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Title: Anti-mass
Author: The Red Sunshine Gang
Date: 1970
Language: en
Topics: affinity groups, mass society
Source: http://www.spunk.org/texts/misc/sp001304.txt
Notes: Anti-Mass — Methods of organization for collectives is an essay written anonymously in 1970 or 1971. The authors called themselves the Red Sunshine Gang and are believed to have been members of the civil rights and anti-war movement in Berkeley, California, USA. It quotes Mao and argues revolution is only possible through the actions of small collectives. The essay has been published several times in different zine editions. It was critiqued in the pamphlet Methods for the Communalization of Confusion.

The Red Sunshine Gang

Anti-mass

The Difference Between Mass and Class

Why is it important to know the difference between mass and class? The

chances are that there can be no conscious revolutionary practice

without making this distinction. We are not playing around with words.

Look. We are living in a mass society. We didn’t get that way by

accident. The mass is a specific form of organization. The reason is

clear. Consumption is organized by the corporations. Their products

define the mass. The mass is not a cliche — ‘the masses’ — but a routine

which dominates your daily life. Understanding the structure of the mass

market is the first step toward understanding what happened to the class

struggle.

What is the mass? Most people think of the mass in terms of numbers —

like a crowded street or stadium. But it is actually structure which

determines its character. The mass is an aggregate of couples who are

separate, detached and anonymous. They live in cities physically close

yet socially apart. Their lives are privatized and depraved. Coca-Cola

and loneliness. The social existence of the mass — its rules and

regulations, the structuring of its status, roles and leadership — are

organized through consumption (the mass market). They are all products

of a specific social organization. Ours.

Of course, no one sees themselves as part of the mass. It’s always

others who are the masses. The trouble is that it is not only the

corporations which organize us into the mass. The ‘movement’ itself

behaves as a mass and its organizers reproduce the hierarchy of the

mass.

Really, how do you fight fire? With water, of course. The same goes for

revolution. We don’t fight the mass (market) with a mass (movement). We

fight mass with class. Our aim should be not to create a mass movement

but a class force.

What is a class? A class is a consciously organized social force. For

example, the ruling class is conscious and acts collectively to organize

not only itself, but also the people (mass) that it rules. The

corporation is the self-conscious collective power of the ruling class.

We are not saying that class relations do not exist in the rest of

society. But they remain passive so long as they are shaped solely by

objective conditions (i.e. work situations). What is necessary is the

active (subjective) participation of the class itself. Class prejudice

is not class consciousness. The class is conscious of its social

existence because it seeks to organize itself.

The moral of the story is: the mass is a mass because it is organized as

a mass. Don’t be fooled by the brand name. Mass is thinking with your

ass.

Primacy of the Collective

The small group is the coming together of people who feel the need for

collectivity. Its function is often to break out of the mass —

specifically from the isolation of daily life and the mass structure of

the movement. The problem is that frequently the group cannot create an

independent existence and an identity of its own because it continues to

define itself negatively, i.e. in opposition. So long as its point of

reference lies outside of it, the group’s politics tend to be

superimposed on it by events and crises.

The small group can be a stage in the development of the collective, if

it develops a critique of the frustrations stemming from its external

orientation. The formation of a collective begins when people not only

have the same politics, but agree on the method of struggle.

Why should the collective be the primary focus of organization? The

collective is an alternative to the existing structure of society.

Changing social relations is a process rather than a product of

revolution. In other words, you make the revolution by actually changing

social relations. You must consciously create the contradictions in

history.

Concretely, this means: organize yourselves, not somebody else. The

collective is the organizational nucleus of a classless society. As a

formal organization, it negates all forms of hierarchy. The answer to

alienation is to make yourself the subject, not the object, of history.

One of the crucial obstacles to the formation of collectives is the

transitional period — when the collective must survive side by side with

a disintegrating movement and a mass society. The disintegration of the

movement is not an isolated phenomenon but reflects the weakening of the

major institutions in American society responsible for our alienation.

Many people are demoralized by this process and find it bewildering

because they actually depend subconsciously on the continued existence

of these institutions. We are witnessing the break-up and transformation

of an institution integral to society — the mass market. The mass market

is corporate structure which few people are sufficiently aware of to

realise how it affects our political life. We really depend on our

‘leaders’ whether they be the Chicago 7 or 7up. Our understanding of the

collective form of organisation based on a critique of the mass and the

dictatorship of the product.

These contradictions make it imperative that any people who decide to

create a collective know exactly who they are and what they are doing.

That is why you must consider your collective as primary. Because, if

you don’t believe in the legitimacy of this form of organization, you

can’t have a practical analysis of what is happening. Don’t kid

yourself. The struggle for the creation and survival of collectives at

this moment in history is going to be very difficult.

The dominant issue will be how collectives can become part of history —

how they can become a social force. There is no guarantee and we should

promise no easy victories. The uniqueness of developing collectives is

their definitive break with all hierarchic forms of organization and the

reconstructing of a classless society.

The thinking of radical organizers is frozen in the concept of the mass

movement. This form of struggle, no matter how radical its demands,

never threatens the basic structure — the mass itself.

Under these circumstances it takes great effort to imagine new forms of

existence. Space must be created before we can think of these things and

be able to establish the legitimacy of acting upon them.

The form of the collective is its practice. The collective is opposed to

the mass. It contradicts the structure of the mass. The collective is

anti-mass.

Size of the Collective

The aim of any organization is to make it as simple as possible, or as

Marshall McLuhan puts it, “high in participation, low in definition.”

The tendency is just the opposite. Our reflex is to create

administrative structures to deal with political problems.

Most people cannot discuss intelligently the subject of size. There is

an unspoken feeling either that the problem should not exist or that it

is beneath us to talk about it. Let’s get it out in the open. Size is a

question of politics and social relations, not administration. Do you

wonder why the subject is shunted aside at large meetings? Because it

fundamentally challenges the repressive nature of large organizations.

Small groups that function as appendages to larger bodies will never

feel like small groups.

The collective should not be larger than a band — no orchestras or

chamber music please. The basic idea is to reproduce the collective, not

expand it. The strength of a collective lies in its social organization,

not its numbers. Once you think in terms of recruiting, you might as

well join the Army. The difference between expansion and reproduction is

the difference between adding and multiplying. The first bases its

strength on numbers and the second on relationships between people.

Why should there be a limit to size? Because we are neither supermen nor

slaves. Beyond a certain point, the group becomes a meeting and before

you know it you have to raise your hand to speak. The collective is a

recognition of the practical limits of conversation. This simple fact is

the basis for a new social experience.

Relations of inequality can be seen more clearly within a collective and

dealt with more effectively. “Whatever the nature of authority in the

large organization, it is inherent in the simple organization unit.”

(Chester Barnard, The Function of Executives, 1938). A small group with

a ‘leader’ is the nucleus of a class society. Small size restricts the

area which any single individual can dominate. This is true both

internally and in relation to other groups.

Today, the mode of struggle requires a durable and resilient form of

organization which will enable us to cope both with the attrition of

daily life and the likelihood of repression. Unless we can begin to

solve problems at this level collectively, we are certainly not fit to

create a new society. Contrary to what people are led to think, i.e.

united we stand, united we fall, it will be harder to destroy a

multitude of collectives than the largest organizations with centralized

control.

Size is a key to security. But its real importance lies in the fact that

the collective reproduces new social relations — the advantage being

that the process can begin now.

The limitation on size raises a difficult problem. What do you say to

someone who asks, “Can I join your collective?” This question is

ultimately at the root of much hostility (often unconscious) toward the

collective form of organization. You can’t separate size from the

collective because it must be small in order to exist. The collective

has a right to exclude individuals because it offers them the

alternative of starting a new collective, i.e. sharing the

responsibility for organization. This is the basic answer to the

question above.

Of course, people will put down the collective as being exclusive. That

is not the point. The size of a collective is essentially a limitation

on its authority. By contrast, large organizations, while having open

membership, are exclusive in terms of who shapes the politics and

actively participates in the structuring of activities. The choice is

between joining the mass of creating the class. The revolutionary

project is to do it yourself. Remember, Alexandra Kollontal warned in

1920, “The essence of bureaucracy is when some third person decides your

fate.”

Contact Between Collectives

The collective does not communicate with the mass. It makes contact with

other collectives. What if other collectives do not exist? Well, it

should take to itself until the day they do. Yes. By all means, the

collective also communicates with other people, but it never views them

as a mass — as a constituency or audience. The collective communicates

with individuals in order to encourage self-organization. It assumes

that people are capable of self-organization, and given that

alternative, they will choose it over mass participation. The collective

knows that it takes time to create new forms of organization. It simply

seeks to hasten the crumbling of the mass.

Much of the problem of ‘communication’ these days is that people think

they have got to communicate all the time. You find people setting up

administrative functions to deal with information flows before they have

any idea what they want to say. The collective is not obsessed with

‘communicating’ or ‘relating’ to the movement. What concerns it is the

amount of noise — incessant phone calls, form letters, announcements of

meetings, etc. — that passes for communication. It is time we gave more

thought to what we say and how we say it.

What exactly do we mean by contact? We want to begin by taking the

bureaucracy out of communication. The idea is to begin modestly. Contact

is a touching on all sides. The essential thing is about its directness

and reliability. Eyeball to eyeball.

Other forms of communication — telephone, letters, documents, etc. —

should never be used as substitutes for direct contact. In fact, they

should serve primarily to prepare contacts.

Why is it so important to have direct contact? Because it is the

simplest form of communication. Moreover, it is physical and involves

all the senses — most of all the sense of smell. For this reason, it is

reliable. It also takes account of the real need for security. Those who

talk about repression continue to pass around sheets of paper asking for

names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

There are already a number of gatherings which appear to involve contact

but in reality are grotesque facsimiles. The worst of these and the one

most people flock to is the conference. This is a hotel of the mind

which turns is all into tourists and spectators. A lower form of

existence is the endless meeting — the one held every night. Not to

mention the committees formed expressly to arrange meetings.

The basic principle of contact between collectives is: you only meet

when you have something to say to each other. This means two things.

First, that you have a concrete idea what it is you want to say.

Secondly, that you must prepare it in advance. These principles help to

ensure that communication does not become an administrative problem.

The new forms of contact have yet to be created. We can think of single

examples. A member of one collective can attend the meeting of another

collective or there may be a joint meeting of the groups as a whole. The

first of these appears to be the more practical, however, the drawback

is that not everyone is involved. There are undoubtedly other forms of

contact which are likely to develop. The main thing is to invent them.

Priority of Local Action

The collective gives priority to local action. It rejects the mass

politics of the white nationalists with their national committees,

organizers, and the superstars. Definitely, the collective is out of the

mainstream and what is more it feels no regrets. The aim of the

collective is to feel new thoughts and act new ideas — in a word to

create its own space. And that, more than any program, is what is

intolerable to all the xerox radicals trying to reproduce their own

images.

The collective is the hindquarters of the revolution. It makes no

pretence whatsoever in regard to the role of the vanguard. Expect

nothing from them. They are not your leaders. Leave them alone. The

collective knows it will be the last to enter the new world.

The doubts people have about local action reveal how dependent they are

on the glamour of mass politics. Everyone wants to project themselves on

the screen of revolution — as Yippies or White Panthers. Having

internalized the mass, they ask themselves questions whose answers seem

logical in its context. How can we accomplish anything without mass

action? If we don’t go to meetings and demonstrations, will we be

forgotten? Who will take us seriously if we don’t join the rank and

file?

Slowly you realize that you have become a spectator, an object. Your

politics take place on a stage and your social relations consist of

sitting in an audience or marching in a crowd. The fragmentation of your

everyday experience contrasts with the spectacular unity of the mass.

By contrast, the priority of local action is an attempt to unify

everyday life and fragment the mass. This level of consciousness is a

result of rejecting the laws of mass behavior based on Leninism and TV

ideology. It makes possible an enema of the brain which everyone so

desperately needs. You will be relieved to discover that you can create

a situation by localizing your struggle.

How can we prevent local action from becoming provincial? Whether or not

it does so depends on our overall strategy. Provincialism is simply the

consequences or not knowing what is happening. A commune, for example,

is provincial because its strategy is based on petty farming and

glorification of the extended family. What they have is astrology, not a

strategy.

Local action should be based on the global structure of modern society.

There can be no collective action without collectives. But the creation

of a collective should not be mistaken for victory nor should it become

an end in itself. The great danger the collective faces historically is

that of being cut off (or cutting itself off) from the outside world.

The issue ultimately will be what action to take and when. Whether

collectives become a social force depends on their analysis of history

and their course of action.

In fact, the ‘provinces’ today are moving ahead of the centers in

political consciousness and motivation. From Minnesota to the Mekong

Delta, the revolt is gaining coherence. The centers are trying to

decipher what is happening, to catch up and contain it. For this purpose

they must create centralized forms of organization — or ‘co-ordination’

— as the modernists call it.

The first principle of local action is to denationalize your thinking.

Take the country out of Salem. Get out of Marlboro country. Become

conscious of how your life is managed from the national centers.

Lifestyles are roles designed to give you the illusion of movement while

keeping you in your place. “Style is mass chasing class, and class

escaping mass.” (W. Rauschenbush, “The Idiot God Fashion,” Woman’s

Coming of Age, eds Schmalhausen and Calvert, 1931).

Local action gives you the initiative by enabling you to define the

situation. That is the practice of knowing you are the subject. Marat

says: “The most important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair,

to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes.”

The collective turns itself inside out and sees reality.

The Dream of Unity

The principle of unity is based on the proposition that everyone is a

unit (a fragment). Unity means one multiplied by itself. We are not

going to say it straight — in so far as unity has suppressed real

political differences — class, racial, sexual — it is a form of tyranny.

The dream of unity is in reality a nightmare of compromise and

suppressed desires. We are not equal and unity perpetuates inequality.

The collective will be subject constantly to pressure from outside

groups demanding support in one form or another. Everyone is always in a

crisis. Given these circumstances, a group can have the illusion of

being permanently mobilized and active without having politics of its

own. Calls for unity channel the political energies of collectives into

support politics. So, as a precaution, the collective must take time to

work out its own politics and plan of action. Above all, it should try

to foresee crisis situations and their ‘rent-a-crowd’ militancy.

You will be accused of factionalism. Don’t waste time thinking about

this age old problem. A collective is not a faction. Responding to

Pavlov’s bell puts you in the position of a salivating dog. There will

be no end to your hunger when who you are is determined by someone else.

You will also be accused of elitism. This is a risky business and should

not be dismissed lightly. A collective must first know what is meant by

elitism. Instead of wondering whether it refers to leadership or

personalities, you should first anchor the issue in a class context.

Know where your ideas come from and what their relation is to the

dominant ideology. You should ask the same questions about those who

make the accusations. What is their class background and class interest?

So far many people have reacted defensively to the charge of elitism

and, thus, have avoided dealing with the issue head on. That in itself

is a class reaction.

The internal is the mirror of the external. The best way to avoid

behaving like an elite is to prevent the formation of elitism within the

collective itself. Often when charges of elitism are true, they reflect

the same class relations internally.

The ways of undermining the autonomy of a collective are many and

insidious. The call for unity can no longer be responded to

automatically. The time has come to question the motives and

effectiveness of such actions — and to feel good (i.e. correct) in doing

so. Jargon is pigeon talk and is meant to make us feel stupid and

powerless. Because collective action is not organized as a mass, it does

not have to rely on the call of unity in order to act.

“Does ‘one divide into two’ or ‘two fuse into one’? This question is a

subject of debate in China and now here. This debate is a struggle

between two conceptions of the world. One believes in struggle, the

other in unity. The two sides have drawn a clear line between them and

their arguments are diametrically opposed. Thus, you can wee why one

divides into two.” (Free translation from the Red Flag, Peking,

September 21, 1964).

The Function of Analysis

Not only can there be no revolution without revolutionary theory, there

can be no strategy without analysis. Strategy is knowing ahead of time

what you are going to do. This is what analysis makes possible. When you

begin, you may not know anything. The purpose of analysis is not to know

everything, but to know what you do know and know it good — that is

collectively. The heart of thinking analytically is to learn over and

over again that the process is as important as the product. Developing

an analysis requires new ways of thinking. Without new ways of thinking

we are doomed to old ways of acting.

The question of what we are going to do is the hardest to answer and the

one that ultimately will determine whether a collective will continue to

exist. The difficulty of the question makes analysis all the more

necessary. We can no longer afford to be propelled by the crudest forms

of advertisement — slogans and rhetoric. The function of analysis is to

reveal a plan of action.

Why is there relatively little practical analysis of what is happening

today? Some people refuse to analyze anything which they cannot

immediately comprehend. Basically they have a feeling of inadequacy.

This is partly because they have never had the opportunity to do it

before and, therefore, don’t know they are capable of it. On the other

hand, many activists put down analysis as being ‘intellectual’ — which

is more a commentary on their own kind of thinking than anything else.

Finally, there are those who feel no need to think and become very

uncomfortable when somebody does want to. This often reflects their

class disposition. The general constipation of the movement is a product

of all these forces.

One reason for this sad state of affairs is that analysis gives so

little satisfaction. This is another way of saying that it is not

practical. What has happened to all thinking can best be seen in the

degeneration of class analysis into stereotyped, obese definitions.

There is little difference between the theory-mongers of high

abstraction and the sloganeers of crude abstraction. Theory is becoming

the dialect of robots, and slogans the mass production of the mind. But

just because ideas have become so mechanical does not mean we should

abandon thought.

Most people are willing to face the fact that they are living in a

society that has yet to be explained. Any attempt to probe those areas

which are unfamiliar is met with a general hostility of fear. People

seem afraid to look at themselves analytically. Part of the problem of

not knowing what to do reveals itself in our not knowing who we are. The

motivation to look at yourself critically and to explain society comes

from the desire to change both. The heart of the problem is that we do

not concretely imagine winning, except perhaps, by accident.

Analysis is the arming of the brain. We’re being stifled by those who

tell us analysis is intellectual when in reality it is the tool of the

imagination. Just as you can’t tolerate intellectualism, so you cannot

act from raw anger — not if you want to win. You must teach your stomach

how to think and your brain how to feel. Analysis should help us to

express anger intelligently. Learning how to think, i.e. analysis, is

the first step toward conscious activity.

No doubt you feel yourself tightening up because you think it sounds

heavy. Really, the problem is that you think much bigger than you act.

Be modest. Start with what you already know and want to know more about.

Analysis begins with what interests you. Political thinking should be

part of everyday life, not a class privilege. To be practical, analysis

must give you an understanding of what to do and how to do it.

Thinking should help to distinguish between what is important and what

is not. It should break down complex forces so that we can understand

them. Break everything down. In the process of analyzing something you

will discover that there are different ways of acting which were not

apparent when you began. This is the pleasure of analysis. To

investigate a problem is to begin to solve it.

The Need for New Formats

The need for new formats grows out of the oppressiveness of print. We

must learn the techniques of advertisement. They consist of short,

clear, non-rhetorical statements. The ad words. The ad represents a

break with the college education and the diarrhea of words. The ad is a

concentrated formula for communication. Its information power has

already outmoded the school system. The secret is to gain as much

pleasure in creating the form as in expressing the idea.

How do we defend adopting the style of advertising when its function is

so oppressive? As a medium we think it represents a revolutionary mode

of production. Rejecting it has resulted in the stagnation of our minds

and a crude romanticism in political culture. Those who turn up their

noses at ads think in a language that is decrepit. Using the ad

technique transforms the person who does it. It makes writing a pleasure

for anyone because it strives in orality in print.

What we mean by the use of ad technique is to physically use it. Most of

the time we are unconscious of ads and, if we do become conscious, we

don’t act upon them — don’t subvert them. Ads are based on repetition.

If you affect one of them, you affect all of them. Know the environment

of the ad. The most effective way to subvert an ad is to make the

contradiction in it visible. Advertise it. The vulnerability of ads lies

in the possibility of turning them against the exploiters.

Jerry Rubin says you should use the media all the time. At least he goes

all the way. This is better than the toe-dipping approach that seems so

common these days. Of course, there are groups who say don’t use it at

all and they don’t. They will probably outlast Jerry since the basic

technique of mass media is over-exposure. That is why Jerry has already

written his memoirs. The Situationists say: “The revolt is contained by

over-exposure. We are given it to contemplate so that we shall forget to

participate.”

We are not talking about the packaging of politics. Ramparts is the

Playboy of the Left. On the other hand, the underground press is

pornographic and redundant. Newsreel’s projector is running backwards.

And why in the era of Cosmopolitan magazine must we suffer the

stodginess of Leviathan? We much prefer reading Fortune — the magazine

for ‘the men in charge of change’ — for our analysis of capitalism.

There is no getting around it — we need new formats, entirely new

formats. Otherwise we will never sharpen our wits. To break out of the

spell of print requires a conscious effort to think a new language. We

should no longer be immobilized by other people’s words. Don’t wait for

the news to tell you what is happening. Make you headlines with

presstype. Cut up your favorite magazine and put it together again. Cut

big words in half and make little words out of them — like ENVIRON

MENTAL CRISIS. All you need is a good pair of scissors and rubber

cement. Abuse the enemy’s images. Turn the Man from Glad into a

Frankenstein. Making comic strips out of great art. Don’t let anything

interfere with your pleasure.

Don’t read any more books — at least not straight through. As G.B. Kay

from Blackpool once said (quoting somebody else), “Reading rots the

mind.” Pamphlets are so much more fun. Read randomly, write on the

margins and go back to comics. You might try the Silver Surfer for a

start.

Self-Activity

Bad work habits and sloppy behavior undermine any attempt to construct

collectively. Casual, sloppy behavior means that we don’t care deeply

about what we are doing or who we are doing it with. This may come as a

surprise to a lot of people. The fact remains: we talk revolution but

act reactionary at elementary levels.

There are two basic things underlying these unfortunate

circumstances: 1) people’s idea of how something (like revolution) will

happen shapes our work habits; 2) their class background gives them a

casual view of politics.

There is no doubt that the Pepsi generation is more politically alive.

But this new energy is being channelled by organizers into boring

meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of class society. After a while,

critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings

become a routine like everything else in life.

A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work

habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive

roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis on

mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely, do

people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to.

Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few

people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of

group achievement.

Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as

subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in

the future. No one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore,

they don’t understand how it will be accomplished.

The short span of attention is one tell tale symptom of instant

politics. The emphasis on responding to crisis seems to contract the

span of attention — in fact there is often no time dimension at all.

This timelessness is experienced as the syncopation of over-commitment.

Many people say they will do things without really thinking out

carefully whether they have the time to do them. Having time ultimately

means defining what you really want to do. Over-commitment is when you

want to do everything but end up doing nothing.

The numerous other symptoms of casual politics — lack of preparation,

being late, getting bored at difficult moments, etc. are all signs of a

political attitude which is destructive to the collective. The important

thing is recognizing the existence of these problems and knowing what

causes them. They are not personal problems but historically determined

attitudes.

Many people confuse the revolt against alienated labor in its specific

historical form with work activity itself. This revolt is expressed in

an anti-work attitude.

Attitudes toward work are shaped by out relations to production, i.e.

class. Class is a product of hierarchic divisions of labor (including

forms other than wage labor). There are three basic relations which can

produce anti-work attitudes. The working class expressed its anti-work

attitude as a rebellion against routinized labor. For the middle class,

the anti-work attitude comes out of the ideology of consumer society and

revolves around leisure. The stereotype of the ‘lazy native’ or

‘physically weak woman’ is a third anti-work attitude which is applied

to those excluded from wage labor.

The dream of automation (i.e. no work) reinforces class prejudice. The

middle class is the one that has the dream since it seeks to expand its

leisure-oriented activities. To the working class, automation means a

loss of their job, preoccupation with unemployment, which is the

opposite of leisure. For the excluded, automation doesn’t mean anything

because it will not be applied to their forms of work.

The automation of the working class has become the ideology of

post-scarcity radicals — from the anarchists at Anarchos to SDS’s new

working class. Technological change has rescued them from the dilemma of

a class analysis they were never able to make. With the elimination of

working class struggle by automation (the automation of the working

class) the radicals have become advocates of leisure society and

touristic lifestyles. This anti-work attitude leads to a utopian outlook

and removes us from the realm of history. It prevents the construction

of collectivity and self-activity. The issue of how to transform work

into self-activity is central to the elimination of class and the

reorganization of society.

Self-activity is the reconstruction of the consciousness (wholeness) of

one’s individual life activity. The collective is what makes the

reconstruction possible because it defines individuality not as a

private experience but as a social relation. What is important to see is

that work is the creating of conscious activity within the structure of

the collective.

One of the best ways to discover and correct anti-work attitudes is

through self-criticism. This provides an objective framework which

allows people the space to be criticized and to be critical.

Self-criticism is the opposite of self-consciousness because its aim is

not to isolate you but to free repressed abilities. Self-criticism is a

method for dealing with piggish behavior and developing consciousness.

To root out the society within us and to redefine our work relations a

collective must develop a sense of its own history. One of the hardest

things to do is to see the closest relations — those within the

collective — in political terms. The tendency is to be sloppy, or what

Mao calls ‘liberal,’ about relations between friends. Rules can no

longer be the framework of discipline. It must be based on political

understanding. One of the functions of analysis is that it be applied

internally.

Preparation is another part of the process which creates continuity

between meetings and insures that our own thinking does not become a

part-time activity. It also combats the tendency to talk off the top of

one’s head and pick ideas out of the air. Whenever meetings tend to be

abstract and random it means the ideas put forward are not connected by

thought (i.e. analysis). There is seldom serious investigation behind

what is said.

What does it mean to prepare for a meeting? It means not coming

empty-handed or empty-headed. Mao says, “No investigation, no right to

speak.” Assuming a group has decided what it wants to do, the first step

is for everyone to investigate. This means taking the time to actually

look into the matter, sort out the relevant materials and be able to

make them accessible to everyone in the collective. The motive

underlying all the preparation should be the construction of a coherent

analysis. “We must substitute the sweat of self-criticism for the tears

of crocodiles,” according to a new Chinese proverb.

Struggle on Many Levels

Struggle has many faces. But no two faces look alike. Like the cubists,

we must look at things from many sides. The problem is to find ways of

creating space for ourselves. The tendency now is toward two-sidedness

which is embedded in every aspect of our lives. Our language poses

questions by making us choose between opposites. The imperialist creates

the anti-imperialist. Before ‘cool’ there was hot and cold. ‘Cool’ was

the first attempt to break out of two-sidedness. Two-sidedness always

minimizes the dimensions of struggle by narrowly defining the situation.

We end up with a one dimensional view of the enemy and of ourselves.

Learn to be shrewd. Our first impulse is always to define our position.

Why do we feel the need to tell them? We create space by not appearing

to be what we really are.

Shrewdness is not simply a defensive tactic. The essence of shrewdness

is learning to take advantage of the enemy’s weaknesses. Otherwise you

can never win. The rule is: be honest among yourselves, but deceive the

enemy.

There are at least three ways of dealing with a situation. You can

neutralize, activate, or destroy. Neutralize is to create space.

Activate is to gain support. Destroy is to win. What’s more, it is

essential to learn how to use all three simultaneously.

Struggle on many levels begins with the activation of all the senses. We

must be able to conceive of more than one mode of acting for a given

situation. The response, i.e. method of struggle, should contain three

elements: 1) a means of survival; 2) a method of exploiting splits in

the enemy camp; 3) an underground strategy.

The fundamental tendency of corporate liberalism is to identify with

social change while trying to contain it. Wouldn’t it be ironic (and

even a relief) if we could turn the threat of co-option into a means of

survival?

The fear of co-option often leads people to shun the challenge of

corporate liberals. Some of the purest revolutionaries prefer not to

think about using the co-opter for their own purposes. Too often the

mentality of the ‘job’ obscures the potential for subversion.

The existence of corporate liberalism demands that we not be sloppy in

our own thinking and response. The strength of the position is that it

forces us to acknowledge our own weaknesses — even before we engage in

struggle against it. The worst mistake is to pretend that this enemy

does not exist.

Urban struggle requires a subversive strategy. Concretely, working

‘within the system’ should become for us a source of money, information,

and anonymity. This is what Mao means when he says, “Move at night.” The

routine of daily life is night-time for the enemy — when he cannot see

us. The process of co-option should become an increasingly disquieting

exercise for them.

Exploiting splits within the enemy camp does not mean helping one

segment defeat another. The basic aim is to maintain the splits. There

are significant differences among the oppressors. These have the effect

of weakening them. Under certain circumstances these splits may provide

a margin of maneuverability which may be strategic for us. The main

thing is not to view the enemy monolithically. Monolithic thinking

condemns you to one way of acting.

There is a tendency to see the most degenerate forms of reaction as the

primary enemy. The corporations are consciously pandering to such ideas

through films like Easy Rider which also attempts to identify with young

males. The function of analysis is to break down and specify the

different forces within the enemy camp.

The spaces created by these splits are of crucial importance to the

preparation of a long range strategy. It will be increasingly difficult

to survive with the visibility that we are accustomed to. The lifestyles

which declare our opposition are also the ones which make us easy

targets. We must not mistake the level of appearances for new cultures.

The whole point is not to make a fetish of our lifestyles. In the

psychedelic atmosphere of repression, square is cool.

Always keep part of your strategy underground. Just as analysis helps to

differentiate the enemy so it should provide you with different levels

of attack. Mao says: “Flexibility is a concrete expression of

initiative.”

Going underground should not mean dropping heroically out of sight.

There will be few places to hide in the electronic environment of the

future. The most dangerous kind of underground will be one that is like

an iceberg. The roles created to replace our identities in everyday life

must become the disguise of the underground.

An underground strategy puts the impulse of confrontation into

perspective. We must fight against the planned obsolescence of

confrontations which lock us into the time-span of instant revolution.

Going underground means having a long range strategy — something which

plans for 2004. The iceberg strategy keeps us cool. It trains us to

control our reflexes and calculate our responses.

The underground strategy is also necessary to maintain autonomy.

Autonomy preserves the organizational form of the collective, which is

critical to the sharpening of its politics. Nothing will be achieved by

submerging ourselves in a chaos of revolutionary fronts. The principle

strategy of the counterfeit Left will be to smear over differences with

appeals to a class unity that no longer exists. An underground strategy

without a revolutionary from of organization can only emerge as a new

class society. To destroy the system of oppression is not enough. We

must create the organization of a free society. When the underground

emerges, the collective will be that society.