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Title: Communist measures
Author: Leon de Mattis
Date: 2. January 2014.
Language: en
Topics: communisation, direct action, class struggle, abolition
Source: http://sicjournal.org/communist-measures-2/
Notes: Published in SIC #2 (January 2014). Leon de Mattis considers class struggle, and specifically when and how struggles can have communist content.

Leon de Mattis

Communist measures

Communisation is not a prophecy. It is not the declaration of some

future or other. Communisation is nothing but a certain perspective on

the class struggles taking place right now. The task is to conceive,

starting from those struggles but proceeding beyond their limits and

their contradictions, what a communist revolution could be today.

Thinking a communist horizon requires us to begin from the class

relation as it is, that is, as it has been transformed by the period of

restructuring; and to understand why that which was in the past the

bearer of a communist vision cannot today play the same role, in any

case in the same way.[1]

Up until the end of the 70s the proletariat were seen as the dominated

class which, in order to bring about communism, only had to become

dominant. Of course, there were many ways of conceiving that, and those

various conceptions were often antagonistic towards each other. There

were also approaches which wanted to break with this dominant

conception, while all the same having to position themselves in relation

to it.[2] And in the end that way of looking at things could not be

overcome, not because the ideas of the epoch were universally mistaken

but simply because the reality of the times—the affirmation of a

proletariat which was socially more and more strong—was obvious to

everyone.

The debates which opposed revolution to reform, the immediacy of

communism to the transitional period (which could precede or follow the

victory of the proletariat) all belong to this shared paradigm. But it

is just that which is put into question, dynamically, in the current

moment.[3]

The disappearance of a strong affirmation of the class and the erosion

of the workers’ movement is the symptom of a major turning-point in the

class struggle. Class-belonging no longer seems to be the basis of a

shared identity or of a possible power, but seems rather, on the

contrary, to be an element that is foreign to everyone’s life: the

hostile embodiment of the dominating power of capital.[3]

Certain theories have concluded that the notion of class struggle no

longer works to characterise the revolt in today’s world. The

persistence of capitalist social relations and of all their

determinations (value, for starters) is however the sign that the

classes have certainly not disappeared. The theory of communisation does

not, therefore, abandon the theory of classes, but thinks it in the era

of the collapse of the workers’ movement. To give an overview one could

say that communisation advances three essential ideas: first, the

immediacy of communism (that is, the absence of any period of transition

at all;) second, communism as means and end of struggle; and, lastly,

the destruction of the class relation and therefore of the proletariat

by the proletariat itself. It is on this last point that one has to

place the emphasis in order to understand how the theory of

communisation links an element of the current class struggles (the end

of the affirmation of the proletariat and the decline of workers’

identity) to a conception of the revolution (the destruction of the

class relation by the proletariat.) This vision, which is a little

paradoxical, nevertheless turns out to be extremely fruitful if one

wants to seek out within the current struggles that which, starting from

now, could be the harbinger of the destruction of capitalist social

relations. The revolution is the destruction of the class relation,

which is immediately also the destruction of the proletariat—which is to

say that the revolution is the activity of a proletariat in the course

of its own self-abolition. And we can already observe, in today’s class

struggles, situations in which a proletariat which is striving to defend

its condition is paradoxically driven to attack it. In this way the

class struggle appears in its fundamental ambiguity, a reflection of

nothing other than a contradiction internal to the capitalist social

forms themselves: the class struggle can just as well be the

recapitulation of class relations as their destruction. So—it is by

linking these two ideas (that there are aspects of the current class

struggle which drive workers to attack their own condition; and the

vision of revolution as proletarian action consisting in proletarian

self-destruction) that the theory of communisation proposes to think

communism.

The role of theory is not to reveal to struggles what they ‘are’ in

their heart of hearts.[4] The point is not to go about trying to ‘raise

consciousness’. Thinking revolution and communism is not a magic formula

which would transform the current struggles into something they are not.

The task is to manage, to link theoretically, current struggles with the

possible production of communism, while understanding that this is

something that is at stake within struggles, and not a matter only for

the future. Without the thinking of revolution, the horizon of struggles

is necessarily that of capital. In the course of an ambivalent class

struggle, which is at the same time the renewal and the putting into

question of the class relation, the absence of a revolutionary horizon

obviously contributes to the first pole, to the renewal of the class

relation. This is reflected, in the struggle, in the persistence of

mediations which express this renewal (union hierarchies, the media,

spokespeople and negotiations, amongst others) or, when those mediations

have given way in the face of the intensity of the struggle, by their

decisive re-emergence at the moment of the return to normality.

Working out a theory of revolution and of communism is therefore an

activity carried out on the basis of struggles and for the sake of those

struggles. The success of such an activity is obviously not in any

degree guaranteed. The generalisation of a contemporary theory of

revolution—that is to say its existence beyond a restricted circle of

theoreticians and militants—will not take place unless it is adequate

enough to what, within struggles, might express the breakdown of the

class relation. To the extent that this theory involves taking a stand

within the matters at hand, it is necessarily a wager. A rational one,

since it involves the production of a certain understanding of struggles

by the struggles themselves; but a wager, nevertheless.

Communism as a process, not an alternative world

Communism is no more a prophecy than communisation is. The possibility

of speaking about communism is at stake within current struggles. That

is why it is indispensable to seek out what, within them, could be the

harbinger of communism—rather than dreaming about a state far off in the

future which humanity might one day be able to attain. Or, to put it

differently: what is essential for the reconstruction of a communist

horizon is above all the discovery of the ways in which communism might

be able to emerge from the present situation—rather than describing what

communism might be as a worked-out form of organisation.[5]

But speaking of communism in the present must not lead us into an error

that has a certain currency nowadays, that of taking ourselves to be

able to find, here and there in the interstices of capital’s society,

communism in gestation or even already part-realised. Communism cannot

exist by itself in the current world, neither as an existential or a

political choice nor as a way of life.[6]

One must, therefore, think communism in the present tense, but not as a

present state of things. That is what the theory of communisation lets

us do. In communisation, the production of communism and communism

itself run together. Communisation is a struggle against capital by

communism, that is to say that for it communism appears simultaneously

as the means and the end. That is why a vision of the production of

communism is for it at the same time a vision of communism itself, but a

communism grasped through the prism of its production. We can not

respond to the question ‘what is communism’? by describing its supposed

completed form but only by evoking the forms in which it could be

produced.

That said, the theory of communisation does encounter certain

difficulties. Since communism is the means of communisation, it is

necessary that in a certain fashion it be brought into play from the

beginning of the process; but at the same time we’re maintaining that

communisation is a process within which communism is produced in the

course of period which unfolds over time, and which takes time.

This question was resolved in the traditional Marxist conception by the

notion of the ‘period of transition’. The social form that was to be

produced in the course of the revolution, and as its ultimate result,

was not to be directly communism but an intermediary stage, socialism.

Communisation breaks with the notion of the period of transition because

communism is a means of the struggle itself. So for it communism is

necessarily immediate, even if it remains only partial.

Communisation therefore takes on certain seemingly-paradoxical forms:

simultaneously immediate and extended in time, simultaneously total and

partial and so on. To be able to think communism, it is necessary to

find an answer to these questions.

The notion of a communist measure

It is at this point that the notion of a ‘communist measure’—an

elementary form of the production of communism—comes in.

The production of communism is nothing but the multiplication and the

generalisation of communist measures taken at this or that point in the

course of the confrontation with capital; measures whose objective is

precisely to make of the enactment of communism a means of struggle.

Communism may not be immediate, but within the communist measure it

seems to be so. Within the communist measure there are not any stages.

There, communism is already in play—even if it cannot be thought of as

completely realised. The communist measure makes the gap between the

immediacy of communism and the time that is required for its realisation

disappear, without in the same moment abolishing the necessity of this

time. And this conception lets us avoid thinking about communisation

itself as an intermediary period between the present and a communist

future.

The term ‘measure’ should not lead us into error.[7] A communist measure

is not a prescription, a law, or an order. It does not install any rule

which everyone would have to submit to. It does not decree a general and

impersonal norm. The communist measure, by definition, implies from the

first moment those who carry it out. And it is not a declaration of

intentions, either, or in any case it could not only be that. The

communist measure is a deed. Getting off on the sound of your own voice

proclaiming the abolition of value, of social class or of capitalism is

not a communist measure. Sharing out resources seized from the enemy, or

producing in common whatever the struggle against capital needs—that

could be.

A communist measure is a collective measure, undertaken in a specific

situation with the ways and means which the communist measure selects

for itself. The forms of collective decision making which result in

communist measures vary according to the measures: some imply a large

number of people, others very many fewer; some suppose the existence of

means of coordination, others do not; some are the result of long

collective discussions, of whatever sort (general assemblies, various

sorts of collective, discussions in more or less diffuse groups) while

others might be more spontaneous… What guarantees that the communist

measure is not an authoritarian or hierarchical one is its content, and

not the formal character of the decision which gave rise to it.

The communist measure is an example of the way the production of

communism is organised. It is not direct democracy or

self-organisation.[8]

Such a measure does not necessarily have authors, or in any case

identifiable ones: communist measures which generalise can very well

have been undertaken simultaneously, here and there, since they are,

simply enough, possible solutions to a problem which poses itself

everywhere, that is to say, generally. Their origin thus rapidly becomes

impossible to locate. Any body which arrogates to itself the power to

prescribe communist measures for others, by that very act, instantly

negates, the possibility that it can undertake a communist measure.

A communist measure is not, all by itself, communism. Communism is not

achieved by one solitary measure, nor indeed by a single series of

measures. But then again communism is nothing but the effect of a huge

number of communist measures—the onset of which characterises the period

of communisation—which fold themselves into each other and which

ultimately succeed in giving to the overall organisation of the world an

altogether different quality. There is not necessarily any kind of

continuity; it is perfectly reasonable to anticipate both advances and

disordering retreats before a tipping-point is reached when the rupture

has become so profound that class society no longer possesses the means

to keep itself going. Communism and class society are mutually

exclusive. Before the tipping-point, communist measures are by their

essence ephemeral: they exist only within the space of the struggle, and

are snuffed out if they do not generalise themselves.[9] They are simply

moments when overcoming is possible but not yet secured. The production

of communism is not necessarily a story told all at once. One can

perfectly well imagine that one day a communising dynamic will unleash

itself, violently recomposing communist measures taken in the course of

particularly radical and extended struggles, and that nevertheless this

dynamic will be defeated. And that it will be reborn, later and

elsewhere, and conclude by destroying class society.

Generalisation does not mean uniformity. There are many ways for a

communist measure to extend itself. It can of course be a question of

rallying to some or other existing communist initiative (dedicated to

production in common or to coordination…) just as it can be of a

adoption, sometimes in an adapted form, of measures already put into

practice elsewhere. Equally, the communist measure can easily install

itself within practices, experiences, and solidarities which pre-exist

it—while being at the same time a creative rupture with these

inheritances in virtue of the potentiality which the generalisation of

the production of communism can bring into being.[10]

It is important to understand the process whereby a communist measure

generalises. If the communist measure generalises itself, it is because

in a given situation it corresponds to whatever the situation demands,

and it is thus one of the forms (perhaps not the only possible one)

which respond to the necessities imposed by the situation (intense

struggle against capital). The moment of communisation is a situation of

chaotic confrontation during which the proletarians undertake an

incalculable number of initiatives in order to be able to carry out

their struggle. If some of these initiatives extend themselves, it is

because they correspond to a need which exceeds the different particular

configurations of the confrontation underway. Choosing amongst the

measures which generalise and the others takes place under the burden of

a social relation in the course of collapsing under the blows of its own

contradictions. And it is only at that level, the level of

generalisation, that one can speak of measures ‘imposed by the very

necessities of the struggle’,[11] or indeed of the revolution as

‘immediate necessity in a given situation’ undertaken by proletarians

‘constrained by their material conditions’.[12] It is in this respect

that the theory of communisation is not deterministic and allows us to

understand the production of communism as an activity.[14]

Communist measures and the production of communism

The communist measure is the positive aspect of a communism which

theoretically we are only able to grasp negatively. Communism is the

annihilation of all currently existing forms of domination and

exploitation. Communism defines itself as a series of abolitions:

abolition of value, of classes, of gender and race dominations and so

on. Said otherwise, if it is true that our attempts to describe

communism are restricted to weak definitions (we know what it is that

communism abolishes, but we do not know what it will concretely

resemble) we have however a positive vision of its production: the

communist measure.

The communist character of a measure derives from its capacity to

reinforce the struggle against capital while all the while being the

expression of its negation. It is, therefore, a definite and concrete

way of putting into play the overcoming of exchange, money, value, the

State, hierarchy, and race, class and gender distinctions—and so on.

This list is presented in no particular order of priority because of the

singular capacity of a communist measure to attack everything which

makes up capitalist social relations. We know that communism is the

overcoming of exchange, value and money; but we do not know how a world

without exchange, value or money could function. We know that communism

is the abolition of classes, but we do not know how a classless

univeralism could function. A communist measure does not answer such

questions in an overarching or global way, but tries instead to respond

to them where they develop, and in the framework of the necessity of

struggle.

Thanks to the communist measure, we understand that communism is not

something which is all that foreign to us. Communism rests, to a very

significant extent, on very simple things many of which are already able

to exist: sharing, co-operation, the absence of socially-distributed

roles and functions, and immediate and direct social relations, for

instance. However, something which exists on a secondary basis does not

have the same significance, qualitatively speaking, as that which exists

in its generality (one thinks for example of value, and of the way in

which its nature was changed by the emergence of the capitalist mode of

production). That is why the concept of generalisation is essential. No

content is communist in itself (even if, on the other hand, some can

very well be anti-communist in themselves). The very same measure could

be or could not be communist, according to its context: it is not

communist if it remains isolated, but becomes so if it generalises. It

is for that reason that it is necessary to understand that an isolated

communist measure is not a communist measure, even if it is true that no

communist measure is able to break all by itself its isolation; that

cannot take place except by the enacting of other communist measures by

other collectives.

Generalisation cannot by any means be the only guarantee of the

communist character of a measure. A measure which does not generalise by

one means or another, or anyway which does not resonate with other

measures underway, cannot be communist. But at the same time it is of

course perfectly possible that measures which are not communist at all

generalise. One should obviously exclude, here, everything which is an

initiative of the capitalist enemy, in the form of laws, prescriptions,

orders or coercive state control. But on the side of the revolution

itself the various contradictions, which result from the complex

segmentation of the proletariat (the unity created in the struggle is

always problematic and it can never be taken for granted) and from the

often confused and contradictory setting for any particular struggle,

can engender counter-revolutionary dynamics which have, nevertheless,

the form of the revolution, that is, the form of measures which

generalise.[13] To repeat oneself: no communist measure is communist in

itself, and the communist character of a measure derives solely from its

overall relationship with the struggle of which it is a part. Some

measures long retain, during the chaotic and non-normative process of

the insurrection, an ambiguous character. Equally, others which may have

been communist at a certain moment can very well become

counter-revolutionary in response to the deepening of certain

problematics which emerge in proportion to the disintegration of the

capitalist social relation. That is how the revolution within the

revolution can reveal itself: by open combat between measures that are

communist and those which are no longer.

Communist measures and insurrection cannot be separated. Communist

measures are absolutely opposed to whatever, within the class struggle,

enables the integration of the proletariat as a class belonging to

capital. Such measures break with legality, with mediating institutions

and with habitual, admissible forms of conflict. You can count on the

State to react with the violence and the cruelty which is customary to

it. Communist measures are a confrontation with the forces of

repression, and in this case too victory can be won only by a dynamic of

rapid generalisation.

So there is necessarily a limit point with the generalisation of

communist measures, a quickly-achieved tipping point at which the

objective of the struggle can no longer be the amelioration or the

preservation of a certain condition within capital, but must instead

become the destruction of the entirety of the capitalist world—which

becomes in this moment, definitively, the enemy.[14] From that point

onwards, amongst all the things which are necessary for the production

of communism, there is confrontation with State forces vowed to the

defence of the old world—then the total destruction of all state

structures.

Communist measures and activity

No-one consciously constructs communism in its totality. But communist

measures are not undertaken unwittingly: the choice to have recourse to

them within a struggle necessarily involves an awareness that they

contribute to the destruction of capitalist social relations, and that

this destruction will come to be one of the objectives of the struggle.

It is the case, of course, that there is no separation between the

necessities of the struggle and the construction of communism. Communism

is realised on the occasion of the struggle, and within its context. But

the choice of a communist measure, considered in isolation, does not

impose itself because the struggle has left no other way forward than to

undertake it: communism is not what is left over when one can no longer

do anything else.

Communism is produced: that means that it is not the effect of a pure

act of will, nor the mere consequence of circumstances which make any

other outcome impossible. Every communist measure is the effect of a

particular will. This will does not at all need to take as its object

the creation of communism in its most general sense, but only in its

immediate aspect, local and useful for the struggle. So the universal

adoption of the communist idea as a kind of general, abstract principle

to be realised is not a necessary precondition for the concrete

production of communism. On the other hand, the social activity of the

production of communism has its own consciousness; that is to say that

in a period of communisation, when communist measures are linking up and

becoming widespread, the overall pattern of what is being established

becomes obvious to everyone.

There are, of course, ‘conditions’ for the production of communism.

There is a struggle, which is class struggle, expressing both the

breakdown of the capitalist class relation and the possibility of its

regeneration. At the same time included in the negation of capital’s

fundamental social forms (a negation which those very forms ceaselessly

put into play), is the vision of the possibility of its own overcoming.

The activity of the production of communism must nevertheless understand

itself as an activity, that is as something which is not induced

mechanically by its preconditions. There is no necessity within the

struggle which imposes the production of communism, leaving no other

option.

What makes it possible to make communism effective is activity. At the

level of the single communist measure, this activity is necessarily

encountered as will, consciousness, project (collective will, of

course). But the generalisation of communist measures exceeds all will,

because even while each measure taken individually is an action, the

overall set of communist measures is beyond the grasp of the will of

those who undertake them. The more the activity intensifies, and the

more it consists in the production of diverse and multivalent measures,

the higher the probability will be that these measures will fulfill the

necessities of the global production of communism.

What is more, since this activity really is an activity, it changes the

conditions within which it develops. That is: the more that communism is

produced, the more it increases the potential for its own production.

That is all that is meant by the concept of a communising dynamic. The

first communist measures which generalise themselves demonstrate through

their generalisation itself that they can be means of struggle; but at

the same time they open up possible routes towards the overcoming of the

specificity and of the constrains of the struggle itself. Measures which

undertake the sharing-out of resources seized from the enemy open the

way towards measures which undertake the satisfaction of needs by

communist means.[17] Measures involving local co-operation open the way

towards co-operation on a larger scales.

This indicates the great strategic importance of the first communist

measures.[15] If they succeed in providing an adequate and prompt

response to the problems which arise in a particular struggle, and if

for that reason they are able to generalise, then a dynamic can be

unleashed which makes of their expansion the motor of their ever-greater

expansion. The role of communist theory, which devotes itself not to

legislating what must be done but to making it possible to name what was

done (that is, the undertaking of communist measures) is therefore

considerable.

The big mistake would be to imagine any sort of mode of struggle as a

‘communist measure’. Communist measures indisputably presuppose a depth

and an extension of the class struggle beyond the ordinary extent

achieved by the common run of struggles. Communist measures therefore

only receive their significance within the framework of a communising

dynamic which rapidly draws them beyond their timid beginnings.

By definition it is impossible to construct a model for the communist

measure. But one can nevertheless offer a few hypotheses, so long as one

properly understands their function. The point is not to realise a

prophecy, but to clarify our current theoretical understanding of

communism. Hypotheses concerning communist measures derive directly from

the manner in which the current epoch enables us to conceive of

communism. All conceptions of this sort are, like the era which has

given birth to them, eminently mortal and destined to be overcome.

Likely to be communist, then, are measures taken, here or there, in

order to seize means which can be used to satisfy the immediate needs of

a struggle. Likely to be communist also are measures which participate

in the insurrection without reproducing the forms, the schemas of the

enemy. Likely to be communist are measures which aim to avoid the

reproduction within the struggle of the divisions within the proletariat

which result from its current atomisation. Likely to be communist are

measures which try to eliminate the dominations of gender and of race.

Likely to be communist are measures which aim to co-ordinate without

hierarchy. Likely to be communist are measures which tend to strip from

themselves, one way or another, all ideology which could lead to the

re-establishment of classes. Likely to be communist are measures which

eradicate all tendencies towards the recreation of communities which

treat each other like strangers or enemies.

[3]‘Dynamically’ means that the survival of a few residual traces, not

yet totally dissolved, of the old workers’ movement is not a serious

objection to the current thesis.

[14] This functioning is not specific to the period of communisation.

All widespread forms of social activity, that is all those which

traverse the social body, operate in the same way—in contrast to the

centralising and unifying activity of hierarchical or Stately

structures. The practices of contemporary struggles can already in this

way extend and generalise themselves, to their own proper extent.

[19] ‘Strategic’ should not be taken to mean that there is a strategy

for the extension and the generalisation of communist measures; such a

strategy could not exist. ‘Strategic’ means here that the first measures

must be as adequate as possible to a given situation, while at the same

time being a concrete instance of the use of communism as a means of

struggle.

[1] The ability to think a communist horizon is one of the things at

stake within the struggles themselves. To be convinced of that it should

suffice to review the history of the last thirty years, a period during

which the question of communism as good as vanished from the radar. This

obliteration was not a coincidence; it was the direct consequence of a

defeat, of the vanquishing of the contestation that took place in the

’60s and ’70s.

[2] There is been some controversy lately over the question of the

novelty or otherwise of the theory of communisation, in which some play

has been made of the fact that what is affirmed in that theory can

already be found here and there in previous periods. But the question of

novelty cannot be posed for each assertion taken separately, but only of

the way in which those elements, perhaps already thought or expressed

some time before, are brought into relation with one another and linked

to the contemporary period.

[3] For more details, see ‘What is communisation?’ Sic no. 1, of which

this text is a sequel.

[4] The discussion in this text will often revolve around ‘struggles’.

This plural, which has a certain currency these days, is one of the

things that shows up the end of the period of the proletariat’s

affirmation. The struggles are so many different aspects of the class

struggle which today it is necessary to attempt to grasp in its full

heterogeneity.

[5] We are not going to get into the controversy over whether or not

communism could one day be described as ‘finished’ (even only

relatively) or if it will never be anything other than the process of

its production—for the simple reason that none of that changes a thing.

On the one hand it is unavoidable for us to conceive of communism as a

stage to be achieved when the destruction of current social relations

shall have become definitive; if we did not, we would hardly have any

way of differentiating it from an existential choice within capitalism.

But on the other hand, in the position we find ourselves in we cannot

speak of communism any other way than as a process. There is no doubt

that there is an essential difference between the period of the

production of communism during the struggle against capital and the

period in which capitalism has been destroyed; but we’ve got no

theoretical tools to describe the second period other than vague

abstractions.

[6] From which follows the critique of alternativism in general. See

‘Reflections concerning the Call’, Meeting no. 2, reproduced in

Communization and its Discontents, Ed. Benjamin Noys, Minor

Compositions, Wivenhoe/New York/Port Watson

[7] Instead of the expression ‘communist measure’ one could just as well

have used ‘communist initiative.

[8] There is no way of determining in advance the way in which communist

measures are taken. It is by reference to its content as a communist

measure that it is possible to assure oneself that it is not a way in

which a domination, a hierarchy or an authority might be

reestablished—and not by applying some democratic formalism or other to

the decision-making process. And it is not ‘self-‘organisation, either.

Self-organisation is certainly, in the current moment, necessary for the

existence of struggles when they venture beyond the cramped times and

forms of legalised and unionised struggles. But the communist measure is

a break with self-organisation, since such a measure involves a passage

beyond partial struggles which need to organise themselves around their

specific objective.

[9] Generalisation of communist measures corresponds in the first place

to the generalisation of the struggles within which they were born and

without which they cannot survive.

[10] Such a potentiality expresses itself as much in the multiplication

of material possibilities (with the destruction of the State and the

seizure of the forces of capital) as in the sphere of representations

and of the imaginary—all of which are in practice indivisible.

[11] Sic no. 1, Editorial.

[12] ‘Crisis and communisation,’ Peter Åström, Sic no. 1. In the

production of the first issue of Sic a debate took place concerning

whether or not Åstrom’s article employed formulas that were too

deterministic. It is possible to find traces of this debate on pages 38

and 39 of the journal.

[13] For an uneasy and tormented presentation of these contradictions on

the side of the revolution, see the articles of Bernard Lyon (Meeting

and Sic no. 1).

[14] As we’ve seen since the beginning of this article, the class

struggle is ambivalent. It is simultaneously a struggle within

capitalism and a struggle which heralds its destruction, a struggle for

the defence of a certain position within capitalism and a struggle

against that condition. The proletariat, in its struggle, oscillates

between its integration and its disintegration. The communist measure

builds towards a break with that ambivalence, and makes of the struggle

of the proletariat a struggle against capital as a system; a struggle in

the course of which the proletariat bit-by-bit dissolves itself. But it

is only when communisation has already become somewhat overt that this

dissolution can become obvious. It is not possible really to talk of

anticapitalist or revolutionary struggle except from the moment when

communism begins to be positively produced.

[15] Needs themselves transformed by the struggle underway.