ACTIVISM STAGE STYLES OF ALIENATION
REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION OF YOUNG WORKERS (1972)
Following the occupations movement of May 68 we saw develop in the left of the Communist Party and the CGT small set of organizations that claim to Trotskyism, Maoism and anarchism. Despite the low percentage of workers who joined their rank, they claim to play traditional organizations controlling the working class they claim to be the avant - garde.
The ridiculousness of their claims can make people laugh, but laughter is not enough. We must go further, why the modern world produces these extremist bureaucrats, and rip the veil from their ideologies to discover their true historical role. Revolutionaries must stand out as much as possible of the leftist organizations and show that far from threatening the old world order the action of these groups can lead to better its repackaging. Begin to criticize them is to prepare the ground to the revolutionary movement which will be liquidated under threat of being liquidated by them.
The first temptation that comes to mind is to address their ideologies, to show the archaic or exotic (from Lenin to Mao) and highlight the contempt of the masses lies beneath their demagoguery. But it quickly becomes tedious if there considers that there is a multitude of organizations and trends and they take out all assert their ideological little originality. On the other hand it means to be placed on their property. More than ideas should be attacking the activity they deploy to "the service of their ideas" activism.
If we take global activism is not because we deny the differences between the activity various organizations. But we believe that in spite of and even precisely because of their significant these differences can well be explained if one takes the militancy in the root.
The various ways of campaigning that are different answers to the same fundamental contradiction, none of which has the solution.
By taking advantage of basing our review on militant activity we do not believe in the importance of ideas in the militancy. Simply From the moment these ideas are put forward without being connected to the activity it is important to know what they hide. We will show the gap that exists between the two, we will link the ideas in the activity and disclose the impact of activity on the ideas behind the search for the real liar lie in understanding the reality of the lie.
If the criticism and condemnation of militancy is an indispensable task of revolutionary theory, it can be made that the "views" of the revolution. Bourgeois ideologues can handle dangerous rogue activists, idealists manipulated, advise them to spend their time working or to go to Club Med and they can not tackle militancy in depth because it is putting highlight the misery of all activities that allows modern society. We do not hide our bias, our review will not be "objective and valid from all points of view."
This critique of activism is inseparable from the construction of revolutionary organizations, not only because of militant organizations must be fought relentlessly, but also because the struggle against the militant tendency must be conducted within organizations revolutionaries. This probably because these organizations, at least initially, may be composed to a significant proportion of former militants "repented," but also because the activism is based on disposal each of us. Alienation is not eliminated with a magic wand and activism is the particular trap that the old world tends to revolutionaries.
What we are saying is hard militants and without appeal. We're actually willing to compromise with them, they are not revolutionaries who make mistakes or semi - revolutionary, but people who fall short of revolution. But this does not mean that we're 1 ° outside this critical if we want to be clear and unambiguous, it is primarily in respect of ourselves, and 2 ° we condemn activist as individuals and make this a matter of moral conviction. This is not to fall in the separation of good and evil. We do not believe in the temptation of "the more I yell against militants, the more I prove that I am not and I put myself immune to criticism!"
Let's effort to overcome the boredom that secret naturally activists. Let us not just to decipher the phraseology of their pamphlets and speeches. Wonder - on the reasons that pushed them, they, personally, to campaign. It yn'a no question that might embarrass a more militant. At worst they will go into endless sales pitches on the horrors of capitalism, the plight of children in the third world, cluster bombs, rising prices, repression .... At best they will explain that having become aware - they are very keen on that famous "awareness" - the true nature of capitalism they decided fight for a better world, for socialism (the real one not the other). Excited about these exciting opportunities they did not resist the urge to throw on the crank mimeograph closest. Trying to dive deeper and carry our eyes not on what they say but what they live.
There is a huge contradiction between what they claim to want and misery and inefficiency of what they do.
The effort to which they subject themselves and the dose of boredom they are capable of withstanding leave no doubt: these guys are first masochists. Not only because of their activity can not believe they can sincerely desire a better life, but their masochism showed no originality. While some perverse implement a imagination that ignores poverty rules of the old world, this is not the case activists! They agree within their organization hierarchy and small heads which they claim to want to rid the society, and energy they spend molds itself spontaneously in the form of work. For the activist is in this kind of people that 8 or 9 hours daily brutalization not enough.
When activists try to justify themselves they can only display their lack of imagination. They can not conceive of something else, another form of activity that currently exists. For them, the division between serious and fun, means and goals is not tied to a particular time. These categories are eternal and insurmountable: we can be happy later if we sacrifice now. The sacrifice of millions of unrewarded labor activists, generations of the Stalin era does not move into their little heads. They do not see that the means determine the ends and that by agreeing to today they are preparing to sacrifice the sacrifices of tomorrow.
One is struck by the countless similarities that bring activism and religious activity. We find the same psychological attitudes: self-sacrifice, but intransigence will convert spirit of submission. These similarities extend to the field of rites and ceremonies on unemployment sermons, processions for Vietnam, references to the sacred texts of Marxism - Leninism, cult emblems (Red flags). The churches have policies - they not as their prophets, their priests, their converts, their heresies, their schisms, their practitioners - activists and their non - practicing - supporters! But the revolutionary activism is a parody of religion. Wealth, dementia, excessiveness of religious projects escape him, he sucks seriously, he wants to be reasonable, he believes he can win in exchange for a paradise here - down. This does not even give him. Jesus Christ resurrected and ascended to heaven Lenin rots on Red Square.
If the activist can be likened to the believer regarding the candor of his illusions he should be regarded quite differently in terms of its real attitude. The sacrifice of the Carmelite who imprisons himself to pray for the salvation of souls has very limited impact on social reality. IT is quite different for the activist. His sacrifice may have adverse consequences for the entire company.
activist speaks a lot of the masses. Its action is focused on them. They are to convince them, make them "aware". Yet the activist is separated from the masses and their possibilities of revolt. This is because it is separated from his own desires.
activist feels the absurdity of existence that is imposed on us. In "deciding" to advocate, it attempts to provide a solution to the gap between his desires and what he can really live. It is a reaction against the misery of his life. But he engages in a dead end.
Although it dissatisfied, the activist is still unable to recognize and deal with their desires. IT IN A SHAME. This leads him to replace the promotion of his desires by the desire for promotion. But the feelings guilt is such that he maintains can be considered for promotion under the hierarchical system, or rather he is ready to fight for good spot if it wins at the same time ensuring that it is not his own account. His activism enables it to rise, to stand on a pedestal, but not promotion appears to others and to him - even for what it is. (After all, the pope is also the servant of the servants of God!
to serve his desires do not to retreat back into his shell and has nothing to do with petty bourgeois individualism. On the contrary it can only be achieved by the destruction of the carapace of selfishness in which we locked bourgeois society and the development of a real class solidarity. The activist who claims to serve the proletariat ("the workers are our masters" Geismar) only to serve the idea that he has interests of the proletariat. Thus, a paradox is only apparent, genuinely putting himself at the service of self - it comes down to truly help others and this on a class basis, and begin to serve others it comes to protecting a personal hierarchical position.
Advocate, not cling to the transformation of everyday life, not rebelling against what oppresses them directly, rather it is away from this field. Now this land is the only one revolutionary long as we know that our everyday life is colonized by capital and governance by the laws of commodity production. By politicizing the activist is seeking a role that put him in - above the masses. That this "at - above" take on the appearance of "avant - garde" or "educationalists" does not alter the case. It is no longer the proletarian who has nothing else to lose his illusions and has a role to defend. In times of revolution, when all the roles crack under the pressure of desire to live unhindered, the role "revolutionary consciousness" is the one that best survives.
In activist, he gives weight to his existence, his life finds a way. But this sense it can not find it in him - even in the reality of his subjectivity, but in submission to external needs. As in the work is subject to a purpose and rules that escape him, he obeyed the activist "necessities of history."
Obviously, we can not to all activists on the same plane. All are not affected as severely. They include some naïve, not knowing how to use their leisure time, driven by loneliness and deceived by the revolutionary phraseology have gone astray, they will seize the first pretext to leave. The purchase of television, meet your soul mate, the need for overtime pay for the car decimating the ranks of the army of activists!
The reasons push to campaign does not date from today. Basically they are the same for union activists, Catholics and revolutionaries. The reappearance of a mass revolutionary activism is linked to the current crisis in market societies and the return of the old revolutionary mole. The possibility of a social revolution is serious enough that activists rely on it. The whole is reinforced by the collapse of religion.
Capitalism no longer needs clearing religious. Mature, it does not offer an extra happiness in the - but beyond all the happiness here - down in the consumption of its material goods, cultural and spiritual (metaphysical anguish sells!) . Overtaken by history, religions and their followers have to do is go to social action .... or Maoism.
leftist activism mainly affects social groups in the process of proletarianization accelerated (high school students, students, teachers, personal and social - educational ....) with no possibility to take practical measures for short-term benefits and to become truly revolutionary which implies a personal challenge very deep. The worker is much less complicit in its social role as student or teacher. Advocate for the latter is a compromise that allows them to support their social role vacillating. They found an important militant in the personal degradation of their social position denied them. Say revolutionary deal with the transformation of society as a whole, can make the economics of conversion of his own condition and his personal delusions.
In the working class unionism has the quasi - monopoly of militancy, it assures immediate satisfaction activist and a position in which the benefit may be measured concretely. The worker attempted by the activism most likely will turn to trade unionism. Even fight anti-union committees tend to become a new way unionism. Activity policy is for labor activists that the extension of trade union action. Activism little tent workers particularly young workers because the workers are the most lucid as regards the misery of their work in particular and life in general. Already a little tempted, as a whole, the unions, they are still less by a leftist benefits smoky.
However, when the revolutionary turmoil in the reign of goods and consumption will flow, trade unionism whose seriousness was based on claim will be ready to survive the move to revolutionary activism. It will resume the watchwords of the most extremist and will be much more dangerous than the leftist groups. Already sees - not we, following the May 68, CFDT mix the word of his self gibberish neo - bureaucratic!
The "free" time that he let his professional or academic, the activist will spend it on what he calls - even "political work". We must learn and distribute leaflets, manufacture and putting up posters, hold meetings, make contacts, prepare meetings ... But it's not such action considered in isolation sufficient to characterize the labor activist. The simple act of composing a leaflet in order to make and distribute can not be regarded in itself as an activist. If it is militant because it fits into an activity that has a particular logic.
is because of militant activity is not an extension of his desires, because it obeys a logic of its exterior, it approaches the work. Just as the worker does not work for him, the activist does not argue for him. The result of his action can not be measured by pleasure he withdrew. It will therefore be based on the number of hours spent, the number of leaflets distributed. Repetition, routine dominate the activity of the militant. The separation between enforcement and decision strengthens the hand of militant officer.
But if the activism is approaching the work can not be compared to him. Work is the activity which is based on the dominant world, it produces and reproduces the capital and capitalist relations of production; activism it is a minor activity. If the result of the work and effectiveness, by definition, does not measure to the satisfaction of worker they have the advantage of being economically measurable. Commodity production, through money and profit creates its standards and its measuring instruments. It has its logic and rationality that requires a producer and consumer. Instead, the effectiveness of activism, "the advance of the revolution", have not yet found their measuring instruments. Their control is beyond the activists and their leaders. Assuming, of course, where they still care about the revolution! It is therefore reduced to account for the material produced and distributed, recruitment, actions, which obviously does not measure what is purports to measure. Naturally it comes to the conclusion that what is measurable is an end in itself. Imagine the capitalist finding no way to assess the value of its production would decide to fall back on measuring quantities of oil consumed by machines. Very conscientious, workers would empty the oil into the gutter to advance .... production. Unable to pursue the stated goal, activism merely sign the work.
Applying consciously imitating the work, activists are badly placed to understand the perspectives opened by the side of a contempt increasingly prevalent with respect to all constraints and the another by the advance of knowledge and technology. The most intelligent of them sided with the ideologues of the modern bourgeoisie, to request that we reduce schedules or that we humanize repulsive activity. Whether in the name of the principal or the revolution, all these people - there are unable to see to - beyond the separation between work time and leisure time, between work devoted to the production and activity devoted to consumption.
If we are forced to work, the cause is not natural, it is social. Work and class society go together. The slave master wants to see happen because only what is produced is appropriated. Joy, pleasure found in any activity that can be capitalized, accumulated, translated into money by the capitalist, so he does not care. When we work we are completely subject to authority, to an external law, our only reason for that is what we produce. Every plant is a racket, where we pump our sweat and our lives to transform them into commodities.
The time spent working is a time where we have not directly satisfy our desires, but until this sacrifice subsequent repair what salary. This is exactly the opposite of play, where the course and pace of what we do is to master the pleasure one takes it. By emancipating the proletariat will abolish the job. Production of food necessary for our biological survival is no longer as the pretext for the release of our passions.
A significant feature of militancy is the time spent in meetings. Leaving aside the discussion on the grand strategy: Where are our comrades in Bolivia, when the next global economic crisis, party building revolutionary advance - t - it ...
Suffice us to address the meetings on the "day job". It may - be there that spread best poverty activism. Apart from a few desperate cases, the militants themselves - the same number are complaining about these "meetings that are not moving." While activists like to warm them they can not but suffer from the obvious contradiction between, on one hand, their willingness to act and secondly the time wasted in futile discussions in fruitless discussions. They are condemned to remain at an impasse because they attack the "réunionnite" without seeing it all the activism that is at issue. The only way to eliminate réunionnite to flee back into activism less in tune with reality.
WHAT TO DO? HOW TO ORGANIZE? These are the questions that underlie and lead meetings. These questions may never be settled, their resolution never advances, because when the militants pose, they lay them as separate from their lives. The answer is not an appointment - you because the question was not asked by those who possess the practical solution. We may meet for hours to grind the brain, it will not appear practical support is lacking in ideas. While matters are trifles for the revolutionary proletariat, because for him the problems of action and organization become concrete, are part of its fight, they become the problem for activists. The réunionnite is the necessary complement of activism. In fact, the problem is always that - here: how to merge with the mass movement while remaining separated from him . The solution to this dilemma is to either merge with the masses actually finding the reality of his desires and possibilities for their implementation, either to strengthen their power as activists, in siding with the old world against the proletariat. Wildcat strikes show that there are risks!
In dealing with the masses, activism reproduces its internal flaws, including its trends réunionnite. It brings people together and counted. For some kind of AJS (1), show up and be counted even becomes the pinnacle of the action!
These questions of action and organization, already separated from the real movement, are mechanically separated from each other. The guidelines of leftism realize this separation. It is on one side with the Maoists and the former - GP pole of the action, and the other with the Trotskyist Communist League and the pole of the organization. We fetishize either the action or the organization to break the impasse by separating the masses activism has plunged. Everyone protects his idiocy particular mocking the orientation of competing groups.
militant organizations are all hierarchical. Some organizations not only do not hide but would even tend to it boast. Others are content to say as little as possible. Finally, some small groups trying to deny it.
Similarly they reproduce the work or rather ape the militant organizations have needs "bosses". Unable to build their union from their practical problems, activists are naturally inclined to the view that the unification of decisions can only result from the existence of a direction. They do not realize that the common truth may spring from the individual wills out of shit, it must be balanced and imposed from above. They necessarily represent the Revolution as a clash between two hierarchical state machines, one being bourgeois, the other proletarian.
They know nothing of the bureaucracy, autonomy and how it resolves its internal contradictions. The grassroots naively believes that conflicts between leaders are reduced to conflicts of ideas and that there, where it is said that there is unity there is indeed unity. His great pride is to be able to discern the organization or the tendency of LA provided good leadership. By adhering to a particular chapel, he adopts a system of ideas as one puts on a costume. Not verified with any basis he will be ready to defend all the consequences and to respond to all objections with incredible dogmatism. At a time when pastors are torn by spiritual crises, the activist's faith.
Forced to consider the contempt increasingly prevalent with respect any form of authority activism has produced offspring with a new type. Some organizations claim they are not particularly hide their direction. Bureaucrats hide themselves better able to pull strings.
Some traditional organizations trying to develop ways of organizing parallel permanent or not. They hope, in the name of "proletarian autonomy, to pick up or at least influence people that would have otherwise missed.
These include the Red Aid, the OJTR Peasants Workers and the Assemblies of the PSU ... Also, some independent newspapers or satellites organizations claim express only the views of the revolutionary masses or autonomous groups base. Include "Cahiers de Mai", "The Technical Control," "The tool of workers" ... where we refuse to clearly and organizational issues and questions theory under the pretext that the time of building the revolutionary party has not yet occurred, or on behalf of a spontaneity of junk (we're not an organization but a gathering of brave guys, One Community "etc..), we can be sure there bureaucracy and often Maoism. The advantage of Trotskyism is that his fetish
forced the organization to display the color and it recovers by saying it. The advantage of Maoism (we're not talking about pure Maoism and archaeological - Stalinist kind of Humanity Red) is that it creates the conditions for its own spillover; force to pick your way to recovery he will beat the shit
systems of ideas adopted by the militant organizations vary, but they are undermined by the need to hide the nature of the activity hide it and the separation of the masses. Also found - t - is always at the heart of militant ideologies of separation between objectivity and subjectivity designed mechanical and ahistorical.
activist who is dedicated to serving the people, even if he does not deny that its activity has subjective motives, refuses to grant them any importance. Anyway this is subjective must be eliminated in favor of what is objective. The activists refused to be moved by his desires are reduced to invoke the necessities considered outside the historical world of desires. Thanks to the "scientific socialism", rigid form of Marxism degenerated, he believes he can discover the meaning of history and adapt.
It is gray with concepts whose meaning eludes him: the productive forces, production relations, law of value, etc. dictatorship of the proletariat. All this allows him to reassure themselves about the seriousness of his agitation. Putting himself out of his "critical" the world, he condemns himself to not understanding the progress of that - it.
The passion he can not turn in his life, he postponed his participation in the imaginary "world revolutionary spectacle." The land is reduced to the status of a puppet theater where good and evil clash, imperialist and anti - imperialist. It compensates for the mediocrity of his existence by identifying with stars of the circus world. How ridiculous has certainly been achieved with the cult of "CHE". Economist delusional, pathetic strategist, but handsome, Guevara has had at least the consolation of seeing his Hollywood talent rewarded. A record in the sale of the posters.
What - what subjectivity, if not the residue of objectivity, what a society based on the reproduction market can not integrate? The subjectivity of the artist objectifies itself in the artwork. For the worker separated from the means of production and organization its own production, subjectivity remains in a state of mania, fantasy ... which is objectified by the grace of capital and capital itself becomes. Revolutionary activity as it foreshadows the world exceeds the separation between objectivity and subjectivity. It subjectivity objectively and subjectively the objective world invests. The proletarian revolution is the emergence of subjectivity!
is not falling into the myth of a "real human nature ", the" eternal essence "of man who, repressed by the Company, seeking to return to the big day. But if the shape and purpose of our desires vary, they do no way reduces the need to consume a particular product. Determined by the historically evolving and the needs of commodity production, subjectivity does not bend to the needs of consumption and production. To get the consumer desires the goods must adapt constantly. But it remains unable to satisfy the desire to live fully and directly realizing our desires. At the avant - garde provocation market, the windows are subjected to increasingly critical of the pavement!
Those who refuse to take into account the reality of their desires in the name of the "materialistic thinking" might not see the weight of our desires fall on their face.
activists and ideologues, even university graduates, are less and less able to understand their time and stick to the story. Unable to secrete a thought a little bit modern, they are forced to dig into the dustbin of history to retrieve ideologies that have already for some time, evidence of their failure: anarchism, Leninism , Trotskyism .... To make it more palatable they season it a bit of Maoism or Castroism misunderstood. They claim the workers' movement but confuse history with the building of state capitalism Russia or the epic bureaucratic - Peasant "long march" in China. They claim to Marxist, but do not understand that the project of Marxist abolition of wage labor, commodity production and the state is indistinguishable from the seizure of power by the proletariat.
thinkers "Marxists" are increasingly unable to repeat the analysis of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism Marx had opened. They are bogged down on the ground of bourgeois political economy, while harping nonsense about the law of labor value, the falling rate of profit, achieving more - value. Despite their claims, they do not understand the march of modern capitalism. Believing themselves forced to use a Marxist vocabulary, they do not know the manual, they intersect the few remaining possibilities for analysis of political economy. Their "research" are not as good the first disciple of Keynes came ..
militant organizations to become autonomous - above the masses that they claim to represent. They are naturally led to consider that this is not the working class who made the revolution but "the organizations of the working class." It is therefore necessary to strengthen them. The proletariat becomes the limit as a raw material, manure which is able to flourish This red rose that is the Revolutionary Party. Essentials of recovery requires that not talking about that too outside, that's where begins demagoguery.
autonomy goals of militant organizations must - be concealed. Ideology is for. It proclaims loudly that it serves the people, we do not act for his own good and that if ever for a short time we are forced to take power we will not abuse it. Once that the working class has been well educated we hurry to return.
The history of workers' councils shows that organizations routinely say workers have sought to play their own game and pull the chestnuts out of fire, that for the best reasons of course. To secure their power, they sought to limit, to retrieve and destroy the forms of organization that the proletariat had data: territorial soviets, factory committees.
Russian Soviets were scheming and liquidated by the Bolshevik party and the state. In 1905 Lenin did not give them importance. In 1917, on the contrary, it proclaims: "All power to the soviets". In 1921 the Soviets who served as a stepping stone to gain power become troublesome, the workers and the Kronstadt sailors who demand free soviets were crushed by the Red Army.
In Germany, the government office - Democrat "Commissioners the people "are responsible for liquidating the workers' councils on behalf of the revolution.
In Spain, again dealing with the Communists to eliminate the forms of popular power. This would allow to better develop the fight against fascism, that's not bother to collect the samples. All the experiments have confirmed the historical antagonism between the proletariat and revolutionary activist organization. The most extremist ideology can obscure the position most cons - revolutionary. If However, some organizations have been fighting alongside the proletariat to defeat common as the Spartacus League and the CNT - FAI anarcho-syndicalist, there is no evidence that these organizations have not begun to fight for their own power once the opponent defeated.
Activists for being cooped up in politics are no less social individuals, subject to the influence of their environment. When it heats up, many can go into the camp of the revolution. We have seen Stewards take the lead in kidnappings! But the mass desertion of activists will be more likely that the advice and revolutionary councilists will be stronger. The movement can be helped in its success by the reinforcement of many activists, but in case of error or the wavering balance plays in the other direction. Militant organizations will be strengthened by the addition of proletarians seeking reassurance.
The settlement of workers' councils was made possible by their weakness, their inability to enforce within them the rules of direct democracy and effectively take all the power by crushing all the powers they were outside. Militant organizations are in fact only the externalized own weakness of the proletariat which turns against him.
workers will make new mistakes. They do not immediately find the appropriate form of power. Least the masses have any illusions about the activism, the better the advice will likely develop. Discredit and ridicule the militants, this is the task returning now to the revolutionaries. This task will be completed by the critique in acts that constitute the birth of councilists organizations. These organizations know very well do without a direction and a bureaucratic apparatus. Proceeds from the militant solidarity of workers, they are free associations of autonomous individuals. They will show their ideas, but mostly by their conduct in the battles, they are unlikely ever to pursue interests separate from those of the entire proletariat.
The development of modern capitalism that results in the total occupation of social space by the goods, the generalization of wage labor, but also by the degradation of moral values, contempt for work and ideologies, will increase the shock . The workers will go much faster and much farther than before. If organizations activists have once played a revolutionary role for a certain time, it will not be possible. These organizations may not be faster than more cons - revolutionary in the next major battles the fight.
(1) Alliance of Youth for Socialism: organization Youth Trotskyites Lambertists of the time (Editor's Note).
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