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fyi: "Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory"
The Minimum Definition of Intelligence
Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory
A Note from the Editor
The "anarchist community", today, is renown for replicating and
increasing the rate of errors wherever it scourges for self-meaning,
especially with regard to theory and historical truth. So, in the case of this text! Rather than check for accuracy, they copy from each
other until, like the "secret" passed around a table, the "returning" resembles the original only in the imagination. This is the
spectacularization process embodied in characterological slack.
This particular text has been diluted into many titles, many with
recycled views camouflaging contact with the authors as well as psycho- malpractice. These include:
Self-Theory: The Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself
This was the one put out by the associates of For Ourselves at The
Spectacle in East Lansing, Michigan USA in 1975. They re-formatted,
stuck to the original text, gave credit, and forwarded communication.
Revolutionary Self-Theory: A Beginner's Guide
This also stuck fairly close to the original, changed graphics, but
left out both the For Ourselves Post-notes and Preamble, and failed to mention the original authors.
From here on, the rest of the copies lose more and more of the
reality of the text, the times, and the authors in the copy process.
They all begin to blindfully believe, and even state, that the first
copy was the original. That kind of investigation-free falsification
is characterologically intentional and mocks the very call for
authenticity that 'self-theory' demands as a practicable self-
definition.
It is no wonder that the "anarchist movement" is anaemic and
unattractive, and according to colonizing "plan", they blame the
historical victim — the all of humanity — because they refuse to
follow these 'copies' of the failing side of the "Anarchist" and the
"Situationist" once again.... Repeating failure better is their next-
to-greatest accomplishment. The greatest is reserved for their
dismissal from the stage[d] history to which they lay pompous claim....
Revolutionary Self-Theory
The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself
Revolutionary Self-help: A Beginner's Manual
The Joy of Thinking... For Yourself
Revolutionary Self-Theory: A Beginner's Manual
There's "making theory your own" and there's the "ownership of theory" — the definition of "ideology". These replicants separate the "self" and the "other" (or "non-self") from their social totalness found
precisely within each other. Theirs is an endless "therapy" for an
endless "atomism". The title mutations exemplify the trend of turning even the most vibrant moments into vapid, lifeless consumables,
complete with marketing trend and annual reports (e.g., the "SF Bay
Area Anarchist Book Fair"), as does the eradication of the
organizational (social and practicable-connected) statement in the
original. Attacks on Leninism walk hand-in-hand with his adhocist
shadow.
Hording credit and communication is an anarcho-Stalinist trait. It
wears a heavy dose of the scent of its enemies to lure in "followers
of the faith"; it "needs" more than desires loyal objects. It is a
life style based in a state of denial of "the other", and justifies
falsification of all transcendent connectivity in the name of abstract individualism and abstract collectivism. Duct tape sells big time in
black....
Essentially, metaphorically, and explicitly, this "movement" is for
the anti-copyright, that "new world" assessment wherein the current
one is mirrored — merely co-dependently — and abstractively negated.
It cannot comprehend — and fears — the concept of an omni-copyright, a
world wherein all that has come before it is used more robustly and
without totality-sacrificial filtering by an old world stupor. So much gaze and so little imagination! A movement chasing capital's tail,
drumming to the mantra of "duh".
This is the original text, without any of their fear of authentic
historical moments lived by and created through the members of For
Ourselves. I would rather embrace and appreciate the flaws of a
truthful past as my own, than pass off flawed replicas as my own
truth. Sure, we all make mistakes — providing all of us the
opportunity to freshly and dialectically transcend them — but here's a
movement that doesn't even bother to improve on much of anything from the past. It finds a depressing contentment to dress, rant, and fail
better than the past. They either don't care very much — resplendent spectators to their own existences — or hate their jobs as
distractors, inverters, and diverters to do better in anything. This, while swilling, regurgitating, and never digesting the theory of the
Situationists and Anarchists with a gluttonous disdain.
As usual in the work of the 'half-assed', I have found misppelled
words such as "blinders" spelled as "blinkers" spattered throughout.
There are missing periods, words run together, chunks of missing text, ad finitum. It's like a dream without color, speech without pauses, or music without silence: all examples of the life-posing and the
righteously self-dispossessed.
Beyond appalling, it's quite sad how a "movement" pretending to be
"for a new world" is actually the vanguard of one embracing greater
quantitifcation of any real life (thus far spared from mediation,
scarcification, paltrification, etc.) and of the qualification of
lowered expectations in a "new world [made-to-]order", i.e., one whose marching orders are built upon "Generalized Self-dumbification", with a parade of "anarchist" commodities storm-trooping the launch of this dismal world onto all of us disbelivers. They are the perfect hosts of that dysfunctional and equally-unattractive reality. Like the
perpetual preview of the never-seen giant squid or coming idiot
science and communications attractions from the blimping Gore and
Moore — we keep wondering what sustains them, and conclude that their 'anti' power is seethed from that same fester as triad of self-and-
other-sacrificing religions from the Middle East. Both are dead-set
against everyone, especially themselves. If left to their mutations,
the text will undoubtedly end up as "The Self-sacrifice Manual" or
"The Pain of Thinking".
In countering that, I have re-included the original title, the group
post-notes, the Preamble, and links to the groups other projects. The time spent actually learning from history and from paradox seems so
much more enjoyable than pretending to exist in a fog of self-absence, wearing the skinned creations of friends from the past who were gutsy enough to demand more of themselves and of us.
Original Introduction
This booklet is for people who are dissatisfied with their lives. If
you are happy with your present existence, we have no argument with you.
However, if you are tired of waiting for your life to change...
tired of waiting for authentic community, love and adventure...
tired of waiting for the end of money and forced work...
tired of looking for new pastimes to pass the time...
tired of waiting for a lush, rich existence...
tired of waiting for a situation in which you can realise all your
desires...
tired of waiting for the end of all authorities, alienations,
ideologies and moralities...
....then we think you'll find what follows to be quite handy.
I
One of the great secrets of our miserable yet potentially marvellous
time is that thinking can be a pleasure. This is a manual for
constructing your own self-theory. Constructing your self-theory is a revelutionary pleasure, the pleasure of constructing your self-theory of revolution.
Building your self-theory is a destructive/constructive pleasure,
because you are building a theory-of-practice for the destructive/
constructive transformation of this society.
Self-theory is a theory of adventure. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.
The alienation felt as a result of having had your thinking done for
you by the ideologies of our day, can lead to the search for the
pleasurable negation of that alienation: thinking for yourself. It is the pleasure of making your mind your own.
Self-theory is the body of critical thought you construct for your own use. You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the way it is, why the world is the way it is. (And 'thinking' and 'feeling' are inseparable, since thought comes from subjective,
emotive experience.) You build your self-theory when you develop a
theory of practice — a theory of how to get what you desire for your life.
Theory will be either a practical theory — a theory of revolutionary practice — or it will be nothing... nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideals is
the eternal waiting-room of unrealised desire.
Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of
realising their life's desires, and of thus fighting for themselves,
usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead (i.e., the
illusion of selfactivity or self-practice). Those who know that this
is the acceptance of alienation will now know that all ideals and
causes are ideologies.
II
Whenever a system of ideas is structured with an abstraction at the
centre — assigning a role or duties to you for its sake — this system
is an ideology. An ideology is a system of false consciousness in
which you no longer function as the subject in your relation to the
world.
The various forms of ideology are all structured around different
abstractions, yet they all serve the interests of a dominant (or
aspiring dominant) class by giving you a sense of purpose in your
sacrifice, suffering and submission.
Religious ideology is the oldest example, the fantastic projection
called 'God' is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every
human being as 'His' subject.
In the 'scientific' and 'democratic' ideologies of bourgeois
enterprise, capital investment is the 'productive' subject directing
world history — the 'invisible hand' guiding human development. The bourgeoisie had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. It exposed the mystification of the religious world in its technological investigation, expanding the realm of things and methods out of which it could make a profit.
The various brands of Leninism are 'revolutionary' ideologies in which their Party is the rightful subject to dictate world history, by
leading its object — the proletariat — to the goal of replacing the bourgeois apparatus with a Leninist one.
The many other forms of the dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The rise of the new religiomsyticisms serve the dominant structure of
social relations in a round about way. They provide a neat form in
which the emptiness of daily life may be obscured, and like drugs,
make it easier to live with. Volunteerism (shoulder to the wheel) and determinism (it'll all work out) prevent us from recognising our real place in the functioning of the world. In avant-garde ideology,
novelty in (and of) itself is what's important. In survivalism,
subjectivity is preempted by fear through the invocation of the image of an impending world catastrophe.
In accepting ideologies we accept an inversion of subject and object; things take on a human power and will, while human beings have their
place as things. Ideology is upside-down theory. We further accept the separation between the narrow reality of our daily life, and the image of a world totality that's out of our grasp. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the totality.
In this separation, and this acceptance of sacrifice for the cause,
every ideology serves to protect the dominant social order.
Authorities whose power depends on separation must deny us our
subjectivity in order to survive themselves. Such denial comes in the form of demanding sacrifices for 'the common good', 'the national
interest', 'the war effort', 'the revolution'....
III
We get rid of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking
ourselves... How do I feel?
Am I enjoying myself?
How's my life?
Am I getting what I want?
Why not?
What's keeping me from getting what I want?
This is having consciousnessof the commonplace, awareness of one's
everyday routine. That Everyday Life — real life — exists, is a public
secret that gets less secret every day, as the poverty of daily life
gets more and more visible.
IV
The construction of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself,
being fully conscious of desires and their validity. It is the
construction of radical subjectivity.
Authentic 'consciousness raising' can only be the 'raising' of
people's thinking to the level' of positive (non-guilty) self-
consciousness: developing their basic subjectivity, free of ideology
and imposed morality in all its forms.
The essence of what many leftists, therapy-mongers, racism awareness
trainers and sisterisers term 'consciousness raising' is their
practice of beating people into unconsciousness with their ideological billyclubs.
The path from ideology (self-negation) to radical subjectivity (self-
affirmation) passes through Point Zero, the capital city of nihilism. This is the windswept still point in social space and time... the
social limbo wherein which one recognises that the present is devoid
of life; that there is no life in one's daily existence. A nihilist
knows the difference between surviving and living.
Nihilists go through a reversal or perspective on their life and the
world. Nothing is true for them but their desires, their will to be.
They refuse all ideology in their hatred for the miserable social
relations in modern capitalist-global society. From this reversed
perspective they see with a newly acquired clarity the upside-down
world of reification(i), the inversion of subject and object, of
abstract and concrete. It is the theatrical landscape of fetishised
commodities, mental projections, separations and ideologies: art, God, city planning, ethics, smile buttons, radio stations that say they
love you and detergents that have compassion for your hands.
Daily conversation offers sedatives like: "You can't always get what
you want", "Life has its ups and downs", and other dogmas of the
secular religion of survival. 'Common sense' is just the nonsense of
common alienation. Every day people are denied an authentic life and
sold back its representation.
Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which
destroys them each day. They cannot go on living as they are, their
minds are on fire. Soon enough they run up against the fact that they must come up with a coherent set of tactics that will have a practical effect on the world.
But if a nihilist does not know of the historical possibility for the transformation of the world, his or her subjective rage will coralise into a role: the suicide, the solitary murderer, the street hoodlum
vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional mental patient... all
seeking compensation for a life of dead time.
The nihilists' mistake is that they do not realise that there are
others who are also nihilists. Consequently they assume that common
communication and participation in a project of self-realisation is
impossible.
V
To have a 'political' orientation towards one's life is just to know
that you can only change your life by changing the nature of life
itself through transfermation of the world — and that transformation of the world requires collective effort.
This project of collective self-realisation can properly be termed
politics. However, 'politics' has become a mystified, separated
category of human activity. Along with all the other socially enforced separations of human activity, 'politics' has become just another
interest. It even has its specialists — be they politicians or
politicos. It is possible to be interested (or not) in football, stamp collecting, disco music or fashion. What people see as 'politics'
today is the social falsification of the project of collective self-
realisation — and that suits those in power just fine.
Collective self-realisation is the revolutionary project. It is the
collective seizure of the totality of nature and social relations and their transformation according to conscious desire.
Authentic therapy is changing one's life by changing the nature of
social life. Therapy must be social if it is to be of any real
consequence. Social therapy (the healing of society) and individual
therapy (the healing of the individual) are linked together: each
requires the other, each is a necessary part of the other.
For example: in spectacular society we are expected to repress our
real feelings and play a role. This is called 'playing a part in
society'. (How revealing that phrase is!) Individuals put on character armour - a steel-like suit of role playing is directly related to the end of social role playing.
VI
To think subjectively is to use your life — as it is now and as you want it to be — as the centre of your thinking. This positive self-
centring is accomplished by the continuous assault on externals: all
the false issues, false conflicts, false problems, false identities
and false dichotomies.
People are kept from analysing the totality of everyday existence by
being asked their opinion of every detail: all the spectacular
trifles, phoney controversies and false scandals. Are you for or
against trades unions, cruise missiles, identity cards... what's your opinion of soft drugs, jogging, UFO's, progressive taxation?
These are false issues. The only issue for us is how we live.
There is an old Jewish saying, "If you have only two alternatives,
then choose the third". It offers a way of getting the subject to
search for a new perspective on the problem. We can give the lie to
both sides of a false conflict by taking our 'third choice' — to view the situation from the perspective of radical subjectivity.
Being conscious of the third choice is refusing to choose between two supposedly opposite, but really equal, polarities that try to define
themselves as the totality of a situation. In its simplest form, this consciousness is expressed by the worker who is brought to trial for
armed robbery and asked, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?". "I'm
unemployed", he replies. A more theoretical but equally classic
illustration is the refusal to acknowledge any essential difference
between the corporate-capitalist ruling classes of the 'West' and the state-capitalist ruling classes of the 'East'. All we have to do is
look at the basic social relations of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there, as here, the vast majority go to work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up control over both the means of production and what they produce (which is then sold back to them in the form of commodities).
In the case of the 'West' the surplus value (ie that which is produced over and above the value of the workers' wages) is the property of the corporate managements who keep up a show of domestic competition. In
the 'East' the surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit domestic competition but engages in
international competition as furiously as any other capitalist nation. Big difference.
An example of a false problem is that stupid conversational question, "What's your philosophy of life?". It poses an abstract concept of
'Life' that, despite the word's constant appearance in conversation,
has nothing to do with real life, because it ignores the fact that
'living' is what we are doing at the present moment.
In the absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phoney social identities, corresponding to their individual role in the
Spectacle (in which people contemplate and consume images of what life is, so that they will forget how to live for themselves). These social identities can be ethnic ('Italian'), racial ('Black'), organisational ('Trade Unionist'), residential ('New Yorker'), sexual ('Gay'),
cultural ('sports' fan'), and so on: but all are rooted in a common
desire for affiliation, for belonging.
Obviously being 'black' is a lot more real as an identification than
being a 'sports fan', but beyond a certain point these identities only serve to mask our real position in society. Again, the only issue for us is how we live. Concretely, this means understanding the reasons
for the nature of one's life in one's relation to society as a whole. To do this one has to shed all the false identities, the partial
associations, and begin with oneself as the centre. From here we can examine the material basis of life, stripped of all mystification.
For example: suppose I want a cup of coffee from the machine at work. First of all, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the
workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantations
and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have all the workers who made the different parts of the machine and
assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite,
smelted the steel, drilled the oil and refined it. Then all the
workers who transported the raw materials and parts over three
continents and two oceans. Then the clerks, typists and communications workers who co-ordinate the production and transportation. Finally you have all the workers who produce all the other things necessary for
the others to survive. That gives me a direct material relationship to several million people: in fact, to the immense majority of the
world's population. They produce my life: and I help to produce
theirs. In this light, all partial group identities and special
interests fade into insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment
of one's life that is presently locked up in the frustrated creativity of those millions of workers, held back by obsolete and exhausting
methods of production, strangled by alienation, warped by the insane
rationale of capital accumulation! Here we begin to discover a real
social identity: in people all over the world who are fighting to win back their lives, we find ourselves.
We are constantly being asked to choose between two sides in a false
conflict. Governments, charities and propagandists of all kinds are
fond of presenting us with choices that are no choice at all (eg the
Central Electricity Generating Board presented its nuclear programme
with the slogan 'Nuclear Age or Stone Age'. The CEGB would like us to believe that these are the only two alternatives — we have the
illusion of choice, but as long as they control the choices we
perceive as available to us, they also control the outcome).
The new moralists love to tell those in the rich West how they will
'have to make sacrifices', how they 'exploit the starving children of the Third World'. The choice we are given is between sacrificial
altruism or narrow individualism. (Charities cash in on the resulting guilt by offering us a feeling of having done something, in exchange
for a coin in the collecting tin.) Yes, by living in the rich West we do exploit the poor of the Third World — but not personally, not
deliberately. We can make some changes in our life, boycott, make
sacrifices, but the effects are marginal. We become aware of the false conflict we are being presented with when we realise that under this
global social system we, as individuals, are as locked in our global
role as 'exploiters' as others are in their global role as the
exploited. We have a role in society, but little or no power to do
anything about it. We reject the false choice of 'sacrifice or
selfishness' by calling for the destruction of the global social
system whose existence forces that decision upon us. It isn't a case
of tinkering with the system, of offering token sacrifices or calling for 'a little less selfishness'. Charities and reformers never break
out of the terrain of the false choice.
Those who have a vested interest in maintaining the present situation constantly drag us back to their false choices — that is, any choice which keeps their power intact. With myths like 'If we shared it all
out there wouldn't be enough to go round', they attempt to deny the
existence of any other choices and to hide from us the fact that the
material preconditions for social revolution already exist.
VII
Any journey towards self-demystification must avoid those two
quagmires of lost thought — absolutism and cynicism; twin swamps that camouflage themselves as meadows of subjectivity.
Absolutism is the total acceptance or rejection of all components of
particular ideologies, spectacles and reifications. An absolutist
cannot see any other choice than complete acceptance or complete
rejection .
The absolutist wanders along the shelves of the ideological
supermarket looking for the ideal commodity, and then buys it — lock, stock and barrel. but the ideological supermarket — like any
supermarket — is fit only for looting. It is more productive for us if
we can move along the shelves, rip open the packets, take out what
looks authentic and useful, and dump the rest.
Cynicism is a reaction to a world dominated by ideology and morality. Faced with conflicting ideologies the cynic says: "a plague on both
your houses". The cynic is as much a consumer as the absolutist, but
one who has given up hope of ever finding the ideal commodity.
VIII
The process of dialectical thinking is constructive thinking, a
process of continually synthesising one's current body of self- theory with new observations and appropriations; a resolution of the
contradictions between the previous body of theory and new theoretical elements. The resulting synthesis is thus not some quantitative
summation of the previous and the new, but their qualitative
supersession, a new totality.
This synthetic / dialectic method of constructing a theory is counter to the eclectic style which just collects a rag-bag of its favourite
bits from favourite ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions. Modern examples include libertarian capitalism,
christian marxism and liberalism in general.
If we are continually conscious of how we want to live, we can
critically appropriate from anything in the construction of our self-
theory: ideologies, culture critics, technocratic experts,
sociological studies, mystics and so forth. All the rubbish of the old world can be scavenged for useful material by those who desire to
reconstruct it.
IX
The nature of modern society, its global and capitalist unity,
indicates to us the necessity of making our self-theory a unitary
critique. By this we mean a critique of all geographic areas where
various forms of socio-economic domination exist (ie both the
capitalism of the 'free' world and the state-capitalism of the
'communist' world), as well as a critique of all alienations (sexual
poverty, enforced survival, urbanism, etc). In other words, a critique of the totality of daily existence everywhere, from the perspective of the totality of one's desires.
Ranged against this project are all the politicians and bureaucrats,
preachers and gurus, city planners and policemen, reformers and
militants, central committees and censors, corporate managers and
union leaders, male supremacists and feminist ideologues, psyche-
sociologists and conservation capitalists who work to subordinate
individual desire to a reified 'common good' that has supposedly
designated them as its representatives. They are all forces of the old world, all bosses, priests and creeps who have something to lose if
people extend the game of seizing back their minds into seizing back
their lives.
Revolutionary theory and revolutionary ideology are enemies — and both
know it.
X
By now it should be obvious that self-demystification and the
construction of our own revolutionary theory doesn't eradicate our
alienation: 'the world' (capital and the Spec tacle) goes on,
reproducing itself every day.
Although this booklet had the construction of self-theory as its
focus, we never intended to imply that revolutionary theory can exist separate from revolutionary practice. In order to be consequential,
effectively to reconstruct the world, practice must seek its theory,
and theory must be realised in practice. The revolutionary prospect of disalienation and the transformation of social relations requires that one's theory be nothing other than a theory of practice, of what we do and how we live. Otherwise theory will degenerate into an impotent
contemplation of the world, and ultimately into survival ideology — a projected mental fogbank, a static body of reified thought, of
intellectual armour, that acts as a buffer between the daily world and oneself. And if revolutionary practice is not the practice of
revolutionary theory, it degenerates into altruistic militantism,
'revolutionary' activity as one's social duty.
We don't strive for a coherent theory purely as an end in itself. For us, the practical use value of coherence is that having a coherent
self-theory makes it easier for someone to think. As an example, it's easier to get a handle on future developments in social control if you have a coherent understanding of modern social control ideologies and techniques up to the present.
Having a coherent theory makes it easier to conceive of the
theoretical practice for realising your desires for your life.
XI
In the process of constructing self-theory, the last ideologies that
have to be wrestled with and determinedly pinned down are the ones
that most closely resemble revolutionary theory. These final
mystifications are a) situationism b)councilism.
The Situationist International (1958-1971) was an international
revolutionary organisation that made an immense contribution to
revolutionary theory. Situationist theory is a body of critical theory that can be appropriated into one's self-theory, and nothing more.
Anything more is the ideological misappropriation known as situationism.
For those who newly discover it, SI theory has a way of seeming like
'the answer I've been searching for for years', the answer to the
riddle of one's dead life. But that's exactly when a new alertness and self-possession become necessary. Situationism can be quite the
complete survival ideology, a defence mechanism against the wear and
tear of daily life. included in the ideology is the spectacular
commodity-role of being 'a situationist', ie a radical jade and ardent esoteric.
Councilism (aka 'Workers' Control', 'Syndicalism') offers 'self-
management' as a replacement for the capitalist system of production.
Real self-management is the direct management (unmediated by any
separate leadership) of social production, distribution and
communication by workers and their communities. The movement for self- management has appeared again and again all over the world in the
course of social revolution. Russia in 1905 and 1917-21, Spain in
1936-7, Hungary in 1956, Algeria in 1960, Chile in 1972 and Portugal
in 1975. The form of organisation most often created in the practice
of self-management has been workers' councils: sovereign general
assemblies of the producers and neighbourhoods that elect mandated
delegates to co-ordinate their activities. The delegates are not
representatives, but carry out decisions already made by their
assemblies. Delegates can be recalled at any time, should the general assembly feel that its decisions are not being rigorously carried out.
Councilism is this historical practice and theory of self- management turned into an ideology. Whereas the participants in these uprisings
lived a critique of the social totality, beginning with a critique of wage labour, of the commodity economy and exchange value, councilism
makes a partial critique: it seeks not the self-managed, continuous
and qualitative transformation of the whole world, but the static,
quantitive self-management of the world as it is. The economy thus
remains a separate realm cut off from the rest of daily life and
dominating it. On the other hand a movement for generalised self-
management seeks the transformation of all sectors of social life and all social relations (production, sexuality, housing, services,
communications, etc), councilism thinks that a self-managed economy is all that matters. It misses, literally, the whole point: subjectivity and the desire to transform the whole of life. The problem with
workers' control is that all it controls is work.
The world can only be turned right-side-up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside-down.
Spontaneous rebellion and insurrectionary subjectivity alone are not
sufficient. An authentic revolution can only occur in a practical
movement in which all the mystifications of the past are being
consciously swept away.
Post-notes
This booklet is part of the collective self-theory of the members of
our organization. It is the statement of what we call our meta-theory, our theory of the practice of theory-making.
The preparation and dissemination of The Minimum Definition of
Intelligence is undertaken for the same reason we do everything else
we do: because we want to catalyze a social revolution that will
transform the present static layout of alienation into a moving
landscape of realized dreams. We know we can only create the lives
that we want tin the process of everyone else creating the lives that they want. We are revolutionaries because our desires require a social revolution for their realization.
The world can only be turned right-side-up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside-down.
Spontaneous rebellion and insurrectionary subjectivity alone are not
sufficient. An authentic revolution can only occur in a practical
movement in which all the mystifications of the past are consciously
being swept away.
Preamble
We have woken up to discover that our lives are becoming unliveable.
From boring, meaningless jobs to the humiliation of waiting endlessly
in lines, at desks and counters to receive our share of survival, from prison-like schools to repetitious, mindless "entertainment," from
desolate and crime-ridden streets to the stifling isolation of home,
our days are a treadmill on which we run faster and faster just to
keep in the same place.
Like the immense majority of the population, we have no control over
the use to which our lives are put: we are people who have nothing to sell but our capacity to work. We have come together because we can no longer tolerate the way we are forced to exist, we can no longer
tolerate being squeezed dry of our energies, being used up and thrown away, only to create a world that grows more alien and ugly every day.
The system of Capital, whether in its "Western" private-corporate or
"Eastern" state-bureaucratic form, was brutal and exploitative even
during its ascent: now, where it is in decay, it poisons air and
water, produces goods and services of deteriorating quality, and is
less and less able to employ us even to its own advantage. Its logic
of accumulation and competition leads inexorably toward its own
collapse. Even as it links all the people of the world together in one vast network of production and consumption, it isolates us from each
other; even as it stimulates greater and greater advances in
technology and productive power, it finds itself incapable of putting them to use: even as it multiplies the possibilities for human self-
realization, we find ourselves strangled in layers of guilt, fear and self-contempt.
But it is we ourselves — our strength, our intelligence, our
creativity, our passions-that are the greatest productive power of
all. It is we who produce and reproduce the world as it is, in the
image of Capital; it is we who reinforce in each other the
conditioning of family, school, church and media, the conditioning
that keeps us slaves. When we decide together to end our misery, to
take our lives into our own hands, we can recreate the world the way
we want it. The technical resources and worldwide productive network
developed under the old system give us the means: the crisis and
continuing collapse of that system give us the chance and the urgent
need.
The ruling ideologies of the world superpowers, with their
interlocking sets of lies, offer us only the false choice of
"Communism" versus "Capitalism". But in the history of revolution
during this century (Russia, 1905; Germany, 1919-20; Spain, 1936-37;
Hungary, 1956) we have discovered the general form through which we
can take back power over our own lives: workers'councils. At their
highest moments these councils were popular assemblies in workplaces
and communities, joined together by means of strictly mandated
delegates who carried out decisions already made by their assemblies
and who could be recalled by them at any time. The councils organized their nwn defense and restarted production under their own management. By now, through a system of councils at the local, regional, and
global level, using modern telecommunications and data processing, we can coordinate and plan world production as well as be free to shape
our own immediate environment. Any compromise with bureaucracy and
official heirarchy, anything short of the total power of workers'
councils, can only reproduce misery and alienation in a new form, as a good look at the so-called "Communist" countries will show. For this
reason, no political party can represent the revolutionary movement or seize power "on its behalf", since this would be simply a change of
ruling classes, not their abolition. The plan of the freely associated producers is in absolute opposition to the dictatorial Plan of state
and corporate production. Only all of us together can decide what is
best for us.
For these reasons, we call upon you and upon all the hundreds of
millions like you and us, to join us in the revolutionary
transformation of every aspect of life. We want to abolish the system of wage and salaried labor, of commodity exchange-value and of profit, of corporate and bureaucratic power. We want to decide the nature and conditions of everything we do, to manage all social life collectively and democratically. We want to end the division of mental from manual work and of "free" time from work time, by bringing into play all our abilities for enjoyable creative activity. We want the whole world to be our conscious self-creation, so that our days are full of wonder,
learning, and pleasure. Nothing less.
In setting down this minimum program, we are not trying to impose an
ideal on reality, nor are we alone in wanting what we want. Our ideas are already in everyone's minds, consciously or unconsciously, because they are nothing but an expression of the real movement that exists
all over the planet. But in order to win, this movement must know
itself, its aims, and its enemies, as never before.
We do not speak for this movement, but for ourselves as of it. We
recognize no Cause over and above ourselves. But our selves are
already social: the whole human race produces the life of each one of its members, now more than ever before. Our aim is simply to make this process conscious for the first time, to give to the production of
human life the imaginative intensity of a work at art.
It is in this spirit that we call upon you to organize, as we are
doing, where you work and where you live, to begin planning the way we can run society together, to defend yourselves against the deepening
misery that is being imposed on all of us. We call upon you to assault actively the lies, the self-deceptions born of fear, that keep
everyone frozen in place while the world is falling apart around us.
We call upon you to link up with us and with others who are doing the same thing. Above all, we call upon you to take yourselves and your
desires seriously, to realize your own power to master your own lives.
It's now or never. If we are to have a future, we ourselves must be
that future.
FOR OURSELVES!
----
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Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory
A Note from the Editor
The "anarchist community", today, is renown for replicating and
increasing the rate of errors wherever it scourges for self-meaning,
especially with regard to theory and historical truth. So, in the case of this text! Rather than check for accuracy, they copy from each
other until, like the "secret" passed around a table, the "returning" resembles the original only in the imagination. This is the
spectacularization process embodied in characterological slack.
This particular text has been diluted into many titles, many with
recycled views camouflaging contact with the authors as well as psycho- malpractice. These include:
Self-Theory: The Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself
This was the one put out by the associates of For Ourselves at The
Spectacle in East Lansing, Michigan USA in 1975. They re-formatted,
stuck to the original text, gave credit, and forwarded communication.
Revolutionary Self-Theory: A Beginner's Guide
This also stuck fairly close to the original, changed graphics, but
left out both the For Ourselves Post-notes and Preamble, and failed to mention the original authors.
From here on, the rest of the copies lose more and more of the
reality of the text, the times, and the authors in the copy process.
They all begin to blindfully believe, and even state, that the first
copy was the original. That kind of investigation-free falsification
is characterologically intentional and mocks the very call for
authenticity that 'self-theory' demands as a practicable self-
definition.
It is no wonder that the "anarchist movement" is anaemic and
unattractive, and according to colonizing "plan", they blame the
historical victim — the all of humanity — because they refuse to
follow these 'copies' of the failing side of the "Anarchist" and the
"Situationist" once again.... Repeating failure better is their next-
to-greatest accomplishment. The greatest is reserved for their
dismissal from the stage[d] history to which they lay pompous claim....
Revolutionary Self-Theory
The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself
Revolutionary Self-help: A Beginner's Manual
The Joy of Thinking... For Yourself
Revolutionary Self-Theory: A Beginner's Manual
There's "making theory your own" and there's the "ownership of theory" — the definition of "ideology". These replicants separate the "self" and the "other" (or "non-self") from their social totalness found
precisely within each other. Theirs is an endless "therapy" for an
endless "atomism". The title mutations exemplify the trend of turning even the most vibrant moments into vapid, lifeless consumables,
complete with marketing trend and annual reports (e.g., the "SF Bay
Area Anarchist Book Fair"), as does the eradication of the
organizational (social and practicable-connected) statement in the
original. Attacks on Leninism walk hand-in-hand with his adhocist
shadow.
Hording credit and communication is an anarcho-Stalinist trait. It
wears a heavy dose of the scent of its enemies to lure in "followers
of the faith"; it "needs" more than desires loyal objects. It is a
life style based in a state of denial of "the other", and justifies
falsification of all transcendent connectivity in the name of abstract individualism and abstract collectivism. Duct tape sells big time in
black....
Essentially, metaphorically, and explicitly, this "movement" is for
the anti-copyright, that "new world" assessment wherein the current
one is mirrored — merely co-dependently — and abstractively negated.
It cannot comprehend — and fears — the concept of an omni-copyright, a
world wherein all that has come before it is used more robustly and
without totality-sacrificial filtering by an old world stupor. So much gaze and so little imagination! A movement chasing capital's tail,
drumming to the mantra of "duh".
This is the original text, without any of their fear of authentic
historical moments lived by and created through the members of For
Ourselves. I would rather embrace and appreciate the flaws of a
truthful past as my own, than pass off flawed replicas as my own
truth. Sure, we all make mistakes — providing all of us the
opportunity to freshly and dialectically transcend them — but here's a
movement that doesn't even bother to improve on much of anything from the past. It finds a depressing contentment to dress, rant, and fail
better than the past. They either don't care very much — resplendent spectators to their own existences — or hate their jobs as
distractors, inverters, and diverters to do better in anything. This, while swilling, regurgitating, and never digesting the theory of the
Situationists and Anarchists with a gluttonous disdain.
As usual in the work of the 'half-assed', I have found misppelled
words such as "blinders" spelled as "blinkers" spattered throughout.
There are missing periods, words run together, chunks of missing text, ad finitum. It's like a dream without color, speech without pauses, or music without silence: all examples of the life-posing and the
righteously self-dispossessed.
Beyond appalling, it's quite sad how a "movement" pretending to be
"for a new world" is actually the vanguard of one embracing greater
quantitifcation of any real life (thus far spared from mediation,
scarcification, paltrification, etc.) and of the qualification of
lowered expectations in a "new world [made-to-]order", i.e., one whose marching orders are built upon "Generalized Self-dumbification", with a parade of "anarchist" commodities storm-trooping the launch of this dismal world onto all of us disbelivers. They are the perfect hosts of that dysfunctional and equally-unattractive reality. Like the
perpetual preview of the never-seen giant squid or coming idiot
science and communications attractions from the blimping Gore and
Moore — we keep wondering what sustains them, and conclude that their 'anti' power is seethed from that same fester as triad of self-and-
other-sacrificing religions from the Middle East. Both are dead-set
against everyone, especially themselves. If left to their mutations,
the text will undoubtedly end up as "The Self-sacrifice Manual" or
"The Pain of Thinking".
In countering that, I have re-included the original title, the group
post-notes, the Preamble, and links to the groups other projects. The time spent actually learning from history and from paradox seems so
much more enjoyable than pretending to exist in a fog of self-absence, wearing the skinned creations of friends from the past who were gutsy enough to demand more of themselves and of us.
Original Introduction
This booklet is for people who are dissatisfied with their lives. If
you are happy with your present existence, we have no argument with you.
However, if you are tired of waiting for your life to change...
tired of waiting for authentic community, love and adventure...
tired of waiting for the end of money and forced work...
tired of looking for new pastimes to pass the time...
tired of waiting for a lush, rich existence...
tired of waiting for a situation in which you can realise all your
desires...
tired of waiting for the end of all authorities, alienations,
ideologies and moralities...
....then we think you'll find what follows to be quite handy.
I
One of the great secrets of our miserable yet potentially marvellous
time is that thinking can be a pleasure. This is a manual for
constructing your own self-theory. Constructing your self-theory is a revelutionary pleasure, the pleasure of constructing your self-theory of revolution.
Building your self-theory is a destructive/constructive pleasure,
because you are building a theory-of-practice for the destructive/
constructive transformation of this society.
Self-theory is a theory of adventure. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.
The alienation felt as a result of having had your thinking done for
you by the ideologies of our day, can lead to the search for the
pleasurable negation of that alienation: thinking for yourself. It is the pleasure of making your mind your own.
Self-theory is the body of critical thought you construct for your own use. You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the way it is, why the world is the way it is. (And 'thinking' and 'feeling' are inseparable, since thought comes from subjective,
emotive experience.) You build your self-theory when you develop a
theory of practice — a theory of how to get what you desire for your life.
Theory will be either a practical theory — a theory of revolutionary practice — or it will be nothing... nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideals is
the eternal waiting-room of unrealised desire.
Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of
realising their life's desires, and of thus fighting for themselves,
usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead (i.e., the
illusion of selfactivity or self-practice). Those who know that this
is the acceptance of alienation will now know that all ideals and
causes are ideologies.
II
Whenever a system of ideas is structured with an abstraction at the
centre — assigning a role or duties to you for its sake — this system
is an ideology. An ideology is a system of false consciousness in
which you no longer function as the subject in your relation to the
world.
The various forms of ideology are all structured around different
abstractions, yet they all serve the interests of a dominant (or
aspiring dominant) class by giving you a sense of purpose in your
sacrifice, suffering and submission.
Religious ideology is the oldest example, the fantastic projection
called 'God' is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every
human being as 'His' subject.
In the 'scientific' and 'democratic' ideologies of bourgeois
enterprise, capital investment is the 'productive' subject directing
world history — the 'invisible hand' guiding human development. The bourgeoisie had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. It exposed the mystification of the religious world in its technological investigation, expanding the realm of things and methods out of which it could make a profit.
The various brands of Leninism are 'revolutionary' ideologies in which their Party is the rightful subject to dictate world history, by
leading its object — the proletariat — to the goal of replacing the bourgeois apparatus with a Leninist one.
The many other forms of the dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The rise of the new religiomsyticisms serve the dominant structure of
social relations in a round about way. They provide a neat form in
which the emptiness of daily life may be obscured, and like drugs,
make it easier to live with. Volunteerism (shoulder to the wheel) and determinism (it'll all work out) prevent us from recognising our real place in the functioning of the world. In avant-garde ideology,
novelty in (and of) itself is what's important. In survivalism,
subjectivity is preempted by fear through the invocation of the image of an impending world catastrophe.
In accepting ideologies we accept an inversion of subject and object; things take on a human power and will, while human beings have their
place as things. Ideology is upside-down theory. We further accept the separation between the narrow reality of our daily life, and the image of a world totality that's out of our grasp. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the totality.
In this separation, and this acceptance of sacrifice for the cause,
every ideology serves to protect the dominant social order.
Authorities whose power depends on separation must deny us our
subjectivity in order to survive themselves. Such denial comes in the form of demanding sacrifices for 'the common good', 'the national
interest', 'the war effort', 'the revolution'....
III
We get rid of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking
ourselves... How do I feel?
Am I enjoying myself?
How's my life?
Am I getting what I want?
Why not?
What's keeping me from getting what I want?
This is having consciousnessof the commonplace, awareness of one's
everyday routine. That Everyday Life — real life — exists, is a public
secret that gets less secret every day, as the poverty of daily life
gets more and more visible.
IV
The construction of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself,
being fully conscious of desires and their validity. It is the
construction of radical subjectivity.
Authentic 'consciousness raising' can only be the 'raising' of
people's thinking to the level' of positive (non-guilty) self-
consciousness: developing their basic subjectivity, free of ideology
and imposed morality in all its forms.
The essence of what many leftists, therapy-mongers, racism awareness
trainers and sisterisers term 'consciousness raising' is their
practice of beating people into unconsciousness with their ideological billyclubs.
The path from ideology (self-negation) to radical subjectivity (self-
affirmation) passes through Point Zero, the capital city of nihilism. This is the windswept still point in social space and time... the
social limbo wherein which one recognises that the present is devoid
of life; that there is no life in one's daily existence. A nihilist
knows the difference between surviving and living.
Nihilists go through a reversal or perspective on their life and the
world. Nothing is true for them but their desires, their will to be.
They refuse all ideology in their hatred for the miserable social
relations in modern capitalist-global society. From this reversed
perspective they see with a newly acquired clarity the upside-down
world of reification(i), the inversion of subject and object, of
abstract and concrete. It is the theatrical landscape of fetishised
commodities, mental projections, separations and ideologies: art, God, city planning, ethics, smile buttons, radio stations that say they
love you and detergents that have compassion for your hands.
Daily conversation offers sedatives like: "You can't always get what
you want", "Life has its ups and downs", and other dogmas of the
secular religion of survival. 'Common sense' is just the nonsense of
common alienation. Every day people are denied an authentic life and
sold back its representation.
Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which
destroys them each day. They cannot go on living as they are, their
minds are on fire. Soon enough they run up against the fact that they must come up with a coherent set of tactics that will have a practical effect on the world.
But if a nihilist does not know of the historical possibility for the transformation of the world, his or her subjective rage will coralise into a role: the suicide, the solitary murderer, the street hoodlum
vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional mental patient... all
seeking compensation for a life of dead time.
The nihilists' mistake is that they do not realise that there are
others who are also nihilists. Consequently they assume that common
communication and participation in a project of self-realisation is
impossible.
V
To have a 'political' orientation towards one's life is just to know
that you can only change your life by changing the nature of life
itself through transfermation of the world — and that transformation of the world requires collective effort.
This project of collective self-realisation can properly be termed
politics. However, 'politics' has become a mystified, separated
category of human activity. Along with all the other socially enforced separations of human activity, 'politics' has become just another
interest. It even has its specialists — be they politicians or
politicos. It is possible to be interested (or not) in football, stamp collecting, disco music or fashion. What people see as 'politics'
today is the social falsification of the project of collective self-
realisation — and that suits those in power just fine.
Collective self-realisation is the revolutionary project. It is the
collective seizure of the totality of nature and social relations and their transformation according to conscious desire.
Authentic therapy is changing one's life by changing the nature of
social life. Therapy must be social if it is to be of any real
consequence. Social therapy (the healing of society) and individual
therapy (the healing of the individual) are linked together: each
requires the other, each is a necessary part of the other.
For example: in spectacular society we are expected to repress our
real feelings and play a role. This is called 'playing a part in
society'. (How revealing that phrase is!) Individuals put on character armour - a steel-like suit of role playing is directly related to the end of social role playing.
VI
To think subjectively is to use your life — as it is now and as you want it to be — as the centre of your thinking. This positive self-
centring is accomplished by the continuous assault on externals: all
the false issues, false conflicts, false problems, false identities
and false dichotomies.
People are kept from analysing the totality of everyday existence by
being asked their opinion of every detail: all the spectacular
trifles, phoney controversies and false scandals. Are you for or
against trades unions, cruise missiles, identity cards... what's your opinion of soft drugs, jogging, UFO's, progressive taxation?
These are false issues. The only issue for us is how we live.
There is an old Jewish saying, "If you have only two alternatives,
then choose the third". It offers a way of getting the subject to
search for a new perspective on the problem. We can give the lie to
both sides of a false conflict by taking our 'third choice' — to view the situation from the perspective of radical subjectivity.
Being conscious of the third choice is refusing to choose between two supposedly opposite, but really equal, polarities that try to define
themselves as the totality of a situation. In its simplest form, this consciousness is expressed by the worker who is brought to trial for
armed robbery and asked, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?". "I'm
unemployed", he replies. A more theoretical but equally classic
illustration is the refusal to acknowledge any essential difference
between the corporate-capitalist ruling classes of the 'West' and the state-capitalist ruling classes of the 'East'. All we have to do is
look at the basic social relations of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and the USSR and China on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there, as here, the vast majority go to work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up control over both the means of production and what they produce (which is then sold back to them in the form of commodities).
In the case of the 'West' the surplus value (ie that which is produced over and above the value of the workers' wages) is the property of the corporate managements who keep up a show of domestic competition. In
the 'East' the surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit domestic competition but engages in
international competition as furiously as any other capitalist nation. Big difference.
An example of a false problem is that stupid conversational question, "What's your philosophy of life?". It poses an abstract concept of
'Life' that, despite the word's constant appearance in conversation,
has nothing to do with real life, because it ignores the fact that
'living' is what we are doing at the present moment.
In the absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phoney social identities, corresponding to their individual role in the
Spectacle (in which people contemplate and consume images of what life is, so that they will forget how to live for themselves). These social identities can be ethnic ('Italian'), racial ('Black'), organisational ('Trade Unionist'), residential ('New Yorker'), sexual ('Gay'),
cultural ('sports' fan'), and so on: but all are rooted in a common
desire for affiliation, for belonging.
Obviously being 'black' is a lot more real as an identification than
being a 'sports fan', but beyond a certain point these identities only serve to mask our real position in society. Again, the only issue for us is how we live. Concretely, this means understanding the reasons
for the nature of one's life in one's relation to society as a whole. To do this one has to shed all the false identities, the partial
associations, and begin with oneself as the centre. From here we can examine the material basis of life, stripped of all mystification.
For example: suppose I want a cup of coffee from the machine at work. First of all, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the
workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantations
and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have all the workers who made the different parts of the machine and
assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite,
smelted the steel, drilled the oil and refined it. Then all the
workers who transported the raw materials and parts over three
continents and two oceans. Then the clerks, typists and communications workers who co-ordinate the production and transportation. Finally you have all the workers who produce all the other things necessary for
the others to survive. That gives me a direct material relationship to several million people: in fact, to the immense majority of the
world's population. They produce my life: and I help to produce
theirs. In this light, all partial group identities and special
interests fade into insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment
of one's life that is presently locked up in the frustrated creativity of those millions of workers, held back by obsolete and exhausting
methods of production, strangled by alienation, warped by the insane
rationale of capital accumulation! Here we begin to discover a real
social identity: in people all over the world who are fighting to win back their lives, we find ourselves.
We are constantly being asked to choose between two sides in a false
conflict. Governments, charities and propagandists of all kinds are
fond of presenting us with choices that are no choice at all (eg the
Central Electricity Generating Board presented its nuclear programme
with the slogan 'Nuclear Age or Stone Age'. The CEGB would like us to believe that these are the only two alternatives — we have the
illusion of choice, but as long as they control the choices we
perceive as available to us, they also control the outcome).
The new moralists love to tell those in the rich West how they will
'have to make sacrifices', how they 'exploit the starving children of the Third World'. The choice we are given is between sacrificial
altruism or narrow individualism. (Charities cash in on the resulting guilt by offering us a feeling of having done something, in exchange
for a coin in the collecting tin.) Yes, by living in the rich West we do exploit the poor of the Third World — but not personally, not
deliberately. We can make some changes in our life, boycott, make
sacrifices, but the effects are marginal. We become aware of the false conflict we are being presented with when we realise that under this
global social system we, as individuals, are as locked in our global
role as 'exploiters' as others are in their global role as the
exploited. We have a role in society, but little or no power to do
anything about it. We reject the false choice of 'sacrifice or
selfishness' by calling for the destruction of the global social
system whose existence forces that decision upon us. It isn't a case
of tinkering with the system, of offering token sacrifices or calling for 'a little less selfishness'. Charities and reformers never break
out of the terrain of the false choice.
Those who have a vested interest in maintaining the present situation constantly drag us back to their false choices — that is, any choice which keeps their power intact. With myths like 'If we shared it all
out there wouldn't be enough to go round', they attempt to deny the
existence of any other choices and to hide from us the fact that the
material preconditions for social revolution already exist.
VII
Any journey towards self-demystification must avoid those two
quagmires of lost thought — absolutism and cynicism; twin swamps that camouflage themselves as meadows of subjectivity.
Absolutism is the total acceptance or rejection of all components of
particular ideologies, spectacles and reifications. An absolutist
cannot see any other choice than complete acceptance or complete
rejection .
The absolutist wanders along the shelves of the ideological
supermarket looking for the ideal commodity, and then buys it — lock, stock and barrel. but the ideological supermarket — like any
supermarket — is fit only for looting. It is more productive for us if
we can move along the shelves, rip open the packets, take out what
looks authentic and useful, and dump the rest.
Cynicism is a reaction to a world dominated by ideology and morality. Faced with conflicting ideologies the cynic says: "a plague on both
your houses". The cynic is as much a consumer as the absolutist, but
one who has given up hope of ever finding the ideal commodity.
VIII
The process of dialectical thinking is constructive thinking, a
process of continually synthesising one's current body of self- theory with new observations and appropriations; a resolution of the
contradictions between the previous body of theory and new theoretical elements. The resulting synthesis is thus not some quantitative
summation of the previous and the new, but their qualitative
supersession, a new totality.
This synthetic / dialectic method of constructing a theory is counter to the eclectic style which just collects a rag-bag of its favourite
bits from favourite ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions. Modern examples include libertarian capitalism,
christian marxism and liberalism in general.
If we are continually conscious of how we want to live, we can
critically appropriate from anything in the construction of our self-
theory: ideologies, culture critics, technocratic experts,
sociological studies, mystics and so forth. All the rubbish of the old world can be scavenged for useful material by those who desire to
reconstruct it.
IX
The nature of modern society, its global and capitalist unity,
indicates to us the necessity of making our self-theory a unitary
critique. By this we mean a critique of all geographic areas where
various forms of socio-economic domination exist (ie both the
capitalism of the 'free' world and the state-capitalism of the
'communist' world), as well as a critique of all alienations (sexual
poverty, enforced survival, urbanism, etc). In other words, a critique of the totality of daily existence everywhere, from the perspective of the totality of one's desires.
Ranged against this project are all the politicians and bureaucrats,
preachers and gurus, city planners and policemen, reformers and
militants, central committees and censors, corporate managers and
union leaders, male supremacists and feminist ideologues, psyche-
sociologists and conservation capitalists who work to subordinate
individual desire to a reified 'common good' that has supposedly
designated them as its representatives. They are all forces of the old world, all bosses, priests and creeps who have something to lose if
people extend the game of seizing back their minds into seizing back
their lives.
Revolutionary theory and revolutionary ideology are enemies — and both
know it.
X
By now it should be obvious that self-demystification and the
construction of our own revolutionary theory doesn't eradicate our
alienation: 'the world' (capital and the Spec tacle) goes on,
reproducing itself every day.
Although this booklet had the construction of self-theory as its
focus, we never intended to imply that revolutionary theory can exist separate from revolutionary practice. In order to be consequential,
effectively to reconstruct the world, practice must seek its theory,
and theory must be realised in practice. The revolutionary prospect of disalienation and the transformation of social relations requires that one's theory be nothing other than a theory of practice, of what we do and how we live. Otherwise theory will degenerate into an impotent
contemplation of the world, and ultimately into survival ideology — a projected mental fogbank, a static body of reified thought, of
intellectual armour, that acts as a buffer between the daily world and oneself. And if revolutionary practice is not the practice of
revolutionary theory, it degenerates into altruistic militantism,
'revolutionary' activity as one's social duty.
We don't strive for a coherent theory purely as an end in itself. For us, the practical use value of coherence is that having a coherent
self-theory makes it easier for someone to think. As an example, it's easier to get a handle on future developments in social control if you have a coherent understanding of modern social control ideologies and techniques up to the present.
Having a coherent theory makes it easier to conceive of the
theoretical practice for realising your desires for your life.
XI
In the process of constructing self-theory, the last ideologies that
have to be wrestled with and determinedly pinned down are the ones
that most closely resemble revolutionary theory. These final
mystifications are a) situationism b)councilism.
The Situationist International (1958-1971) was an international
revolutionary organisation that made an immense contribution to
revolutionary theory. Situationist theory is a body of critical theory that can be appropriated into one's self-theory, and nothing more.
Anything more is the ideological misappropriation known as situationism.
For those who newly discover it, SI theory has a way of seeming like
'the answer I've been searching for for years', the answer to the
riddle of one's dead life. But that's exactly when a new alertness and self-possession become necessary. Situationism can be quite the
complete survival ideology, a defence mechanism against the wear and
tear of daily life. included in the ideology is the spectacular
commodity-role of being 'a situationist', ie a radical jade and ardent esoteric.
Councilism (aka 'Workers' Control', 'Syndicalism') offers 'self-
management' as a replacement for the capitalist system of production.
Real self-management is the direct management (unmediated by any
separate leadership) of social production, distribution and
communication by workers and their communities. The movement for self- management has appeared again and again all over the world in the
course of social revolution. Russia in 1905 and 1917-21, Spain in
1936-7, Hungary in 1956, Algeria in 1960, Chile in 1972 and Portugal
in 1975. The form of organisation most often created in the practice
of self-management has been workers' councils: sovereign general
assemblies of the producers and neighbourhoods that elect mandated
delegates to co-ordinate their activities. The delegates are not
representatives, but carry out decisions already made by their
assemblies. Delegates can be recalled at any time, should the general assembly feel that its decisions are not being rigorously carried out.
Councilism is this historical practice and theory of self- management turned into an ideology. Whereas the participants in these uprisings
lived a critique of the social totality, beginning with a critique of wage labour, of the commodity economy and exchange value, councilism
makes a partial critique: it seeks not the self-managed, continuous
and qualitative transformation of the whole world, but the static,
quantitive self-management of the world as it is. The economy thus
remains a separate realm cut off from the rest of daily life and
dominating it. On the other hand a movement for generalised self-
management seeks the transformation of all sectors of social life and all social relations (production, sexuality, housing, services,
communications, etc), councilism thinks that a self-managed economy is all that matters. It misses, literally, the whole point: subjectivity and the desire to transform the whole of life. The problem with
workers' control is that all it controls is work.
The world can only be turned right-side-up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside-down.
Spontaneous rebellion and insurrectionary subjectivity alone are not
sufficient. An authentic revolution can only occur in a practical
movement in which all the mystifications of the past are being
consciously swept away.
Post-notes
This booklet is part of the collective self-theory of the members of
our organization. It is the statement of what we call our meta-theory, our theory of the practice of theory-making.
The preparation and dissemination of The Minimum Definition of
Intelligence is undertaken for the same reason we do everything else
we do: because we want to catalyze a social revolution that will
transform the present static layout of alienation into a moving
landscape of realized dreams. We know we can only create the lives
that we want tin the process of everyone else creating the lives that they want. We are revolutionaries because our desires require a social revolution for their realization.
The world can only be turned right-side-up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside-down.
Spontaneous rebellion and insurrectionary subjectivity alone are not
sufficient. An authentic revolution can only occur in a practical
movement in which all the mystifications of the past are consciously
being swept away.
Preamble
We have woken up to discover that our lives are becoming unliveable.
From boring, meaningless jobs to the humiliation of waiting endlessly
in lines, at desks and counters to receive our share of survival, from prison-like schools to repetitious, mindless "entertainment," from
desolate and crime-ridden streets to the stifling isolation of home,
our days are a treadmill on which we run faster and faster just to
keep in the same place.
Like the immense majority of the population, we have no control over
the use to which our lives are put: we are people who have nothing to sell but our capacity to work. We have come together because we can no longer tolerate the way we are forced to exist, we can no longer
tolerate being squeezed dry of our energies, being used up and thrown away, only to create a world that grows more alien and ugly every day.
The system of Capital, whether in its "Western" private-corporate or
"Eastern" state-bureaucratic form, was brutal and exploitative even
during its ascent: now, where it is in decay, it poisons air and
water, produces goods and services of deteriorating quality, and is
less and less able to employ us even to its own advantage. Its logic
of accumulation and competition leads inexorably toward its own
collapse. Even as it links all the people of the world together in one vast network of production and consumption, it isolates us from each
other; even as it stimulates greater and greater advances in
technology and productive power, it finds itself incapable of putting them to use: even as it multiplies the possibilities for human self-
realization, we find ourselves strangled in layers of guilt, fear and self-contempt.
But it is we ourselves — our strength, our intelligence, our
creativity, our passions-that are the greatest productive power of
all. It is we who produce and reproduce the world as it is, in the
image of Capital; it is we who reinforce in each other the
conditioning of family, school, church and media, the conditioning
that keeps us slaves. When we decide together to end our misery, to
take our lives into our own hands, we can recreate the world the way
we want it. The technical resources and worldwide productive network
developed under the old system give us the means: the crisis and
continuing collapse of that system give us the chance and the urgent
need.
The ruling ideologies of the world superpowers, with their
interlocking sets of lies, offer us only the false choice of
"Communism" versus "Capitalism". But in the history of revolution
during this century (Russia, 1905; Germany, 1919-20; Spain, 1936-37;
Hungary, 1956) we have discovered the general form through which we
can take back power over our own lives: workers'councils. At their
highest moments these councils were popular assemblies in workplaces
and communities, joined together by means of strictly mandated
delegates who carried out decisions already made by their assemblies
and who could be recalled by them at any time. The councils organized their nwn defense and restarted production under their own management. By now, through a system of councils at the local, regional, and
global level, using modern telecommunications and data processing, we can coordinate and plan world production as well as be free to shape
our own immediate environment. Any compromise with bureaucracy and
official heirarchy, anything short of the total power of workers'
councils, can only reproduce misery and alienation in a new form, as a good look at the so-called "Communist" countries will show. For this
reason, no political party can represent the revolutionary movement or seize power "on its behalf", since this would be simply a change of
ruling classes, not their abolition. The plan of the freely associated producers is in absolute opposition to the dictatorial Plan of state
and corporate production. Only all of us together can decide what is
best for us.
For these reasons, we call upon you and upon all the hundreds of
millions like you and us, to join us in the revolutionary
transformation of every aspect of life. We want to abolish the system of wage and salaried labor, of commodity exchange-value and of profit, of corporate and bureaucratic power. We want to decide the nature and conditions of everything we do, to manage all social life collectively and democratically. We want to end the division of mental from manual work and of "free" time from work time, by bringing into play all our abilities for enjoyable creative activity. We want the whole world to be our conscious self-creation, so that our days are full of wonder,
learning, and pleasure. Nothing less.
In setting down this minimum program, we are not trying to impose an
ideal on reality, nor are we alone in wanting what we want. Our ideas are already in everyone's minds, consciously or unconsciously, because they are nothing but an expression of the real movement that exists
all over the planet. But in order to win, this movement must know
itself, its aims, and its enemies, as never before.
We do not speak for this movement, but for ourselves as of it. We
recognize no Cause over and above ourselves. But our selves are
already social: the whole human race produces the life of each one of its members, now more than ever before. Our aim is simply to make this process conscious for the first time, to give to the production of
human life the imaginative intensity of a work at art.
It is in this spirit that we call upon you to organize, as we are
doing, where you work and where you live, to begin planning the way we can run society together, to defend yourselves against the deepening
misery that is being imposed on all of us. We call upon you to assault actively the lies, the self-deceptions born of fear, that keep
everyone frozen in place while the world is falling apart around us.
We call upon you to link up with us and with others who are doing the same thing. Above all, we call upon you to take yourselves and your
desires seriously, to realize your own power to master your own lives.
It's now or never. If we are to have a future, we ourselves must be
that future.
FOR OURSELVES!
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creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / Christopher Gray / 30 Jun 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / richard haden <richard_haden-AT-yahoo.com> / 30 Jun 2009
• fyi: "Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory" / Christopher Gray <rasputin-AT-teleport.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: fyi: "Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory" / richard haden <richard_haden-AT-yahoo.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: fyi: "Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory" / Vikki Riley <riley.vikki-AT-gmail.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: fyi: "Theses on the Construction of One's Own Self-theory" / Vikki Riley <riley.vikki-AT-gmail.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / Vikki Riley <riley.vikki-AT-gmail.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com> / 01 Jul 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com> / 02 Jul 2009
RE: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / Diana Manister <dmanister-AT-hotmail.com> / 02 Jul 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / JEAN PARR <jeanparr-AT-btinternet.com> / 02 Jul 2009
Re: creating social festival in place of capital and class (a pre-invitation) / Vikki Riley <riley.vikki-AT-gmail.com> / 02 Jul 2009
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