translated by malcontent editions
This text, composed for the most part of key fragments from texts by
other historical and international comrades on the themes proposed, is
the continuation or second part of my text “The self-abolition of the
proleariat as the end of the capitalist world (or why the current revolt
doesn’t transform into revolution”, and it’s a tentative and provisional
response to the question “So what should we do then?”
1. Amadeo Bordiga (Activism – Italy, 1952)
[from: https://libcom.org/library/activism-amadeo-bordiga]
Activism is an illness of the workers movement that requires continuous
treatment.
Activism always claims to possess the correct understanding of the
circumstances of political struggle, and that it is “equal to the
situation”, but it is incapable of engaging in a realistic evaluation of
the relations of force, enormously exaggerating the possibilities of the
subjective factors of the class struggle.
It is therefore natural that those affected by activism react to this
criticism by accusing their adversaries of underestimating the
subjective factors of the class struggle and of reducing historical
determinism to that automatic mechanism which is also the target of the
usual bourgeois critique of Marxism. That is why we said, in Point 2 of
Part IV of our “Fundamental Theses of the Party”:
“… [t]he capitalist mode of production expands and prevails in all
countries, under its technical and social aspects, in a more or less
continuous way. The alternatives of the clashing class forces are
instead connected to the events of the general historical struggle, to
the contrast that already existed when bourgeoisie [began to] rule
[over] the feudal and precapitalistic classes, and to the evolutionary
political process of the two historical rival classes, bourgeoisie and
proletariat; being such a process marked by victories and defeats, by
errors of tactical and strategical method.”
This amounts to saying that we maintain that the stage of the resumption
of the revolutionary workers movement does not coincide only with the
impulses from the contradictions of the material, economic and social
development of bourgeois society, which can experience periods of
extremely serious crises, of violent conflicts, of political collapse,
without the workers movement as a result being radicalized and adopting
extreme revolutionary positions. That is, there is no automatic
mechanism in the field of the relations between the capitalist economy
and the revolutionary proletarian party. […]
The indefatigable and assiduous labor of defense waged on behalf of the
doctrinal and critical patrimony of the movement, the everyday tasks of
immunization of the movement against the poisons of revisionism, the
systematic explanation, in the light of Marxism, of the most recent
forms of organization of capitalist production, the unmasking of the
attempts on the part of opportunism to present such “innovations” as
anti-capitalist measures, etc., all of this is struggle, the struggle
against the class enemy, the struggle to educate the revolutionary
vanguard, it is, if you prefer, an active struggle that is nonetheless
not activism. […]
The resumption of the revolutionary movement is still nowhere in sight
because the bourgeoisie, putting into practice bold reforms in the
organization of production and of the State (State Capitalism,
totalitarianism, etc.), has delivered a shattering and disorienting
blow, sowing doubt and confusion, not against the theoretical and
critical foundations of Marxism, which remain intact and unaffected, but
rather against the capacity of the proletarian vanguards to apply those
Marxist principles precisely in the interpretation of the current stage
of bourgeois development.
In such conditions of theoretical disorientation, is the labor of
restoring Marxism against opportunist distortions merely a theoretical
task?
No, it is the substantial and committed active struggle against the
class enemy.
2. Camatte – Collu (On Organization – France-Italy, 1972)
[from: https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/capcom/on-org.htm]
At the present time the proletariat either prefigures communist society
and realizes communist theory or it remains part of existing society.
[…]
Today, now that the apparent community-in-the-sky of politic constituted
by parliaments and their parties has been effaced by capital’s
development, the “organizations” that claim to be proletarian are simply
gangs or cliques which, through the mediation of the state, play the
same role as all the other groups that are directly in the service of
capital. This is the groupuscule phase. In Marx’s time the supersession
of the sects was to be found in the unity of the workers’ movement.
Today, the parties, these groupuscules, manifest not merely a lack of
unity but the absence of class struggle. They argue over the remains of
the proletariat. They theorize about the proletariat in the immediate
reality and oppose themselves to its movement. In this sense they
realize the stabilization requirements of capital. The proletariat,
therefore, instead of having to supersede them, needs to destroy them.
The critique of capital ought to be, therefore, a critique of the racket
in all its forms, of capital as social organism; capital becomes the
real life of the individual and his mode of being with others […] The
theory which criticizes the racket cannot reproduce it. The consequence
of this is refusal of all group life; it’s either this or the illusion
of community.[…]
Today the party can only be the historic party. Any formal movement is
the reproduction of this society, and the proletariat is essentially
outside of it. A group can in no way pretend to realize community
without taking the place of the proletariat, which alone can do it.[…]
The revolutionary must not identify himself with a group but recognize
himself in a theory that does not depend on a group or on a review,
because it is the expression of an existing class struggle. This is
actually the correct sense in which anonymity is posed rather than as
the negation of the individual (which capitalist society itself brings
about). Accord, therefore, is around a work that is in process and needs
to be developed. This is why theoretical knowledge and the desire for
theoretical development are absolutely necessary if the
professor-student relation – another form of the mind-matter,
leader-mass contradiction – is not to be repeated and revive the
practice of following.[…]
It is necessary to return to Marx’s attitude toward all groups in order
to understand why the break with the gang practice ought to be made:
– refuse to reconstitute a group, even an informal one (cf. The
Marx-Engels correspondence, various works on the revolution of 1848, and
pamphlets such as “The Great Men of Exile,” 1852).
– maintain a network of personal contacts with people having realized
(or in the process of doing so) the highest degree of theoretical
knowledge: antifollowerism, antipedagogy; the party in its historical
sense is not a school.
Marx’s activity was always that of revealing the real movement that
leads to communism and of defending the gains of the proletariat in its
struggle against capital. Hence, Marx’s position in 1871 in revealing
the “impossible action” of the Paris Commune or declaring that the First
International was not the child of either a theory or a sect. It is
necessary to do the same now.[…]
It follows from this that it is also necessary to develop a critique of
the Italian communist left’s conception of “program.” That this notion
of “communist program” has never been sufficiently clarified is
demonstrated by the fact that, at a certain point, the Martov-Lenin
debate resurfaced at the heart of the left. The polemic was already the
result of the fact that Marx’s conception of revolutionary theory had
been destroyed, and it reflected a complete separation between the
concepts of theory and practice. For the proletariat, in Marx’s sense,
the class struggle is simultaneously production and radicalization of
consciousness. The critique of capital expresses a consciousness already
produced by the class struggle and anticipates its future. For Marx and
Engels, proletarian movement = theory = communism.[…]
Actually, the problem of consciousness coming from the outside did not
exist for Marx. [Kautsky-Lenin] There wasn’t any question of the
development of militants, of activism or of academicism. Likewise, the
problematic of the self-education of the masses, in the sense of the
council communists (false disciples of R. Luxemburg and authentic
disciples of pedagogic reformism) did not arise for Marx. R. Luxemburg’s
theory of the class movement, which from the start of the struggle finds
within itself the conditions for its radicalization, is closest to
Marx’s position (cf. her position on the “creativity of the masses,”
beyond its immediate existence).[…]
Once we had rejected the group method, to outline “concretely” how to be
revolutionaries, our rejection of the small group could have been
interpreted as a return to a more or less Stirnerian individualism. [and
as “a new theory of consciousness coming from the outside through the
detour of an elitist theory of the development of the revolutionary
movement] As if the only guarantee from now on was going to be the
subjectivity cultivated by each individual revolutionary! Not at all. It
was necessary to publicly reject a certain perception of social reality
and the practice connected with it, since they were a point of departure
for the process of racketization. If we therefore withdrew totally from
the groupuscule movement, it was to be able simultaneously to enter into
liaison with other revolutionaries who had made an analogous break. Now
there is a direct production of revolutionaries who supersede almost
immediately the point we were at when we had to make our break. Thus,
there is a potential “union” that would be considered if we were not to
carry the break with the political point of view to the depths of our
individual consciousnesses. Since the essence of politics is
fundamentally representation, each group is forever trying to project an
impressive image on the social screen. The groups are always explaining
how they represent themselves in order to be recognized by certain
people as the vanguard for representing others, the class. […]
All political representation is a screen and therefore an obstacle to a
fusion of forces. […]
In the vast movement of rebellion against capital, revolutionaries are
going to adopt a definite behavior – which will not be acquired all at
once – compatible with the decisive and determinative struggle against
capital.
We can preview the content of such an “organization.” It will combine
the aspiration to human community and to individual affirmation, which
is the distinguishing feature of the current revolutionary phase. It
will aim toward the reconciliation of man with nature, the communist
revolution being also a revolt of nature (i.e., against capital;
moreover, it is only through a new relation with nature) that we will be
able to survive, and avert the second of the two alternatives we face
today: communism or the destruction of the human species.
In order to better understand this becoming organizational, so as to
facilitate it without inhibiting whatever it may be, it is important to
reject all old forms and to enter, without a priori principles, the vast
movement of our liberation, which develops on a world scale. It is
necessary to eliminate anything that could be an obstacle to the
revolutionary movement. In given circumstances and in the course of
specific actions, the revolutionary current will be structured and will
structure itself not only passively, spontaneously, but by always
directing the effort toward how to realize the true Gemeinwesen (human
essence) and the social man, which implies the reconciliation of men
with nature (Camatte, 1972).
3. Francesco Santini (Apocalypse and Survival Italy, 1994)
[from:
https://libcom.org/library/apocalypse-survival-reflections-giorgio-cesaranos-book-critica-dell%E2%80%99utopia-capitale-expe
– See also the pdf edition published by Malcontent Editions]
10.2 Two opposed points of view on organization.
In 1971 Comontism took shape and the group that had formed based on the
positions of Invariance [the journal directed by Camatte] dissolved. It
must be mentioned that both tendencies had diametrically opposed
attitudes towards the “question of organization”. One of these attitudes
was in fact that of Cesarano and a large part of the current. The idea
of Comontism instead whimsically identified its own members (largely
veterans of the similar Organizzazione Consigliare di Torino) with the
historical party of the proletariat, or, even better, with the “human
community”.
On this basis, it created an organization with branches in several
Italian cities (see Maelström, No. 2), which erased any distinction
between theoretical and practical activity, between public life and
private life, between individual and organization. Comontism thus
attempted to breathe life into a concrete communism, characterized by:
1. The collectivization of all resources for survival;
2. A “total” way of living together;
3. The constant practice of the “critique of everyday life” in order not
to yield to the pressure imposed by society in the form of family,
social milieu, legal relations, etc.
The immediatist illusion of the group caused it to overlook one
fundamental fact: that between capitalism—that is, between personal
relations dominated by valorization—and communism, there is a revolution
that, according to Marx, serves among other things to “get rid of all
the old shit”. For Comontism the Gemeinwesen [human community] had to be
put into practice here and now: it was all about the passage to
communism of twenty or thirty persons, communizing all relations all at
once: this idea would lead inevitably and immediately to the production
of an ideology: immediatism was rapidly followed by the elaboration of a
whole set of “theoretical” corollaries.
In retrospect, we have to sympathize with Comontism: it was a group of
courageous individuals who always stayed at their posts at the
revolutionary front, bravely confronting harsh repression and fighting
against various Maoist-workerist splinter groups that had specialized
military structures crafted to ensure that the assemblies and
demonstrations were conducted in a way that was acceptable to their
father-master PCI (with the sole exception —besides, naturally, the
Bordiguist groups that had already experienced the armed repression of
the “extraparliamentary” Stalinists—of Potere Operaio, a group devoted
to guerrilla tactics which, although it did not publicly defend the
revolutionaries, was always opposed to […]the systematic calumnies of
the left which had for several years been proclaiming that
“situationists=fascists”. It is indisputable, however, that Comontism
was a revolutionary group, which the Cronaca di un ballo mascherato
justly cited as part of the radical communist current. Not in vain did
it claim to have remained on the terrain of revolutionary practice, when
so many other former Luddites had accepted the separation between the
“militant” public life and private life, which soon led them to passive
nihilism and, in many cases, to renounce the revolutionary option in
favor of worldly success or simply a tranquil life. On the other hand,
one cannot avoid criticizing the retreat of Comontism with respect to
the level attained by Ludd. Comontist immediatism is nothing but a
substitutionism of the proletariat carried to its logical extreme.
From this point of view, Comontism was an authentic model of ideology,
based on an undeclared but easily recognizable hierarchy, which
subjected its recruits to initiation tests and examinations of their
radicality. The most disastrous aspect of Ludd, which we shall discuss
in connection with Cesarano’s critique, became a systematically and
relentlessly applied ideology. Among its ideological conclusions we
find: the apology for crime (the only respected and recognized way to
survive); the praise, not publicly proclaimed, but a constant feature
within the group, for hard drugs as an instrument of destructuring and
liberation from family and repressive relations; the sectarian attitude
of superiority displayed towards every element external to the
organization; the group’s hostility to the hard working, sheep-like
proletariat, which was viewed as just as culpable as everyone else who
was not part of the organization. All of this turned Comontism into a
gang at war with all of humanity, and an uncritical follower of the
criminal model. This is what we mean by “ideology”: the theorization of
this practical attitude in fact prevented any critical procedure from
assuming a material basis: they were dogmas embedded in the extremely
coercive experience of the members of the group. This form of
immediatism was certainly one of the reasons that prevented Cesarano
from drawing practical conclusions, and which led him to lose himself in
sterile abstractions.
However, behind this and other dead ends of Cesarano we find certain
positions that are diametrically opposed to those of Comontism: the
positions of Invariance.
Invariance had “resolved” the problem of organization by studying the
measures employed by Marx to prevent the party from succumbing to
bourgeois reformism during the period of counterrevolutionary retreat.
This analysis was extremely partial, since it completely ignored all of
Marx’s activity that was devoted to building the communist party, and
distorted the revolutionary tradition by avoiding a critical examination
of the purely political activity of Marx taken as a whole. This attitude
was expressed in a text from 1969, published three years later by
Invariance under the title, “On Organization”, signed by Camatte-Collu,
which can be summarized as follows:
1. Under the real domination of capital every organization tends to be
transformed into a Mafia or a sect;
2. Invariance avoided this danger by dissolving the embryonic group that
had begun to form around the journal;
3. All organized groups are excluded a priori, because of the risk that
they will be transformed into Mafias;
4. Relations between revolutionaries are only useful at the highest
level of theory, which each individual can attain in a personal and
independent way, or otherwise fall prey to followerism.
According to Camatte and Collu, the danger of individualism was of no
account because the “production of revolutionaries” was already
underway—in 1972: the extension of the revolutionary process was such
that a network of interpersonal contacts at the “highest” level of
theory was already guaranteed and was even evident.
Thus, Camatte and Collu expressed in the clearest way an error that was
typical of the entire current and of Cesarano himself. In reality, a
pre-revolutionary stage on an international level was not opening up in
1972 (despite the fact that the movement would continue to resist,
although only in Italy), nor was an inexorable production of
revolutionaries imminent (even Camatte and Collu would desert).
Therefore, the disregard of individualism was nothing but an illusion.
There was nothing glorious about dissolving the small group that was
forming around the journal. This did nothing but accelerate what was
already taking place: the dispersion of the sparse revolutionary forces
that remained from 1968, forces which would not experience a resurgence
(in France there were no more large-scale social uprisings, and in Italy
the revolutionary current faced 1977 so weakened by individualism that
it was incapable of undertaking any relevant interventions). In fact,
individualism favored the dissolution of the revolutionary perspective:
either because life in isolation produced a feeling of reduced
self-esteem—which could only be escaped by comparing oneself with one’s
peers—which prevented one from perceiving the movement and which
generated discouragement and depression, the loss of one’s defenses
against the invasion from “outside” and surrender to dominant
tendencies; or because it disguised personalism and elitism, and served
to enable one to get rid of those uncomfortable relations that could
stand in the way of an opportunist reinsertion into bourgeois ideology.
During the seventies and eighties the work of the liquidation of the
organizational remnants (which were by then fragile and informal) and
the unjustified fear of succumbing to politics, “workerism” or leftism,
contributed the impulse to jump to the “other side of the barricade” for
those exponents of the “elite” who had transformed theory into a fetish
and who were mistrustful of the alleged danger of followerism (a danger
that was actually imaginary and non-existent: in Italy no group or
personality exercised any attraction or obtained passive followers such
as the Situationist International had on the other side of the Alps. In
France, in any event, Invariance never did so). We have been analyzing
two views regarding organization that were typical of the seventies,
which we can reject without any remorse, and above all without falling
prey to any of the mystifications offered by the youngest elements. The
first view, that of Comontism, is the model of the criminal
gang-historical party-human community. Although respectable from a human
point of view (like its current epigone, the French group, Os
Cangaceiros), and although it was often interesting for the
practical-organizational-lifestyle solutions that it proposed (the
revolutionaries must live “as if” communism was already a fact and could
thus face the terrible struggle for survival together, which was twice
as hard for them), its vision was born from resentment: the proletariat
is not revolutionary, so “we” (the tiny groups) are the proletariat; we
are the now-realized human community. This led them to a dogmatic and
ideological evaluation of their own sectarian activity and offered the
most disastrous answers: the terroristic self-criticism imposed on every
gesture and every word; the fetishism of coherence; the lurking
possibility of political decline, caused above all by the spell cast by
action, which led them to become a mere gang of loud-mouthed thugs. All
of this was based on the totemic-fetishistic blackmail of “practice”, in
the ideological scorn for theory and lucid action.
The other, “invariantist”, view, which would later spread over a large
part of the radical current, is the model of the circle of relations
among “theoreticians”. In this case, the enormous totem-fetish of theory
conceals the unilateral nature of relations limited to a tiny elite of
“critics”.
Such an attitude, now that the illusions regarding a rapid and abundant
“production of revolutionaries” have dissipated, amounts in reality to
pure and simple individualism. Instead, there is nothing left to do but
to adjust to the fact that the revolutionaries are now isolated. To
increase their current powerlessness by taking a position against
organization does not make any sense. The alternative of continuing to
pursue this option, in an environment of the anxious atomization of
revolutionaries, insisting on the anti-Mafia phobia and on the
exclusivity of relations between a handful of the elect (if one can find
any such elect) at the highest level (higher than what?) of theory, is
not very attractive.
Although it is now clear that the resurgence of activism and militancy
rapidly leads back to politics, it is also clear that the fetish of
theory separated from collective efficacy and, if possible, organized
practice, offers no way out. Communist principles, united with a
critical theory animated by its contrast with the theory of the previous
two decades and with the principle results of the recent past—that is: a
revolution of and for life, a questioning of the limits of the ego and
of personal identity (which in the work of Cesarano are denounced
vehemently and comprehensively), the experience of a revolution in the
revolution—are the only antidotes against the Mafioso degeneration,
which cannot be escaped by way of self-valorizing isolation, and much
less by the original and personal road of an alleged creativity.
It is obvious that in 1970 there was no danger posed by the possibility
that a militant-activist group associated with Invariance or a core
group of “theoreticians” would be formed. In fact, the danger was just
the reverse: disintegration and the neglect of the most important
questions that should have been addressed:
1. The reformulation of the contribution of the historical ultraleft
(Bordiga and the most consistent sector of the
German revolution, which were decisive for the world revolution);
2. Draw up a balance sheet of the new contents contributed by the
sixties;
3. The need to create a network of relations capable of enduring and
prepared to reinitiate the revolutionary possibilities that were
presented during the seventies.
According to Camatte and Collu the “production of revolutionaries” would
magically resolve all problems, when what actually took place
immediately thereafter was the dispersion of the revolutionaries, and it
became evident that they were incapable of taking advantage of the
opportunity that would be once again, and only in Italy, be presented.
In the following years the question of nihilism arose, still posed in
terms that were upside down with respect to reality: in reality the
expressions of nihilism were the abandonment of the revolutionary
tradition, the end of the search for communist relations among
subversives, the denial of the need to become an effective community,
and the underestimation of the need to avoid being dragged down by the
counterrevolution.
Comontism was a caricature of relations between revolutionaries, with
its illusion that all problems could be magically resolved by the right
ideology, and its pretension of being the embodiment of the theory of
the sixties, now complete, which only had to be applied in practice
without any delay. Although it was aberrant and unsustainable on the
theoretical plane, this simplification was based on a profoundly correct
demand: theory cannot be a separate and specialized activity, it is an
integral part of the everyday coherence of revolutionaries and the need
to change reality in its entirety, to have an impact on society and on
history.
Comontism had a doubly counterproductive result:
1. Because it created a gang that proclaimed itself to be the enemy of
society and the proletariat, preventing any possibility of forming a
pole of regroupment and of having an effect on society;
2. Because it was easily recuperable by the most typical ideology of the
seventies: that which consisted in justifying—as Toni Negri did—the
groups produced by social disintegration, instead of subjecting them to
a radical critique. This made Comontism incapable of providing any
perspective to a sector, one that was much more coherent in 1977, of
young people who broke with the hierarchical and instrumental armed
practice of Autonomia Organizatta and who instead wanted to act for
themselves, courageously but with impoverished and confused ideas.
Comontism, however, was right to reject the elitism of the few who act
“at the highest level of theory”. Such elitism could only lead to the
creation of relations rooted solely on the intellectual plane.
Cesarano was the only person who acted on the highest level, producing a
clear and explicit theory, completely anti-esoteric, vainly trying to
provide a human solution to this pseudo-intellectual milieu,
characterized by its absolute fragility and by its tremendous
incoherence (except for Piero Coppo and Joe Fallisi, the only other
people among his comrades who preserved a revolutionary coherence,
without nourishing any pretenses to superiority derived from the
possession of theory).
[…]
16. The activity of the Centro d’iniziativa Luca Rossi
This is why an activity like that undertaken by the Centro d’iniziativa
Luca Rossi [1990’s] is relevant, which we may summarize as follows:
1. Clarifying the revolutionary tradition, which is necessary in order
to establish some principles that transcend the waves of barbarism that
capital has unleashed on the world that it has colonized (racism, war,
the bloody resurgence of national conflicts like those of the period
before the First World War, the belligerent expansionism of the old
religions), with special attention to the ultraleft current of the epoch
of fascism and Stalinism. This labor implies the resumption of the
projects that were underway in the seventies and which could not be
concluded: the affirmation of communism and its positive description.
Because we must confront the mystification that accompanied the collapse
of that which seventy years of counterrevolution falsely passed off as
“communism”, while fascism and racism no longer just play the role of
spectacular scarecrows but have become gigantic zombies armed to the
teeth.
2. Drawing up a balance sheet of the Italian radical current, because
the revolutionary eruption of those years “set fire to” a series of
questions without actually answering them, and got stuck in a dead end
just when the time seemed to be most favorable for its activity (1977).
This is why it is necessary to demarcate that historical experience in
order to extract the requisite lessons from it. There is a clear
necessity, among other things, of making accessible the results of this
endeavor, but it is unthinkable that this should be done outside the
boundaries of a discussion that would make it comprehensible and that
would make it an object of criticism for today’s revolutionaries. It is
therefore necessary to confront a double task: to spread the principle
texts of the seventies and to try to draw up a critical balance sheet of
that period.
3. In the short term, we have to avoid repeating the error that was made
at that time and that would be totally unthinkable today: the
valorization of isolation (which transforms theoretical activity into
something abstract and unverifiable). To the contrary, the experiences
of the revolutionaries in the workplaces, in the rank and file
proletarian organizations, and in the social centers, must be very
carefully analyzed without making any exceptions, since they constitute
a vital element, without which not even the preliminary formulations of
therevolutionary tradition would be viable. One lesson that may be
immediately drawn from the radical theory of the seventies is that the
revolutionaries cannot omit the concrete relations with the social
struggle without swelling the ranks of so many brilliant former
revolutionaries; and at the same time, they cannot renounce the concrete
and living critique of everyday life without eventually succumbing to
passive nihilism.
4. There is no need to fear the organizational and institutional
solutions that could serve to attain full practical efficacy. In the
current conditions of the profound crisis of capitalism, in which the
best elements of the international revolutionary proletariat are not,
however, prospering—and there is not even a prosperous class movement
capable of self-defense—the revolutionaries face all the typical dangers
of the previous periods of retreat, but they still do not possess any
historical relation with a recent movement of generalized struggle.
Thus, in a certain sense, today much more than in the seventies, we move
along the edge of the abyss, threatened by the snare of desperation,
deception, and the “catastrophic” crisis of devalorization, in which it
is becoming ever more difficult to find a solution in attack and revolt,
a solution that, after all, in comparison with our current situation,
used to be within reach. So that now, no one may allow himself any kind
of indulgence on the terrain of isolation. Revolutionary community,
organization and solidarity are urgent necessities, whose absence is
dramatically obvious, but whose realization is terribly distant. All of
which calls for strong bonds between revolutionaries, without any kind
of sectarianism. The current period of “preparatory” work, of
clarification of principles, requires not only coherence and
intransigence, but also an enrichment of contacts, of sources and
discussions. The revolutionary milieu is in itself too weak, it is too
much of a “nostalgic” parody of what it once was, to be capable of
constituting by itself a valid point of reference. That is why it needs
all the contributions it can get, in order to create some degree of
circulation of ideas, of research, of study, that would at least
establish the minimal conditions for a resurgence.
There will be no movement without principles and without theory, nor
will there be any movement if we reproduce the narrow-mindedness that
characterized the decline of the radicals.
4. Carlos Lagos Paredes – Communization (Foreward to Apocalypse and
Survival by the spanish translator – Chile, April 2010)
[from:
https://libcom.org/library/apocalypse-survival-reflections-giorgio-cesaranos-book-critica-dell%E2%80%99utopia-capitale-expe
– See also the pdf edition published by Malcontent Editions]
It is one thing to recognize the value of a theoretical work for its
radical and clarifying features, but another one entirely to attribute
to it the ability to change the course of a social movement. A theory
may of course seek to help the proletarian movement avoid being
“poisoned” by ideology, but it can only act as one partial influence
among many others. With respect to both the case of communist minorities
as well as the proletarian movement in general, ideologization is the
result of the complex interaction between innumerable factors—among
which, the content of immediate social practice occupies a central
place—rather than of intellectual errors that are spread by contagion
from one mind to another and which can be counteracted by the “antidote”
of a correct theory. The practical content of the movement can be
analyzed and predicted, but for the most part it is beyond the scope of
formal theory, since it responds to its own laws and evolves in
accordance with what its protagonists perceive to be immediate
necessity. Although theory formally expresses the content of human
relations, it only expresses a negligible part of them; it is one
mediation among others, and as such cannot by itself alter the material
conditions that produce ideology or its supersession. The purview of
theory is in fact much more modest: in the best case, it can publicly
explain aspects of reality or relations that were not normally
perceived, or call attention to the risks and the opportunities of a
situation that affects everyone. Everything else depends on the men and
women dedicated to action and struggle.
The overestimation of the power of written theory is not the only
feature that can be criticized in Santini’s article, but this did not
discourage me when it came time to translate it. I do not think that in
this case the author was trying to argue in favor of personalism or of
idealism. I believe, rather, that he permitted himself some exaggerated
claims, inspired by his great affection for Cesarano and for the
experience that he recounts, which is of course debatable, but does not
invalidate the contribution made by the text taken as a whole. The same
is true of the emphasis that Santini places on the need for
revolutionary regroupment, an aspect that, in my view, he does not
subject to a profound enough analysis. Considering the indisputable
dispersion of revolutionaries, it seems to me to be of little use to
call for their regroupment as if this were itself enough to solve
anything. In reality, it is not so much a question of getting the people
with revolutionary ideas to associate with one another, but to know for
what purpose they would do so, besides the enjoyment of their mutual
affinity. To do this, however, does not by any means require that one be
a “revolutionary”: we proletarians have a tendency to unite
spontaneously because this is what our social nature demands: it is not
a question of choice. If such a regroupment has some special purpose,
this is another question, but it only makes sense to debate this
question in relation to each specific case. Whether it involves
organizing a potluck dinner, a strike picket at work, the publication of
a text of radical critique or agitation in support of imprisoned
comrades … there are a thousand things that can be discussed and acted
upon, without losing sight of the fact that each person participates in
this or that activity because it directly affects his personal
existence. But a general appeal to revolutionaries in order to convince
them to regroup in accordance with their ideas, is another matter
entirely, which basically is oriented towards transcending concrete
determinations that link each person to a specific kind of activity. I
shall pause here to examine this point more carefully because I believe
that what Santini expresses in his article is symptomatic of a very
widespread perception.
What Santini says is true: the retreat of the working class to defensive
positions or to mere helplessness only aggravates the devastation
produced by capitalist development, and in such conditions isolation
cannot be defended with the delirium displayed by the apologists for
theoretical purism in the early seventies. But there is also another
question: as long as social atomization persists in the proletariat as a
whole there will be limitations to the regrouping of radical minorities,
since their activity inevitably tends to reproduce the conditions in
which their class lives and acts. This must have a repercussion on their
practice, which will tend to focus on one particular issue to the
detriment of others, with the exclusionary effect this entails. Thus, it
is by no means strange that some revolutionaries undertake solidarity
actions on behalf of prisoners while others concentrate on rebuilding
nuclei of agitation in the workplace; likewise, it is logical that some
would prefer to respond to the need for independent media, while others
devote their efforts to preserving the historical memory of the
proletariat … and so on. It would be absurd to expect that each person
should assume responsibility for all the practical necessities of the
movement, nor does it make any sense to demand that all those who are
engaged in different activities should converge in a single perfectly
integrated collectivity: this would be enough to render their
co-existence impossible, assuming with justification that a certain
degree of dispersion is the inevitable effect of the way one lives in
this society. In these conditions, it is normal for those who are trying
to develop a “total practice” to end up absorbed in an overwhelming
flood of tasks and relations where what they gain in terms of extension
is almost always lost in terms of depth. The dissatisfaction that this
generates is usually expressed in a recriminatory discourse that makes
the radical minorities themselves responsible for the dispersion and
weakness of the proletarian movement. Each group or individual therefore
discovers reasons for underestimating the others because they are “only”
devoted to labor issues, or counter-information, or prisoners’ aid, or
theory, etc. Ultimately, from this point of view all of them are
culpable for not being sufficiently revolutionary to have an impact on
the general situation. Such an attitude is equivalent to putting the
responsibility for industrial pollution on the shoulders of the ordinary
consumers. In both cases what is expressed is a feature of radical
democratism, which relies on the moral power of good intentions to
resolve the problems that can by no means be resolved under capitalist
conditions.
The preferential dedication to certain tasks will only cease to be a
problem in a revolutionary context, in which human relations will
possess a new dynamic corresponding to new social problems; and in which
the resulting polyvalence will not be a distinctive trait of
“revolutionaries”, but of broad sectors of the population. As long as
this does not take place, and perhaps even after it has occurred, it is
inevitable and even desirable that some should devote themselves with
more enthusiasm to one or another type of activity. If the preference
for one activity instead of others today appears as a limitation this is
not due to the actual content of this activity, but due to the fact that
the collective capacity for harmonizing the diverse activities in a
coherent community has not been sufficiently developed. This is only a
reflection of the way the population as a whole relates to the
instruments of production and to the products of their activity.
Communism, however, does not impose the abstract demand that each person
should occupy himself indiscriminately with everything; instead, it
allows for the harmonious social coordination of individual aptitudes.
The communist production of the “total man” is not the production of the
isolated individual in possession of infinite abilities, but the total
community: in this community, man does not need to do everything that
the others do, but he has the opportunity to do anything because he no
longer encounters arbitrary impediments that separate him from his own
inclinations. This has nothing to do with the madness of the “new man”
that justified the spectacular protagonism of certain revolutionary
leaders, and which is today still nourishing the desire for fantasy and
the moralism of those who want to see their own personal requirements
rule the lives of everyone in the entire world.
Returning to Santini, I think that his overestimation of theory as well
as of the current possibilities for revolutionary regroupment are
related to the insufficiency of his criticism of the point of view
elaborated by Cesarano and Invariance during the seventies: a point of
view in which the crisis of capitalism presents such apocalyptic and
unfavorable features for communism, that revolutionary possibilities no
longer seem to be contained within the social contradiction of
capitalism itself, but elsewhere. Thus, theory appears as a means
capable of expressing possibilities situated beyond the immediate social
contradiction (which actually amounts to a new esotericism); while
regroupment seems to provide access to such possibilities, without
taking into account the fact that the revolutionaries themselves are
immersed in the social contradiction and in history, from whose limits
in any event they can hardly escape.
5. Gilles Dauvé (Militancy in the 21st Century – France, 2014)
[No full english edition available, Translation: Malcontent Editions]
The situationists had made from the rejection of militancy a base
banality, a critique that was summed up in 1972 in Militancy, supreme
state of alienation.
For us, ‘militant’ is not an insult reserved for those that we wouldn’t
do anything together with (as ‘petit-bourgeois’ was long ago for many
militants). Certain comrades can be included within the militancy: they
don’t seek perfection, but we don’t see it necessarily as a sufficient
motive for rupture.
In the situationist critique, to militate signifies sacrificing one’s
own life for the cause, denying personal desires and necessities in
order to submit to a doctrine. And above all, to believe that it’s
possible to change the world with no more than presentations, meetings
and words. The militant is a voluntarist multiplied by a productivist.
Forty years later, what has the militant changed into? What consequences
do these changes have in our critique of militancy? […]
The professional revolutionary of long ago was paid by the party: today
the State or a private organism contracts them or subsidizes them, which
was unacceptable for the militants of the 70’s. The rejection of
political parties has progressed, the rejection of the State [and of the
Market] has diminished […]
There’s no interest in playing at massacre. We don’t believe ourselves
to be worse than our neighbor, nor do we imagine overcoming the
contradictions of radical critique through the magic of a dialectic that
would take up the good parts of each one (the energy of one, the
preoccupation to inform of the other, the reproduction of old texts by
the third…) abstaining from the faults present in each of them.
In any case, we don’t hope to construct today the organization that will
be ready tomorrow “when everything explodes” To remain available is
often the best that can be done; to be informed, but without being glued
to the screen; to act, but not necessarily every day. In the necessary
diffusion of information and radical theses, these are no more important
than the links woven for their circulation, useful some day, but it
would be impossible and vain to formalize currently. If the collective
inertia is an obstacle to the revolution, certain types of actions can
also maintain the passivity.
As a proletarian proverb says: “it’s not the revolutionaries who will
make the revolution, but the revolution that will make the
revolutionaries.”
6. A proletarian revolutionary after participating in a mass revolt and
returning to the capitalist normalcy, at a time of economic and health
crisis
(Ecuador, March-April 2020)
[translation: Malcontent Editions]
If indeed theory is an activity or a specific form of practice which
emanates from reality with the aim of consciously understanding and
transforming it, it’s the practice of the class struggle itself that
always has the last word in class society. Only in practice can the
truth and the force, or not, of a theory be demonstrated. And theory
only turns into a material force when it kindles within the masses and
they realize it. Revolutionary theory is only practice and immediate in
the revolution, and vice-versa: only the practical revolution is
immediately theory. The rest is silence… or pure noise.
But the revolution doesn’t depend on “grassroots work” and “agitation
and propaganda” focused on “awareness raising” and recruitment on the
part of a “revolutionary” organization for its own “accumulation of
forces” and “taking of power” under its ideology (e.g. the
marxist-leninists). Neither does it depend on creating small
“self-managed communes” isolated form the rest of the society in order
to “live the utopia here and now” (e.g. the self-managerialists). Much
less does it depend on the political, symbolic and mediatic activism of
the new leftists (e.g. the leftist postmodernists, including some
anarchists). All these forms of supposedly “anticapitalist” action do no
more than to reproduce this generalized mercantile and spectacular
society, although they think and say the opposite, because they neither
attack nor subvert its roots or foundations but rather reproduce them
“from below and to the left”.
Then? In reality the revolution depends on the anonymous proletarian
masses or the nobodies who neither can nor want to live under the
capitalist mode of production and of living any longer, and thus begin
to produce for themselves, through necessity and desire, social
relations and forms of living that are communistic and anarchic, which
can only be developed freely and fully by means of the social
revolution, meaning by means of the abolition and overcoming of the
class society, in the heat of the class antagonism itself and the
reproduction of daily life. In the real social struggles and everyday
practices where the proletarians do this, there is where the seed of
revolution, of communism and anarchy is to be found.
Meanwhile, individuals tend to be separated amongst themselves, just as
theory tends to be separated from practice as well (this last
separation/alienation is called ideology), given that capitalism is the
world of separation or of the systematic social organization of
isolation, independently from what individuals or groups of the left
believe and say ideologically to this respect. But the revolutionaries
“with neither dogma nor party” will not save us from ideology either,
for the simple fact of “living” under conditions of structural social
alienation/separation. Thus, to be objective from the communist and
class perspective, radical theory must not only be produced in an
individual or isolated form and only in relation with other individuals
that do the same (as is my case currently, and surely that of other
comrades in other latitudes as well as in other eras, including
Camatte); but rather it’s necessary to make an effort to construct and
practice social relations and forms of living that really transform the
capitalist social relations and forms of living, with other proletarians
that are “ordinary” but are tired of being proletarians (which is more
complicated but also more necessary and effective). “Communism vs. the
alienated lone individual” (Santini, 1994)
In effect, what’s more important and decisive than the revolutionary
theories and individuals, are the real links of solidarity, mutual aid,
care, confidence, communication, gratuity, horizontality and liberty
which, in an anonymous and autonomous way, the proletarians create in
order to satisfy their immediate vital necessities and, at the same
time, to struggle for and live the revolution, that’s to say to change
their own lives radically in every aspect, as much in times of
capitalist normality (or of non-revolutionary class struggle) as in
times of revolts and insurrections (or of revolutionary class struggle).
Theory will only be a factor or one more active element of this total
and radical transformation of the class and of society; but it will be,
because revolutionary praxis – which without a doubt includes
revolutionary agitation and propaganda – is lucid or conscious of itself
and of its circumstances.
Having it clear that this will not occur at whatever time or whenever it
is wanted (as the voluntarists and immediatists believe), but in
concrete historical situations of ascent, generalization and
intensification of the class struggle and of the capitalist crisis,
which affects people’s daily lives and presents them with new social
problems to resolve in collective practice.
Furthermore, this can’t be done with people that don’t want to or can’t
do it, they cannot and must not be obliged to it (nobody saves or
liberates anybody, we all save ourselves or self-liberate together).
Real relationships of community and of liberty can only be constructed
with other proletarianized individuals that already fight for their own
freedom and human community, to reappropriate their lives, in their own
realities and with the means that they have at reach.
The historical, social and impersonal process of the revolution is that
which produces revolutionary individuals who associate freely in order
to act as such, and vice-versa. That, among other things, is what “that
communist production of communism” (Théorie Communiste, 2011) involves,
by means of real communities of struggle and of life; that is to say, by
means of spontaneous, impure, imperfect, limited and contradictory
communities of proletarians that fight for their immediate vital
necessities at the same time as fighting for their own liberation and
abolition as a social class (communist proletarians fight for our own
abolition, as Gorter said well), and for the abolition of Capital and
the State. This involves, also, breaking and overcoming the isolation or
the capitalist social atomization and, at the same time, making an
effort to be the critique and the practical overcoming of the “rackets”,
groupuscules, gangs or political mafias of the left that compete amongst
themselves for quotas of power within the bourgeois society and its
State – the reason for which they are not revolutionary but rather
counterrevolutionary.
Contradictory? Yes: better said, dialectical, because the proletariat is
the living contradiction and it is only revolutionary when it fights to
cease being an exploited and oppressed class. That’s why it’s an
anti-class class. The revolution is the positive resolution of this
contradiction in motion. Criticizing and overcoming in the said motion
all the separations which Capital has imposed; in this case, the
separation between individual and community, and between theory and
practice; and, therefore, criticizing and overcoming the typical and
false leftist debates to that respect: activism-theoreticism (or
pragmatism-intellectualism), subjectivism-objectivism and
individualism-collectivism. Even so, it continues to be contradictory or
dialectical, because it’s a living reality, in constant movement and,
therefore, in constant self-transformation. The same applies,
historically and logically, to revolutionary
organization-anti-organization: it has only been, is, and will be such
if it questions and transforms the capitalist social relations and forms
of living and thought that it contains and which contain it (which
without a doubt includes the male-chauvinist, racist, nationalist, etc.
forms of oppression at its very heart); if it realizes radical critique
(theoretical and practical) of all the aspects of the capitalist world;
if it subverts the current state of things and produces the arms
(practical and theoretical) of its liberation in an autonomous and
conscious manner; if it prefigures the real human community of freely
associated individuals and fights for the communist revolution in deeds;
if it struggles for its own abolition as an organization separated from
the class, abolishing the capitalist conditions that have produced it as
such; in a word: if it really contributes to the self-liberation and the
self-abolition of the proletariat as a class which is exploited,
oppressed and alienated by Capital and the State.
All of this – as it has already been said and it’s worth making clear –
not at a whim but in determined conditions, principally in situations of
revolutionary crisis produced or not by the class struggle itself, as
well as in everyday life in the measure that it’s possible. And – as
it’s also already been said and worth making clear – not in a pure
manner without contradictions, because when a movement is real it’s
impure and contradictory, and what makes it revolutionary, then, is to
assume, sustain and strain these capitalist contradictions in order to
overcome them and overcome them all at the root.
On the contrary, the proletarian and popular organizations, as much of
the masses as of “cadres”, as much activists as radicals, have not been,
are not, nor will they be more than organizations that, through their
practices and their relationships, reproduce capitalism but with an
“anticapitalist” or “revolutionary” appearance. For which they must also
be criticized, fought against, destroyed and overcome by the
proletarians that are fed-up with being proletarians and “without a
party”. Indeed, to really self-emancipate, the proletariat must
criticize, strain, break, transform, abolish and overcome itself
radically, without fear, mystification, piety or subterfuge. In this
sense, the proletariat, like the revolution, in reality advances through
ruptures and leaps. Its militant self-organization and self-activity
only make sense if it’s in order to realize this sole end which is truly
revolutionary. This means, furthermore, to understand and practice
communism as a real movement and anarchy as a tension towards social
revolution.
But, unfortunately, what happens most of the time and all over the place
is exactly the opposite, despite how many organization-gangs and
militant-martyrs of the left that exist and do “real political work and
not just blah-blah”. The revolutionary situations, on the contrary, have
been, are, and will be decisive historical exceptions, ultimately,
according to what the proletariat does or doesn’t do in them as a
revolutionary or self-abolishing anti-class class; that’s to say,
according to what our class does or doesn’t do to abolish and overcome
the living contradiction that it itself is in every aspect of social
life, including its organizations, its ideologies and its
“revolutionary” roles.
The proletarians don’t learn “these things” only through theory, but
principally through their own practical experience and, especially,
through the false steps, the errors, the failures, the blows and the
defeats suffered in everyday life and in the class struggle, until the
revolution… or death. and also it’s something that can happen just as
much as it can’t, depending on what, now and in the coming decades, we
do or not in order to free ourselves integrally; that’s to say, to
self-abolish as a class (and as a gender, “race”, nation, etc.) and in
order to create a real human-natural community, above all in this era of
generalized capitalist catastrophe where the only radical alternative
that’s left for the human species is: communism or extinction.
———————————————————-
Other related and recommended texts:
– Give up activism – Andrew X (1999)
https://libcom.org/library/give-up-activism
– The Necessity and Impossibility of ‘Anti-Activism’ – J. Kellstadt
(1999)
http://news.infoshop.org/opinion/the-necessity-and-impossibility-of-anti-activism/
– Against the Logic of Submission: Neither Intellectualism Nor Stupidity
– Willfull Disobedience (2001)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-willful-disobedience-volume-2-number-11.html#toc1
– La propaganda subversiva y los “ismos” – Ricardo Fuego (2006)
[es, no existing english edition]
https://kaosenlared.net/la-propaganda-subversiva-y-los-ismos/
– Minimum Definition of Revolutionary Organizations – Situationist
International (1967)
www.bopsecrets.org/SI/11.mindef.htm
– Militancy: highest stage of alienation – Organisation des Jeunes
Travailleurs Révolutionnaires (1972)
https://libcom.org/library/militancy-ojtr
– The Impotence of the Revolutionary Group – Sam Moss (1930s)
https://libcom.org/library/impotence-of-revolutionary-group-international-council-correspondence-moss
– Rackets – F.Pallinorc (2001)
http://left-dis.nl/uk/rackets.htm
