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Title: Against Domestication Author: Jacques Camatte Date: 1973 Language: en Topics: capitalism, class struggle, violence Source: Retrieved on December 3, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm Notes: Published: In French in Invariance Année VI, Série II, no. 3, 1973. This translation Falling Sky Books, Kitchener, Canada in 1981. Transcription from the John Gray website. Markup by Rob Lucas, 2006. Translation: David Loneragan. Translators note in first edition: Dedicated to Rose and to all my friends in London
The time we are now living through is without doubt the most critical
period capitalist society has ever known. All the features which we
associate with the classic crisis now exist as a permanent state of
affairs, though production itself has not been affected, except to a
limited extent in certain countries. Social relations and traditional
consciousness are decomposing all around us, while at the same time each
institution in society proceeds to ensure its survival by recuperating
the movement which opposes it. (An obvious example here is the catholic
church, which has lost count of all the âmodernizationsâ it has
embraced). One would think that the violence and torture which is now
endemic everywhere would have people mobilized and up in arms against
it, but instead it continues to flourish on a world scale. Indeed, the
situation today makes the âbarbarismâ of the Nazis seem in comparison
rather unprofessional, quite archaic in fact. All the conditions would
seem to be ripe; there should be revolution. Why then is there such
restraint? What is to stop people from transforming all these crises and
disasters, which are themselves the result of the latest mutation of
capital, into a catastrophe for capital itself?
The explanation for this is to be found in the domestication of
humanity, which comes about when capital constitutes itself as a human
community. The process starts out with the fragmentation and destruction
of human beings, who are then restructured in the image of capital;
people are turned into capitalist beings, and the final outcome is that
capital is anthropomorphised. The domestication of humanity is closely
bound up with another phenomenon which has intensified even further the
passivity of human beings: capital has in effect âescapedâ. Economic
processes are out of control and those who are in a position to
influence them now realize that in the face of this they are powerless:
they have been completely outmanoeuvered. At the global level, capitalâs
escape is evident in the monetary crisis;[1] overpopulation, pollution
and the exhaustion of natural resources. The domestication of humanity
and the escape of capital are concepts which can explain the mentality
and activity of those who claim to be revolutionaries and believe that
they can intervene to hasten the onset of revolution: the fact is that
they are playing roles which are a part of the old world. The revolution
always eludes them and when there is any kind of upheaval they see it as
something external to them, which they have to chase after in order to
be acknowledged as ârevolutionariesâ.
For a considerable time, human beings have, strictly speaking, been
outstripped by the movement of capital which they are no longer able to
control. This explains why some people think that the only solution is
flight into the past, as with the fashionable preoccupation with
mysticism, zen, yoga and tantraism in the U.S. Others would rather take
refuge in the old myths which reject the total and all-pervading tyranny
of science and technology. (Often this is all combined with the use of
some drug which gives the illusion of the rapid arrival of a world
different from the horror we are now living through.[2]) On the other
hand, there are people who say that only science and technology can be
relied upon to provide the answers â which would explain why certain
women in the feminist movement are able to envisage their emancipation
through parthenogenesis or by the production of babies in incubators.[3]
There are others who believe they can fight against violence by putting
forward remedies against aggressiveness, and so on. These people all
subscribe, in a general way, to the proposition that each problem
presupposes its own particular scientific solution. They are therefore
essentially passive, since they take the view that the human being is a
simple object to be manipulated. They are also completely unequipped to
create new interhuman relationships (which is something they have in
common with the adversaries of science); they are unable to see that a
scientific solution is a capitalist solution, because it eliminates
humans and lays open the prospect of a totally controlled society.[4]
We now come to the category of people who feel that they have to âdo
somethingâ: they are now having to realize that their understanding of
the situation is totally inadequate, and their efforts to conceal this
fact only makes their powerlessness more obvious. The âsilent majorityâ,
who make up the rest, are permeated with the belief that it is pointless
to do anything, because they simply have no perspective. Their silence
is not consent pure and simple, but rather evidence of their incapacity
to intervene in any way. The proof of this is that when they are
mobilized, it is never for something but against it. Their particular
passivity is therefore negative.
It is important to note that the two groups referred to above â the
activists and the silent majority â cannot be catalogued simply as left
and right: the old political dichotomy no longer operates here. The
confusion which this raises is nevertheless important in relation to the
attitude taken towards science, since in the past it was people on the
left who were very committed to science, whereas now it is being
condemned by the New Left (in the United States for example). The
leftright dichotomy lives on, however, among the old regroupements, the
parties of the left and right and all the rackets of the past, but these
oppositions have all ceased to matter: in one way or another they each
defend capital equally. The most active of all are the various communist
parties because they defend capital by espousing exactly the same
scientific forms and rational structures which capital uses to maintain
itself.
All the movements of the left and right are functionally the same in as
much as they all participate in a larger, more general movement towards
the destruction of the human species. Whether people stay confined
within certain obsolete strategies and forms, or whether they submit to
the mechanisms of technology â either way the result is the same.
Historically, the categories of left and right seem to emerge as a
duality at the beginning elf the nineteenth century when the capitalist
mode of production was beginning to exert its real domination over the
process of production, and was becoming a true social force. Thus
certain people like Carlyle found themselves in opposition to the
apologists of capital,[5] but it was left to Marx to go further: he
affirmed the necessity of developing productive forces (and therefore
science and technology as well), and at the same time denounced their
negative effects on people in the immediate situation. But he thought
that all this would eventually lead to a contradiction such that the
development of productive forces would no longer be possible without the
destruction of the capitalist mode of production. Thereafter these
forces would be directed by people themselves, and alienation would
cease to exist. But this was to presuppose that capital would not be
able to become truly autonomous, that it could not escape from the
constraints of the social and economic base on which it is built: the
law of value, the exchange of capital and labour power, the rigorous
general equivalent (gold), and so on.
By simply having interiorized the social base on which it is built,
capital has become autonomous, from which point it has then been able to
make its escape. The headlong plunge of its development over a number of
years has now let loose grave dangers for humanity and for the whole of
nature. Not even the keen-witted experts and the droning old bores can
remain aloof any longer from the dangers that now confront us. To a
certain degree, they are even obliged to join in the company of those
who talk in terms of an apocalyptic future. The apocalypse is
fashionable because our world is nearing its end, a world in which human
beings, in spite of all the evidence of their weakness and degradation,
had always remained the norm, the reference point of the world. But
having been presented with the fact that God is dead, we now hear the
proclamation of the death of the human being. Both God and humans yield
in turn to science, which is at once the goddess and servant of capital:
science presents itself in todayâs world as the study of mechanisms of
adaptation which will assimilate human beings and nature into the
structure of capitalâs productive activity. All the signs indicate that
it is those who are least destroyed as people, and particularly young
people, who now find themselves unable to accept this onslaught of
adaptation and domestication; hence they are impelled to refuse the
system.
The process of domestication is sometimes brought about violently, as
happens with primitive accumulation; more often it proceeds insidiously
because revolutionaries continue to think according to assumptions which
are implicit in capital and the development of productive forces, and
all of them share in exalting the one divinity, science. Hence
domestication and repressive consciousness have left our minds
fossilized more or less to the point of senility; our actions have
become rigidified and our thoughts stereotyped. We have been the
soulless frozen masses fixated on the post, believing all the time that
we were gazing ahead into the future. But at the time of May/June â68, a
new life erupted and the movement of growth towards communism was taken
up again. No new theory was produced, nor did any new modes of action
appear. The important fact was that the struggle had a new aim. It had
nothing to do with politics, ideology, science or even social science
(the latter having been totally discredited). Rather, it was a specific
and vital need asserted against this society and independently of it: to
end the passivity imposed by capital, to rediscover communication
between people and to unleash free creativity and unrestrained
imagination in a movement of human becoming.
With the advent of May/June â68 everything changed and everything has
kept on changing ever since. This is why it is not possible to
understand the lycée insurrection of 1973 (discussed below) and its
possible potential except in relation to this earlier movement.
According to our analysis of it, the activity of May/June â68 was clear
evidence that revolution had positively re-emerged, signifying the
beginning of a new revolutionary cycle. But our argument here proceeded
according to a classist analysis: thus we went on to declare that the
May movement would result in the proletariat being recalled to its class
base. More than this, we found in the events of that period confirmation
of our belief that the revolution would follow a course of development
along lines laid down by Marx. But in point of fact, the first classes
to rise up in 1968 were the social strata closest to the established
society, made up of people whose objective interests were closely
aligned with those of the state. The oppressed classes followed on
later, and it was they who radically resolved the contradictions that
the other social strata wanted only to reform. Now the course of
development followed by the English and French revolutions provided the
underlying substance from which Marxâs thought was moulded. Thus in the
case of the French revolution, the nobility intervened in the situation
in the very early stages, this being the famous noblesâ revolt which
took place some years before 1789, which picked up and aided the
struggle of he bourgeoisie (at the same time preparing the way for
enlightened despotism). There then followed the bourgeois strata less
tied to the state, which formed, as Kautsky remarked, a kind of
intelligentsia. Only then, with the failure of reform, the internal
collapse of the system and the fall of the monarchy, were the peasants
and artisans drawn in (the fourth estate, the future proletariat), and
it was they who created the final decisive break and ensured that there
would be no turning back. Without them, the revolution, in as much as it
involved a change in the mode of production, would have taken much
longer. In Russia there was similar pattern of development. The
suggestion here is that those who are most oppressed and have the
greatest objective interest in rebelling â and who form, according to
some, the true revolutionary class â can only in fact bring themselves
into movement during a period when there has already been a rupture at
the core of society, and the state has been considerably weakened. Out
of the turmoil there begins to emerge a new perspective, if only through
the realization that life is not going to continue as before, that it
has become necessary to find some other way. This process is one of
those elements that gives every revolution a character that is not
strictly classist. It will be more accentuated in the case of the
communist revolution, because it wonât be the activity of one class
only, but of humanity rising up against capital.
At the centre of what we at one time ventured to call the universal
class, or more simply humanity (for both are now the slaves of capital),
there are social strata which exist in very close affinity with capital,
(i.e. the new middle classes and the students) who are rebelling against
the system. They see themselves as distinct strata in society to the
extent that they claim to be able to detonate a movement which will
revolutionize the proletariat and set it in motion â but this is just a
caricature of revolution, dragged out for the occasion dressed up in all
its old regalia awkwardly going through the same old motions.
The classist analysis which we adopted originally could never do more
than interpret real events. The same shortcoming affected the
participants of May â68 and made it possible for them to perceive
themselves according to the old schemas. It is becoming increasingly
obvious that these active participants were men and women who were
personally and very intimately involved in the life and functioning of
capital, and more especially were having to justify and maintain its
representation,[6] who then went into revolt against it. But their
revolt is completely recuperable as long as it moves on the worn out
road of class struggle which aspires to awaken the proletariat and make
it accomplish its mission.
Here we meet a clear impasse. The role of the proletariat has been to
destroy the capitalist mode of production in order to liberate the
productive forces imprisoned within it: communism was to begin only
after this action was accomplished. But far from imprisoning the
productive forces, capitalism raises them to new heights, because they
exist for the benefit of capital, not humanity. The proletariat
therefore, is superfluous. The reversal referred to just now, whereby
the productive forces are liberated by capital, rather than by the
proletariat, which has been made possible thanks to the development of
science, is a development in parallel with the domestication of human
beings. Their domestication is their acceptance of the development of
capital as theorized by Marxism, which is itself the arch-defender of
the growth of productive forces. In the course of this development, the
proletariat as producer of surplus value has been denied even this
function by the generalization of wage labour and the destruction of any
possible distinction between productive and unproductive work. The once
revered proletariat has now become the strongest upholder of the
capitalist mode of production. What does the proletariat want? And those
who speak in the name of the proletariat and happily venerate its name â
what do they want? If it is full employment and self-management, this
would only ensure the permanent continuity of the capitalist mode of
production since it has now become humanized. The left all believe that
the process of production, being rationality in action, only needs to be
made to function for human needs. But this rationality is capital
itself.
The mythology of the proletariat accounts for how the âpopulismâ of May
â68, as we called it, became âproletarianismâ. People started to say:
âWe must go to the proletariat, revive its fighting spirit, summon up
its capacities for self-sacrifice and then it can kick out the evil
bosses and follow the other âproletariansâ down the road to revolution.â
May â68 ushered in a period of great scorn and confusion. People were
scornful of themselves because they werenât âproletarianâ, and they
scorned each other for the same reason, whereas they were all confused
about the proletariat, the class that had always been considered
potentially revolutionary. There is no other way to explain the impasse
encountered by the movement which formed itself in opposition to the
established society. This impasse did not however become clear all at
once, because in the enthusiasm which followed May â68 the movement of
opposition took on a certain life of its own, and the essential
questions were allowed to remain on the sidelines. But not only this,
the shock of May â68 caused a revival and a re-emergence of the currents
of the workers movement which had up to then been held in great disdain
by the established parties and consigned to oblivion: the council
movement in all its variants, the old German Communist Workers Party
(KAPD), the ideas of individuals like Lukacs and Korsch, and so on. This
resurrection of the past was a sign that people had not grasped directly
the reality of the situation, and that the situation itself was unable
to engender new forms of struggle and other theoretical approaches.
Nevertheless, to intellectually retrace that path already so well
travelled is even still a form of revolt, because it wonât bow to the
tyranny of what has simply âhappenedâ. It can moreover be a starting
point in finding out about the origins of the wandering of humanity, and
a first step in confronting humanityâs fate which is to have been
excluded from its own human context and condemned to the productivist
sewer.
We were speaking earlier of an âimpasseâ. As an image it is not as
suggestive as we would like, but it is nevertheless the heart of the
matter. It is like a wall which stands in front of all the different
groups of this vast current in society, and this wall is the proletariat
and its representation.[7] Militants go from one group to another, and
as they do so they âchangeâ ideology, dragging with them each time the
same load of intransigence and sectarianism. A few of them manage,
extremely large trajectories, going from Leninism to situationism, to
rediscover neo-bolshevism and then passing to councilism. They all come
up against this wall and are thrown back further in some cases than in
others. The wall is an effective barrier against any possible
theoretical and practical combination. (In Germany you can even come
across antiauthoritarian trotskyists, Korschist trotskyists, etc.)
Admittedly, within these groups, just as with certain individuals, there
are aspects which are far from negative, since a certain number of
things have been properly understood; but even this understanding is
deformed by the jack-of-all-trades mentality which is the spiritual
complement of coming together in a groupscule.
In previous articles[8] it has been clearly shown that it is not
possible to find the key to the representation of the proletariat
without first calling into question the Marxist conception of the
development of the productive forces, the law of value, and so on. Yet
the proletariat is made into a fetish, and because it raises such strong
ethical and practical implications, it is still the one element which
weighs most heavily on the consciousness of revolutionaries. But once
this fetish is challenged and seen for what it is, then the whole
theoretical/ ideological edifice just collapses in confusion. And yet
there still seems to be this unspoken assumption that each individual
must be attached to a group and be identified as a part of it in order
to have the security and strength to face the enemy. There is the fear
of being alone â accompanied nonetheless by a genuine realization that
it is necessary to join together to destroy capitalism â but there is
also the fear of individuality,[9] an inability to confront in an
autonomous way the fundamental questions of our period. It is another
manifestation of the domestication of human beings suffering from the
disease of dependency.
Following on this, the real importance of the lycée movement (Spring,
1973) can be better appreciated. It brought into clear perspective
something that had only been seen in outline in Mayâ68: the critique of
repressive consciousness. Repressive consciousness originated with
Marxism in so far as the latter is a concrete formula for the future of
the human species: proletarian revolution was supposed to come about
when the development of the productive forces allowed it. This
legalistic and repressive consciousness operates by explaining away
popular uprisings, branding them as premature, petit-bourgeois, the work
of irresponsible elements, etc. It is a consciousness which goes to the
roots of reification, because it can only be organized consciousness,
taking the form of parties, unions and groupuscles. Each of them
organizes repression against those who are not organized, or who are not
organized according to their particular methods. The difference between
these organizations is measured by the amount of repression they are
prepared to exercise.
Now the critique of repressive consciousness does not attack the myth of
the proletariat directly by arguing over it, but rather more indirectly,
by ignoring it and treating it with derision. The young people on this
occasion didnât fall into the trap of looking to workerist organizations
in order to form a unified front in the style of May â68. But
politicians of all kinds went after them trying to get them âinvolvedâ:
the PCF, PS, PSU, CGT, CFDT[10] and the rest went chasing after high
school kids trying to persuade them that they were all somehow under the
same banner. When the students broke away from the unitary
demonstrations, as they very often did, out came the political
masquerade obscenely offering itself for sale: the veteran political
hacks and the hardened old temptresses of the PCF and the CCT,
discovering five years after May â68 the political importance of youth,
marching along demanding deferment for everyone, while the students
looked on and jeered. It seemed almost as though the young people had
been spirited off and their places taken by their elders !
More ridicule was in store for the politicians of every variety who
affirmed once again during these events the primacy of the proletariat,
declaring that the critical revolutionary moment was to be occasioned by
a strike of skilled workers. This is because they canât conceive of
revolution unless it appears dressed in overalls. Skilled workers do not
threaten the capitalist system; the capitalist mode of production has
long since accepted rises in wages, and as for working conditions,
capital is well qualified to improve them. Thus the abolition of
assembly line work is a well recognized necessity in some bossesâ
circles.
The lycée movement belittled the institutions of society and their
defenders. Those who wanted (albeit reluctantly) to bring themselves
down to the level of âour valiant youngstersâ behaved ridiculously â
after all, recuperation has to pay its price. On the other hand, those
who wanted to counter the movement from within and didnât succeed, just
proceeded to despise it, and in this manner they brought down a similar
ridicule on themselves. But then it was the turn of the men of
government: out they came, bleating about how weâve already got deputies
and a parliament and that we should make use of them to sort out the
problems that remain unsolved. The young people acted as though none of
this existed. Once again, as in May â68, there was no communication, no
understanding between the two sides (âWeâre not closed to arguments, but
really I donât know what it is they wantâ â Fontanet, the Education
minister). They fondly imagine that young people want to discuss with
them and present opposing arguments. This is a revolution of life
itself,[11] a search for another way of living. Dialogue should be
concerned only with the plans and ideas for realizing this desire. No
dialogue can take place between the social order and those who are to
overthrow it. If dialogue is still seen as a possibility, then this
would be an indication that the movement is faltering.
Underlying all this is a profoundly important phenomenon: all human
life, from the very beginning of its development within capitalist
society, has undergone an impoverishment. More than this, capitalist
society is death organized with all the appearances of life. Here it is
not a question of death as the extinction of life, but death-in-life,
death with all the substance and power of life. The human being is dead
and is no more than a ritual of capital. Young people still have the
strength to refuse this death; they are able to rebel against
domestication. They demand to live. But to those great numbers of smugly
complacent people, who live on empty dreams and fantasies, this demand,
this passionate need just seems irrational, or, at best, a paradise
which is by definition inaccessible.
Youth remains a serious problem for capital because it is a part of
society which is still undomesticated. The lycée students demonstrated
not only against military service and the army, but also, and just as
much, against the school, the university and the family. Schools
function as the organization of the passivity of the soul, and this is
true even when active and libertarian methods are used; the liberation
of the school would be the liberation of oppression. In the name of
history, science and philosophy, each individual is sent down a corridor
of passivity, into a world surrounded by walls. Knowledge and theory are
just so many insurmountable barriers which prevent one individual from
recognizing other individuals, making dialogue between them impossible.
Discourse must proceed along certain channels, but thatâs all. And then
at the end of the pipeline, there is the army, which is a factory for
domestication; it organizes people into a general will to kill others,
structuring the dichotomy already imprinted in their minds by the
secular morality of âmy nationâ and âother peopleâ, all of whom are
potential enemies. People are trained and educated to know how to
justify the unjustifiable â the killing of men and women.
We do not deny that this agitation before Easter had largely reformist
tendencies. The reformist aspects were what attracted recuperation, but
that is not what interests us here because it tells us nothing about the
real movement of struggle of the species against capital. As with May
â68, this movement was superficial, (though only a more radical
agitation from beneath could have raised it to the surface in the first
place), and it will open the door to an improved restructuring of the
despotism of capital, enabling it better to realize its own
âmodernizationâ.
Schools and universities are structures that are too rigid for the
global process of capital, and the same thing holds true for the
army.[12] The rapid decline of knowledge and the development of mass
media have destroyed the old school system. Teachers and professors are,
from the point of view of capital, useless beings who will tend to be
eliminated in favour of programmed lessons and teaching machines. (In
just the same way, capital tends to eliminate the bureaucracy because it
inhibits the transmission of information which is the very basis of
capitalâs mobility.) It is ironic then that many people who argue for
the necessity of life turn out to be readily convinced by solutions
which entrust teaching to machines and thus eliminate human life. As a
general rule, it may be said that all who embrace âmodernizationâ are in
fact provoking their own condemnation as individuals with a certain
function in this society; they are demanding their own dispossession.
But even those others who preach about the need to return to the rigid
and authoritarian climate which prevailed before 1968 will not fare any
better, because in order for their plans to succeed, they still have to
depend on capital, and either way, left or right, capital profits
equally.
Capital imposes its despotism on human beings by means of objects and
things which are invested with new modes of being appropriate to
capitalâs new requirements. It implies a world of things which are in
rapid motion, constantly changing and differentiating themselves (a
process which is clearly not unrelated to a feeling of meaninglessness).
These qualities inevitably conflict with traditional social relations
and previous ways of life, including previous ways of thinking. It is
things which are the real subjects. They impose their own rhythm of life
and ensure that people are confined to the level of their own single
existences. But because objects and things are themselves governed and
controlled by the movement of capital, there is always the possibility
that this rising new oppression could actually set in motion an
insurrectional movement against the society of capital itself. And yet
capital in its turn is able to profit from subversion in order to
consolidate itself, as it did during the early years of this century.
The revolt of the proletariat, confined as it was to the terrain of the
factory and emphasizing the ordering of production, was a factor which
actually aided capital in its movement towards real domination. The end
result was the elimination of strata that were unnecessary for the
progress of capital, the triumph of full employment, the abandonment of
laissez-faire liberalism, and so on.
We are not suggesting that revolution should rise directly out of the
conflict we were speaking of just now, nor are we saying that the
instigators of it will be men and women who are ordinarily very
conservative. The point we want to emphasize is this: capital must come
to dominate all human beings, and in order to do this it can no longer
depend entirely for its support on the old social strata which are in
turn coming under threat themselves. This is a tendency which Franz
Borkenau understood very precisely:
in this tremendous contrast with previous revolutions, one fact is
reflected. Before these latter years, counter-revolution usually
depended on the support of reactionary powers which were technically and
intellectually inferior to the forces of revolution. This has changed
with the advent of fascism. Now, every revolution is likely to meet the
attack of the most modern, most efficient, most ruthless machinery yet
in existence. It means that the age of revolutions free to evolve
according to their own laws is over.[13]
We have got to remember that capital, as it constantly overthrows
traditional patterns of life, is itself revolution. This should lead us
to think again about the nature of revolution, and to realize that
capital is able to take control of social forces in order to overthrow
the established order in insurrections directed against the very society
which it already dominates.[14] Never before have vision and
understanding been more vitally necessary; every separate revolt now
becomes a further stimulus for the movement of capital. But people have
been robbed of their ability to think in a theoretical way and to
perceive reality as part of the outcome of an historical process â this
has happened as a result of the process of domestication. And in a
similar way, this capacity for theoretical thought has been prevented
from ever taking root in the material development of our planet and in
us as a species due to the existence of a split between the mind and the
body, and the old division between physical and intellectual work (which
automated systems are now in the process of surmounting to capitalâs
benefit).
Revolution can no longer be taken to mean just the destruction of all
that is old and conservative, because capital has accomplished this
itself. Rather, it will appear as a return to something (a revolution in
the mathematical sense of the term), a return to community, though not
in any form which has existed previously. Revolution will make itself
felt in the destruction of all that which is most âmodernâ and
âprogressiveâ (because science is capital). Another of its
manifestations will involve the reappropriation of all those aspects and
qualities of life which have still managed to affirm that which is
human. In attempting to grasp what this tendency means, we cannot be
aided by any of the old dualistic, manichean categories. (It is the same
tendency which in the past had held back the valorization process in its
movement towards a situation of complete autonomy.) If the triumph of
communism is to bring about the creation of humanity, then it requires
that this creation be possible, it must be a desire which has been there
all the time, for centuries. Yet here again nothing is easy, obvious,
free from doubts, and indeed one could have legitimate doubts about what
it means to be human after the experience of colonialism and Nazism, and
then a second colonialism which strives to maintain itself in spite of
revolts in the oppressed countries (notorious massacres and tortures
having been committed by the British in Kenya, the French in Algeria and
the Americans in Vietnam), and in the face of the brutal and deeprooted
violence that everywhere continues to rage unchecked. Indeed, could it
be that humanity is too lost and sunk in its infernal wandering to save
itself?
The movement which developed among the lycée students was an assertion
of the communist revolution in its human dimension. The students took up
the question of violence (though perhaps not in its full scope) in their
refusal of the army, refusal of military service and refusal of the
universal right to kill. By contrast, the groupscules of the left and
extreme left, but not the anarchists, preach about the necessity of
learning to kill because they think they can make death âreboundâ on
capital. But none of them (and this is particularly true of the most
extreme elements) ever take into account the fact that they are
suggesting the necessity of destroying human beings in order to
accomplish this revolution. How can you celebrate a revolution with a
rifle butt? To accept the army for one reason, whatever it may be, is to
strengthen the oppressive structure at every level. Any kind of argument
on this subject serves only to reinstate the despotism of repressive
consciousness, according to which people must repress the desire to not
kill because killing will be required of them at some stage in the
future. (And indeed some people are known to actually rejoice in this
prospect). Repressive consciousness forces me to be inhuman under the
pretext that on a day decreed by some theoretical destiny, I will at
last metamorphosize into a human being.
[The various left and extreme left currents] try to ensure that there is
no convergence between the âbourgeoisâ desire to see military service
abolished and the libertarian pacifism which underlies conscientious
objection, something that is always more or less latent among the young.
(T. Pfistner, Le Monde, 27 Mar â73)
Violence is a fact of life in present day society; the question now is
how that violence can be destroyed. Revolution unleashes violence, but
it has to be under our control and direction; it cannot be allowed to
operate blindly, and it certainly cannot be glorified and widened in its
field of action. Statements like this may sound reasonable enough, but
they arenât particularly helpful unless we go on to consider more
precisely the actual nature of violence, which is determined in the
first instance by its object: thus violence directed against the
capitalist system should be praised and encouraged, but not violence
against people. But the capitalist system is represented by people, and
it is these people who will often be overtaken by violence. This is
where the question of the limitation of violence becomes relevant; if it
is not raised, we are still living according to the prescriptions of
capital. Granted that capitalâs despotism is maintained through
generalized violence against people, it is also a fact that it can only
achieve this domination over people by first putting them in opposition
to one another and then allotting them different roles. When conflicts
occur, each side then represents the other as non-human (which is how
the Americans saw the Vietnamese). If human beings are to be destroyed,
they must first be despoiled of their humanity. And so if, during the
revolutionary struggle people choose to proceed according to this view,
are they not simply imitating the methods used by the capitalists, and
thus furthering the destruction of human beings?
So we might ask what the leftists are playing at when they theorize
about the destruction of the dominant class (rather than what supports
it), or of the cops (âthe only good cop is a dead oneâ)? One can make
the equation CRS=SS[15] on the level of a slogan, because that
accurately represents the reality of the two roles, but it does not
justify the destruction of the people involved â for two reasons.
Firstly, it effectively rules out the possibility of undermining the
police force. When the police feel they are reduced to the status of
sub-humans, they themselves go into a kind of revolt against the young
people in order to affirm a humanity which is denied to them, and in so
doing they are therefore not simply playing the part of killing/
repression machines. Secondly, every riot cop and every other kind of
cop is still a person. Each one is a person with a definite role like
everyone else. It is dangerous to delegate all inhumanity to one part of
the social whole, and all humanity to another. There is no question here
of preaching non-violence,[16] but rather of defining precisely what
violence must be exercised and to what purpose. In this connection, the
following points should make the position clearer: firstly, all
stereotypes and functions must be revealed for what they are â roles
imposed on us by capital; secondly, we must reject the theory which
postulates that all those individuals who defend capital should simply
be destroyed; thirdly, we cannot make exceptions on the ground that
certain people are not free, that it is âthe systemâ which produces both
cops and revolutionaries alike. If this were correct, the logical
conclusion would be either a position of non-violence, or a situation
where human beings become reduced to automatons which would then justify
every kind of violence against them. If right from the outset certain
people are denied all possibility of humanity, how can they subsequently
be expected to emerge as real human beings? So it is as human beings
that they must be confronted. Now though the majority of people think in
terms of the radical solution provided by class society â i.e., repress
your opponents â even in this form the revolution would assert itself
according to its true nature, namely that it is human. When the conflict
comes, as it inevitably will, there should be no attempt to reduce the
various individuals who defend capital to the level of âbestialâ or
mechanical adversaries; they have to be put in the context of their
humanity, for humanity is what they too know they are a part of and are
potentially able to find again. In this sense the conflict takes on
intellectual and spiritual dimensions. The representations which justify
an individual personâs defence of capital must be revealed and
demystified; people in this situation must become aware of
contradiction, and doubts should arise in their minds.
Terrorism also has to be viewed in this perspective. It is not
sufficient just to denounce it as abhorrent. Those who accept terrorism
have capitulated before the power of capital. Terrorism is concerned
with more than just the destruction of some people: it is also an appeal
to death in order to raise up a hypothetical revolt. That aspect should
be fairly noted, without condemnation or approval, but it must be
rejected as a plan of action. Terrorism implies that the âwallâ (the
proletariat and its representation) is an impassable and indestructible
barrier. Terrorism has admitted defeat, and all the recent examples of
it are sufficient proof of this.
We must recognize that the crushing domination of capital affects
everyone without exception. Particular groupings cannot be designated as
âthe electâ, exempt from and unmarked by capitalâs despotism. The
revolutionary struggle is a human struggle, and it must recognize in
every person the possibility of humanity. Amid the conflict with the
racketeers in their groupscules, the âcapitalistsâ and the police in all
their forms, each individual must be violent with him/herself in order
to reject, as outside themselves the domestication of capital and all
its comfortable self-validating âexplanationsâ.
None of this can take on its full meaning unless there is a simultaneous
refusal of all obsolete forms of struggle. Like the May â68 movement but
more so, the lycée movement emphasized very clearly that staying within
the old forms of struggle inevitably leads to certain defeat. It is now
becoming generally accepted that demonstrations, marches, spectacles and
shows donât lead anywhere. Waving banners, putting up posters, handing
out leaflets, attacking the police are all activities which perpetuate a
certain ritual â a ritual wherein the police are always cast in the role
of invincible subjugators. The methods of struggle therefore must be put
through a thorough analysis because they present an obstacle to the
creation of new modes of action. And for this to be effective, there has
to be a refusal of the old terrain of struggle â both in the workplace
and in the streets. As long as revolutionary struggle is conducted not
on its own ground but on the terrain of capital, there can be no
significant breakthrough, no qualitative revolutionary leap. This is
where we must concentrate our attention; it is a question which has to
be faced now if revolution is not to stagnate and destroy itself, a
setback which could take years to recover from. If we are to
successfully abandon the old centres of struggle, it will require a
simultaneous movement towards the creation of new modes of life. Whatâs
the point of occupying the factories â like car factories for example â
where production must be stopped anyway? The cry goes up: âOccupy the
factories and manage them ourselves !â So all the prisoners of the
system are supposed to take over their prisons and begin the
self-management of their own imprisonment. A new social form is not
founded on the old, and only rarely in the past do we find civilizations
superimposed on one another. The bourgeoisie triumphed because it staged
the battle on its own terrain, which is the cities. But in our present
situation this can only be helpful to the emergence of communism which
is neither a new society nor a new mode of production. Today humanity
can launch its battle against capital not in the city, nor in the
countryside, but outside of both:[17] hence the necessity for communist
forms to appear which will be truly antagonistic to capital, and also
rallying points for the forces of revolution. Since the advent of May
â68, capital has been obliged to take account of the fact that
revolution had presented itself again as a vital imperative, a
necessity. In response, the counter-revolution was compelled to adapt
and remodel itself (remembering that it has no existence except in
relation to revolution). But however much it tries by its usual methods
to limit the development of its adversary, it can never totally succeed,
because revolution will always present itself as real, and therefore as
irrational. This irrationality is its fundamental characteristic.
Whatever is rational in relation to the established order can be
absorbed and recuperated. If revolution operates on the same terrain as
its adversary, it can always be halted. It cannot rise up; it is
thwarted in its most passionate desire, which is to realize its own
project and to accomplish it on its own ground.
The attaining of a human community must be the goal towards which
revolution moves. The revolutionary movement must therefore reflect
within itself the same purpose and aim. The methods provided by class
society lead us away from this goal; by their very nature they are
inhuman, and it is therefore not possible to use them. Thus it is absurd
to want to penetrate the structures of the established order to make
them function in the interests of the revolutionary movement. Those who
operate in this way are labouring under the mystification that the
historical project approaches its truth and its end in capital. That
mystification which presents the human being as inessential, not
determinant, and useless has to be exposed. In the capitalist system
humans have in effect become superfluous, but to the extent that
humanity has preserved an unbroken human consistency from its earliest
origins, it cannot be said to have been destroyed as long as the idea of
revolt remains alive, and provided also that young people are not
totally immobilized by domestication. All is still possible. In every
case, struggle tends to revive the human essence which is preserved in
each individual; struggle takes us out of the trap of perceiving others
only as their reified outward appearance. Even where an individual has
attained a high degree of reification and been transformed into an
organic automaton of capital, there is still the possibility that the
whole construction could break apart. Here we would do well to follow an
old piece of advice from Marx: Itâs not enough to make the chains
visible, they must become shameful. Each individual should experience a
crisis. In conflicts with the police, the impulse should be not only to
eliminate a repressive force which presents an obstacle to the communist
movement but also to bring down the system, provoking in the minds of
the police a sense of human resurgence.
This can never happen if the old methods of direct confrontation
continue to be used; we have got to find new methods, such as treating
all institutions with contempt and ridicule[18] by leaving them trapped
and isolated in their own concerns. It would be absurd to theorize and
make generalizations about this. But we can be certain of one thing: it
has proved effective in the past, and it will be again, but we must
invent a host of other different modes of action. The essential point is
to understand that the terrain and methods of struggle must be changed;
this necessity has been understood in a limited and sometimes negative
way by people who abandon everything and go on the roads, expressing
their desire to leave the vicious circle of struggles that go on in the
day-to-day world.
The leftists persist in their well known cycle of
provocation-repression-subversion which is all supposed to bring about
revolution at some precise time in the future. But this conception of
revolution is totally inadmissible because it means sacrificing men and
women in order to mobilize others. Communist revolution does not demand
martyrs because it does not need to make any demands. The martyr becomes
the bait which attracts the followers. What would then be the use of a
revolution that uses death as a bait in this way?[19] But then there is
always someone who dies at just the right time (or the victimâs demise
may even be âfacilitatedâ), and someone else goes around shaking the
cadaver in order to attract the revolutionary flies.
Since the communist revolution is the triumph of life, it cannot in any
way glorify death, or seek to exploit it, since this would be putting
itself once more on the terrain of class society. There are some who
would compare or substitute âthose who fell in the revolutionâ with
those who died in the service of capital: but itâs all just the same old
carnival of carrion !
Revolution is never presented as having the scope of a necessary and
also a naturally occurring phenomenon, and this misunderstanding has
serious consequences. It always seems that revolution depends strictly
on some group or other radiating true consciousness. We are faced today
with the following alternatives: either there is actual revolution â the
whole process, from the formation of revolutionaries to the destruction
of the capitalist mode of production â or there is destruction, under
one form or another of the human species. There is no other possibility.
When revolution is unleashed there will be no need to justify what is
happening; rather it will be a question of being powerful enough to
avoid abuses and excesses. And this is possible only if individual men
and women, before the revolutionary explosion, begin to be autonomous:
since they donât need any leaders, they can gain mastery over their own
revolt.
Obviously in the present circumstances people can only go so far in this
direction; but the only way it has a chance of true realization is by
rejecting that cannibalistic discourse which presents revolution as a
settling of scores, as a physical extermination of one class or group of
people by another. If communism really is a necessity for the human
species, it has no need of such methods to impose itself.
In general, most revolutionaries doubt that revolution will ever come
about, but in order to convince themselves that it will, they have to
justify it to themselves in some way. This allows them to deal with the
waiting, but it also masks the fact that most of the time manifestations
of real revolution pass them by. To exorcise their doubt they resort to
verbal violence (again a substitute), and are constantly engaged in
desperate and obstinate proselytizing. The justification process works
like this: as soon as theyâve made some recruits, this is taken as proof
that the situation is favourable, and so the level of agitation must be
stepped up, and so on and so on. According to this scheme of things,
revolution means agitation which means bringing consciousness from
outside. They havenât yet grasped the fact that revolution is
accomplished precisely when there is no one left to defend the old
order; revolution triumphs because there are no more adversaries. The
point is that everything is going to be different afterwards, which is
where the problem of violence again becomes relevant. The necessity for
communism is a necessity which extends to all people. During the ferment
of revolution this is a truth which will become evident in a more or
less confused way. It does not mean that people will somehow be rid of
all the old rubbish of the previous society overnight. It means that
those who will be making the revolution will be people of the right as
well as the left; thus when the superstructural elements of the
capitalist system are destroyed and the global process of production
halted, the presuppositions of capital will remain intact, and the old
forms of behaviour and the old schemas will tend to reappear because it
seems that each time humanity embarks on a new opportunity, a creation,
it tends to wrap it up in the forms of the past and readapt it to the
times. Certainly, the communist revolution will not develop in the same
way as previous revolutions, but if its scope is limited to any degree,
it will nonetheless still be part of the content of the
post-revolutionary movement. The movement will tend to give new
dimensions to the human community, reaffirming and strengthening what
will have emerged during the course of revolution. It is at this stage,
when things are difficult, that the old institutional forms can
reappear, and some elements may want to reassert their privileges in a
disguised form, and try to make solutions prevail that favour them.
Others might want to reintroduce self-management. They still will not
have understood that communism is not a mode of production, but a new
mode of being.
This is also the time when the old practice of categorizing everything,
so characteristic of all rackets, must bp eliminated once and for all.
We have to understand that new things can spring up draped in the mantle
of the past; it would be a major error to consider only these
superficial semblances of the past to the exclusion of everything else.
Itâs not a question of seeing the postrevolutionary movement as the
apotheosis of immediate reconciliation, when by some miracle the
oppressiveness of the past will abolish itself. Granted that the new
mode of being will generate itself through effective struggle, the issue
then becomes the modality of that struggle. Any sectarian or
inquisitional spirit is lethal to the revolution â which is all the more
reason why the classical dictatorship is out of the question, since this
would mean re-establishing a mode of being which is intrinsic to class
society. The period of intermediate change cannot be transcended except
through a diverse expression of liberation by multifarious human beings.
This is the pressure which communism brings to bear. It is a pressure
exerted by the great majority of human beings seeking to create the
human community which will allow and enable them to remove all obstacles
barring their way. This affirmation of life is what Marx had in mind
when he said âif we assume man to be man, and his relation to the world
to be a human one, then love can be exchanged only for love, trust for
trust...â Violent clashes can only be exceptional.
Those who believe that what is required is a dictatorship have already
conceded in their minds that human society will never be ready to grow
towards communism. It is a long, painful and difficult road to that
extraordinary realization that the mystification no longer holds, that
the wandering of humanity was leading to its own destruction, and that
this was largely due to the fact that it had entrusted its destiny to
the monstrous, autonomized system of capital.[20] Men and women will
come to realize that they themselves are the determining elements, and
that they do not have to abdicate their power to the machine, and
alienate their being in the false belief that this will lead to
happiness.
The moment this point is reached, itâs all over, and going back will be
impossible. The entire representation of capital All collapse like a
house of cards. People whose minds are free from capital will be able to
find themselves and their fellow creatures as well. From this time
onwards, the creation of a human community can no longer be halted.
Ideology, science, art and the rest, through the entire range of
institutions and organizations act together to instill the belief that
human beings are inessential and powerless to act.[21] More than this,
they all enforce the idea that if we seem to have arrived at a
particular stage of social evolution, it is because it could not have
been otherwise from the very beginning when we first appropriated and
developed technology. There is a certain fatality which surrounds
technology: if we do not embrace it, we cannot progress. All we can do
is remedy certain shortcomings, but we cannot escape the workings of the
machine, which is this society itself. The trap has been closed, people
have been immobilized, and the determining factor here is the
representation of capital â it represents itself (i.e. capital) as a
rational social process, which gives rise to the feeling that the system
can no longer be perceived as oppressive. In order to explain any
negative aspects, capital simply invokes categories designated as
âoutside of capitalâ.
The long habit of mind which has allowed human intelligence to be a host
for the parasitical representation of capital has to be broken down. The
mentality and behaviour of the servant (whose master is capital) must be
eradicated. This need is now all the more urgent as the old dialectic of
master and slave is tending to disappear in the process whereby even the
slave â the human being â is becoming redundant.
The struggle against domestication has to be understood at the global
level where important forces are also beginning to emerge. The a priori
universal rationality of capitalism can be demystified only when we
begin to seriously question the unilinear scheme of human evolution and
also the notion that the capitalist mode of production has been
progressive for all countries.
Those particular countries which according to the prophets of growth and
the âeconomic miracleâ are underdeveloped or on the road to development
are really countries where the capitalist mode of production has failed
to establish itself. In Asia, South America, and Africa there are
millions of people who have not yet fully succumbed to the despotism of
capital. Their resistance is usually negative in the sense that they are
unable to pose for themselves another community. It is therefore
essential to maintain a world wide network of human debate which only
the communist revolution can transform into a movement for the
establishing of a new community. Moreover, during the revolutionary
explosion this network or pole will have a determining influence in the
work of destroying capital.
In those countries labelled as underdeveloped, the youth have risen up
(in Ceylon, in Madagascar in 1972, and less strongly in Senegal,
Tunisia, Zaire etc...), and expressed in different ways the same need
and necessity that is felt in the West. For over ten years the
insurrection of youth has demonstrated that its fundamental
characteristic is that of anti-domestication. Without wanting to
prophesy any certain outcome, it is important to try to discern in this
some kind of perspective. In May â68 we again took up Bordigaâs forecast
about a revival of the revolutionary movement around 1968, and
revolution for the period 1975â1980. This is a âpredictionâ we remain
attached to. Recent political/social and economic events confirm it, and
the same conclusion is being arrived at by various writers. The
capitalist mode of production finds itself in a crisis which is shaking
it from its highest to its lowest levels. It is not a 1929-style crisis,
though certain aspects of that crisis can reappear; rather it is a
crisis of profound transformation. Capital must restructure itself in
order to be able to slow down the destructive consequences of its global
process of production. The whole debate about growth shows very clearly
that this concern is real. The experts think they can simply draw
attention to the movement of capital and proclaim that there must be
slackening off, a slowing down. But capital in its turn can only break
free from peopleâs opposition by perfecting its domination over them at
an ever higher level. It is a domination which extends to the horizon of
our lives, but young people are rising up against it in a vast movement,
and a growing number of older people are beginning to understand and
support them.
The revolutionary resurgence is evident everywhere except in one
enormous country, the USSR, which could quite easily end up playing an
inhibiting role, putting a strong brake on the revolution (in which case
our previous forecast would be consigned to the limbo of pious wish
fulfilment). But events in Czechoslovakia and Poland and the constant
strengthening of despotism in the Soviet republic are an indication
(though a negative one) that subversion, of which we hear only faint
echoes, is by no means absent there. Repression in the USSR needs to be
more violent in order to prevent insurrection generalizing. On the other
hand, the process of destalinization is taking on the same role (taking
into account considerable historical differences) as the revolt of the
nobles in 1825, which made way for the revolt of the intelligentsia and
subsequently gave strength to the whole populist movement. This idea
leads us to think that there exists at the present moment subversion
sufficient to go well beyond the democratic opposition expressed by the
dissident academician Sakharov. Certain other historical constants must
be kept in mind: for example, generalized revolutionary action appeared
in its most radical form in France and Russia, while actually having its
origins in other countries. The French revolution subsequently spread
the bourgeois revolution throughout Europe. The Russian revolution
generalized a double revolution â proletarian and bourgeois â which
resulted in the final triumph of the capitalist revolution. The student
revolt did not originate in France yet it was there that the revolt was
felt most sharply; it was capable of shaking capitalist society, and the
consequences of it are still being felt. There can be no revolutionary
upheaval in the USSR while the consequences of 1917 â the wave of
anti-colonial revolutions â are still to be played out. The most
important of these has been the case of China, and now that the Chinese
revolution has come to the end of its cycle, we will see in the USSR the
beginning of a new revolutionary cycle.
The important historic shift between the French and the Russian
revolutions is present also in the rise of the new revolutionary cycle.
The despotism of capital today is more powerful than that which
prevailed under the Czar, and there is also the fact that the holy
alliance between the USSR and the USA has been shown to be more
effective than the Anglo-Russian alliance of the nineteenth century. The
outcome can be delayed but not halted: we can expect the âcommunitarianâ
dimension of revolution in the USSR to be clearer there than in the
West, and that it will go forward with giant strides.
During a period of total counter-revolution, Bordiga was able to
withstand the disintegrating effect brought about by it because he
retained a vision of the coming revolution, but more particularly
because he shifted his focus of thinking concerning struggle. He did not
look only to the past, which is just a dead weight in such a period, nor
did he incline towards the present, dominated as it was by the
established order, but towards the future.[22]
Being thus attuned to the future enabled him to perceive the
revolutionary movement as it actually was, and not according to its own
characterizations. Since that time, the âfuture industryâ[23] has come
into its own and assumed an enormous scope. Capital enters this new
field and begins to exploit it, which leads to a further expropriation
of people, and a reinforcement of their domestication. This hold over
the future is what distinguishes capital from all other modes of
production. From its earliest origins capitalâs relationship to the past
or present has always been of less importance to it than its
relationship to the future. Capitalâs only lifeblood is in the exchange
it conducts with labour power. Thus when surplus value is created, it
is, in the immediate sense, only potential capital; it can become
effective capital solely through an exchange against future labour. In
other words, when surplus value is created in the present, it acquires
reality only if labour power can appear to be ready and available in a
future (a future which can only be hypothetical, and not necessarily
very near). If therefore this future isnât there, then the present (or
henceforth the past) is abolished: this is devalorization through total
loss of substance. Clearly then capitalâs first undertaking must be to
dominate the future in order to be assured of accomplishing its
production process. (This conquest is managed by the credit system).
Thus capital has effectively appropriated time, which it moulds in its
own image as quantitative time. However, present surplus value was
realized and valorized through exchange against future labour, but now,
with the development of the âfuture industryâ, present surplus value has
itself become open to capitalization. This capitalization demands that
time be programmed, and this need expresses itself in a scientific
fashion in futurology. Henceforth, capital produces time.[24] From now
on where may people situate their utopias and uchronias?
The established societies that existed in previous times dominated the
present and to a lesser extent the past, while the revolutionary
movement had for itself the future. Bourgeois revolutions and
proletarian revolutions have had to guarantee progress, but this
progress depended on the existence of a future valorized in relation to
a present and a past which is to be abolished. In each case, and to a
degree which is more or less pronounced depending on which type of
revolution is being considered, the past is presented as shrouded in
darkness, while the future is all shining light. Capital has conquered
the future. Capital has no fear of utopias, since it even tends to
produce them. The future is a field for the production of profit. In
order to generate the future, to bring it into being, people must now be
conditioned as a function of a strictly preconceived process of
production: this is programming brought to its highest point. Man, once
characterized by Marx as âthe carcass of timeâ is now excluded from
time. This, together with the domination of the past, the present and
the future, gives rise to a structural representation, where everything
is reduced to a combinative of social relations, productive forces, or
mythĂšmes etc., arranged in such a way as to cohere as a totality.
Structure, perfecting itself, eliminates history. But history is what
people have made.
This leads to the understanding that revolution must not only engender
another conception of time, but must also assimilate it to a new
synthesis of space. Both will be created simultaneously as they emerge
out of the new relationship between human beings and nature:
reconciliation. We said before that all which is fragmented is grist to
the mill of the counter-revolution. But revolution means more than
reclaiming just the totality; it is the reintegration of all that was
separate, a coming together of future being, individuality and
Gemeinwesen. This future being already exists as a total and
passionately felt need; it expresses better than anything else the true
revolutionary character of the May â68 movement and that of the lycĂ©e
students in Spring 1973.
Revolutionary struggle is struggle against domination as it appears in
all times and places, and in all the different aspects of life. For five
years this contestation has invaded every department of the life of
capital. Revolution is now able to pose its true terrain of struggle,
whose centre is everywhere, but whose place is nowhere.[25] Its task in
this sense is infinite: to destroy domestication and engender the
infinite manifestation of the human being of the future. We have a
feeling, which is founded on more than just optimism, that the next five
years will see the beginning of revolution, and the destruction of the
capitalist mode of production.[26]
Jacques Camatte 1 May 1973
Â
[1] What we call the monetary crisis involves more than just determining
the price of gold or redefining its role; nor is it merely a question of
establishing a new general equivalent (a new standard altogether), or
setting fixed parities among national currencies, or integrating the
economies of the money markets (capital as totality â Marx). The
monetary crisis is about the role of capital in its money form, or, more
precisely, the superseding of the money form itself, just as there has
been a supercession of the commodity form.
[2] Worse than the âheartless worldâ Marx speaks of in The Critique of
Hegelâs Philosophy of Right.
[3] The presupposition underlying such an absurd demand is the supposed
biological inferiority of women, which is a scientific illusion. Science
has discovered a defect in women and decrees that it is up to science to
remedy it. If men are no longer needed (because of parthenogenesis) and
if women arenât needed either (since embryos and even ovaries may be
developed in phials), then we are left with the question of whether
there is any need for the human species after all. Has it not become
redundant? These people seem to believe in solving everything by
mutilation. Why not do away with pain by eliminating the organs of
sensitivity? Social and human problems cannot be solved by science and
technology. Their only effect when used is to render humanity even more
superfluous. Obviously, no one can make a judgement about the feminist
movement as a whole just by reference to that aspect now being
discussed. The feminist movement is of great importance in the struggle
against capital, and it is a subject we hope to take up on in the
future. In its critique of capitalist society and the traditional
revolutionary movement, it has made a remarkable contribution..
[4] In the original French the author frequently uses the expressions
âmenâ, âmanâ, or âmankindâ, as well as âhumansâ, or âhuman beingsâ.
Where the false generic âmanâ etc. does occur it has been changed, even
though this must involve a distortion of what was originally intended.
[translatorâs note]
[5] The struggle of people against capital has only ever been seen
through the narrow focus of class. The only way to be regarded as a real
adversary of capital has been to actively identify oneself with the
proletariat; all else is romantic, petit bourgeois etc ... But the very
act of reasoning in classist terms means that any particular class is
confined within the limits of class analysis. This is particularly
important when one considers that the working class has as its mission
the elimination of all classes. It also avoids the question of how that
class will bring about its own autodestruction, since this classist
analysis prevents any lessons being drawn from the tragic intellectual
fate of those people who set themselves in opposition to capital without
even recognising or identifying their enemy (as with Bergson, for
example). Today, when the whole classist approach has been deprived of
any solid base, it may be worthwhile to reconsider movements of the
right and their thinking. The right is a movement of opposition to
capital that seeks to restore a moment which is firmly rooted in the
past. Hence in order to eliminate class conflict, the excesses of
capitalist individualism, speculation and so on, the Action Francaise
and the Nouvelle Action Francaise (NAF) envisage a community which can
only be guaranteed, according to them, by a system of monarchy. (See
particularly the chapter on capitalism in Les Dossiers de lâAction
Francaise).
It seems that every current or group which opposes capital is
nonetheless obliged to focus always on the human as the basis of
everything. It takes diverse forms, but it has a profoundly consistent
basis and is surprisingly uniform wherever human populations are found.
Thus by seeking to restore (and install) the volksgemeinschaft, even the
Nazis represent an attempt to create such a community (cf. also their
ideology of the Urmensh, the âoriginal manâ). We believe that the
phenomenon of Nazism is widely misunderstood: it is seen by many people
only as a demonic expression of totalitarianism. But the Nazis in
Germany had reintroduced an old theme originally theorized by German
sociologists like Tonnies and Max Weber. And so in response, we find the
Frankfurt school, and most notably Adorno, dealing in empty and sterile
concepts of âdemocracyâ, due to their incapacity to understand the
phenomenon of Nazism. They have been unable to grasp Marxâs great
insight, which was that he posed the necessity of reforming the
community, and that he recognised that this reformation must involve the
whole of humanity. The problems are there for everybody; they are
serious, and they urgently require solutions. People try to work them
out from diverse political angles. However, it is not these problems
which determine what is revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, but the
solutions put forward â i.e. are they effective or not? And here the
racketeerâs mentality descends upon us once again: each gang of the left
or the right carves out its own intellectual territory; anyone straying
into one or the other of these territories is automatically branded as a
member of the relevant controlling gang. Thus we have reification: the
object is determinant, the subject passive.
[6] We are speaking here of technicians, intellectuals, politicians and
economists, like the members of the Club of Rome, Mansholt, Dumont,
Laborit etc.
[7] Human beings are not constantly immersed in nature; existence is not
always at one with essence, nor being with consciousness, and so on.
This separation brings into being the need for representation. Once time
is perceived as irreversible, the subject of the past is seen as
distinct from the subject of the present, and thus memory begins to
assume a determining role. It is here that representation interposes
itself in order to provide a mediation. From such an understanding, the
way is open to a re-examination of philosophy and science, a task which
will have to be undertaken someday. Perhaps some readers may have been
drawn to similar ideas (which are actually different because they leave
aside the importance of representation in social contexts) in the work
of Cardan and the social-imaginary, the situationists and the spectacle,
and in the area of scholarship, Foucaultâs analysis of representation in
the sixteenth century (which we took up in a study of the democratic
mystification). We would like to clarify our own position on this: we
employ the term ârepresentationâ in the same way as Marx did
(vorstellung) in order to indicate, for example, that value must be
represented in a price. In âA propos du capitalâ (Invariance ser. III,
no. 1), we discussed very briefly the way capital becomes
representation, which then becomes autonomous, and how it can then only
exist through being accepted and recognized by everyone as real. This is
why people have now had to interiorize the representation of capital.
This whole question of representation is a very important one. From the
moment when human beings and nature no longer exist together in an
immediate unity (leaving aside for the moment the question of whether an
âimmediate unityâ could ever have been possible), representation becomes
necessary. Representation is the human appropriation of reality and our
means of communication, and in this sense it can never be abolished:
human beings cannot exist in an undifferentiated union with nature. The
point is that representation must not be allowed to become autonomous,
another expression of alienation.
[8] See the chapter âGrowth of Productive Forces: Domestication of Human
Beingsâ in Camatte: The Wandering of Humanity (Detroit, 1975). That work
also contains a more detailed discussion of other matters raised in the
present article, e.g. the Marxist theory of the proletariat, repressive
consciousness etc. [translatorâs note]
[9] This point was made clear by Norman 0. Brown in Eros and Thanatos.
The fear of individuality cannot by itself adequately explain the
profound phenomenon whereby human beings are pressed into a mould,
obliged to identify themselves as a certain type of being and forced to
submerge themselves within a group. People are afraid of themselves
because they donât know themselves. Hence there is this need for a norm
in order to be able to ward off the âexcessesâ which can afflict the
social order as well as the individual heart. It would seem that the
organizations within society are too fragile to allow the free
development of human potentialities. With the capitalist mode of
production everything is possible as an element of capitalization, but
what is possible is all the time only what is permitted; this means that
the individual is reduced to a modality of being that is either normal
or abnormal; the totality meanwhile exists only within the discourse of
capital, where it remains perverted and beyond reach. The fear of
individuality comes through very clearly in most of the utopias which
depict the triumph of a despotic and egalitarian rationality.
[10] The abbreviations refer to the Communist Party, the Socialist
Party, the United Socialist Party and the two big labour confederations:
CGT (Communist) and the CFDT (âindependentâ left). The agitation in the
lycées emerged openly on 22 March when 30,000 young people demonstrated
in Paris against the Debré law which provided for 15 months military
service (previously two years) for all 18 year olds, but with no
deferment beyond the age of 21. During the first part of April there
were more large demonstrations in Paris (one of them numbering 100,000
according to The Times, 10 Apr 73) and in many other cities in France
and also Strasbourg. Strike Committees were formed in the lycées and
general assemblies were set up. These were often controlled by political
militants (usually belonging to the trotskyist organizations, La Ligue
Communiste RĂ©volutionnaire and LâAlliance Marxiste; the young Communists
stayed with the existing student organisations), and these leaders
succeeded, against some considerable opposition, in forging contacts
with the trade unions which had earlier issued long declarations of
support for the striking lycĂ©ens. This led to the âunitaryâ
demonstrations of 9 April where leaders of the CGT etc. marched at the
head of the columns. [translatorâs note]
[11] In 1964 Cardan saw that youth insurrections were very important,
but he viewed them as something exterior which had to be made use of.
This is the tribute which ideology pays to the old idea of consciousness
coming from outside: âThe revolutionary movement will be able to give a
positive direction to todays enormous youth revolt. If it can discover
that new and true language which the youth is looking for, it can turn
their revolt into a ferment of social transformation, and show them
another activity for their struggle against the world which they now
refuse.â Socialisme ou Barbarie No. 35, p. 35
[12] On the subject of the army, we would insist that those arguments
which attempt to distinguish between the volunteer, professional army
and the conscript or national army are a fraud, an absurd blackmail. If
you end military service, you are still left with a professional army, a
praetorian guard and the possibility of a fascist revival. (Certain
leftist groups âintervenedâ during the agitation in 1973 demanding
democratic and popular control of the national army [translators note]).
In practice, the present system in France is a mixture: a professional
army which educates and trains the intake who then go to make up the
national army. And where did this national army, much vaunted by Jaurés
come from? â the union sacrĂ©e of 1914, the sacred slaughter which is
venerated to this day. There is a book called lâArmĂ©e Nouvelle
(publisher 10/18) which demonstrates the extent to which âfascismâ had
no need to invent a fresh theory in this area, since one had already
been provided by the social democratic International. Jaurés wanted to
reconcile army and nation (which is exactly what Hitler wanted and
managed to achieve.) The reconciliation was accomplished in 1914 when
the brave Frenchmen gaily set out for the slaughter. How different it
all was from JaurĂ©sâ cult of la patrie. âIt was rooted in the very
foundations of human life, and even, if we can put it this way, in
peopleâs physiologyâ (lâArmĂ©e Nouvelle, p.268). And in Germany, at about
the same time, Bebel was thinking along similar lines.
[13] Cited in Noam Chomsky: American Power and the New Mandarins
(Pelican, 1969) p. 247.
[14] The Asiatic mode of production experienced quite a number of very
extensive insurrectional movements which effectively regenerated it.
According to a number of historians, some revolts were even raised up by
the state itself Maoâs great cultural revolution is only a replay of
such revolts. These facts confirm the thesis we have advanced many times
before about the, convergence between the Asiatic mode of production
where classes could never become autonomous, and the capitalist mode
where they are absorbed.
[15] The CRS are the para-military riot police. In May 1979 a new
variation on the old slogan appeared when the trotskyists of the Ligue
Communiste RĂ©volutionaire (LCR) joined forces with the stalinists and
the CRS in the violent repression directed against the âautonomesâ
during the demonstrations in Paris by the steel workers from Longwy and
Denain: LCR=CRS, or LCRS. [translatorâs note]
[16] Non-violence is itself just an insidious hypocritical form of
violence, a sign of certain peopleâs inability to stand up for
themselves as human beings.
[17] The old opposition between city and country clearly no longer
exists. Capital has urbanized the planet; Nature has become mineralized
(made inorganic). We are now seeing new conflicts between urban centres
and those parts of the countryside where a few peasants still remain.
Urban centres demand more and more water which means building numerous
reservoirs at distances of fifty or even a hundred miles from the city.
This leads to the destruction of good agricultural land as well as land
for hunting and fishing; it also results in the peasants being deprived
of water since all the sources are drawn off to fill reservoirs and
channels. This conflict can affect the same person from two angles if
he/she lives in the town and owns a second âhouse in the countryâ. We
can see now that the problem extends well beyond the question of the
traditional peasantry; it now involves the global relationship of people
to the natural world and a reconsideration of their actual mode of
being.
[18] Which is how one would have to regard the actions of those American
psychiatrists who voluntarily commit themselves to psychiatric clinics,
thereby demonstrating the there is no system of knowledge capable of
defining madness. (We might add that the production of actual madness is
necessary to the existence of capital).
[19] Death has become an essential element in peopleâs coming to
consciousness of themselves, but such consciousness is transmitted only
with great difficulty. The passage from the exterior to the interior is
too laborious, but fortunately the expedients and shortcuts are there.
[20] A process described as âprosthesisâ by Cesarano and Collu in
Apocalisse et Rivoluzione (Dedalo, Bari, 1973). The book presents itself
as âa manifesto for biological revolutionâ and no resumĂ© could do
justice to its great richness of thought. (The authors also take up the
question of representation and symbolism in social relations. See note
7). Here are two passages which give a small insight into their
position: The progressive thinkers who produced the MIT report (Manâs
Impact on the Global Environment, 1972) and also the propositions put
forward by Mansholt all suggest that capital cannot survive unless it
continually increases the volume of commodity production (the basis of
its valorization process). But they are mistaken in this if their
understanding of commodity is restricted to things. It doesnât matter
whether the commodity form is a thing or âa personâ. In order for
capital to continue its growth it requires only this: that within the
process of circulation there must be a moment when one commodity of
whatever kind assumes the task of exchanging itself for A in order to
subsequently exchange itself with X. In theory this is perfectly
possible, provided that constant capital, instead of being invested
mainly in projects to manufacture objects, is devoted to projects
designed to create corporate people (âsocial servicesâ, âpersonnel
servicesâ). (p. 82) Fiction (le fictif) reaches its final peak of coher
ence when it is able to present itself as a complete representation and
hence as an organization of appearances which is completely unreal;
ultimately it is able to separate itself definitively from the concrete,
to such a degree that it disappears altogether. (Thus fiction is the
essence of all religions). The human species will be able to emancipate
itself definitively from prosthesis and free itself from fiction and
religion only when it openly recognizes itself as subjectively acting as
an indissoluble part of the organic movement of nature in its global
process. Biological revolution consists in reversing once and for all
the relationship which has been a feature of all prehistory (i.e. all
the period preceding the communist revolution), whereby the physical
existence of the species is subordinated to the role of the social
mechanism; it is the emancipation of organic subjectivity, the taming of
the machine once and for all in whatever form it may appear. (p. 153)
[21] We are referring here not to the human being as an individual
existing in a particular historical period, but as an invariant
constant.
[22] Bordiga once maintained that âwe are the only ones to ground our
action in the futureâ. In 1952 he wrote: âOur strength lies more in the
science of the future than in that of the past or present.â
(âExplorateurs de lâavenirâ, Battaglia Communista no. 6)
[23] âLâindustrie du futurâ e.g. futurology, the technological
revolution, marketing, resources planning, space exploration etc.
translators note]
[24] Capital is characterized not so much by the way it emphasizes
quantity while denying quality, but rather by the fact that there exists
a fundamental contradiction between the two, with the quantitative
tending to overwhelm all aspects of quality. It is not a question of
realizing the desire for quality by denying quantity (in the same way,
one does not arrive at use value by suppressing exchange value). It will
require a total mutation before all the logic of this domination can be
swept away. For quality and quantity both exist in close affinity with
measurement, and all are in turn linked to value. Measurement operates
to an equal degree at the level of use value, as well as exchange value.
In the former case, it is closely bound up with one type of domination:
use values measure a particular personâs social position, and are also a
measure of the weight of oppression they bear. Use values impose their
own despotism which envelops the other despotism (exchange value), and
now also that of capital. Marx, in his notes to J.S.Millâs work,
denounced utilitarianism as a philosophy in which man is valued only in
terms of his use, while exchange tends to autonomize itself.
[25] This is Blanquiâs definition of infinity which is itself a slight
modification of Pascalâs famous phrase. (The French is: âle centre est
partout, la surface nulle partâ â translators note)
[26] âFrom our present point of view, this prediction seems to be wrong.
But we should bear in mind that predictions can never be made with
absolute accuracy; the overall process will generally tend to lag behind
what we forecast will happen, and there is also the factor that every
such prediction is an expression of a particular individualâs, own
profound desire. And desire is always in a hurry, it doesnât know how to
wait.
We should discuss the future realistically: i.e. in terms of the
movement and process towards revolution, and from the standpoint that we
must abandon this world. But it cannot be stated as simply as that; it
starts to look like equivocation. We ought to be able now to examine the
forecast we made and what emerges from it. What is true about it is the
fact that in 1978, the refusal we have often spoken about is now more
manifest, more definitely present than it has been in the years
preceding. This refusal moreover, is heavy with consequences for
capitalâs destruction.
âWhat we have said so far has been concerned with the permanent element
of the perspective, but it doesnât clarify particularly the situation at
the present, where we find that the concern is no longer with a struggle
against capital as such. In 1973, one could already see that the
destruction aimed at capital was indirect: it did not come from men and
women forming a frontal opposition against it. If the system suffers
from instability â the âcrisisâ as the economists now call it â this
doesnât of itself call capital into question, and the catastrophe is
only just beginning to develop its premises (though the pace of events
can accelerate quickly).
âOne fundamental thing to emerge since 1978 is the fact that we are fast
approaching the end of the cycle of capital. It is more intensive now,
but also more extensive, and from either point of view this makes it
easier for us to abandon capital. Taking up a position about something
that is already achieved and finished is easy; it is much harder with
something that is still in the process of formation and development.â
(from âla separation necessaire et lâimmense refusâ, 1979)
This is as clear as I was able to get it in January 1979 when that piece
was written. In a more recent article (âlâEcho du Tempsâ, Feb. 1980) I
try to describe more accurately how this âdestructionâ of the community
of capital can come about. It is an attempt to take up the question of
what I call capitalâs potential death, which is due to its movement of
anthropomorphization and the capitalization of human beings.
As capital openly installs its community it realizes a project of the
human species and at the same time exhausts its possibilities. Being
real contemporaries of our period requires a clear realization of the
potential death of capital, in order that we may subsequently embark on
a new dynamic of life. (Authorâs note, March 1980)