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Title: On Organization Author: Jacques Camatte, Gianni Collu Date: 04.09.1969 Language: en Topics: anti-organization, post-left, commodification Source: https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/onorganization.pdf
The following letter (dated 04.09.69) led to the dissolution of the
group that had begun to form on the basis of the positions set forth in
Invariance. The letter opened an important area of reflection and debate
that has gone on since, certain conclusions of which have already been
discussed in "Transition", no. 8, série 1.
Although certain points raised by the letters have been partially dealt
with, others have hardly been touched upon. That's why it's
necessary-given the importance of making a more clean break with the
past-to publish it now. Our publishing it should enable the reader to
appreciate the work accomplished thus far, and what still remains to be
done.
Since it is simultaneously a break (and thus a conclusion) and a point
of departure, the letter contains a certain number of imprecisions,
seeds of possible errors. We shall indicate the most important ones in a
note. In addition, since it was possible for us then, once we had
rejected the group method, to outline "concretely" how to be
revolutionaries, our rejection of the small group could have been
interpreted as a return to a more or less Stirnerian individualism. As
if the only guarantee from now on was going to be the subjectivity
cultivated by each individual revolutionary! Not at all. It was
necessary to publicly reject a certain perception of social reality and
the practice connected with it, since they were a point of departure for
the process of racketization. If we therefore withdrew totally from the
groupuscule movement, it was to be able simultaneously to enter into
liaison with other revolutionaries who had made an analogous break. Now
there is a direct production of revolutionaries who supersede almost
immediately the point we were at when we had to make our break. Thus,
there is a potential "union" that would be considered if we were not to
carry the break with the political point of view to the depths of our
individual consciousnesses. Since the essence of politics is
fundamentally representation, each group is forever trying to project an
impressive image on the social screen. The groups are always explaining
how they represent themselves in order to be recognized by certain
people as the vanguard for representing others, the class. This is
revealed in the famous "what distinguishes us" of various small groups
in search of recognition. All delimitation is limitation and often leads
rather rapidly to reducing the delimitation to some representative
slogans for racketeerist marketing. All political representation is a
screen and therefore an obstacle to a fusion of forces. Since
representation can occur on the individual as well as the group level,
recourse to the former level would be, for us, a repetition of the past.
Camatte, 1972
---
"Both of us scoff at being popular. Among other things our disgust at
any personality cult is evidence of this. I have never permitted anyone
to make publicity out of the numerous testimonials of admiration with
which they've overwhelmed me in various countries... When Engels and I
first joined the secret society of communists, we did it on the
condition sine qua non that they repeal all statutes that would be
favorable to a cult of authority."
Marx to Blos - 10.11.1877, MEW 34, p. 308.
"It is possible to avoid the dirt in bourgeois intercourse or in its
trade? Dirt is its natural element.... The honest infamy or the infamous
honesty of the solvent morality appear to me not a bit superior to the
unrespectable infamy which neither the first Christian communities nor
the Jacobin club, nor our own deceased League could free themselves of
entirely. In bourgeois intercourse, however, you get used to the fact
that you lose your sense of respectable infamy or of infamous
respectability."
Marx to Freiligrath - 29.02.1860, MEW 30, p. 492.
The establishment of capital within material existence and therefore
within the social community is accompanied by the disappearance of the
traditional personal capitalist, the relative, and sometimes absolute,
diminution of the proletariat, and the growth of new middle classes.
Each human community, no matter how small, is conditioned by the mode of
existence of the material community. The present mode of existence
derives from the fact that capital is able to valorize itself, therefore
exist and develop, only if a particle of it, at the same time that it
becomes autonomous, confronts the social ensemble and places itself in
relation to the total socialized equivalent, capital. It needs this
confrontation (competition, rivalry); it exists only by differentiation.
From this point, a social fabric forms based on the competition of rival
"organizations" (rackets).
"It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites
in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a
whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation
promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private
production without the control of private property."
Capital (International Publishers), Vol. III, p. 438].
"Expropriation extends here from the direct producers to the smaller and
the medium-sized capitalists themselves. It is the point of departure
for the capitalist mode of production; its accomplishment is the goal of
this production. In the last instance it aims at the expropriation of
the means of production from all individuals. With the development of
social production, the means of production ceases to be means of private
production and products of private production, and can thereafter be
only means of production in the hands of associated producers, i.e. the
latter's social property, much as they are their social products.
However, this expropriation appears within the capitalist system in a
contradictory form, as appropriation of social property by a few; credit
lends the latter more and more the aspect of pure adventurers".
Ibid., pp. 439-440.
As home of the production process (the creation of value), the business
enterprise restrains the movement of capital, fixes it at a particular
location. It therefore must overcome this stabilization, lose this fixed
character. So the propertyless enterprise arises, which still allows for
a mystified yield form of surplus value. Here the constant capital is
equal to zero, so only a small advance of capital is necessary to get
the "business" rolling. Finally, there are even fictitious enterprises,
thanks to which the most unchecked speculation develops.
"Today, capital constantly appears in the form of an "organization."
Behind this word-synonymous, in the glorious days of labor conflicts,
with brotherhood in an open struggle, but now merely a hypocritical
fiction about common interest among businessmen, administrators,
technicians, unskilled workers, robots and watchdogs-behind the
inexpressive and anti-mnemonic trademarks of the companies, behind the
terms "elements of production" and "stimulation of national revenue,
"capital still fulfills its old repulsive function; a function far more
unworthy than that of the entrepreneur who personally contributed his
intelligence, courage and true pioneering spirit at the dawn of
bourgeois society.
The organization is not only the modern depersonalized capitalist, but
also the capitalist without capital because it doesn't need any...
The business organization has its own plan. It doesn't establish a
reliable business firm with assets but a "corporate front" with a
fictitious capital.[1] If anything is paid in advance, it is merely to
gain the sympathy of the government agencies which examine bids,
proposals, and contracts.
This reveals the falseness of the stupid doctrine that the state or
party bureaucracy constitutes a new ruling class which screws
proletarians and capitalists alike, a ridiculous hypothesis, easily
rejected from a Marxist viewpoint. Today the "specialist" is a beast of
prey, the bureaucrat a miserable bootlicker.
The organization differs from the worker commune (a libertarian illusion
which cannot be found within any defined boundaries) in that, in each
form, rather than equality of performance in a common work, there is a
hierarchy of functions and benefits. It can't be otherwise when the firm
has autonomy in the market and must present a profitable balance sheet.
Recent reports from Russia concerning the regional decentralization and
enlarged independence of particular concerns show that the trend is
towards an explosive extension of the contract system, by which the
state hires itself out to organizations in all sectors of the economy,
organizations which are actual business gangs, with a changing and
elusive personnel composition. This is similar to the various greedy
forms which characterize the modern construction industry in all
contemporary capitalist systems."
A. Bordiga, "The Economic and Social Structure in Russia Today" in il
programma comunista, no. 7, 1957. Edition de L'oubli 1975, pp. 230-31.
Not only does the state hire itself out to gangs, but it becomes a gang
(racket) itself. Nevertheless, it still plays the role of mediator.
"Absolute monarchy (which itself is already a product of the growing
bourgeois wealth and develops to a point where it becomes incompatible
with the old feudal relations) necessitates in a determinate way a
general power that affirms itself through egalitarian forms. The
absolute monarchy must be able to exercise this power on all points of
the periphery; it needs this power as the material lever of the general
equivalent; of the wealth that becomes increasingly effective and
powerful in its forms and increasingly independent from all special,
local, natural, individual relations."
K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ă–konomie (Europaische
Verlaganstalt, Frankfurt) p. 873.
The state appeared in its pure form, with the power of the general
equivalent, at the time of the growth of the law of value in the period
of simple commodity production. In the phase of formal domination of
capital, when capital had not yet dominated the law of value, the state
was a mediator between capital and [...][2] both remained of prior modes
of production and the proletariat itself. The credit system was still
undeveloped and had not yet given rise, on a large scale, to fictitious
capital. Capital still needed a rigid gold standard. With the passage to
real domination, capital created its own general equivalent, which
couldn't be as rigid as it had been in the period of simple circulation.
The state itself had to lose its rigidity and become a gang mediating
between different gangs and between the total capital and particular
capitals.
We can see the same sort of transformation in the political sphere. The
central committee of a party or the center of any sort of regroupment
plays the same role as the state. Democratic centralism only managed to
mimic the parliamentary form characteristic of formal domination. And
organic centralism, affirmed merely in a negative fashion, as refusal of
democracy and its form (subjugation of the minority to the majority,
votes, congresses, etc.) actually just gets trapped again in the more
modern forms. This results in the mystique of organization (as with
fascism). This was how the PCI (International Communist Party) evolved
into a gang.
The proletariat having been destroyed, this tendency of capital
encounters no real opposition in society and so can produce itself all
the more efficiently. The proletariat's real essence has been denied and
it exists only as an object of capital. Similarly, the theory of the
proletariat, Marxism, has been destroyed, Kautsky first revising it and
then Bernstein liquidating it. This occurred in a definitive manner, for
no assault of the proletariat has succeeded since then in reestablishing
Marxism. This is only another way of saying that capital has succeeded
in establishing its real domination. To accomplish this, capital had to
absorb the movement that negates it, the proletariat, and establish a
unity in which the proletariat is merely an object of capital. This
unity can be destroyed only by a crisis, such as those described by
Marx. It follows that all forms of working-class political organization
have disappeared. In their place, gangs confront one another in an
obscene competition, veritable rackets rivaling each other in what they
peddle but identical in their essence.
The existence of the gangs derives therefore from the tendency of
capital to absorb its contradictions, from its movement of negation and
from its reproduction in a fictitious form. Capital denies, or tends to
deny, the basic principles on which it erects itself; but, in reality,
it revives them under a fictitious form. The gang is a clear expression
of this duality:
the boss who commands = caricature of the traditional individual (and
his clique)
the collective form = caricature of community based on common interests
The movement of negation is thus reabsorbed in the gang, which is the
realization of appearance. The gang also fulfills another requirement of
capital: it replaces all natural or human presuppositions with
presuppositions determined by capital.
In its external relations, the political gang tends to mask the
existence of the clique, since it must seduce in order to recruit. It
adorns itself in a veil of modesty so as to increase its power. When the
gang appeals to external elements through journals, reviews, and
leaflets, it thinks that it has to speak on the level of the mass in
order to be understood. It talks about the immediate because it wants to
mediate. Considering everyone outside the gang an imbecile, it feels
obliged to publish banalities and bullshit so as to successfully seduce
them. In the end, it seduces itself by its own bullshit and it is
thereby absorbed by the surrounding milieu. However, another gang will
take its place, and its first theoretical wailings will consist of
attributing every misdeed and mistake to those who have preceded it,
looking in this way for a new language so as to begin again the grand
practice of seduction; in order to seduce, it has to appear to be
different from the others.
Once within the gang (or any type of business) the individual is tied to
it by all the psychological dependencies of capitalist society. If he
shows any capacities they are exploited immediately without the
individual having had a chance to master the "theory" that he has
accepted. In exchange, he is given a position in the ruling clique, he
is made a petty leader. If he fails to show capacities, an exchange
takes place all the same; between his admission to the gang and his duty
to diffuse its position. Even in those groups that want to escape the
social givens, the gang mechanism nevertheless tends to prevail because
of the different degrees of theoretical development among the members
who make up the grouping. The inability to confront theoretical
questions independently leads the individual to take refuge behind the
authority of another member, who becomes, objectively, a leader, or
behind the group entity, which becomes a gang. In his relations with
people outside the group the individual uses his membership to exclude
others and to differentiate himself from them, if only – in the final
analysis – so as to guard himself against recognition of his own
theoretical weaknesses. To belong in order to exclude, that is the
internal dynamic of the gang; which is founded on an opposition,
admitted or not, between the exterior and the interior of the group.
Even an informal group deteriorates into a political racket, the classic
case of theory becoming ideology.
The desire to belong to a gang comes from the wish to be identified with
a group that embodies a certain degree of prestige, theoretical prestige
for intellectuals and organizational prestige for so-called practical
men. Commercial logic also enters into "theoretical" formation. With a
growing mass of ideological commodity-capital to realize, it becomes
necessary to create a deep motivation so people will buy commodities.
For this the best motivation is: learn more, read more, in order to be
above, in order to be different from the mass. Prestige and exclusion
are the signs of competition in all its forms; and so also among these
gangs, which must vaunt their originality, their prestige, in order to
attract notice. This is why the cult of the organization and the
glorification of the peculiarities of the gang develop. From that point
on, it's no longer a question of defending a "theory," but of preserving
an organizational tradition (cf. the PCI and its idolatry of the Italian
left).[3]
Theory is also often acquired for use in political maneuvering, for
example, for supporting one's attempt to gain a leadership position or
for justifying the removal of a current leader.
The interior-exterior opposition and the gang structure develop the
spirit of competition to the maximum. Given the differences of
theoretical knowledge among the members, the acquisition of theory
becomes, in effect, an element of political natural selection, a
euphemism for division of labor. While one is, on the one hand,
theorizing about existing society, on the other, within the group, under
the pretext of negating it, an unbridled emulation is introduced that
ends up in a hierarchization even more extreme than in society-at-large;
especially as the interior-exterior opposition is reproduced internally
in the division between the center of the gang and the mass of
militants.
The political gang attains its perfection in those groups that claim to
want to supersede existing social forms (forms such as the cult of the
individual, of the leader, and of democracy). In practice, anonymity –
understood simply as anti-individualism - means unbridled exploitation
of the gang members to the profit of the direction clique, which gains
prestige from everything the gang produces. And organic centralism
becomes the practice of hypocrisy, since the double-dealing that one
finds in those groups that lay claim to democratic centralism occurs
anyway, in spite of the denial that it's going on.
What maintains an apparent unity in the bosom of the gang is the threat
of exclusion. Those who do not respect the norms are rejected with
calumny; and even if they quit, the effect is the same. This threat also
serves as psychological blackmail for those who remain. This same
process appears in different ways in different types of gangs.
In the business gang, modern form of the enterprise, the individual is
kicked out and finds himself in the streets.
In the youth gang, the individual is beaten up or killed. Here, where we
find revolt in its raw form, delinquency; the lone individual is weak,
lacks protection, and so is forced to join a gang.
In the political gang, the individual is rejected with calumny, which is
nothing but the sublimation of assassination. The calumny justifies his
exclusion, or is used to force him to leave "of his own free will."
In reality, of course, the different methods cross from one type of gang
to another. There are murders linked to business deals just as there are
settlements of account that result in murder.
Thus, capitalism is the triumph of the organization, and the form the
organization takes is the gang. This is the triumph of fascism. In the
United States the racket is found at all levels of society. It's the
same in USSR. The theory of hierarchical bureaucratic capitalism, in the
formal sense, is an absurdity, since the gang is an informal organism.
An alternative at the theoretical level is the exaltation of discipline,
the demand for the purity of the militant (cf. the group "Rivoluzione
comunista," which broke with the PCI in 1964 on the question of the
creation of a true elite of militants who would do nothing but bring
back to life the positions of "ultrabolshevism" that Lukacs saw as the
alternative to the opportunist mass party, which the German Communist
Party had become in the space of two years (cf. "Towards a Methodology
of the Problem of Organization" in History and Class Consciousness).
This is like saying that on the level of sexual life the alternative to
the decay of values is asceticism. Besides, in abstracting itself from
reality, this view creates a gulf between theory and practice.
All this expresses the growing separation of the individual from the
human community, poverty in Marx's sense. The formation of the gang is
the constitution of an illusory community. In the case of the youth
gang, it is the result of fixation on the elementary instinct of revolt
in its immediate form. The political gang, on the contrary, wants to
hold up its illusory community as a model for the whole society. This is
utopian behavior without any real base. The utopians hoped that through
emulation all humanity would eventually be included in the communities
they created but these communities were all absorbed by capital. So this
line from the inaugural address of the First International is more valid
than ever: "The emancipation of the workers must be the task of the
workers themselves."
At the present time the proletariat either prefigures communist society
and realizes communist theory or it remains part of existing society.
The May movement was the beginning of this prefiguration. It follows
from what has been said that the proletariat can in no way recognize
itself in any organization since it already suffers them in other forms.
The May movement clearly demonstrates this.
With the proletariat broken, its immediate form of existence is the
process of capital itself. The workers' parties in Marx's time were
produced by the immediate movement of the proletariat of that period.
Their fate was to play the bourgeois parliamentary game. Today, now that
the apparent community-in-the-sky of politic constituted by parliaments
and their parties has been effaced by capital's development, the
"organizations" that claim to be proletarian are simply gangs or cliques
which, through the mediation of the state, play the same role as all the
other groups that are directly in the service of capital. This is the
groupuscule phase. In Marx's time the supersession of the sects was to
be found in the unity of the workers' movement. Today, the parties,
these groupuscules, manifest not merely a lack of unity but the absence
of class struggle. They argue over the remains of the proletariat. They
theorize about the proletariat in the immediate reality and oppose
themselves to its movement. In this sense they realize the stabilization
requirements of capital. The proletariat, therefore, instead of having
to supersede them, needs to destroy them.
The critique of capital ought to be, therefore, a critique of the racket
in all its forms, of capital as social organism; capital becomes the
real life of the individual and his mode of being with others (cf. on
this subject: Marcuse, One Dimensional Man and Galbraith, The New
Industrial State). The theory which criticizes the racket cannot
reproduce it. The consequence of this is refusal of all group life; it's
either this or the illusion of community. On this subject, we can take
up again Engels's critique given at the congress of Sonvillers. What he
said at the time about the International applies today to a group. It
can be summed up as follows: In Marx's time the proletariat couldn't go
as far as negating itself-in the sense that during the course of the
revolution it had to set itself up as the dominant class: 1848, 1871,
1917. There was a definitive separation between the formal party and the
historic party. Today the party can only be the historic party. Any
formal movement is the reproduction of this society, and the proletariat
is essentially outside of it. A group can in no way pretend to realize
community without taking the place of the proletariat, which alone can
do it. Such an attempt introduces a distortion that engenders
theoretical ambiguity and practical hypocrisy. It is not enough to
develop the critique of capital, nor even to affirm that there are no
organizational links; it's necessary to avoid reproducing the gang
structure, since it is the spontaneous product of the society. This
ought to be the basis of the critique of the Italian left and of our
mode of existence since the break with the PCI.
The revolutionary must not identify himself with a group but recognize
himself in a theory that does not depend on a group or on a review,
because it is the expression of an existing class struggle. This is
actually the correct sense in which anonymity is posed rather than as
the negation of the individual (which capitalist society itself brings
about). Accord, therefore, is around a work that is in process and needs
to be developed. This is why theoretical knowledge and the desire for
theoretical development are absolutely necessary if the
professor-student relation - another form of the mind-matter,
leader-mass contradiction – is not to be repeated and revive the
practice of following. Moreover, the desire for theoretical development
must realize itself in an autonomous and personal fashion and not by way
of a group that sets itself up as a kind of diaphragm between the
individual and the theory.
It is necessary to return to Marx's attitude toward all groups in order
to understand why the break with the gang practice ought to be made:
- refuse to reconstitute a group, even an informal one (cf. The
Marx-Engels correspondence, various works on the revolution of 1848, and
pamphlets such as "The Great Men of Exile," 1852).
- maintain a network of personal contacts with people having realized
(or in the process of doing so) the highest degree of theoretical
knowledge: antifollowerism, antipedagogy; the party in its historical
sense is not a school.[4]
Marx's activity was always that of revealing the real movement that
leads to communism and of defending the gains of the proletariat in its
struggle against capital. Hence, Marx's position in 1871 in revealing
the "impossible action" of the Paris Commune or declaring that the First
International was not the child of either a theory or a sect. It is
necessary to do the same now. Those who wish to enter in liaison with
the work set forth in this review in order to develop it and ensure a
more detailed, precise, and lucid exposition, ought to direct their
relations along the lines indicated above in the discussion of Marx's
work. Failing to do this, they will relapse into the gang practice.
It follows from this that it is also necessary to develop a critique of
the Italian communist left's conception of "program." That this notion
of "communist program" has never been sufficiently clarified is
demonstrated by the fact that, at a certain point, the Martov-Lenin
debate resurfaced at the heart of the left. The polemic was already the
result of the fact that Marx's conception of revolutionary theory had
been destroyed, and it reflected a complete separation between the
concepts of theory and practice. For the proletariat, in Marx's sense,
the class struggle is simultaneously production and radicalization of
consciousness. The critique of capital expresses a consciousness already
produced by the class struggle and anticipates its future. For Marx and
Engels, proletarian movement = theory = communism.
"Mr. Heinzen imagines communism to be a certain doctrine which springs
from a definite theoretical principle as its nucleus and draws further
consequences from it. Mr. Heinzen is very wrong. Communism is not a
doctrine but a movement springing from facts rather than principles.
Communists presuppose not such and such a philosophy but all past
history and, above all, its actual and effective results in the
civilized countries.... In so far as communism is a theory, it is the
theoretical expression of the situation of the proletariat in its
struggle and the theoretical summary of the conditions of the liberation
of the proletariat".
F. Engels, "The communists and Karl Heinzen" Article 2, MEW 4, pp.
321-322.
Actually, the problem of consciousness coming from the outside did not
exist for Marx. There wasn't any question of the development of
militants, of activism or of academicism. Likewise, the problematic of
the self-education of the masses, in the sense of the council communists
(false disciples of R. Luxemburg and authentic disciples of pedagogic
reformism) did not arise for Marx. R. Luxemburg's theory of the class
movement, which from the start of the struggle finds within itself the
conditions for its radicalization, is closest to Marx's position (cf.
her position on the "creativity of the masses," beyond its immediate
existence).
This shows the necessity of superseding the bourgeois form of perceiving
and conceiving social reality and taking up again, as Marx did, Hegel's
demonstration of the mediate character of any form of immediacy. For it
is characteristic of "scientific" thought to accept the immediate fact
as the real object of knowledge without perceiving and conceiving the
mediation that underlies it. It is on the basis of such gnoseology that
in capitalist society social appearance becomes reality and vice-versa.
The real being of the proletariat is hidden and the class is perceived
in its apparent form of life. This is what gives to the problem of
consciousness coming from the outside and the fact that when the
proletariat manifests its true being (1905-1917), everyone is left
stupefied, dumbfounded. The Italian communist left, in spite of its more
acute capacities in the domain of the theory of the proletariat, did not
in 1950 make a definitive break with its past (1919-1926). Its critique
of Trotskyism, of council communism, etc., did not achieve the integral
restoration of Marx's notions of the party and of the proletariat.
Because of this, its official position and its real essence oscillated
between a conception of program as a "Marxist school" and a
Trotskyist-brand petty activism. This second aspect became dominant
after 1960 due to the fact that a clique of gangsters totally foreign to
the theory and to the proletariat took possession of the "school,"
thanks above all to its continuing ambiguity on some problems of vital
importance: the union question and the notion of "vanguard of
proletariat," which was actually rejected in acts and in official
discussion but which persisted in the official canon of the party. It
was then that the Martov-Lenin debate on the question of organization
was resurrected, which demonstrated that this current was definitely
dead, and led to its third-class funeral during May '68.
It should be noted that since we left the PCI we have tried to remove
the ambiguity discussed by our doing our best to reveal the positive
aspects of the left. This only resulted in our cultivating the left and
becoming its most extreme expression (cf. the articles of Invariance).
And this led us to fall back into a group practice. Although we
considered our group "informal," it carried with it the inevitable
tendency of substituting itself for the proletariat. It is no longer a
question of arguing about accommodation in the heart of the left but of
recognizing that if there has been accommodation, it is because even
from the start the theory wasn't integrally a theory of the proletariat.
Thus it is no longer adequate to say that the creation of the party in
1943 was premature; it's necessary to say that it was an absurdity.
Accordingly, it's necessary to break with our past and return to Marx's
position.
This letter has been written not so much as a definitive and exhaustive
treatment of the theme discussed; it is intended as a break with the
"whole" group past. The signatures that follow are intended to emphasize
this break and do not indicate that we have dropped our previous
position on the subject of anonymity.
[1] "Fictitious" is from finto in the original Italian, which does not
correspond to the term "fictitious" in Capital but is close to it
(Translator's note).
[2] unclear in original copy of translation.
[3] Amadeo Bordiga and the theoreticians close to him were known as the
Italian communist left. More precisely, "the Italian left" refers to the
Italian left-communist tradition: the left opposition in the Italian
Socialist Party (1910/12, 1921), the direction of the Communist Party of
Italy (1921-24), the left opposition in the Communist Party of Italy
(1924-26), the left-communist fraction in Belgium and France (Bilan and
Prometeo: 1926-43), the reconstruction of Italian left communism
(Battaglia Comunista, Prometeo 1944-52), and the International Communist
Party (il programma comunista: 1952-70; Bordiga died in 1970).
(Translator's note)
[4] To talk of reassuming again an attitude adopted by Marx at a certain
moment of his revolutionary activity resulted from a profound failure to
understand that the phase of capital's formal domination has been
completed. Marx had to take a position only valid for that period.
Furthermore, his theoretical position on the subject of the party is not
as rigid as the letter indicates here. What is even less acceptable in
the above assertions is that they could lead to a new theory of
consciousness coming from the outside by way of an elitist theory of the
development of the revolutionary movement.
The refusal of all organization is not a simple anti organizational
position. To leave it at that would be to again manifest a desire for
originality, to try to set oneself up as different and thereby reach a
position from which to attract people. From there the movement of
racketization would begin all over again.
Our position on the dissolution of groups derives from the study of the
becoming of the capitalist mode of production on one hand, and our
characterization of the May movement on the other. We are deeply
convinced that the revolutionary phenomenon is in motion and that, as
always, consciousness follows action. This means that in the vast
movement of rebellion against capital, revolutionaries are going to
adopt a definite behavior – which will not be acquired all at once -
compatible with the decisive and determinative struggle against capital.
We can preview the content of such an "organization." It will combine
the aspiration to human community and to individual affirmation, which
is the distinguishing feature of the current revolution ary phase. It
will aim toward the reconciliation of man with nature, the communist
revolution being also a revolt of nature (i.e., against capital;
moreover, it is only through a new relation with nature) that we will be
able to survive, and avert the second of the two alternatives we face
today: communism or the destruction of the human species.
In order to better understand this becoming organizational, so as to
facilitate it without inhibiting whatever it may be, it is important to
reject all old forms and to enter, without a priori principles, the vast
movement of our liberation, which develops on a world scale. It is
necessary to eliminate anything that could be an obstacle to the
revolutionary movement. In given circumstances and in the course of
specific actions, the revolutionary current will be structured and will
structure itself not only passively, spontaneously, but by always
directing the effort toward how to realize the true Gemeinwesen (human
essence) and the social man, which implies the reconciliation of men
with nature (Camatte, 1972).