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SOME THOUGHTS ON ORGANIZATION * by Henri Simon
All quotations and references have been deliberately
excluded in this article. I have no doubt that many ideas
expressed here have already been expressed by many others
and there will be repetitions, some made on purpose, some not.
I have also deliberately tried as far as possible to get away
from traditional language. Certain words, certain names
produce a mental block in this or that person's thinking
shutting out a whole part of their thought processes. This
article's aim is to try to make people think about
experience: their own and what they know of others'. I've no
doubt this aim will only be imperfectly satisfied and this
for two reasons. The first, and least important, is that there
are those who will still insist on putting labels on all this
and on exorcising this or that proposition that they suspect of
heresy because their own beliefs cannot tolerate them. The
second, more essential, is that the article will say finally
that our own beliefs are hardly ever swept away solely by the
shock impact of other ideas, but by the shock of the clash of
our ideas with social reality.
Can we possibly lead ourselves out of the citadel of our
own system of thought towards a simple consideration of
facts? And not just any facts, but those which belong to our
experience as "militants" or "non-militants." Experience,
furthermore which is not just isolated in our own individual
world, but to be put back into the context of our social
relations , i.e. what we have been able to experience or what we
live now in a totally capitalist world (from one end of the
planet to the other). And yet this experience and what we can
know of other experiences brings us but a partial knowledge.
This is already evident for a given moment. It is even more
evident when seen in a historical perspective. Even if we try to
generalize experiences, observations, and reflections and to
integrate them into a vaster whole, we will not necessarily
widen our field of vision. It is a wholly justifiable pretension
to generalize: we do it all the time, whether we know it or not.
We make connections, compare and draw from these more general
notions, which we either integrate into already established
generalizations, or use to change such generalizations, or to
create a new generalization. A generalization can serve as an
opening, because of the curiosity it gives to look for other
facts with which to fill it out. It can serve as a closing, a
blocking process, because it can lead to the ignoring or
eliminating of everything which would challenge such a
generalization.
PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE OF SOCIAL LIFE
Our knowledge is always partial because inevitably at
the beginning we belong to a generation, a family a milieu, a
class, a state etc., a tiny fraction of a world of hundreds
of millions of inhabitants. And it's not so easy, except when
the capitalist system itself takes this in hand, to widen the
restricted field of "Life which has been given to us" .
Nevertheless this fractional knowledge is not so partial these
days if we look a bit closer. The accelerated uniforming
process of social conditions and lifestyles in the capitalist
explosion of the last 30 years has created a certain uniformity
of experiences. Even if technical, economic and political
conditions still vary to a considerable extent today, the
elementary, and less elementary foundations of the capitalist
system are really identical and inviolable whatever the regime
in which they operate. And so our experiences and their
particularisms have sometimes but a short distance to run in
order to accede to that more general knowledge which emerges
in measuring our experiences against those of others.
Very often our experience has already found its own
justification only by the meeting with identical
experiences, before contact with other different experiences.
And very often these experiences are synthesized by the
milieu itself in systems of thought raising these
particularisms to the level of ideologies. The path of more
general knowledge which is made by the measurement of
experience with that of others is then obstructed by the
obstacle of these ideologies. Apart from moments of violent,
often heart-rending, breaks, this situation leaves us stranded
in mid-path with a system of ideas which can only translate
imperfect concrete and practical knowledge of social life in all
its forms. Violent, tearing breaks with the past are not the
result of our reflection or knowledge which causes us to change
our previous ideas: they are what our "social position" leads us
to do at certain moments, ( and these moments are always
arriving) when our experience suddenly and sharply becomes
linked and is confronted with different experiences. This
situation liberates us from all screens and ideological
obstacles and makes us act, sometimes unbeknown to our ideas,
as a result of the elementary foundations of the capitalist
system referred to above, i.e. to act in according to our class
interests. It is clear that, according to our position in the
capitalist system, action leads us on one side or the other, in
a direction which may agree with our former ideas, but which
often has very little to do with them.
WILLED VS. SPONTANEOUS ORGANIZATION
The "problem of organization" is precisely one of those
very questions which is most marked by preconceived ideas on
what some people call "necessities." In relation with what has
been said, two poles can be distinguished:
--Willed (Voluntary organization)
-- Spontaneous organization
Willed organization is that which we wish to operate (in
joining or creating it) in relation to certain pre-
established ideas coming from our belonging to a milieu, for
the permanent defense of what we think is our interest. To do
this we get together with a limited (often very limited)
number of people having the same pre-occupation. The nature
of this organization is, in its aim defined by those who work
thus together, for themselves and for others, that of
permanence, in which is inscribed a system of references from
which one can deduce the practical modes of operating. In
other words, a certain body of ideas leads to certain
determined forms of action: more often than not a limited
collectivity speaks to and acts towards a larger one, in a
direction which is inevitably that of people who "know" ( or
think they know) towards those "who do not know" ( or know
imperfectly) and who must be persuaded.
Spontaneous organization is that which arises from the
action of the whole of the members of a collectivity at a
given moment, an action of defense of their immediate and
concrete interests at a precise moment in time. The forms and
modes of operation of that organization are those of the action
itself, as a response to the practical necessities of a
situation. Such situations are not only the result of concrete
conditions which lead to the perception of what the interests
one must defend are, but also of the relationship which we can
have at that moment with all the voluntary (willed)
organizations which are at work in the collectivity.
Spontaneous organization is therefore the common action of the
totality of a defined social group, not by its own choice but
by the social insertion of each individual at that very moment.
We will see later that such organization has no goal to reach,
but on the contrary, initial goals which can change very
rapidly. We will also see that it is the same thing for the
forms of action themselves. The initial collectivity which
began the action can also change itself very quickly precisely
at the time and concomitant with changes in goals and forms of
action.
From this distinction between willed and spontaneous
organization, we could possibly multiply definitions and
differences. Anyone is free to do this. But I must underline
that I am talking about "poles" . Between these two extremes
we can find all sorts of hybrids whose complexity of nature
and interaction are those of social life itself.
Particularly, starting from a voluntary organization, we can
finish by a series of "slidings" to arrive at an
identification with a spontaneous organization. One could
even say that is the aim- avowed or hidden- of all
organizations to make us believe (it is only a question of self-
persuasion or propaganda) or to try to arrive at (this is the
myth of Sisyphus) that very identification with the spontaneous
organization of a determined collectivity. At the opposite
end, a form of spontaneous organization which has arisen can
transform itself into a willed or voluntary organization when
the social forces which have created it turn towards other
forms of organization and the former organization tries to
survive by the will alone of the minority, then stuck in a
rigid framework of references.
DEFINING SPONTANEITY
There have already been lots of arguments about the term
"spontaneous" (like the word "autonomous" which has become a
political word in the bad sense of the term). "Spontaneous"
in no way means straight "out of the clear blue sky" , a sort
of spontaneous generation in which one sees rising from
nothingness structures adequate for any kind of struggle. We
are all inevitably social beings, i.e. we are plunged by
force into a social organization to which we inevitably
oppose another organization, that of our own life. Contrary
to what is normally supposed, this organization of our own
life is not fundamentally a form against the dominant social
organization. This organization of our own life is above all
"for itself" . It is only "against" as a consequence of our own
self activity. There is a very precise feeling in each of us of
what the interests of our life are and of what prevents us self
organizing our own lives. ( I am not using the word "conscious"
here on purpose because for too many this word either has the
sense of moral consciousness or, which is only a variant of the
same thing, "political" consciousness. For the self organization
of our own lives as for its self defense, the capitalist system
is the best agent of education. Increasingly it is putting into
our hands a host of instruments which permit this self
organization and its passage from individual to collective
forms. Increasing by its constantly refined forms of
repression, including all previous forms of struggle in
spontaneous organizations, it is posing for this individual or
collective self-organization the absolute need to find
"something else" to survive. What one has acquired from former
struggle is not known through examples or discussions but
through the shock impact of experiences that I spoke of earlier
in this article. Spontaneous' means in the end only the
surfacing of an organization woven into day to day life which in
precise circumstances, and for its defence, must pass on to
another stage of organization and action, ready to return to a
previous level later, or to pass on to another stage, different
from the first two ( the term "balance of forces" is to be
located in the same area, but only describes the situation
without defining anything about its contents, and about the
action and organization of said forces).
VARIABLE TERMS AND INTERESTS
"Spontaneous" also refers to another aspect of action
and organization. I touched upon it when stressing, in the
definition of spontaneous organization, that it had no goals,
no pre-established forms and that these could be quickly
transformed by a change in the collectivity involved.
"Spontaneous" is opposed to a moving tactic which serves as a
strategy directed towards a well defined goal (inside
secondary goals defining successive stages to be reached).
Collectivity, action and organization constitute variable
terms in the defense of interests which are also variable. At
every moment these variable interests seem to be just as
immediate as the action and organization to achieve the
provisional and passing goals in question seem necessary. If
all this can happen suddenly and the process evolve very
quickly, this spontaneity is nevertheless, and this has been
stressed, this prolongation of a previous self-organization
and its confrontation with a changed situation.
The vicissitudes of voluntary organization are not
interesting in themselves, even when, as they so often do,
they weigh down discussions about the "problem of
organization" . We all know the type of organization meant only
too well, above all among those we usually call "militants" .
However, it would be possible to discuss these critically in a
form which remains purely ideological, masking the essential
problem. The history of organization and of "organization" in
relation to technical, economic and social movement remains to
be written.
THE FUNCTION OF WILLED GROUPS
It is not the purpose of this article to write this
history, even though the article will note from place to
place the distance between the theory of these groups and
their real practice or simply between what they claim to do
and what they do in reality, between their "vocation" to
universality and their derisory real insertion into society.
In passing I can only underline certain possible axes of
reflections such as:
1) The function of willed or voluntary groups. What do
they fulfill in present day capitalist society in imitation
of political parties and trade unions ( the great models of
this type of organization), and that independent of the
political school to which they refer (including the most
"modern"), whatever their radicalism? ( Radicalism is never an
end in itself, but often a different way of achieving the
same end as in other more legal organizations.)
2) The behavior of such a voluntary organization. It is
independent of its general or particular aim and of its
practice ( authoritarian or "autonomous"). The capitalist
world inevitably defines its function for it ( in relation to
the aims and the practice it has chosen for itself). This
same relationship to a capitalist world imposes upon it a
separation which a partisan of such willed or voluntary
organization would define "despite himself" as follows :**
"the problem of how to relate and activity which is intended
to be conscious to actual history and the problem of the
relationship between revolutionaries and masses both remain
total:"
3) The impossibility of voluntary organizations to develop
themselves, even when the daily practice of struggle
illustrates the very ideas they put forward. More than this,
the development of spontaneous organization leads to the
rejection of willed organizations or their destruction, in
such circumstances, even when these voluntary organizations
assign themselves a role. The consequence is that these
voluntary organizations are increasingly rejected and pushed
towards reformist or capitalist areas and forced to have a
practice which is increasingly in contradiction with their
avowed principles. Just as the above quotation above shows,
it becomes more and more difficult for such organizations
which thus assign a function for themselves to identify with
spontaneous organization and action. Some strive to "revise"
certain parts of their action while keeping others (
theory, violence, exemplary acts, the practice of one's
theory etc.). And yet it isn't a question of revision, but of a
complete challenging by the movement itself of all the
"revolutionary" notions trundled around for decades, even for
over a century now. It is not details which are in question,
but fundamental ideas.
IDEA OF COLLECTIVITY ESSENTIAL
In the distinction which has been made between willed
and spontaneous organization, the idea of collectivity seems
essential. What collectivity are we talking about and what
are the interests around which action and organization are
ordered?
A collectivity can be itself defined as such by those
voluntarily forming it; they make explicit their common
interests, goals to achieve and the means in the collectivity,
not in actions but as preparation to action. Whatever the
dimensions and character of such a collectivity, this feature
characterizes perfectly all voluntary organization. More than
those to whom this behavior is addressed, the collectivity
can only concern itself with (1) the interests of its
participants alone (2) or either defend interests supposedly
common to members and non-members alike (3) or either defend the
interests of its members by domination of non-members, which
immediately creates a community of opposite interests among the
latter ). According to the situation, we would then have for
example, a living community (1) like a commune for example;
a trade union type movement or political party (2) ( many groups
would come under this heading); or a capitalist enterprise (3) (
a producers' co-operative would also come under this heading
for even if it remains exempt from the internal domination of a
minority, it would be forced, in order to function, to have
recourse to the mediation of the market, which supposes a
relationship of domination with the consumers). Forms of
voluntary or willed organization, apparently very different one
from another are in reality all marked by this type of
voluntarist initiative, which is concretely expressed by a
certain type of relation. The consequence of this situation is
that all self willed organizations must , in one way or
another, conform to the imperatives of capitalist society in
which it lives and operates. This is accepted by some, fully
assumed by others, but rejected by yet others who think they can
escape it or simply not think about it. In certain crucial
situations, capitalist enterprise has no other choice, if it
wants to survive, but to do what the movement of capital imposes
upon it. From the moment that it exists as an organization, its
only choice is death or capitalist survival. In other forms, but
in the same inexorable way, all self-willed organization is
tied up in the same binding sheath of imperatives. The
forgetting of, or hiding of this situation or the refusal to
look it in the face creates violent internal conflicts. These
are often hidden behind conflicts of personality or ideology.
For a time they can also be dissimulated behind a facade of
"unity" , which one can always hear being offered, for reasons
of propaganda, to non-members ( from here springs the rule that
inside such organizations internal conflicts are always settled
inside the organization and never in public).
It is possible that such a self-willed collectivity has
derived from a spontaneous organization. This is a frequent
situation following a struggle. Voluntarism here either
consists in seeking to perpetuate either the formal organisms
that the struggle created or keeping up a type of liaison
which the struggle had developed with a specific action in
mind. Such origins in no way preserve the organization thus
developing the characteristics of a self-willed organization.
On the contrary, this origin can make a powerful contribution
in giving the self-willed voluntary organization the
ideological facade necessary for its later actions. The
construction of a new union after a strike is a good example
of this type of thing.
In opposition to the collectivity which defines itself,
the collectivity to which, despite oneself, one belongs,
is defined by others, by the different forms which the real
or formal domination of capital imposes upon us. We belong
not as a result of choice, but by the obligation (constraint)
of the condition in which we find ourselves. Each person is
thus subjugated, enclosed in one (or several) institutional
frameworks where repression is exercised. He escapes, if he
seeks to escape, only to be put in another institutional cage
( prison for example). Even if he leaves his class and the
special framework of that class, it is only to enter another
class where he becomes subject to the special marshalling and
caging of that class. Inside these structures a certain
number of individuals see themselves imposing the same rules
and the same constraints. Cohesion, action, organization come
from the fact that it is impossible to build one's own life, to
self-organize. Everyone whatever his orientations, comes up
against the stumbling block of the same limits, the same walls.
The responses, i.e. the appearance of a precise common
interest, depends on the force and the violence of that
repression, but they are in no way voluntary. They are the
translation of necessity. The obstacles met and the
possibilities offered lead to action in one form of organization
or another. It is this activity itself which produces ideas
about what ought or ought not to be done. Such organization
does not mean formal concerting together or consultation and the
adoption of a defined form of organization. It would be
difficult to describe in terms of structure the generalization
of the May 68 strike in France, the collective action of British
miners in the 1974 strike, the looting of shops in New York in
the more recent power blackout, the extent of absenteeism or
work the day after a national holiday, etc. However, these,
among others, are actions which carry a weight much greater
than many "organized" forms of struggle called into existence by
self-willed organizations. Spontaneous organization can be very
real-it always exists in this non-structured form and apparently
according to the usual criteria, it doesn't "exist" . This
spontaneous organization, in the course of action and according
to the necessities of this action, can give itself well-defined
forms (always transitory). They are but the prolongation of
informal organization which existed before and which can
return afterwards, when the circumstances which led to the
birth of the organization have disappeared.
In the self-willed organization, each participant needs to
know in advance if all the other participants in the
collectivity have the same position as himself. Formal
decisions must be taken to know at any moment if what we are
going to do is in agreement with ground principles and the
aims of the organization. Nothing like this happens in a
spontaneous organization. Action, which is a common procedure
without formal concentration, is woven together across close
links, by a type of communication, more often than not with-out
talk ( it would often be impossible considering the rapidity
of the change of objectives and forms of action ).
Spontaneously, naturally, action directs itself towards
necessary objectives to attain a common point, which a common
oppression assigns to everyone, because it touches each one in
the same way. The same is true for specific organisms which
can arise for precise tasks in the course of this action for
its necessity. The unity of thought and action is the essential
feature of this organization; it is this which during the
action gives rise to other ideas, other objectives, other forms
which perhaps one person or some people formulate, but which
have the same instant enthusiastic approbation of all in the
immediate initiation of action. Often the idea is not
formulated but is understood by all in the form of an
initiation of action in another direction than previously
followed. Often also this initiation of action rises up from
many places translating at the same time the unity of thought
and action in the face of the same repression applied to
identical interests.
While the self-willed organization is either directly or
indirectly submitted to the pressure of the capitalist system
which imposes upon it a line rather than a choice, spontaneous
organization only reveals its action and its apparent forms
openly to everyone, if repression makes necessary defense and
attack over and above that of its daily functioning. Action and
forms will be all the more visible the greater the impact of
these upon society and capital. The place of the collectivity
acting in such a way in the production process will be
determinant.
NO FORMULA FOR STRUGGLE
Any struggle which tries to snatch from capitalism what
it does not want to give has that much more importance in
that it forces capital to cede a part of its surplus value and
reduce its profits. One could think that such a formula would
privilege struggles in firms and factories where there is in
effect a permanent spontaneous organization which arises
directly with its own laws at the heart of the system-the
place of exploitation- taking on then its most open and
clearest forms. But in an age when the redistribution of
revenue plays an important role in the functioning of the
system and its survival, in an age of the real domination of
capital, struggles express the spontaneous organization of
collectivities in places other than factories, shops and
offices resulting in the same final consequences for the system.
Their pathways could be very different and confrontations less
direct but their importance is not less. The insurrection of
East Berlin workers in 1953 was at the beginning a spontaneous
movement against the increasing of work norms. The spontaneous
organization which grew out of this moved the collectivity
involved, a group of building workers, away to a collectivity
of all the workers of East Germany. and the simple
demonstration of a handful of workers away to the attack on
official buildings, the objectives of a simple annulling of a
decree away to the fall of a regime, grass-roots self-
organization away to workers' councils; all this in the space of
two days. The Polish insurrection of June 1976 was only a
protest against price rises; but in two points, the necessity to
show their force on two occasions led in a few hours to the
spontaneous organization of workers to occupy Ursus and block
all communications-a pre-insurrection situation, to set on fire
Party headquarters and to the looting at Radom. The government
immediately gave in and straight away the spontaneous
organization fell back to its former positions. The blackout of
electricity plunged New York into darkness revealing suddenly
the spontaneous organization of a collectivity of "frustrated
consumers" who immediately gave themselves up to looting, but
disappeared once the light was restored. The problem of
absenteeism has already been mentioned. That large groups of
people working at a place have recourse to absenteeism in such
a way that repression becomes impossible, reveals a spontaneous
organization in which the possibilities of each person are
defined by the common perception of a situation, by the
possibilities of each other person. This cohesion will reveal
itself suddenly if the management try to sanction these
practices, through the appearance of a perfectly organized, open
spontaneous struggle. We could cite many, many examples of
similar events in the appearance of wildcat strikes over
anything concerning work speeds and productivity, especially in
Great Britain.
In the examples just quoted spontaneous organization is
entirely self-organization of a collectivity without any
conscious voluntary organization interfering. In looking at them
closer we can see how the constant flux and reflux of action
takes place, from the organization to the aims in the way
described above. But in many other struggles where spontaneous
organization plays an important role, self-willed organization
can co-exist with it, which seems to go in the same direction as
the spontaneous organization. More often than not they do so to
play a repressive role in respect of this organization, which
the normally adequate structures of the capitalist system cannot
assume. This last strike lasting two months by 57.000 Ford auto
workers apparently revealed no form of organization outside the
strike itself. On the contrary, a superficial examination would
make one say that conscious voluntary organization like trade
unions, the shop stewards organizations, even some political
groups played an essential role in the strike. However, this in
no way explains how the strike spontaneously began at Halewood
or the remarkable cohesion of 57,000 workers, or the effective
solidarity of transport workers which led to a total blockage
of all Ford products. The explanation is in the spontaneous
organization of struggle which, if it found expression in
nothing formal and apparent, constantly imposed its presence
and efficacy on all capitalist structures and above all, on the
unions. In the case of Ford, the spontaneous organization was
not seen in particular actions except, and it was singularly
effective in this situation, by absence without fail from the
workplace. In the miners strike of 1974, we find the same
cohesion in a strike also covered by the union, but if it had
stayed there the effectiveness of their struggle would
nevertheless have been reduced because of the existence of
stocks of substitute energy. The offensive action around the
organization of flying pickets across the country revealed a
spontaneous self-organization, even if this self-organization
benefitted from the help of self-willed organization. Without
the effective, spontaneous organization of the miners
themselves, this support would have been reduced to precious
little. In an identical domain, coal mines, we saw a similar
self-organization on the part of American miners last summer
during the U.S. miners' strike.
On the other hand, in a different situation, the 4,000
miners of the iron mines of Kiruna in Sweden went out on
total strike from December 1969 to the end of February 1970.
Their spontaneous organization found expression in a strike
committee elected by the rank and file and excluding all union
representatives. The end of the strike could only be achieved
after the destruction of this committee and the return to forms
of self-organization prior to the struggle itself. The LIP
strike in France in 1973 had an enormous echo among other
workers because 1,200 people dared do an unusual thing: steal
the firms' products and material to pay their wages during the
strike. This was only possible by spontaneous organization of
struggle; but this spontaneous organization was entirely masked
by an internal conscious, voluntary organization ( the Inter-
Union Committee) and external ones (the many committees of
support). In the course of the last years, spontaneous
organization has been little by little brought out, often at the
price of very harsh tensions between two organizations, in the
institutional framework of Capital-one organization formal, the
other informal, except at rare moments. In another dimension,
May 68 in France also saw the arrival of several types of
organization. Much has been said about the self-willed
movement, the 22nd of March Movement, the action committees,
neighborhood committees, worker-student committees etc. Much
less has been said of the informal self-organization of the
struggle which was very strong in the extension of the strike
in a few days, but which folded back on itself just as quickly
without expressing itself in specific organizations or actions,
thus leaving the way free to various conscious voluntary
organizations, for the most part unions or parties.
Italy from 1968 until today and Spain between 1976-77,
saw similar situations developing to those of May 68 in
France, with the co-existence of spontaneous organizations
not only in the face of traditional conscious organizations,
but also concise voluntary organizations of a new type, in a
form adapted to the situation created by the spontaneous
movement. Movements can develop spontaneously in social
categories subject to the same conditions, without all of them
being involved at first, but without being self-willed
organizations for all that. They are the embryo of a greater
spontaneous movement which according to circumstance will
remain at the day to day level or give rise to a formal
organization when it spreads on a much wider scale. Mutinies in
the British, French, German and Russian armies in the 1914-18
war had these characteristics and had very different
consequences. The movement of desertion and resistance to the
Vietnam War in the U.S. Army was something else which became
in the end one of the most powerful agents for the end of that
war. Everyone can try in this way in all movements of struggle
to determine the part played by spontaneous organization and
that played by self-willed organization. It is only a rigorous
delimitation, by no means easy, which allows us to understand
the dynamics of the internal conflicts and struggles carried out
therein. And so the sentence I quoted further back evincing an
unresolved "problem" between "revolutionaries and the masses"
takes on its whole meaning ( certainly not the one the author
intended). The problem is that of a permanent conflict between
"revolutionaries and the masses" , i.e. between self-willed
and spontaneous organization.
Of course this conflict expresses a relationship which
does not the less exist because it is very different from
that which such conscious voluntary organizations would want
it to be. The conflict is maintained to a great extent in the
fact that when, in a struggle, the voluntary organizations
would wish it to be. the conflict is maintained to a great
extent in the fact that when, in a struggle, the voluntary
and the spontaneous organizations co-exist, the relationship
is not the same in both directions. For the spontaneous
organization, the conscious voluntary one can be a temporary
instrument in a stage of action. It only needs the
affirmations of the voluntary organization not to be
resolutely opposed to what the spontaneous one wants for this
to be the case and in such a way that ambiguity exists. It is
often so with a delegate of a union or of various committees
created parallel to spontaneous organization around an idea
or aim. If the spontaneous organization does not find such
an instrument it creates its own temporary organisms to reach
the goal of the moment. If the instrument either refuses the
function the spontaneous organization assigns to it, or
becomes inadequate because the struggle has shifted its
ground and requires other instruments, the voluntary
organization is abandoned. It is the same thing for the defined
form of a specific moment of a spontaneous organization.
MASSES AS SUBJECT/OBJECT
For the self-willed organization, the "masses" , i.e. the
spontaneous organization, including its defined temporary forms,
is an object. That's why they try to achieve in order to apply
it to the role that they have defined themselves. When a
spontaneous organization uses a conscious voluntary one, the
latter tries to maintain the basic ambiguity as long as
possible, while at the same time trying to bend the spontaneous
organization towards its own ideology and objectives. When the
spontaneous organization is abandoned it will try by all the
means in its possession to bring it under its own wing. The
methods used will certainly vary according to the importance of
the voluntary organization and the power it holds in the
capitalist system. Between the barrage of propaganda of certain
organizations and the U.S. union commandos which attack
strikers, for example, there is only this difference of size.
This dimension is even more tragic when the spontaneous
organization creates its own organisms of struggle whose
existence means the death of the conscious voluntary one and the
entire capitalist system along with it. From Social Democratic
Germany to Bolshevik Russia, to the Barcelona of the Anarchist
ministers come the smashing of the workers councils, Kronstadt
and the days of May 1937. Between assemblies, strike
committees, councils and collectivities on the one hand and
self-willed organizations on the other, the frontiers are well
drawn in the same way as those between voluntary and spontaneous
organization itself.
The very creation of spontaneous organization can know
the same fate as the self-willed organization. The
circumstances of a struggle nearly always lead the movement
of spontaneous organization to fold on itself, to return to
more underground forms, more primitive forms one could say,
even though these underground forms would be as rich and as
useful as the others. Here we are often tempted to trace a
hierarchy between various forms of organization when they are
only the relay, one to the other, of the constant adaption to
situation, i.e. to pressure and repression). The shifting of
spontaneous organization leaves behind on the sand without any
life the definite forms they have created. If they don't die
all together and seek to survive by the voluntary action of
certain people, they find themselves exactly in the same
positions as other self-willed organizations. They can even
possibly make a sizeable development in this direction because
they can then constitute a form of voluntary organization, if
the latter has reached a dangerous level for the capitalist
system.
NO RECIPE FROM PAST
In this sense there is no recipe from the past in the
creation of spontaneous organization for its future
manifestation. We cannot say in advance what definite form of
spontaneous organization will borrow temporarily to achieve
its objectives at the moment. At its different levels of
existence and manifestation, spontaneous organization has a
dialectical relationship with all that finds itself submitted
to the rules of the system ( all that which tries to survive
in the system ) and ends up sooner or later by being opposed
to it-including opposition to voluntary self-willed
organizations created to work in its own interests, and
organizations which have sprung from spontaneous
organizations which in the capitalist system build themselves
up into permanent organisms.
To put a conclusion to these few considerations on
organization lead one to believe that a real look at the
problem had been made and that a provisional or definitive
termination could be made. I leave it to the conscious
voluntary organizations to do that. Like the spontaneous
movement of struggle itself, the discussion about it has no
defined frontiers and no conclusions.
CRISIS OF TRADITIONAL ORGANIZATION
It would also be a contradiction of the spontaneous
movement to consider that the necessary schematism of
analysis contains a judgement of any sort of the value of
ideas and a condemnation of the action of self-willed
voluntary organization. Individuals involved in such
organizations are there because the system of ideas offered
corresponds to the level of the relationship between their
experiences and those of the people who surround them and those
of which they could have knowledge. The only issue in question
is to situate their place in such an organization, the place of
that organization in capitalist society, the function of this in
events in which the organization may be involved. These are
precisely the circumstances which through the shock impact of
experiences leads one person to do what his dominant interest
dictates at a given moment. In order to better situate the
question, let us look at the crises of "big" voluntary
organizations because they are well known and badly camouflaged
( and always recurring ); for example in the French Communist
Party. In the last few years internal crises have been
caused in the French C.P. by the explosion of spontaneous
organizations in such events as the Hungarian insurrection
(1956), the struggle against the Algerian War (1956-62) and May
68.
Spontaneous organization does not affirm itself all at
once, in a way which could be judged according to the
traditional schema of conscious voluntary organization. It
remoulds itself endlessly and, according to the necessities of
struggle, seems to disappear here, in order to reappear there
in another form. This uncertain and fleeting character is at
one and the same time a mark of the strength of repression
(the strength of capitalism) and of a period of affirmation
which has existed for decades and which may be very long. In
such an intermediary period uncertainties find expression in
the limited experiences of each of us, the parceling up of ideas
and actions, and the temptation is to maintain an "acquisition"
of struggle. The same uncertainty is often interpreted as a
weakness leading to the necessity to find ourselves with others
having the same limited experience of self-willed voluntary
organizations. But such organizations do nevertheless differ a
lot from those of the past. When looking at what were the
"great" voluntary organizations of half a century ago and more,
some people regret the dispersion and atomization of such
organizations. But they only express, however, the decline of
the conscious voluntary organization and the rising of the
spontaneous organization, -a transitional stage where the two
forms of organization rub shoulders and confront each other in a
dialectical relationship.
It is for each person to place himself, if he can and when
he can, in the relationship of this process, trying to
understand that his disillusions are the riches of a world to
come and his failures are the victory of something else much
greater than what he must abandon ( and which has little to
do with the temporary "victory of the class enemy" ). Here
the conclusion is the beginning of a much greater debate
which is that of the idea of revolution and of the
revolutionary process itself, a debate which is in effect
never posed as a preamble to spontaneous organization, but
which arises, as action, as a condition and an end of action
in action itself.