Online at that link) (translators
note).
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