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The Situationist List
dedicated to capital's philo-fundamentalist cops
NOTE:
This text re-published in association with the then-and-now friends
who wrote it, whom I knew 35+ years ago
(when they also wrote "The Right To Be Greedy" and "Theses on the
Construction of One's Own Self-theory");
I availed ink-on-paper versions of it then, and just like back then,
we offend the same agents of assholism and proto-fascism!!!!
The espousers of rational and universal thing-ification just never
change, so the same exposure is appropriate.
Here, even when their "knowledge" regarding the Situationist critique, the Marxian critique, the Sex-Pol critique, the libertarian socialist critique, the anti-authoritarian communist critique, and the anti-
capital critique proves them to be ignorant loudmouths, I waste my
time defending myself against lies and distortions, and I don't have
many to thank for tolerating their abusive demeanor and list
hijacking. Spectatorship seems more alive-and-well on a supposed
"Situationist" list that is afraid to deal with the kids in knee-high paratropper boots and black-or-red armbands. [Does the color of the
ideological tattoo even matter with authoritarians?]
Q: Ever wonder why power-junkies, philo-Stalinists, and narcissist-
bullies need loudspeakers?
A: To keep everyone else from speaking to and hearing each other!
It would make them more useless than they already are, even to their
"topping" masters, whom they cannot (and would never) identify except for the dutifully-suckable ideology stuck through the hole in the
wall... if they didn't enjoy being on their knees so much while coming up for air long enough to call us names.
They are our equivalent of the intrusive Christian Fundamentalists who flood atheist forums,
or the Islamic Fundamentalists who collect Earthly rewards for Islamic humanists and secularists.
They cannot stand self-determinance and social construction.
They fear totality, so they destroy it at the point where its
interesting use by the Situationists might expand it beyond the SI.
So, while they lick their lips, try to figure out how to avoid all
theory herein, and plan yet one, two, three, many... personal
Kronstadts, read this and take what you can use and extend....
Then, I suggest you start sending email directly to those with whom
you wish to speak.
Use theory before it is deconstructed into ideology as vibrant as our list cops, as they would have you deconstructed into weak-linked
proletarian atoms.
Rather, let's unbuckle the pants of these moralizing ideologists...
and reveal them for what they are: aggressive, suppressive,
repressive, banal, loud, full-time, cops.
----------------------------------------------------
A Modest proposal for How the Bad Old Days Will End
The Collapse of the World as We Know It has Already Begun.
Everyone Knows This.
Everyone Feels It in their Bones.
All the Attempts to Deny It are Enough to Prove It.
It's as though everyone's waiting for something but no one knows what. Whether I find myself wandering around in the city or in the graveyard- like suburbs, this feeling of despair seems to haunt everyone even in their sleep.
Meanwhile we just grow more isolated from each other. When I meet
someone on the street we really have nothing to say to each other
because nothing has really happened. So empty words are exchanged and we stumble away awkwardly. Nobody seems to enjoy anything anymore.
Nobody seems to know why they're alive. What everybody does know,
however, is that this society is falling apart, and that all the
attempts to hold it together just make it more hideous.
As far back as I can remember everyone around me spent most of their
fives sacrificing in order to survive. There was, of course, always a certain degree of marginal freedom but now even this is vanishing. And as politicians talk about the need for yet more sacrifice, the mass
media pumps out more ways to glorify misery.
It's not as though things used to be gem or anything. But perhaps
never before have so many people had the feeling that everything has
become so pointless — that each day is like the fast, only a little more dull, a little more empty, a little more exhausting.
Surely there lurks inside each of us a subjective passion such as
maybe we experienced in childhood but have been too embarrassed to
think about for years — the desire to be in love always — the kind of
inspiration which once unleashed could move mountains and remake the
world. Currently our energy is being constantly used up just to keep
things the same. Artists have nothing left to express but their
emptiness, and the emptiness of a society which can no longer find any reason to exist. All joy has gone out of music. All the new processing and quasi-technical perfection cannot compensate for the total absence of inspiration. And whatever remedies are adopted are usually worse
than the disease. Jobs are becoming so meaningless and so exhausting
that many people would prefer to be unemployed. "Leisure time" is
becoming as boring as work. All the "problem solving" of the
sociologists, economists, psychologists and urban planners just become ways to make more acceptable the humiliation we experience every day.
Nonetheless, I know this misery will go on only so long as we allow it to.
The spectacle is like a supermarket of false alternatives. In spite of the supposed "opposition" between capitalism and "Communism," the
difference between them is like the difference between Pepsi Cola and Seven Up. "Communism" — as it exists in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc — is just a state-monopolized form of capitalism. But whether you live under p rivate corporate capitalism or bureaucratic
statecapitalism, it's essentially the same old crap. Everywhere people sell their lives in order to survive. Every where daily life has been reduced to a mere series of humiliations. Even "free time" there isn't any freedom. Our whole environment has been produced in an alien form.
And now, as world capitalism is falling apart, its spokesmen tell us
that it's our fault for being too "greedy", too "selfish", too
"affluent".
But there is nothing mysterious about the present breakdown of social production. It is nothing other than the outcome of the contradiction between the forces of production [1] and the social relations of
production. Now capitalism has become a fetter on our existence and
development as genuinely human beings. But capitalism is only the
highest form of commodity [2] (exchange-value) production. While for
thousands of years the commodity form helped to develop the productive forces and thus to prepare the conditions for a really free society,
it has now become a fetter (and in fact the last essential fetter) on our further development as human beings.
Though this contradiction exists in every part of the world; it is
first most visible in the most advanced and overdeveloped countries
(especially the U.S.). Thus the active contradiction between use-value and exchange-value can be seen constantly in the most common acts of
our daily life. Every time you stand in a line at a supermarket
checkstand you do this not to accomplish any productive or socially
useful function. The only reason you're waiting in line is to pay for the food, even though it would be every bit as good whether or not you pay for it. But unless you pay for it, it cannot be realized as a
commodity, as exchange-value. In terms of its social use-value it
would be much simpler and indeed more efficient, if you simply walked out with it. (But don't get caught trying!)
But exchange-value is not a mere accessory tacked on to an otherwise
neutral reality. On the contrary, value is the motivating force of all production in capitalist society. Everything is produced as value and its use-value is shaped accordingly.
Thus, it is no accident that everything is being designed to break
down or be thrown away, that "education" is as shitty as it is, or
that "culture", "art", and "entertainment" have become so uninspired. The entirety of the existing mode of production is specifically
capitalist. While at work we experience no real freedom or self-
expression of any kind. The only reason we work is to get paid. But
when we get off work we still are alienated — i.e., we still have
little or no control over any of the conditions which determine how we spend our time.
Thus "leisure" time — or "free" time — can be used for nothing but a
repetition of the most meaningless and tedious trivialities — such as shopping, watching boring television shows, etc. Even when we're
eating and sleeping — perfectly normal human activities — we're really
only recuperating to prepare ourselves for more alienated work.
As the contradiction grows more explicit we see the trend of
contracting social reproduction. In many parts of the world
capitalists are finding that now they can sell more (in dollar terms) by producing less — hence the phony "shortages" of various sorts, as well as the rapidly rising prices. They are finding fewer profitable
things in which to channel the labor force (hence "unemployment").
Capitalism's weakest elements are rapidly falling onto the historical scrapheap: more and more small shopkeepers are going under (just take a walk downtown and look at all the closing out sales), smaller firms are going bankrupt or being bought out.
Capitalism's most rugged form will, probably prove to be in countries where there is the most developed State rationalization of the capital accumulation process (e.g., China), i.e. the so-called "Socialist" and "Communist" countries.
As the collapse becomes more evident each day, spokesmen for all the
different factions of Capital rush to compete with their respective
"explanations." And as though the "opposition" between "liberals" and "conservatives" weren't absurd enough, the circus has added the
official "Left" as an even more comical sideshow.
For the "Left," of course, the problem with private capitalism is only that it doesn't do what it's supposed to on its own terms — that there
aren't enough "jobs," that people don't get high enough ("fair") wages for selling their lives, that women and "third world" people don't get their fair share of the shit pie, that Capital accumulation doesn't go on peacefully as it should.
The "Leftists" have so little understanding of the actual workings of capitalism that when its tendency toward centralization and
monopolization is pushed to an extreme such as in Russia or China — they think that it is no longer capitalism. In spite of their self-
acclaimed "radicalism" they are really the staunchest of
conservatives. And as capitalism — the highest form of hierarchical society — is failing apart, they dutifully try to come up with new
ways of holding it together.
But all the confusion created by the "Left" and the "Right" alike
cannot hide forever the fact that since the time capitalism began
there has been a real movement for a new and genuinely human way of
life, for a society in which the full and free development of every
individual forms the ruling principle. This movement has emerged again and again. Each time it has been crushed, but only to re-emerge,
perhaps years or decades later. And almost every time it has emerged
in the twentieth century the "Right" and the "Left" have formed a Holy Alliance to suppress it.
Thus, for instance, in Russia amidst the famine and general breakdown of production which occurred during World War One and the Civil War
which f ollowed — the workers and sailors of Kronstadt (a naval
fortress city on an island near present-day Leningrad) took social
production directly into their own hands. Without any specialized or
separate "leadership," they reclaimed all social territory, carried
out expropriations, redistributed land and began a comprehensive
program to coordinate socially the use of all available resources, as well as improving and expanding production in agriculture (on hitherto unused land on the outskirts of the city), construction of buildings, etc. All this was organized responsibly throughout the city (approx.
pop. 50,000) as a whole. In addition the workers and sailors of
Kronstadt maintained an "operating fund", so to speak, from voluntary donations by the people of whatever was beyond their own immediate
needs. This was used to acquire various resources (tools, seeds, etc.) by the city's population collectively, and in addition, to send
revolutionary speakers and agitators throughout Russia.
All major decisions were made by the people themselves in workplaces
and popular assemblies in other public areas. Coordination of action
was carried out through elected delegates (from among the Workers and sailors) who were strictly mandated for specific tasks only and who
could be recalled by their assemblies at any time.
In March of 1921, after three and a half years, the workers' and
sailors' revolution at Kronstadt was crushed. Its participants and
sympathizers were either shot on sight, imprisoned, or forced to flee "revolutionary" Russia. But the final suppression of the Kronstadt
Commune and the massacre of its people was not carried out by the
"White Army" or by foreign imperialists. They were crushed militarily by the so-called "Red Army," with Leon Trotsky at its head and with
explicit orders from Lenin and the rest of the top Leaders of the
Russian "Communist" Party.
None of this should be surprising, The workers' and sailors'
revolution which broke out at Kronstadt was qualitatively different
from and in direct opposition to the movement which was led by Lenin
and the other top Leaders of the "Communist" Party. It was, though in a crude and embryonic form, a movement for a free and classless
society — the real movement I have been speaking of.
For several decades now, the "Right" and "Left" have conspired to hide this movement from us or to falsify and distort its reality beyond
recognition. Both the "Right" and the "Left" would like us to believe that totalitarian state-capitalism (which they call "Communism") is
the only possible alternative to private corporate capitalism, and
that shitheads like the "Symbionese Liberation Army" are
revolutionaries. All these people have a stake in keeping things the
same.
But I will surrender nothing voluntarily to my enemies. Not even
words. Thus, in spite of all the ways, in which reality and the words associated with it have been distorted and misrepresented by these
people, I insist on calling this movement, this desire, by its real
historical name.. I insist on calling it what its most articulate
protagonists have called it for over a hundred and thirty years — it is the communist movement. The real communist movement.
Once again I must emphasize that the relationship between the real
communist movement on the one hand, and the bureaucrats and aspiring
bureaucrats of totalitarian state-capitalism — the so-called
"Communists" — is a relationship of total opposition and complete
antagonism. It cannot be otherwise. It makes no difference whether
they're Trotskyists, Maoists, Stalinists, Guevarists, or just part of the neo-Leninist mish-mash. It is precisely because I am a communist
that they are my enemies. I am in opposition to them every bit as much as the revolutionaries of Kronstadt were in opposition to the
"Communist" Party bureaucrats who ordered their massacre.
Despite the suppression from all sides, the real communist movement
did not perish with Kronstadt. It has emerged again and again since;
in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-37; in the Hungarian Revolution of
1956 -which was crushed by tanks from Russia (much to the enthusiasm
of Mao-Tse-Tung); and in the insurrection in France of May-June 1968 —
which the French "Left" did everything possible to subordinate to
their "leadership" and to reduce it to a bunch of reformist "demands."
It has emerged as well in events such as the street festival in
Detroit in 1967 and the revolt which broke out in "socialist" Poland
in 1970-71 where workers happily looted state-owned stores and burned down the "Communist Party" headquarters while singing the
Internationale!
As for ourselves: In place of capitalist society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free
development of each individual is the condition for the free
development of all. Production for profit will be replaced by
production for pleasure. The end of the law of value will be the
decisive beginning of the end of all alienations, of all the fetishes to which people have been sacrificed since the first human beings
walked the earth.
The great insurrections of the past (Kronstadt, Hungary 1956, Paris
1871, Spain 1936-37, Seattle 1919, France 1968, Poland, 1970-71, etc.) and the new life which they announced, were only the faintest hints of the fantastic possibilities of modern world revolution. As we take
over we can begin immediately to rebuild the world in a form which is fit for our playful habitation. Some structures can simply be
eliminated. Many other things — such as houses, machinery and
transportation — can be entirely redesigned and rebuilt.
No "system" can guarantee successful social production. The life blood of production in communist society can only be the conscious desire
and energy of each of us. Nonetheless the organizational forms of past communist experiences (such as Kronstadt and the Spanish Revolution of 1936-37) as well as the nature of the present productive forces,
strongly imply much of how the new world could be organized.
During the earlier parts of the revolution, the organizational mode of the new society will be growing organically in the process of over
throwing the old one. [3] As we steal back more and more of the means of social production we can use these not only for our own immediate
needs, but also as a means to escalate the revolutionary process
further.
When the ruling classes are fully overthrown we will be free to take
on the re-organization of everything. We can then meet publicly to
discuss our real needs and desires.
We could easily begin production by regularly holding popular
assemblies in local public areas and production places of all sorts.
Here ideas and plans could be initiated and elaborated with the full
and direct participation of all those concerned. (Obviously not
everyone will be interested in every question: the point is that
anyone could, if they chose, participate in making any decision they
think is important.)
When initial decisions have been made, the people at the assemblies
can elect delegates who will then meet in regional and finally global councils with other delegates sent from assemblies throughout the
world. They will meet simply to coordinate decisions already made by
the people at their assemblies and will have no separate governing
power of any kind. Their function will be rotated periodically among
the population and monopolized by no one. Furthermore, they could be
removed and replaced by their assemblies at any time.
Even for planning and coordination of world-wide production, it is
hard to say to what extent such meetings of delegates will prove
necessary. With telecommunications equipment already existing, it
would, in many cases, be simpler for the local assemblies to contact
each other directly via the airwaves, and take part in each other's
discussions. Such methods would be especially useful if you consider
that in some cases even initial plans could not be made only locally
and might immediately require direct dialogues between the respective assemblies.
By means of such telecommunications networks as well as modern data
storage and processing, each of us could be in instantaneous contact
with each other in any part of the world, as well as with all the
wealth of knowledge of the entirety of human history. Resources could be coordinated globally in order to maximize use-value and minimize
difficulties in fulfilling desires.
Not all projects would necessarily be carried out even initially by
people who are already concentrated in a particular geographic area.
Any individual would have immediate access to broadcast his/her ideas all over the world in order to find others who are interested and who might have particular knowledge and skills he/she would find
appropriate.
People from different parts of the world who shared a common fantasy, fascination or innovative idea could if they chose, come together and shape entire landscapes.
We could begin to relate as human beings instead of as commodities. No longer would people be compelled to be competitive with each other.
Instead the enrichment of others would only be a further enrichment of ourselves when we experience each other. The full and free development of each individual around us will be our own direct self-interest.
Each of us will be a co-owner of the entirety of the world's wealth
and means of production, as well as of the entire natural environment.
Whereas in capitalist society each individual can usually only pursue his interests narrowly, at the expense of others, in communist society every individual will have as his own the entirety of society and of
social wealth. Each individual's pursuit of an ever-richer life would mean the pursuit of an ever-richer society.
Planning and decision making will not be a separate or specialized
activity. It will be an integrated part of production and of life,
just like any other.
The direct control people will have over the production process
applies also, of course, to their immediate environment. For the day-
to-day matters of running, for instance, a given factory, decisions
will be made at assemblies of all those involved.
But nobody's activities need be restricted to a given "job" or
locality. Each person can fish in the morning, plow the soil in the
afternoon, compose and play music before dinner and write poetry in
the evening, chop wood one day, cast steel the next, build castles one month and sail around the world the next (perhaps distributing the
goodies they've made). And all of this without ever having to become
as such a fisherman, a farm-worker, a musician, a poet, a woodsman, a steelworker, a construction worker or a sailor.
There will no longer be a "work day." Nor a separate "leisure" time.
Just life — just the process of consciously creating and recreating ourselves and our world.
Communist society will be not only the full appropriation of the ideas of all the great visionaries, dreamers and mad geniuses of the past
(Scriabin, William Morris, Fourier, the Pre-Raphaelites, Lautreamont, William Blake, the early surrealists, etc.), but furthermore the
realization of their outrageous dreams and fantasies (as well as our
own), made concrete and possible now by the development of the real
forces of production, as well as by the decay and collapse of the
present "system."
With all the modern means of production at our individual disposal,
each of us will have a direct self-interest in the building and
rebuilding of the world in the image of our desires, and in
participating fully in the accurate executing of this. Successful
production in communist society will depend only on the real and
immediate determination of each individual to live their life fully,
to realize their wildest imaginations — in the real world (that, by the way, is "how the work will get done").
As for the Trotskyists, Maoists, and neo-Christians of the "Left,"
they can take their "transitional demands," "correct leadership" and
"revolutionary" self-sacrifice — and shove it up their respective
asses. The communist movement can develop only as an insatiable thirst for life — the same inspiration which made Scriabin insist that he
could fly — or, as a 19th century egomaniac (Karl Marx) put it: "a
revolutionary daring which hurls at its adversaries the defiant
phrase: I am nothing, but I must be everything!"
There will no longer be any fetishized abstractions to mediate
people's l ives — there will be no law of value no commodity exchange,
no State a nd no religion to decide our activities for us; no "general interest", no "national interest", no pre-defined "human nature". Just us. Just our desires, skills, imagination, passions, and intelligence - developed over centuries and now freed for the first time — with all the world at our disposal.
"THE SOCIETY WHICH HAS ABOLISHED EVERY KIND OF ADVENTURE, MAKES ITS
OWN ABOLITION THE ONLY POSSIBLE ADVENTURE"
Wall painting, Paris, May 1968
Communist revolution like all revolutions, is the outcome of a
struggle between antagonistic classes. Every mode of production has
produced insurrectionary classes who ultimately overthrow or
effectively abolish that mode of production and all the social
relations built on it.
Capitalism has produced the largest and the most important
(potentially) revolutionary class in all history — the proletariat. The proletariat consists of all of us who are separated from control
of the means of social production and therefore have no control over
our own life activity. [4] The means of social production includes
everything used for the production and reproduction of human beings
and of society: not only factories, mines, raw materials, agricultural land, etc., but also all the implements and all the space and
territory which are part of our overall life process — everything from
printing presses, television equipment and educational institutions
right down to the very air we breath, the water we drink and the
sounds which we hear around us. We have no control over any of these
because Capital has taken them all over and uses them all as Capital. Everything that is produced — and increasingly everything that is even
tolerated — is produced and tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of Capital — i.e., of exchange-value which expands
quantitatively for the mere sake of expanding (regardless of form).
Capital is busily shaping all the world in its image. Just look around you — anywhere. But Capital is not some natural or supernatural force determining our activity. It is nothing other than our own activity
when we disown it — which reproduces this form of life. Capital is not
a thing, but a social relation between people mediated by things.
Quite simply, Capital is something we do every day. Every day the
means of social production pass through our hands. We reproduce
society and we reproduce it as Capital. It is only our willingness to comply and our lack of conscious organization for ourselves as a
class, that allow the world to go on in its present, hideous form.
Imagine now that one day no one came to work, no one went shopping and no one went to school. If this were sustained, within a very short
period of time capitalism would grind to a halt. Unfortunately, in
this case, so would human society. But imagine, on the other hand that one day proletarians everywhere took over all the work places-
factories, offices, schools, stores, television stations, gas
stations, telephone facilities, oil refineries, computer centers, etc. — in every part of the world at once! No military force in the world could possibly be large or powerful enough to stop us. I realize I
have exaggerated what is actually possible ... but only slightly. All we, i.e., the world proletariat, lack is the conscious desire and
unity to pull it off. Until we realize this desire and unity, we will continue, collectively, to kick out own ass every Imagine now that one day no one came to work, no one went shopping and no one went to
school. If this were sustained, within a very short period of time
capitalism would grind to a halt. Unfortunately, in this case, so
would human society. But imagine, on the other hand that one day
proletarians everywhere took over all the work places-factories,
offices, schools, stores, television stations, gas stations, telephone facilities, oil refineries, computer centers, etc. — in every part of the world at once! No military force in the world could possibly be
large or powerful enough to stop us. I realize I have exaggerated what is actually possible ... but only slightly. All we, i.e. the world
proletariat, lack is the conscious desire and unity to pull it off.
Until we realize this desire and unity, we will continue,
collectively, to kick out own ass every day. So long is, at any given time, the majority of us are willing to comply, each isolated
individual or small group of individuals is powerless to resist.
But above all, if we are ever to regain our own lives, we must begin
attempting to regain our own minds and our own emotions. From the time
we were born we have been conditioned to become submissive, humble and crippled. We have been taught to be "realistic" and repress our
desires, to accept humiliation as a natural and necessary part of life.
This authoritarian conditioning begins in our families while we are
infants and is further carried out in school, in church and in all the other institutions of capitalist society. It is just such conditioning which makes us complaisant in our misery and thus suitable for the
slavery of capitalist society. [5]
It is this same authoritarian character (as Wilhelm Reich called it)
which bureaucrats and aspiring bureaucrats are appealing to when they attempt to "lead the masses."
But worst of all, many proletarians try to justify and defend their
authoritarian character and will even resent others who begin to break out of their own. There is nothing more counter-revolutionary than
self-denial and fear of freedom. Nothing.
The contradiction between the forces of production and the social
relations of production exists inside each of us. We are the greatest productive force of all — and every day the individuality of each of us comes into direct conflict with our role as members of an enslaved class — with the way of life that is forced upon us.
Unlike any previous revolutionary movement, the communist movement
must be carried through actively and consciously by the overwhelming
majority of the world's people. No "vanguard" Party can "lead" us,
"represent" us, or seize Power "on our behalf."
Instead we must begin organizing ourselves. We can begin opening an
active dialogue among all of us who are already consciously
revolutionary, in every part of the world. But the dialogue must also extend to the rest of the proletariat.
We can begin organizing where we live and where we work, forming
"cells," so to speak, in workplaces and in all areas of social life.
This is the beginning of the abolition of Capital from within (the
proletarians, while essential to Capital, are also the living negation of Capital). Such groups can intervene into many potentially
revolutionary situations — especially those which most directly
reflect the crisis of Capital. We can intervene into every part of
social production (in the broadest sense of the term) — at workplaces,
college and highschool campuses, shopping centers, public meetings,
neighborhoods, busses, rock concerts, laundromats, waiting rooms (at
everything from welfare offices to hospitals), unemployment lines,
etc. — in short, everywhere that social life exists and has been
colonized by Capital.
We can intervene with every means possible — leaflets, graffiti, wall posters, music, newspapers — and of course direct conversation.
Whenever it can be done effectively, direct encounter with people is
best. There are so many situations every day where people really do
see through everything and it would only be a matter of one individual being able to articulate what everyone there already knows. Such
situations occur whenever the absurdity of exchange-value relations
are demonstrated most explicitly — such as when people are forced to wait in lines for something they don't even want (such as to pay for
something or to pick up a stupid bureaucratic "form").
Unfortunately, the spoken word and the acted gesture are usually quite limited in their effect over time. Someone can go home after a really good conversation with a stranger, but unless the encounter is
followed up with something, in a couple of weeks it will probably be
as though it hadn't happened. But the written word can also be used
creatively and subversively.
With the written word (such as in a leaflet or wall poster) it is
important to be able to describe well what people are experiencing at the time they see it — such as the hatred they already feel for the office or factory where they're working at the time, or the alienation and boredom they feel at the laundromat in which they're sitting.
(Imagine yourself being bored stiff sitting in a laundromat and
someone hands you a leaflet about being bored stiff sitting in a
laundromat.) Hopefully such literature could then elaborate further in a way that would encourage the reader to look critically at the whole of his/her alienated life, as well as how the totality of this
alienation could be superseded.
These different methods can, of course, be combined — such as if you stick around where you've distributed literature and are prepared to
further discuss such ideas, or if you have literature on hand to help follow up a verbal encounter.
For really effective revolutionary organization to develop it will
probably be necessary to concentrate continuously on a particular
workplace or residential area, to develop an ongoing dialogue with
people you see continually.
Factory and office organizations can even begin gathering information about their own workplace facilities and planning how these could be
seized, diverted and utilized in a revolutionary situation.
It is crucial that, at a very early stage these groups link up with
each other and begin sharing information and ideas, as well as
whatever material facilities they might have (literature, tools, media equipment, etc.). This must not take place just regionally. Rather, we must link up our activities with each other all over the world. This
will be especially crucial when revolts occur — our strategy must be worldwide and as revolution breaks out we must be already prepared to coordinate our action internationally. Otherwise, each revolt will be crushed in isolation.
Although such revolutionary organizations will sometimes be forced to engage in limited day-to-day struggles for survival, we must not turn these into "issues" to "organize around." We must, among
prerevolutionary proletarians, be completely explicit and open about
our views and aims — that our desires can be realized only by the
complete and forcible overthrow of all exiting social conditions.
I have said nothing in this article that 99% of the readers didn't
already know intuitively. Communism is in our bones. It is the real
and highest form of human nature. In spite of all the authoritarian
conditioning, and the distortions, lies and confusion presented by the media, these ideas are already in everyone's minds — however deeply they may be buried. It is now up to us and us only — to take control of our own lives.
The wall which must be knocked down is immense, but it has been
cracked so many times that soon a single cry will be enough to bring
it crashing to the ground. Let the formidable reality of the real
communist movement emerge at last from the mists of history, with all the individual passions that have fuelled a thousand insurrections of the past. Soon we shall find that there is an energy locked up in
everyday life which can move mountains and abolish distances.
– Charles Lutwidge October 1975
Notes
[1] By "forces of production" I mean everything which serves to
enhance our ability to reproduce ourselves and to enrich ourselves as human beings. This includes not only improvements in "technology," but also in organizational methods and our own skills, energy, creativity and imagination as well as our ability to realize these. Every student can see this contradiction when he/she finds that much of his/her
activity consists of juggling "credits," "grades" and "units," and
waiting in line and hassling at the registrar's office — and that the whole content of their "education" is subordinated to these silly
things. At colleges and universities there is a gigantic
administrative bureaucracy, the function of which has nothing to do
with education as such, but is necessary so long as the principle
function of such "educational institutions" is merely to prepare
people for the senile job market, and for lives as helpless spectators in a world beyond their control.
[2] By a commodity I mean something which is produced primarily to be
exchanged rather than for use as such. Its producer is interested not in the product itself, but in what he can get in exchange for it —
usually money which he can then exchange for other commodities. Thus
it is not the particular qualities of a product, but rather its
(exchange-)value which motivates production in acommodity economy. As capitalism develops, the primary motivation for production is to
increase exchange-value, or its implicit form, value as much as
possible. The particular qualities of the products (i.e., their
capacity for use, including use for pleasure — or as I call it, their use-value) become, at best, secondary. Anyone who has ever been on
welfare or unemployment has had the experience of going to offices,
spending hours being questioned and hassled, waiting in lines, filling out forms and going through countless other humiliations in order to
receive some silly pieces of paper (checks) which are exchanged for
other silly pieces of paper (cash) which can then be exchanged for
various commodities. But the things you ultimately buy would be every bit as good if you simply took them. The entire paper world of the
welfare bureaucracy is completely worthless. Not only the hours of
humiliation which all welfare recipients have to spend to get their
check, but furthermore absolutely every hour, day, year and second
spent on the job by employees at the welfare bureaucracies are
completely useless and unnecessary. It is completely wasted and
unproductive labor which has nothing to do with the use-value of the
goods which it is supposed to help people attain.
[3] Many times in past revolutions, such organizations — which workers
have created to coordinate revolts and in some cases to resume
production under their own management — have been called workers'
councils.
[4] In fact we — the proletariat — are quite obviously the
overwhelming majority of the people in the world today. Our class
includes not only industrial "blue collar" workers, but furthermore,
white collar and "service" workers (skilled and unskilled alike),
teachers, unemployed, welfare recipients, most students, agricultural workers, and even a growing number of "professionals," artists and.
musicians (in spite of all the illusions many of these people try to
maintain) not to mention miscellaneous shitworkers of all sorts.
[5] I can remember now how in my earliest childhood I just assumed the
world and my life were mine to play with, and how restraints and
restrictions seemed so irrational and unnecessary. I remember how
shocked I was when I found that everything I enjoyed was forbidden,
every spontaneous act frustrated. When I was about four I had this
idea that I was going to build a ship and go sailing with this girl I knew ... and we'd keep sailing till we came to some unknown island
where we'd live outside and sleep in the sand till we built a big
carnival city for all of our friends to come and live in ... but
without any-parents and without any baby-sitters to boss us around
because we'd know how to run the place. Of course, I never got to do
any of those things, so continually I would just create microcosmic
dreamworlds when there was nowhere else worth being. I remember even
these being crushed until finally I stopped dreaming. For so long
since, such dreams seemed silly and embarrassing. It's only quite
recently that I've understood again how important they really were,
how seriously they should be taken. I have only recently begun again
to dream ... and hopefully with still more coherence.
----
Message sent by the Situationist list.
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to requests-AT-lists.nothingness.org
This text re-published in association with the then-and-now friends
who wrote it, whom I knew 35+ years ago
(when they also wrote "The Right To Be Greedy" and "Theses on the
Construction of One's Own Self-theory");
I availed ink-on-paper versions of it then, and just like back then,
we offend the same agents of assholism and proto-fascism!!!!
The espousers of rational and universal thing-ification just never
change, so the same exposure is appropriate.
Here, even when their "knowledge" regarding the Situationist critique, the Marxian critique, the Sex-Pol critique, the libertarian socialist critique, the anti-authoritarian communist critique, and the anti-
capital critique proves them to be ignorant loudmouths, I waste my
time defending myself against lies and distortions, and I don't have
many to thank for tolerating their abusive demeanor and list
hijacking. Spectatorship seems more alive-and-well on a supposed
"Situationist" list that is afraid to deal with the kids in knee-high paratropper boots and black-or-red armbands. [Does the color of the
ideological tattoo even matter with authoritarians?]
Q: Ever wonder why power-junkies, philo-Stalinists, and narcissist-
bullies need loudspeakers?
A: To keep everyone else from speaking to and hearing each other!
It would make them more useless than they already are, even to their
"topping" masters, whom they cannot (and would never) identify except for the dutifully-suckable ideology stuck through the hole in the
wall... if they didn't enjoy being on their knees so much while coming up for air long enough to call us names.
They are our equivalent of the intrusive Christian Fundamentalists who flood atheist forums,
or the Islamic Fundamentalists who collect Earthly rewards for Islamic humanists and secularists.
They cannot stand self-determinance and social construction.
They fear totality, so they destroy it at the point where its
interesting use by the Situationists might expand it beyond the SI.
So, while they lick their lips, try to figure out how to avoid all
theory herein, and plan yet one, two, three, many... personal
Kronstadts, read this and take what you can use and extend....
Then, I suggest you start sending email directly to those with whom
you wish to speak.
Use theory before it is deconstructed into ideology as vibrant as our list cops, as they would have you deconstructed into weak-linked
proletarian atoms.
Rather, let's unbuckle the pants of these moralizing ideologists...
and reveal them for what they are: aggressive, suppressive,
repressive, banal, loud, full-time, cops.
----------------------------------------------------
A Modest proposal for How the Bad Old Days Will End
The Collapse of the World as We Know It has Already Begun.
Everyone Knows This.
Everyone Feels It in their Bones.
All the Attempts to Deny It are Enough to Prove It.
It's as though everyone's waiting for something but no one knows what. Whether I find myself wandering around in the city or in the graveyard- like suburbs, this feeling of despair seems to haunt everyone even in their sleep.
Meanwhile we just grow more isolated from each other. When I meet
someone on the street we really have nothing to say to each other
because nothing has really happened. So empty words are exchanged and we stumble away awkwardly. Nobody seems to enjoy anything anymore.
Nobody seems to know why they're alive. What everybody does know,
however, is that this society is falling apart, and that all the
attempts to hold it together just make it more hideous.
As far back as I can remember everyone around me spent most of their
fives sacrificing in order to survive. There was, of course, always a certain degree of marginal freedom but now even this is vanishing. And as politicians talk about the need for yet more sacrifice, the mass
media pumps out more ways to glorify misery.
It's not as though things used to be gem or anything. But perhaps
never before have so many people had the feeling that everything has
become so pointless — that each day is like the fast, only a little more dull, a little more empty, a little more exhausting.
Surely there lurks inside each of us a subjective passion such as
maybe we experienced in childhood but have been too embarrassed to
think about for years — the desire to be in love always — the kind of
inspiration which once unleashed could move mountains and remake the
world. Currently our energy is being constantly used up just to keep
things the same. Artists have nothing left to express but their
emptiness, and the emptiness of a society which can no longer find any reason to exist. All joy has gone out of music. All the new processing and quasi-technical perfection cannot compensate for the total absence of inspiration. And whatever remedies are adopted are usually worse
than the disease. Jobs are becoming so meaningless and so exhausting
that many people would prefer to be unemployed. "Leisure time" is
becoming as boring as work. All the "problem solving" of the
sociologists, economists, psychologists and urban planners just become ways to make more acceptable the humiliation we experience every day.
Nonetheless, I know this misery will go on only so long as we allow it to.
The spectacle is like a supermarket of false alternatives. In spite of the supposed "opposition" between capitalism and "Communism," the
difference between them is like the difference between Pepsi Cola and Seven Up. "Communism" — as it exists in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc — is just a state-monopolized form of capitalism. But whether you live under p rivate corporate capitalism or bureaucratic
statecapitalism, it's essentially the same old crap. Everywhere people sell their lives in order to survive. Every where daily life has been reduced to a mere series of humiliations. Even "free time" there isn't any freedom. Our whole environment has been produced in an alien form.
And now, as world capitalism is falling apart, its spokesmen tell us
that it's our fault for being too "greedy", too "selfish", too
"affluent".
But there is nothing mysterious about the present breakdown of social production. It is nothing other than the outcome of the contradiction between the forces of production [1] and the social relations of
production. Now capitalism has become a fetter on our existence and
development as genuinely human beings. But capitalism is only the
highest form of commodity [2] (exchange-value) production. While for
thousands of years the commodity form helped to develop the productive forces and thus to prepare the conditions for a really free society,
it has now become a fetter (and in fact the last essential fetter) on our further development as human beings.
Though this contradiction exists in every part of the world; it is
first most visible in the most advanced and overdeveloped countries
(especially the U.S.). Thus the active contradiction between use-value and exchange-value can be seen constantly in the most common acts of
our daily life. Every time you stand in a line at a supermarket
checkstand you do this not to accomplish any productive or socially
useful function. The only reason you're waiting in line is to pay for the food, even though it would be every bit as good whether or not you pay for it. But unless you pay for it, it cannot be realized as a
commodity, as exchange-value. In terms of its social use-value it
would be much simpler and indeed more efficient, if you simply walked out with it. (But don't get caught trying!)
But exchange-value is not a mere accessory tacked on to an otherwise
neutral reality. On the contrary, value is the motivating force of all production in capitalist society. Everything is produced as value and its use-value is shaped accordingly.
Thus, it is no accident that everything is being designed to break
down or be thrown away, that "education" is as shitty as it is, or
that "culture", "art", and "entertainment" have become so uninspired. The entirety of the existing mode of production is specifically
capitalist. While at work we experience no real freedom or self-
expression of any kind. The only reason we work is to get paid. But
when we get off work we still are alienated — i.e., we still have
little or no control over any of the conditions which determine how we spend our time.
Thus "leisure" time — or "free" time — can be used for nothing but a
repetition of the most meaningless and tedious trivialities — such as shopping, watching boring television shows, etc. Even when we're
eating and sleeping — perfectly normal human activities — we're really
only recuperating to prepare ourselves for more alienated work.
As the contradiction grows more explicit we see the trend of
contracting social reproduction. In many parts of the world
capitalists are finding that now they can sell more (in dollar terms) by producing less — hence the phony "shortages" of various sorts, as well as the rapidly rising prices. They are finding fewer profitable
things in which to channel the labor force (hence "unemployment").
Capitalism's weakest elements are rapidly falling onto the historical scrapheap: more and more small shopkeepers are going under (just take a walk downtown and look at all the closing out sales), smaller firms are going bankrupt or being bought out.
Capitalism's most rugged form will, probably prove to be in countries where there is the most developed State rationalization of the capital accumulation process (e.g., China), i.e. the so-called "Socialist" and "Communist" countries.
As the collapse becomes more evident each day, spokesmen for all the
different factions of Capital rush to compete with their respective
"explanations." And as though the "opposition" between "liberals" and "conservatives" weren't absurd enough, the circus has added the
official "Left" as an even more comical sideshow.
For the "Left," of course, the problem with private capitalism is only that it doesn't do what it's supposed to on its own terms — that there
aren't enough "jobs," that people don't get high enough ("fair") wages for selling their lives, that women and "third world" people don't get their fair share of the shit pie, that Capital accumulation doesn't go on peacefully as it should.
The "Leftists" have so little understanding of the actual workings of capitalism that when its tendency toward centralization and
monopolization is pushed to an extreme such as in Russia or China — they think that it is no longer capitalism. In spite of their self-
acclaimed "radicalism" they are really the staunchest of
conservatives. And as capitalism — the highest form of hierarchical society — is failing apart, they dutifully try to come up with new
ways of holding it together.
But all the confusion created by the "Left" and the "Right" alike
cannot hide forever the fact that since the time capitalism began
there has been a real movement for a new and genuinely human way of
life, for a society in which the full and free development of every
individual forms the ruling principle. This movement has emerged again and again. Each time it has been crushed, but only to re-emerge,
perhaps years or decades later. And almost every time it has emerged
in the twentieth century the "Right" and the "Left" have formed a Holy Alliance to suppress it.
Thus, for instance, in Russia amidst the famine and general breakdown of production which occurred during World War One and the Civil War
which f ollowed — the workers and sailors of Kronstadt (a naval
fortress city on an island near present-day Leningrad) took social
production directly into their own hands. Without any specialized or
separate "leadership," they reclaimed all social territory, carried
out expropriations, redistributed land and began a comprehensive
program to coordinate socially the use of all available resources, as well as improving and expanding production in agriculture (on hitherto unused land on the outskirts of the city), construction of buildings, etc. All this was organized responsibly throughout the city (approx.
pop. 50,000) as a whole. In addition the workers and sailors of
Kronstadt maintained an "operating fund", so to speak, from voluntary donations by the people of whatever was beyond their own immediate
needs. This was used to acquire various resources (tools, seeds, etc.) by the city's population collectively, and in addition, to send
revolutionary speakers and agitators throughout Russia.
All major decisions were made by the people themselves in workplaces
and popular assemblies in other public areas. Coordination of action
was carried out through elected delegates (from among the Workers and sailors) who were strictly mandated for specific tasks only and who
could be recalled by their assemblies at any time.
In March of 1921, after three and a half years, the workers' and
sailors' revolution at Kronstadt was crushed. Its participants and
sympathizers were either shot on sight, imprisoned, or forced to flee "revolutionary" Russia. But the final suppression of the Kronstadt
Commune and the massacre of its people was not carried out by the
"White Army" or by foreign imperialists. They were crushed militarily by the so-called "Red Army," with Leon Trotsky at its head and with
explicit orders from Lenin and the rest of the top Leaders of the
Russian "Communist" Party.
None of this should be surprising, The workers' and sailors'
revolution which broke out at Kronstadt was qualitatively different
from and in direct opposition to the movement which was led by Lenin
and the other top Leaders of the "Communist" Party. It was, though in a crude and embryonic form, a movement for a free and classless
society — the real movement I have been speaking of.
For several decades now, the "Right" and "Left" have conspired to hide this movement from us or to falsify and distort its reality beyond
recognition. Both the "Right" and the "Left" would like us to believe that totalitarian state-capitalism (which they call "Communism") is
the only possible alternative to private corporate capitalism, and
that shitheads like the "Symbionese Liberation Army" are
revolutionaries. All these people have a stake in keeping things the
same.
But I will surrender nothing voluntarily to my enemies. Not even
words. Thus, in spite of all the ways, in which reality and the words associated with it have been distorted and misrepresented by these
people, I insist on calling this movement, this desire, by its real
historical name.. I insist on calling it what its most articulate
protagonists have called it for over a hundred and thirty years — it is the communist movement. The real communist movement.
Once again I must emphasize that the relationship between the real
communist movement on the one hand, and the bureaucrats and aspiring
bureaucrats of totalitarian state-capitalism — the so-called
"Communists" — is a relationship of total opposition and complete
antagonism. It cannot be otherwise. It makes no difference whether
they're Trotskyists, Maoists, Stalinists, Guevarists, or just part of the neo-Leninist mish-mash. It is precisely because I am a communist
that they are my enemies. I am in opposition to them every bit as much as the revolutionaries of Kronstadt were in opposition to the
"Communist" Party bureaucrats who ordered their massacre.
Despite the suppression from all sides, the real communist movement
did not perish with Kronstadt. It has emerged again and again since;
in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-37; in the Hungarian Revolution of
1956 -which was crushed by tanks from Russia (much to the enthusiasm
of Mao-Tse-Tung); and in the insurrection in France of May-June 1968 —
which the French "Left" did everything possible to subordinate to
their "leadership" and to reduce it to a bunch of reformist "demands."
It has emerged as well in events such as the street festival in
Detroit in 1967 and the revolt which broke out in "socialist" Poland
in 1970-71 where workers happily looted state-owned stores and burned down the "Communist Party" headquarters while singing the
Internationale!
As for ourselves: In place of capitalist society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free
development of each individual is the condition for the free
development of all. Production for profit will be replaced by
production for pleasure. The end of the law of value will be the
decisive beginning of the end of all alienations, of all the fetishes to which people have been sacrificed since the first human beings
walked the earth.
The great insurrections of the past (Kronstadt, Hungary 1956, Paris
1871, Spain 1936-37, Seattle 1919, France 1968, Poland, 1970-71, etc.) and the new life which they announced, were only the faintest hints of the fantastic possibilities of modern world revolution. As we take
over we can begin immediately to rebuild the world in a form which is fit for our playful habitation. Some structures can simply be
eliminated. Many other things — such as houses, machinery and
transportation — can be entirely redesigned and rebuilt.
No "system" can guarantee successful social production. The life blood of production in communist society can only be the conscious desire
and energy of each of us. Nonetheless the organizational forms of past communist experiences (such as Kronstadt and the Spanish Revolution of 1936-37) as well as the nature of the present productive forces,
strongly imply much of how the new world could be organized.
During the earlier parts of the revolution, the organizational mode of the new society will be growing organically in the process of over
throwing the old one. [3] As we steal back more and more of the means of social production we can use these not only for our own immediate
needs, but also as a means to escalate the revolutionary process
further.
When the ruling classes are fully overthrown we will be free to take
on the re-organization of everything. We can then meet publicly to
discuss our real needs and desires.
We could easily begin production by regularly holding popular
assemblies in local public areas and production places of all sorts.
Here ideas and plans could be initiated and elaborated with the full
and direct participation of all those concerned. (Obviously not
everyone will be interested in every question: the point is that
anyone could, if they chose, participate in making any decision they
think is important.)
When initial decisions have been made, the people at the assemblies
can elect delegates who will then meet in regional and finally global councils with other delegates sent from assemblies throughout the
world. They will meet simply to coordinate decisions already made by
the people at their assemblies and will have no separate governing
power of any kind. Their function will be rotated periodically among
the population and monopolized by no one. Furthermore, they could be
removed and replaced by their assemblies at any time.
Even for planning and coordination of world-wide production, it is
hard to say to what extent such meetings of delegates will prove
necessary. With telecommunications equipment already existing, it
would, in many cases, be simpler for the local assemblies to contact
each other directly via the airwaves, and take part in each other's
discussions. Such methods would be especially useful if you consider
that in some cases even initial plans could not be made only locally
and might immediately require direct dialogues between the respective assemblies.
By means of such telecommunications networks as well as modern data
storage and processing, each of us could be in instantaneous contact
with each other in any part of the world, as well as with all the
wealth of knowledge of the entirety of human history. Resources could be coordinated globally in order to maximize use-value and minimize
difficulties in fulfilling desires.
Not all projects would necessarily be carried out even initially by
people who are already concentrated in a particular geographic area.
Any individual would have immediate access to broadcast his/her ideas all over the world in order to find others who are interested and who might have particular knowledge and skills he/she would find
appropriate.
People from different parts of the world who shared a common fantasy, fascination or innovative idea could if they chose, come together and shape entire landscapes.
We could begin to relate as human beings instead of as commodities. No longer would people be compelled to be competitive with each other.
Instead the enrichment of others would only be a further enrichment of ourselves when we experience each other. The full and free development of each individual around us will be our own direct self-interest.
Each of us will be a co-owner of the entirety of the world's wealth
and means of production, as well as of the entire natural environment.
Whereas in capitalist society each individual can usually only pursue his interests narrowly, at the expense of others, in communist society every individual will have as his own the entirety of society and of
social wealth. Each individual's pursuit of an ever-richer life would mean the pursuit of an ever-richer society.
Planning and decision making will not be a separate or specialized
activity. It will be an integrated part of production and of life,
just like any other.
The direct control people will have over the production process
applies also, of course, to their immediate environment. For the day-
to-day matters of running, for instance, a given factory, decisions
will be made at assemblies of all those involved.
But nobody's activities need be restricted to a given "job" or
locality. Each person can fish in the morning, plow the soil in the
afternoon, compose and play music before dinner and write poetry in
the evening, chop wood one day, cast steel the next, build castles one month and sail around the world the next (perhaps distributing the
goodies they've made). And all of this without ever having to become
as such a fisherman, a farm-worker, a musician, a poet, a woodsman, a steelworker, a construction worker or a sailor.
There will no longer be a "work day." Nor a separate "leisure" time.
Just life — just the process of consciously creating and recreating ourselves and our world.
Communist society will be not only the full appropriation of the ideas of all the great visionaries, dreamers and mad geniuses of the past
(Scriabin, William Morris, Fourier, the Pre-Raphaelites, Lautreamont, William Blake, the early surrealists, etc.), but furthermore the
realization of their outrageous dreams and fantasies (as well as our
own), made concrete and possible now by the development of the real
forces of production, as well as by the decay and collapse of the
present "system."
With all the modern means of production at our individual disposal,
each of us will have a direct self-interest in the building and
rebuilding of the world in the image of our desires, and in
participating fully in the accurate executing of this. Successful
production in communist society will depend only on the real and
immediate determination of each individual to live their life fully,
to realize their wildest imaginations — in the real world (that, by the way, is "how the work will get done").
As for the Trotskyists, Maoists, and neo-Christians of the "Left,"
they can take their "transitional demands," "correct leadership" and
"revolutionary" self-sacrifice — and shove it up their respective
asses. The communist movement can develop only as an insatiable thirst for life — the same inspiration which made Scriabin insist that he
could fly — or, as a 19th century egomaniac (Karl Marx) put it: "a
revolutionary daring which hurls at its adversaries the defiant
phrase: I am nothing, but I must be everything!"
There will no longer be any fetishized abstractions to mediate
people's l ives — there will be no law of value no commodity exchange,
no State a nd no religion to decide our activities for us; no "general interest", no "national interest", no pre-defined "human nature". Just us. Just our desires, skills, imagination, passions, and intelligence - developed over centuries and now freed for the first time — with all the world at our disposal.
"THE SOCIETY WHICH HAS ABOLISHED EVERY KIND OF ADVENTURE, MAKES ITS
OWN ABOLITION THE ONLY POSSIBLE ADVENTURE"
Wall painting, Paris, May 1968
Communist revolution like all revolutions, is the outcome of a
struggle between antagonistic classes. Every mode of production has
produced insurrectionary classes who ultimately overthrow or
effectively abolish that mode of production and all the social
relations built on it.
Capitalism has produced the largest and the most important
(potentially) revolutionary class in all history — the proletariat. The proletariat consists of all of us who are separated from control
of the means of social production and therefore have no control over
our own life activity. [4] The means of social production includes
everything used for the production and reproduction of human beings
and of society: not only factories, mines, raw materials, agricultural land, etc., but also all the implements and all the space and
territory which are part of our overall life process — everything from
printing presses, television equipment and educational institutions
right down to the very air we breath, the water we drink and the
sounds which we hear around us. We have no control over any of these
because Capital has taken them all over and uses them all as Capital. Everything that is produced — and increasingly everything that is even
tolerated — is produced and tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of Capital — i.e., of exchange-value which expands
quantitatively for the mere sake of expanding (regardless of form).
Capital is busily shaping all the world in its image. Just look around you — anywhere. But Capital is not some natural or supernatural force determining our activity. It is nothing other than our own activity
when we disown it — which reproduces this form of life. Capital is not
a thing, but a social relation between people mediated by things.
Quite simply, Capital is something we do every day. Every day the
means of social production pass through our hands. We reproduce
society and we reproduce it as Capital. It is only our willingness to comply and our lack of conscious organization for ourselves as a
class, that allow the world to go on in its present, hideous form.
Imagine now that one day no one came to work, no one went shopping and no one went to school. If this were sustained, within a very short
period of time capitalism would grind to a halt. Unfortunately, in
this case, so would human society. But imagine, on the other hand that one day proletarians everywhere took over all the work places-
factories, offices, schools, stores, television stations, gas
stations, telephone facilities, oil refineries, computer centers, etc. — in every part of the world at once! No military force in the world could possibly be large or powerful enough to stop us. I realize I
have exaggerated what is actually possible ... but only slightly. All we, i.e., the world proletariat, lack is the conscious desire and
unity to pull it off. Until we realize this desire and unity, we will continue, collectively, to kick out own ass every Imagine now that one day no one came to work, no one went shopping and no one went to
school. If this were sustained, within a very short period of time
capitalism would grind to a halt. Unfortunately, in this case, so
would human society. But imagine, on the other hand that one day
proletarians everywhere took over all the work places-factories,
offices, schools, stores, television stations, gas stations, telephone facilities, oil refineries, computer centers, etc. — in every part of the world at once! No military force in the world could possibly be
large or powerful enough to stop us. I realize I have exaggerated what is actually possible ... but only slightly. All we, i.e. the world
proletariat, lack is the conscious desire and unity to pull it off.
Until we realize this desire and unity, we will continue,
collectively, to kick out own ass every day. So long is, at any given time, the majority of us are willing to comply, each isolated
individual or small group of individuals is powerless to resist.
But above all, if we are ever to regain our own lives, we must begin
attempting to regain our own minds and our own emotions. From the time
we were born we have been conditioned to become submissive, humble and crippled. We have been taught to be "realistic" and repress our
desires, to accept humiliation as a natural and necessary part of life.
This authoritarian conditioning begins in our families while we are
infants and is further carried out in school, in church and in all the other institutions of capitalist society. It is just such conditioning which makes us complaisant in our misery and thus suitable for the
slavery of capitalist society. [5]
It is this same authoritarian character (as Wilhelm Reich called it)
which bureaucrats and aspiring bureaucrats are appealing to when they attempt to "lead the masses."
But worst of all, many proletarians try to justify and defend their
authoritarian character and will even resent others who begin to break out of their own. There is nothing more counter-revolutionary than
self-denial and fear of freedom. Nothing.
The contradiction between the forces of production and the social
relations of production exists inside each of us. We are the greatest productive force of all — and every day the individuality of each of us comes into direct conflict with our role as members of an enslaved class — with the way of life that is forced upon us.
Unlike any previous revolutionary movement, the communist movement
must be carried through actively and consciously by the overwhelming
majority of the world's people. No "vanguard" Party can "lead" us,
"represent" us, or seize Power "on our behalf."
Instead we must begin organizing ourselves. We can begin opening an
active dialogue among all of us who are already consciously
revolutionary, in every part of the world. But the dialogue must also extend to the rest of the proletariat.
We can begin organizing where we live and where we work, forming
"cells," so to speak, in workplaces and in all areas of social life.
This is the beginning of the abolition of Capital from within (the
proletarians, while essential to Capital, are also the living negation of Capital). Such groups can intervene into many potentially
revolutionary situations — especially those which most directly
reflect the crisis of Capital. We can intervene into every part of
social production (in the broadest sense of the term) — at workplaces,
college and highschool campuses, shopping centers, public meetings,
neighborhoods, busses, rock concerts, laundromats, waiting rooms (at
everything from welfare offices to hospitals), unemployment lines,
etc. — in short, everywhere that social life exists and has been
colonized by Capital.
We can intervene with every means possible — leaflets, graffiti, wall posters, music, newspapers — and of course direct conversation.
Whenever it can be done effectively, direct encounter with people is
best. There are so many situations every day where people really do
see through everything and it would only be a matter of one individual being able to articulate what everyone there already knows. Such
situations occur whenever the absurdity of exchange-value relations
are demonstrated most explicitly — such as when people are forced to wait in lines for something they don't even want (such as to pay for
something or to pick up a stupid bureaucratic "form").
Unfortunately, the spoken word and the acted gesture are usually quite limited in their effect over time. Someone can go home after a really good conversation with a stranger, but unless the encounter is
followed up with something, in a couple of weeks it will probably be
as though it hadn't happened. But the written word can also be used
creatively and subversively.
With the written word (such as in a leaflet or wall poster) it is
important to be able to describe well what people are experiencing at the time they see it — such as the hatred they already feel for the office or factory where they're working at the time, or the alienation and boredom they feel at the laundromat in which they're sitting.
(Imagine yourself being bored stiff sitting in a laundromat and
someone hands you a leaflet about being bored stiff sitting in a
laundromat.) Hopefully such literature could then elaborate further in a way that would encourage the reader to look critically at the whole of his/her alienated life, as well as how the totality of this
alienation could be superseded.
These different methods can, of course, be combined — such as if you stick around where you've distributed literature and are prepared to
further discuss such ideas, or if you have literature on hand to help follow up a verbal encounter.
For really effective revolutionary organization to develop it will
probably be necessary to concentrate continuously on a particular
workplace or residential area, to develop an ongoing dialogue with
people you see continually.
Factory and office organizations can even begin gathering information about their own workplace facilities and planning how these could be
seized, diverted and utilized in a revolutionary situation.
It is crucial that, at a very early stage these groups link up with
each other and begin sharing information and ideas, as well as
whatever material facilities they might have (literature, tools, media equipment, etc.). This must not take place just regionally. Rather, we must link up our activities with each other all over the world. This
will be especially crucial when revolts occur — our strategy must be worldwide and as revolution breaks out we must be already prepared to coordinate our action internationally. Otherwise, each revolt will be crushed in isolation.
Although such revolutionary organizations will sometimes be forced to engage in limited day-to-day struggles for survival, we must not turn these into "issues" to "organize around." We must, among
prerevolutionary proletarians, be completely explicit and open about
our views and aims — that our desires can be realized only by the
complete and forcible overthrow of all exiting social conditions.
I have said nothing in this article that 99% of the readers didn't
already know intuitively. Communism is in our bones. It is the real
and highest form of human nature. In spite of all the authoritarian
conditioning, and the distortions, lies and confusion presented by the media, these ideas are already in everyone's minds — however deeply they may be buried. It is now up to us and us only — to take control of our own lives.
The wall which must be knocked down is immense, but it has been
cracked so many times that soon a single cry will be enough to bring
it crashing to the ground. Let the formidable reality of the real
communist movement emerge at last from the mists of history, with all the individual passions that have fuelled a thousand insurrections of the past. Soon we shall find that there is an energy locked up in
everyday life which can move mountains and abolish distances.
– Charles Lutwidge October 1975
Notes
[1] By "forces of production" I mean everything which serves to
enhance our ability to reproduce ourselves and to enrich ourselves as human beings. This includes not only improvements in "technology," but also in organizational methods and our own skills, energy, creativity and imagination as well as our ability to realize these. Every student can see this contradiction when he/she finds that much of his/her
activity consists of juggling "credits," "grades" and "units," and
waiting in line and hassling at the registrar's office — and that the whole content of their "education" is subordinated to these silly
things. At colleges and universities there is a gigantic
administrative bureaucracy, the function of which has nothing to do
with education as such, but is necessary so long as the principle
function of such "educational institutions" is merely to prepare
people for the senile job market, and for lives as helpless spectators in a world beyond their control.
[2] By a commodity I mean something which is produced primarily to be
exchanged rather than for use as such. Its producer is interested not in the product itself, but in what he can get in exchange for it —
usually money which he can then exchange for other commodities. Thus
it is not the particular qualities of a product, but rather its
(exchange-)value which motivates production in acommodity economy. As capitalism develops, the primary motivation for production is to
increase exchange-value, or its implicit form, value as much as
possible. The particular qualities of the products (i.e., their
capacity for use, including use for pleasure — or as I call it, their use-value) become, at best, secondary. Anyone who has ever been on
welfare or unemployment has had the experience of going to offices,
spending hours being questioned and hassled, waiting in lines, filling out forms and going through countless other humiliations in order to
receive some silly pieces of paper (checks) which are exchanged for
other silly pieces of paper (cash) which can then be exchanged for
various commodities. But the things you ultimately buy would be every bit as good if you simply took them. The entire paper world of the
welfare bureaucracy is completely worthless. Not only the hours of
humiliation which all welfare recipients have to spend to get their
check, but furthermore absolutely every hour, day, year and second
spent on the job by employees at the welfare bureaucracies are
completely useless and unnecessary. It is completely wasted and
unproductive labor which has nothing to do with the use-value of the
goods which it is supposed to help people attain.
[3] Many times in past revolutions, such organizations — which workers
have created to coordinate revolts and in some cases to resume
production under their own management — have been called workers'
councils.
[4] In fact we — the proletariat — are quite obviously the
overwhelming majority of the people in the world today. Our class
includes not only industrial "blue collar" workers, but furthermore,
white collar and "service" workers (skilled and unskilled alike),
teachers, unemployed, welfare recipients, most students, agricultural workers, and even a growing number of "professionals," artists and.
musicians (in spite of all the illusions many of these people try to
maintain) not to mention miscellaneous shitworkers of all sorts.
[5] I can remember now how in my earliest childhood I just assumed the
world and my life were mine to play with, and how restraints and
restrictions seemed so irrational and unnecessary. I remember how
shocked I was when I found that everything I enjoyed was forbidden,
every spontaneous act frustrated. When I was about four I had this
idea that I was going to build a ship and go sailing with this girl I knew ... and we'd keep sailing till we came to some unknown island
where we'd live outside and sleep in the sand till we built a big
carnival city for all of our friends to come and live in ... but
without any-parents and without any baby-sitters to boss us around
because we'd know how to run the place. Of course, I never got to do
any of those things, so continually I would just create microcosmic
dreamworlds when there was nowhere else worth being. I remember even
these being crushed until finally I stopped dreaming. For so long
since, such dreams seemed silly and embarrassing. It's only quite
recently that I've understood again how important they really were,
how seriously they should be taken. I have only recently begun again
to dream ... and hopefully with still more coherence.
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Re: dedicated to capital's philo-fundamentalist cops / richard haden <richard_haden-AT-yahoo.com> / 01 Jul 2009
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