đŸ Archived View for library.inu.red âș file âș ken-knabb-the-joy-of-revolution.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:52:52. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âĄïž Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Joy of Revolution Author: Ken Knabb Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: situationist, situationist international, Utopia, violence, work Source: Retrieved on September 18, 2010 from http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev.htm Notes: First published in Public Secrets: Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb (1997).
âWe can comprehend this world only by contesting it as a whole... The
root of the prevailing lack of imagination cannot be grasped unless one
is able to imagine what is lacking, that is, what is missing, hidden,
forbidden, and yet possible, in modern life.â
â Situationist International [1]
Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what
could be and what actually exists.
Itâs hardly necessary to go into all the problems in the world today â
most of them are widely known, and to dwell on them usually does little
more than dull us to their reality. But even if we are âstoic enough to
endure the misfortunes of others,â the present social deterioration
ultimately impinges on us all. Those who donât face direct physical
repression still have to face the mental repressions imposed by an
increasingly mean, stressful, ignorant and ugly world. Those who escape
economic poverty cannot escape the general impoverishment of life.
And even life at this pitiful level cannot continue for long. The
ravaging of the planet by the global development of capitalism has
brought us to the point where humanity may become extinct within a few
decades.
Yet this same development has made it possible to abolish the system of
hierarchy and exploitation that was previously based on material
scarcity and to inaugurate a new, genuinely liberated form of society.
Plunging from one disaster to another on its way to mass insanity and
ecological apocalypse, this system has developed a momentum that is out
of control, even by its supposed masters. As we approach a world in
which we wonât be able to leave our fortified ghettoes without armed
guards, or even go outdoors without applying sunscreen lest we get skin
cancer, itâs hard to take seriously those who advise us to beg for a few
reforms.
What is needed, I believe, is a worldwide participatory-democracy
revolution that would abolish both capitalism and the state. This is
admittedly a big order, but Iâm afraid that nothing less can get to the
root of our problems. It may seem absurd to talk about revolution; but
all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system,
which is even more absurd.
of capitalism
Before going into what this revolution would involve and responding to
some typical objections, it should be stressed that it has nothing to do
with the repugnant stereotypes that are usually evoked by the word
(terrorism, revenge, political coups, manipulative leaders preaching
self-sacrifice, zombie followers chanting politically correct slogans).
In particular, it should not be confused with the two principal failures
of modern social change, Stalinist âcommunismâ and reformist
âsocialism.â
After decades in power, first in Russia and later in many other
countries, it has become obvious that Stalinism is the total opposite of
a liberated society. The origin of this grotesque phenomenon is less
obvious. Trotskyists and others have tried to distinguish Stalinism from
the earlier Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky. There are differences, but
they are more of degree than of kind. Leninâs The State and Revolution,
for example, presents a more coherent critique of the state than can be
found in most anarchist writings; the problem is that the radical
aspects of Leninâs thought merely ended up camouflaging the Bolsheviksâ
actual authoritarian practice. Placing itself above the masses it
claimed to represent, and with a corresponding internal hierarchy
between party militants and their leaders, the Bolshevik Party was
already well on its way toward creating the conditions for the
development of Stalinism while Lenin and Trotsky were still firmly in
control.[2]
But we have to be clear about what failed if we are ever going to do any
better. If socialism means peopleâs full participation in the social
decisions that affect their own lives, it has existed neither in the
Stalinist regimes of the East nor in the welfare states of the West. The
recent collapse of Stalinism is neither a vindication of capitalism nor
proof of the failure of âMarxist communism.â Anyone who has ever
bothered to read Marx (most of his glib critics obviously have not) is
aware that Leninism represents a severe distortion of Marxâs thought and
that Stalinism is a total parody of it. Nor does government ownership
have anything to do with communism in its authentic sense of common,
communal ownership; it is merely a different type of capitalism in which
state-bureaucratic ownership replaces (or merges with) private-corporate
ownership.
The long spectacle of opposition between these two varieties of
capitalism hid their mutual reinforcement. Serious conflicts were
confined to proxy battles in the Third World (Vietnam, Angola,
Afghanistan, etc.). Neither side ever made any real attempt to overthrow
the enemy in its own heartland. (The French Communist Party sabotaged
the May 1968 revolt; the Western powers, which intervened massively in
countries where they were not wanted, refused to send so much as the few
antitank weapons desperately needed by the 1956 Hungarian insurgents.)
Guy Debord noted in 1967 that Stalinist state-capitalism had already
revealed itself as merely a âpoor cousinâ of classical Western
capitalism, and that its decline was beginning to deprive Western rulers
of the pseudo-opposition that reinforced them by seeming to represent
the sole alternative to their system. âThe bourgeoisie is in the process
of losing the adversary that objectively supported it by providing an
illusory unification of all opposition to the existing orderâ (The
Society of the Spectacle, §§110â111).
Although Western leaders pretended to welcome the recent Stalinist
collapse as a natural victory for their own system, none of them had
seen it coming and they now obviously have no idea what to do about all
the problems it poses except to cash in on the situation before it
totally falls apart. The monopolistic multinational corporations that
proclaim âfree enterpriseâ as a panacea are quite aware that free-market
capitalism would long ago have exploded from its own contradictions had
it not been saved despite itself by a few New Deal-style pseudosocialist
reforms.
Those reforms (public services, social insurance, the eight-hour day,
etc.) may have ameliorated some of the more glaring defects of the
system, but in no way have they led beyond it. In recent years they have
not even kept up with its accelerating crises. The most significant
improvements were in any case won only by long and often violent popular
struggles that eventually forced the hands of the bureaucrats: the
leftist parties and labor unions that pretended to lead those struggles
have functioned primarily as safety valves, coopting radical tendencies
and greasing the wheels of the social machine.
As the situationists have shown, the bureaucratization of radical
movements, which has degraded people into followers constantly
âbetrayedâ by their leaders, is linked to the increasing
spectacularization of modern capitalist society, which has degraded
people into spectators of a world over which they have no control â a
development that has become increasingly glaring, though it is usually
only superficially understood.
Taken together, all these considerations point to the conclusion that a
liberated society can be created only by the active participation of the
people as a whole, not by hierarchical organizations supposedly acting
on their behalf. The point is not to choose more honest or âresponsiveâ
leaders, but to avoid granting independent power to any leaders
whatsoever. Individuals or groups may initiate radical actions, but a
substantial and rapidly expanding portion of the population must take
part if a movement is to lead to a new society and not simply to a coup
installing new rulers.
I wonât repeat all the classic socialist and anarchist critiques of
capitalism and the state; they are already widely known, or at least
widely accessible. But in order to cut through some of the confusions of
traditional political rhetoric, it may be helpful to summarize the basic
types of social organization. For the sake of clarity, I will start out
by examining the âpoliticalâ and âeconomicâ aspects separately, though
they are obviously interlinked. It is as futile to try to equalize
peopleâs economic conditions through a state bureaucracy as it is to try
to democratize society while the power of money enables the wealthy few
to control the institutions that determine peopleâs awareness of social
realities. Since the system functions as a whole it can be fundamentally
changed only as a whole.
To begin with the political aspect, roughly speaking we can distinguish
five degrees of âgovernmentâ:
The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt
minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a façade of token
democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would
progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3).
Iâll discuss the two types of (2) later on. But the crucial distinction
is between (3) and (4).
In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected
officials. The candidatesâ stated policies are limited to a few vague
generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over
their actual decisions on hundreds of issues â apart from the feeble
threat of changing oneâs vote, a few years later, to some equally
uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the
wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to
the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity;
and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public
regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected
bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may
sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in âdemocraticâ regimes,
the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never
voted in and never voted out. Most people donât even know who they are.
In delegate democracy, delegates are elected for specific purposes with
very specific limitations. They may be strictly mandated (ordered to
vote in a certain way on a certain issue) or the mandate may be left
open (delegates being free to vote as they think best) with the people
who have elected them reserving the right to confirm or reject any
decision thus taken. Delegates are generally elected for very short
periods and are subject to recall at any time.
In the context of radical struggles, delegate assemblies have usually
been termed âcouncils.â The council form was invented by striking
workers during the 1905 Russian revolution (soviet is the Russian word
for council). When soviets reappeared in 1917, they were successively
supported, manipulated, dominated and coopted by the Bolsheviks, who
soon succeeded in transforming them into parodies of themselves: rubber
stamps of the âSoviet Stateâ (the last surviving independent soviet,
that of the Kronstadt sailors, was crushed in 1921). Councils have
nevertheless continued to reappear spontaneously at the most radical
moments in subsequent history, in Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and
elsewhere, because they represent the obvious solution to the need for a
practical form of nonhierarchical popular self-organization. And they
continue to be opposed by all hierarchical organizations, because they
threaten the rule of specialized elites by pointing to the possibility
of a society of generalized self-management: not self-management of a
few details of the present setup, but self-management extended to all
regions of the globe and all aspects of life.
But as noted above, the question of democratic forms cannot be separated
from their economic context.
Economic organization can be looked at from the angle of work:
And from the angle of distribution:
Though itâs possible for goods or services produced by wage labor to be
given away, or for those produced by volunteer or cooperative labor to
be turned into commodities for sale, for the most part these levels of
work and distribution tend to correspond with each other. The present
society is predominately (3): the forced production and consumption of
commodities. A liberated society would eliminate (3) and as far as
possible reduce (2) in favor of (1).
Capitalism is based on commodity production (production of goods for
profit) and wage labor (labor power itself bought and sold as a
commodity). As Marx pointed out, there is less difference between the
slave and the âfreeâ worker than appears. Slaves, though they seem to be
paid nothing, are provided with the means of their survival and
reproduction, for which workers (who become temporary slaves during
their hours of labor) are compelled to pay most of their wages. The fact
that some jobs are less unpleasant than others, and that individual
workers have the nominal right to switch jobs, start their own business,
buy stocks or win a lottery, disguises the fact that the vast majority
of people are collectively enslaved.
How did we get in this absurd position? If we go back far enough, we
find that at some point people were forcibly dispossessed: driven off
the land and otherwise deprived of the means for producing the goods
necessary for life. (The famous chapters on âprimitive accumulationâ in
Capital vividly describe this process in England.) As long as people
accept this dispossession as legitimate, they are forced into unequal
bargains with the âownersâ (those who have robbed them, or who have
subsequently obtained titles of âownershipâ from the original robbers)
in which they exchange their labor for a fraction of what it actually
produces, the surplus being retained by the owners. This surplus
(capital) can then be reinvested in order to generate continually
greater surpluses in the same way.
As for distribution, a public water fountain is a simple example of true
communism (unlimited accessibility). A public library is an example of
true socialism (free but regulated accessibility).
In a rational society, accessibility would depend on abundance. During a
drought, water might have to be rationed. Conversely, once libraries are
put entirely online they could become totally communistic: anyone could
have free instant access to any number of texts with no more need to
bother with checking out and returning, security against theft, etc.
But this rational relation is impeded by the persistence of separate
economic interests. To take the latter example, it will soon be
technically possible to create a global âlibraryâ in which every book
ever written, every film ever made and every musical performance ever
recorded could be put online, potentially enabling anyone to freely tap
in and obtain a copy (no more need for stores, sales, advertising,
packaging, shipping, etc.). But since this would also eliminate the
profits from present-day publishing, recording and film businesses, far
more energy is spent concocting complicated methods to prevent or charge
for copying (while others devote corresponding energy devising ways to
get around such methods) than on developing a technology that could
potentially benefit everyone.
One of Marxïżœïżœïżœs merits was to have cut through the hollowness of political
discourses based on abstract philosophical or ethical principles (âhuman
natureâ is such and such, all people have a ânatural rightâ to this or
that) by showing how social possibilities and social awareness are to a
great degree limited and shaped by material conditions. Freedom in the
abstract means little if almost everybody has to work all the time
simply to assure their survival. Itâs unrealistic to expect people to be
generous and cooperative when there is barely enough to go around
(leaving aside the drastically different conditions under which
âprimitive communismâ flourished). But a sufficiently large surplus
opens up wider possibilities. The hope of Marx and other revolutionaries
of his time was based on the fact that the technological potentials
developed by the Industrial Revolution had finally provided an adequate
material basis for a classless society. It was no longer a matter of
declaring that things âshouldâ be different, but of pointing out that
they could be different; that class domination was not only unjust, it
was now unnecessary.
Was it ever really necessary? Was Marx right in seeing the development
of capitalism and the state as inevitable stages, or might a liberated
society have been possible without this painful detour? Fortunately, we
no longer have to worry about this question. Whatever possibilities
there may or may not have been in the past, present material conditions
are more than sufficient to sustain a global classless society.
The most serious drawback of capitalism is not its quantitative
unfairness â the mere fact that wealth is unequally distributed, that
workers are not paid the full âvalueâ of their labor. The problem is
that this margin of exploitation (even if relatively small) makes
possible the private accumulation of capital, which eventually reorients
everything to its own ends, dominating and warping all aspects of life.
The more alienation the system produces, the more social energy must be
diverted just to keep it going â more advertising to sell superfluous
commodities, more ideologies to keep people bamboozled, more spectacles
to keep them pacified, more police and more prisons to repress crime and
rebellion, more arms to compete with rival states â all of which
produces more frustrations and antagonisms, which must be repressed by
more spectacles, more prisons, etc. As this vicious circle continues,
real human needs are fulfilled only incidentally, if at all, while
virtually all labor is channeled into absurd, redundant or destructive
projects that serve no purpose except to maintain the system.
If this system were abolished and modern technological potentials were
appropriately transformed and redirected, the labor necessary to meet
real human needs would be reduced to such a trivial level that it could
easily be taken care of voluntarily and cooperatively, without requiring
economic incentives or state enforcement.
Itâs not too hard to grasp the idea of superseding overt hierarchical
power. Self-management can be seen as the fulfillment of the freedom and
democracy that are the official values of Western societies. Despite
peopleâs submissive conditioning, everyone has had moments when they
rejected domination and began speaking or acting for themselves.
Itâs much harder to grasp the idea of superseding the economic system.
The domination of capital is more subtle and self-regulating. Questions
of work, production, goods, services, exchange and coordination in the
modern world seem so complicated that most people take for granted the
necessity of money as a universal mediation, finding it difficult to
imagine any change beyond apportioning money in some more equitable way.
For this reason I will postpone more extensive discussion of the
economic aspects till later in this text, when it will be possible to go
into more detail.
Is such a revolution likely? The odds are probably against it. The main
problem is that there is not much time. In previous eras it was possible
to imagine that, despite all humanityâs follies and disasters, we would
somehow muddle through and perhaps eventually learn from past mistakes.
But now that social policies and technological developments have
irrevocable global ecological ramifications, blundering trial and error
is not enough. We have only a few decades to turn things around. And as
time passes, the task becomes more difficult: the fact that basic social
problems are scarcely even faced, much less resolved, encourages
increasingly desperate and delirious tendencies toward war, fascism,
ethnic antagonism, religious fanaticism and other forms of mass
irrationality, deflecting those who might potentially work toward a new
society into merely defensive and ultimately futile holding actions.
But most revolutions have been preceded by periods when everyone scoffed
at the idea that things could ever change. Despite the many discouraging
trends in the world, there are also some encouraging signs, not least of
which is the widespread disillusionment with previous false
alternatives. Many popular revolts in this century have already moved
spontaneously in the right direction. I am not referring to the
âsuccessfulâ revolutions, which are without exception frauds, but to
less known, more radical efforts. Some of the most notable examples are
Russia 1905, Germany 1918â19, Italy 1920, Asturias 1934, Spain 1936â37,
Hungary 1956, France 1968, Czechoslovakia 1968, Portugal 1974â75 and
Poland 1980â81; many other movements, from the Mexican revolution of
1910 to the recent anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, have also
contained exemplary moments of popular experimentation before they were
brought under bureaucratic control.
No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has
not carefully examined these movements. To ignore them because of their
âfailureâ is missing the point.[3] Modern revolution is all or nothing:
individual revolts are bound to fail until an international chain
reaction is triggered that spreads faster than repression can close in.
Itâs hardly surprising that these revolts did not go farther; what is
inspiring is that they went as far as they did. A new revolutionary
movement will undoubtedly take new and unpredictable forms; but these
earlier efforts remain full of examples of what can be done, as well as
of what must be avoided.
Itâs often said that a stateless society might work if everyone were
angels, but due to the perversity of human nature some hierarchy is
necessary to keep people in line. It would be truer to say that if
everyone were angels the present system might work tolerably well
(bureaucrats would function honestly, capitalists would refrain from
socially harmful ventures even if they were profitable). It is precisely
because people are not angels that itâs necessary to eliminate the setup
that enables some of them to become very efficient devils. Lock a
hundred people in a small room with only one air hole and they will claw
each other to death to get to it. Let them out and they may manifest a
rather different nature. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, âMan is
neither Rousseauâs noble savage nor the Churchâs depraved sinner. He is
violent when oppressed, gentle when free.â
Others contend that, whatever the ultimate causes may be, people are now
so screwed up that they need to be psychologically or spiritually healed
before they can even conceive of creating a liberated society. In his
later years Wilhelm Reich came to feel that an âemotional plagueâ was so
firmly embedded in the population that it would take generations of
healthily raised children before people would become capable of a
libertarian social transformation; and that meanwhile one should avoid
confronting the system head-on since this would stir up a hornetâs nest
of ignorant popular reaction.
Irrational popular tendencies do sometimes call for discretion. But
powerful though they may be, they are not irresistible forces. They
contain their own contradictions. Clinging to some absolute authority is
not necessarily a sign of faith in authority; it may be a desperate
attempt to overcome oneâs increasing doubts (the convulsive tightening
of a slipping grip). People who join gangs or reactionary groups, or who
get caught up in religious cults or patriotic hysteria, are also seeking
a sense of liberation, connection, purpose, participation, empowerment.
As Reich himself showed, fascism gives a particularly vigorous and
dramatic expression to these basic aspirations, which is why it often
has a deeper appeal than the vacillations, compromises and hypocrisies
of liberalism and leftism.
In the long run the only way to defeat reaction is to present more
forthright expressions of these aspirations, and more authentic
opportunities to fulfill them. When basic issues are forced into the
open, irrationalities that flourished under the cover of psychological
repression tend to be weakened, like disease germs exposed to sunlight
and fresh air. In any case, even if we donât prevail, there is at least
some satisfaction in fighting for what we really believe, rather than
being defeated in a posture of hesitancy and hypocrisy.
There are limits on how far one can liberate oneself (or raise liberated
children) within a sick society. But if Reich was right to note that
psychologically repressed people are less capable of envisioning social
liberation, he failed to realize how much the process of social revolt
can be psychologically liberating. (French psychiatrists are said to
have complained about a significant drop in the number of their
customers in the aftermath of May 1968!)
The notion of total democracy raises the specter of a âtyranny of the
majority.â Majorities can be ignorant and bigoted, thereâs no getting
around it. The only real solution is to confront and attempt to overcome
that ignorance and bigotry. Keeping the masses in the dark (relying on
liberal judges to protect civil liberties or liberal legislators to
sneak through progressive reforms) only leads to popular backlashes when
sensitive issues eventually do come to the surface.
Examined more closely, however, most instances of majority oppression of
minorities turn out to be due not to majority rule, but to disguised
minority rule in which the ruling elite plays on whatever racial or
cultural antagonisms there may be in order to turn the exploited massesâ
frustrations against each other. When people get real power over their
own lives they will have more interesting things to do than to persecute
minorities.
So many potential abuses or disasters are evoked at any suggestion of a
nonhierarchical society that it would be impossible to answer them all.
People who resignedly accept a system that condemns millions of their
fellow human beings to death every year in wars and famines, and
millions of others to prison and torture, suddenly let their imagination
and their indignation run wild at the thought that in a self-managed
society there might be some abuses, some violence or coercion or
injustice, or even merely some temporary inconvenience. They forget that
it is not up to a new social system to solve all our problems; it merely
has to deal with them better than the present system does â not a very
big order.
If history followed the complacent opinions of official commentators,
there would never have been any revolutions. In any given situation
there are always plenty of ideologists ready to declare that no radical
change is possible. If the economy is functioning well, they will claim
that revolution depends on economic crises; if there is an economic
crisis, others will just as confidently declare that revolution is
impossible because people are too busy worrying about making ends meet.
The former types, surprised by the May 1968 revolt, tried to
retrospectively uncover the invisible crisis that their ideology insists
must have been there. The latter contend that the situationist
perspective has been refuted by the worsened economic conditions since
that time.
Actually, the situationists simply noted that the widespread achievement
of capitalist abundance had demonstrated that guaranteed survival was no
substitute for real life. The periodic ups and downs of the economy have
no bearing on that conclusion. The fact that a few people at the top
have recently managed to siphon off a yet larger portion of the social
wealth, driving increasing numbers of people into the streets and
terrorizing the rest of the population lest they succumb to the same
fate, makes the feasibility of a postscarcity society less evident; but
the material prerequisites are still present.
The economic crises held up as evidence that we need to âlower our
expectationsâ are actually caused by over-production and lack of work.
The ultimate absurdity of the present system is that unemployment is
seen as a problem, with potentially labor-saving technologies being
directed toward creating new jobs to replace the old ones they render
unnecessary. The problem is not that so many people donât have jobs, but
that so many people still do. We need to raise our expectations, not
lower them.[4]
Far more serious than this spectacle of our supposed powerlessness in
the face of the economy is the greatly increased power of the spectacle
itself, which in recent years has developed to the point of repressing
virtually any awareness of pre-spectacle history or anti-spectacle
possibilities. Debordâs Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988)
goes into this new development in detail:
In all that has happened over the last twenty years, the most important
change lies in the very continuity of the spectacle. What is significant
is not the refinements of the spectacleâs media instrumentation, which
had already attained a highly advanced stage of development; it is quite
simply that spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an entire
generation molded to its laws... Spectacular dominationâs first priority
was to eradicate historical knowledge in general, beginning with
virtually all information and rational commentary on the most recent
past... The spectacle makes sure that people are unaware of what is
happening, or at least that they quickly forget whatever they may have
become aware of. The more important something is, the more it is hidden.
Nothing in the last twenty years has been so thoroughly shrouded with
official lies as May 1968... The flow of images carries everything
before it, and it is always someone else who controls this simplified
digest of the perceptible world, who decides where the flow will lead,
who programs the rhythm of what is shown into an endless series of
arbitrary surprises that leaves no time for reflection ... isolating
whatever is presented from its context, its past, its intentions and its
consequences... It is thus hardly surprising that children are now
starting their education with an enthusiastic introduction to the
Absolute Knowledge of computer language while becoming increasingly
incapable of reading. Because reading requires making judgments at every
line; and since conversation is almost dead (as will soon be most of
those who knew how to converse) reading is the only remaining gateway to
the vast realms of pre-spectacle human experience.
In the present text I have tried to recapitulate some basic points that
have been buried under this intensive spectacular repression. If these
matters seem banal to some or obscure to others, they may at least serve
to recall what once was possible, in those primitive times a few decades
ago when people had the quaint, old-fashioned notion that they could
understand and affect their own history.
While there is no question that things have changed considerably since
the sixties (mostly for the worse), our situation may not be quite as
hopeless as it seems to those who swallow whatever the spectacle feeds
them. Sometimes it only takes a little jolt to break through the stupor.
Even if we have no guarantee of ultimate victory, such breakthroughs are
already a pleasure. Is there any greater game around?
âAn individual cannot know what he really is until he has realized
himself through action... The interest the individual finds in something
is already the answer to the question of whether he should act and what
should be done.â
â Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
Later on I will try to answer some more of the perennial objections. But
as long as the objectors remain passive, all the arguments in the world
will never faze them, and they will continue to sing the old refrain:
âItâs a nice idea, but itâs not realistic, it goes against human nature,
itâs always been this way...â Those who donât realize their own
potential are unlikely to recognize the potential of others.
To paraphrase that very sensible old prayer, we need the initiative to
solve the problems we can, the patience to endure the ones we canât, and
the wisdom to know the difference. But we also need to bear in mind that
some problems that canât be solved by isolated individuals can be solved
collectively. Discovering that others share the same problem is often
the beginning of a solution.
Some problems can, of course, be solved individually, through a variety
of methods ranging from elaborate therapies or spiritual practices to
simple commonsense decisions to correct some mistake, break some harmful
habit, try something new, etc. But my concern here is not with purely
personal makeshifts, worthwhile though they may be within their limits,
but with moments where people move âoutwardâ in deliberately subversive
ventures.
There are more possibilities than appear at first sight. Once you refuse
to be intimidated, some of them are quite simple. You can begin
anywhere. And you have to begin somewhere â do you think you can learn
to swim if you never go in the water?
Sometimes a little action is needed to cut through excessive verbiage
and reestablish a concrete perspective. It neednât be anything
momentous; if nothing else comes to mind, some rather arbitrary venture
may suffice â just enough to shake things up a bit and wake yourself up.
At other times itâs necessary to stop, to break the chain of compulsive
actions and reactions. To clear the air, to create a little space free
from the cacophony of the spectacle. Just about everyone does this to
some degree, out of instinctive psychological self-defense, whether by
practicing some form of meditation, or by periodically engaging in some
activity that effectively serves the same purpose (working in oneâs
garden, taking a walk, going fishing), or simply by pausing to take a
deep breath amid their daily round, coming back for a moment to the
âquiet center.â Without such a space it is difficult to get a sane
perspective on the world, or even simply to keep oneâs own sanity.
One of the methods I have found most useful is to put things in writing.
The advantage is partly psychological (some problems lose their power
over us by being set out where we can see them more objectively), partly
a matter of organizing our thoughts so as to see the different factors
and choices more clearly. We often maintain inconsistent notions without
becoming aware of their contradictions until we try putting them down on
paper.
I have sometimes been criticized for exaggerating the importance of
writing. Many matters can, of course, be dealt with more directly. But
even nonverbal actions require thinking about, talking about, and
usually writing about, if they are to be effectively carried out,
communicated, debated, corrected.
(In any case, I donât claim to cover everything; I am merely discussing
certain points about which I feel I have something to say. If you think
I have failed to address some important topic, why donât you do it
yourself?)
Writing enables you to work out your ideas at your own pace, without
worrying about oratorical skills or stage fright. You can make a point
once and for all instead of having to constantly repeat yourself. If
discretion is necessary, a text can be issued anonymously. People can
read it at their own pace, stop and think about it, go back and check
specific points, reproduce it, adapt it, refer others to it. Talking may
generate quicker and more detailed feedback, but it can also disperse
your energy, prevent you from focusing and implementing your ideas.
Those in the same rut as you may resist your efforts to escape because
your success would challenge their own passivity.
Sometimes you can best provoke such people by simply leaving them behind
and pursuing your own course. (âHey, wait for me!â) Or by shifting the
dialogue to a different level. A letter forces both writer and addressee
to work out their ideas more clearly. Copies to others concerned may
enliven the discussion. An open letter draws in even more people.
If you succeed in creating a chain reaction in which more and more
people read your text because they see others reading it and heatedly
discussing it, it will no longer be possible for anyone to pretend to be
unaware of the issues you have raised.[5]
Suppose, for example, that you criticize a group for being hierarchical,
for allowing a leader to have power over members (or followers or fans).
A private talk with one of the members might merely meet with a series
of contradictory defensive reactions with which it is fruitless to
argue. (âNo, heâs not really our leader... And even if he is, heâs not
authoritarian... And besides, what right do you have to criticize?â) But
a public critique forces such contradictions into the open and puts
people in a crossfire. While one member denies that the group is
hierarchical, a second may admit that it is and attempt to justify this
by attributing superior insight to the leader. This may cause a third
member to start thinking.
At first, annoyed that you have disturbed their cozy little scene, the
group is likely to close ranks around the leader and denounce you for
your ânegativityâ or âelitist arrogance.â But if your intervention has
been acute enough, it may continue to sink in and have a delayed impact.
The leader now has to watch his step since everyone is more sensitive to
anything that might seem to confirm your critique. In order to
demonstrate how unjustified you are, the members may insist on greater
democratization. Even if the particular group proves impervious to
change, its example may serve as an object lesson for a wider public.
Outsiders who might otherwise have made similar mistakes can more easily
see the pertinence of your critique because they have less emotional
investment.
Itâs usually more effective to criticize institutions and ideologies
than to attack individuals who merely happen to be caught up in them â
not only because the machine is more crucial than its replaceable parts,
but because this approach makes it easier for individuals to save face
while dissociating themselves from the machine.
But however tactful you may be, thereâs no getting around the fact that
virtually any significant critique will provoke irrational defensive
reactions, ranging from personal attacks on you to invocations of one or
another of the many fashionable ideologies that seem to demonstrate the
impossibility of any rational consideration of social problems. Reason
is denounced as cold and abstract by demagogues who find it easier to
play on peopleâs feelings; theory is scorned in the name of practice...
To theorize is simply to try to understand what we are doing. We are all
theorists whenever we honestly discuss what has happened, distinguish
between the significant and the irrelevant, see through fallacious
explanations, recognize what worked and what didnât, consider how
something might be done better next time. Radical theorizing is simply
talking or writing to more people about more general issues in more
abstract (i.e. more widely applicable) terms. Even those who claim to
reject theory theorize â they merely do so more unconsciously and
capriciously, and thus more inaccurately.
Theory without particulars is empty, but particulars without theory are
blind. Practice tests theory, but theory also inspires new practice.
Radical theory has nothing to respect and nothing to lose. It criticizes
itself along with everything else. It is not a doctrine to be accepted
on faith, but a tentative generalization that people must constantly
test and correct for themselves, a practical simplification
indispensable for dealing with the complexities of reality.
But hopefully not an oversimplification. Any theory can turn into an
ideology, become rigidified into a dogma, be twisted to hierarchical
ends. A sophisticated ideology may be relatively accurate in certain
respects; what differentiates it from theory is that it lacks a dynamic
relation to practice. Theory is when you have ideas; ideology is when
ideas have you. âSeek simplicity, and distrust it.â
We have to face the fact that there are no foolproof gimmicks, that no
radical tactic is invariably appropriate. Something that is collectively
possible during a revolt may not be a sensible option for an isolated
individual. In certain urgent situations it may be necessary to urge
people to take some specific action; but in most cases it is best simply
to elucidate relevant factors that people should take into account when
making their own decisions. (If I occasionally presume to offer direct
advice here, this is for convenience of expression. âDo thisâ should be
understood as âIn some circumstances it may be a good idea to do this.â)
A social analysis need not be long or detailed. Simply âdividing one
into twoâ (pointing out contradictory tendencies within a given
phenomenon or group or ideology) or âcombining two into oneâ (revealing
a commonality between two apparently distinct entities) may be useful,
especially if communicated to those most directly involved. More than
enough information is already available on most issues; what is needed
is to cut through the glut in order to reveal the essential. Once this
is done, other people, including knowledgeable insiders, will be spurred
to more thorough investigations if these are necessary.
When confronted with a given topic, the first thing is to determine
whether it is indeed a single topic. Itâs impossible to have any
meaningful discussion of âMarxismâ or âviolenceâ or âtechnologyâ without
distinguishing the diverse senses that are lumped under such labels.
On the other hand, it can also be useful to take some broad, abstract
category and show its predominant tendencies, even though such a pure
type does not actually exist. The situationistsâ Student Poverty
pamphlet, for example, scathingly enumerates all sorts of stupidities
and pretensions of âthe student.â Obviously not every student is guilty
of all these faults, but the stereotype serves as a focus around which
to organize a systematic critique of general tendencies. By stressing
qualities most students have in common, the pamphlet also implicitly
challenges those who claim to be exceptions to prove it. The same
applies to the critique of âthe pro-situâ in Debord and Sanguinettiâs
The Real Split in the International â a challenging rebuff of followers
perhaps unique in the history of radical movements.
âEveryone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent
them from forming one about the totalityâ (Vaneigem). Many issues are
such emotionally loaded tar-babies that anyone who reacts to them
becomes entangled in false choices. The fact that two sides are in
conflict, for example, does not mean that you must support one or the
other. If you cannot do anything about a particular problem, it is best
to clearly acknowledge this fact and move on to something that does
present practical possibilities.[6]
If you do decide to choose a lesser evil, admit it; donât add to the
confusion by whitewashing your choice or demonizing the enemy. If
anything, itâs better to do the opposite: to play devilâs advocate and
neutralize compulsive polemical delirium by calmly examining the strong
points of the opposing position and the weaknesses in your own. âA very
popular error: having the courage of oneâs convictions; the point is to
have the courage for an attack on oneâs convictions!â (Nietzsche).
Combine modesty with audacity. Remember that if you happen to accomplish
anything it is on the foundation of the efforts of countless others,
many of whom have faced horrors that would make you or me crumple into
submission. But donât forget that what you say can make a difference:
within a world of pacified spectators even a little autonomous
expression will stand out.
Since there are no longer any material obstacles to inaugurating a
classless society, the problem has been essentially reduced to a
question of consciousness: the only thing that really stands in the way
is peopleâs unawareness of their own collective power. (Physical
repression is effective against radical minorities only so long as
social conditioning keeps the rest of the population docile.) Hence a
large element of radical practice is negative: attacking the various
forms of false consciousness that prevent people from realizing their
positive potentialities.
Both Marx and the situationists have often been ignorantly denounced for
such negativity, because they concentrated primarily on critical
clarification and deliberately avoided promoting any positive ideology
to which people could passively cling. Because Marx pointed out how
capitalism reduces our lives to an economic rat-race, âidealisticâ
apologists for this state of affairs accuse him of âreducing life to
materialistic concernsâ â as if the whole point of Marxâs work was not
to help us get beyond our economic slavery so that our more creative
potentials can flower. âTo call on people to give up their illusions
about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that
requires illusions... Criticism plucks the imaginary flowers from the
chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without
fantasy or consolation, but so that he will throw off the chain and
pluck the living flowerâ (âIntroduction to a Critique of Hegelâs
Philosophy of Rightâ).
Accurately expressing a key issue often has a surprisingly powerful
effect. Bringing things out into the open forces people to stop hedging
their bets and take a position. Like the dexterous butcher in the Taoist
fable whose knife never needed sharpening because he always cut between
the joints, the most effective radical polarization comes not from
strident protest, but from simply revealing the divisions that already
exist, elucidating the different tendencies, contradictions, choices.
Much of the situationistsâ impact stemmed from the fact that they
articulated things that most people had already experienced but were
unable or afraid to express until someone else broke the ice. (âOur
ideas are in everybodyâs mind.â)
If some situationist texts nevertheless seem difficult at first, this is
because their dialectical structure goes against the grain of our
conditioning. When this conditioning is broken they donât seem so
obscure (they were the source of some of the most popular May 1968
graffiti). Many academic spectators have floundered around trying
unsuccessfully to resolve the various âcontradictoryâ descriptions of
the spectacle in The Society of the Spectacle into some single,
âscientifically consistentâ definition; but anyone engaged in contesting
this society will find Debordâs examination of it from different angles
eminently clear and useful, and come to appreciate the fact that he
never wastes a word in academic inanities or pointless expressions of
outrage.
The dialectical method that runs from Hegel and Marx to the
situationists is not a magic formula for churning out correct
predictions, it is a tool for grappling with the dynamic processes of
social change. It reminds us that social concepts are not eternal; that
they contain their own contradictions, interacting with and transforming
each other, even into their opposites; that what is true or progressive
in one context may become false or regressive in another.[7]
A dialectical text may require careful study, but each new reading
brings new discoveries. Even if it influences only a few people
directly, it tends to influence them so profoundly that many of them end
up influencing others in the same way, leading to a qualitative chain
reaction. The nondialectical language of leftist propaganda is easier to
understand, but its effect is usually superficial and ephemeral;
offering no challenge, it soon ends up boring even the stupefied
spectators for whom it is designed.
As Debord put it in his last film, those who find what he says too
difficult would do better to blame their own ignorance and passivity,
and the schools and society that have made them that way, than to
complain about his obscurity. Those who donât have enough initiative to
reread crucial texts or to do a little exploration or a little
experimentation for themselves are unlikely to accomplish anything if
they are spoonfed by someone else.
Debord is in fact virtually the only person who has made a truly
dialectical and antispectacular use of film [see Guy Debordâs Films].
Although would-be radical filmmakers often give lip service to Brechtian
âdistanciationâ â the notion of encouraging spectators to think and act
for themselves rather than sucking them into passive identification with
hero or plot â most radical films still play to the audience as if it
were made up of morons. The dimwitted protagonist gradually âdiscovers
oppressionâ and becomes âradicalizedâ to the point where he is ready to
become a fervent supporter of âprogressiveâ politicians or a loyal
militant in some bureaucratic leftist group. Distanciation is limited to
a few token gimmicks that allow the spectator to think: âAh, a Brechtian
touch! What a clever fellow that filmmaker is! And how clever am I to
recognize such subtleties!â The radical message is usually so banal that
it is obvious to virtually anyone who would ever go to see such a film
in the first place; but the spectator gets the gratifying impression
that other people might be brought up to his level of awareness if only
they could be got to see it.
If the spectator has any uneasiness about the quality of what he is
consuming, it is assuaged by the critics, whose main function is to read
profound radical meanings into practically any film. As with the
Emperorâs New Clothes, no one is likely to admit that he wasnât aware of
these supposed meanings until informed of them, for fear that this would
reveal him as less sophisticated than the rest of the audience.
Certain films may help expose some deplorable condition or convey some
sense of the feel of a radical situation. But there is little point in
presenting images of a struggle if both the images and the struggle are
not criticized. Spectators sometimes complain that a film portrays some
social category (e.g. women) inaccurately. This may be true insofar as
the film reproduces certain false stereotypes; but the usually implied
alternative â that the filmmaker âshould have presented images of women
struggling against oppressionâ â would in most cases be equally false to
reality. Women (like men or any other oppressed group) have in fact
usually been passive and submissive â thatâs precisely the problem we
have to face. Catering to peopleâs self-satisfaction by presenting
spectacles of triumphant radical heroism only reinforces this bondage.
To rely on oppressive conditions to radicalize people is unwise; to
intentionally worsen them in order to accelerate this process is
unacceptable. The repression of certain radical projects may
incidentally expose the absurdity of the ruling order; but such projects
should be worthwhile for their own sake â they lose their credibility if
they are merely pretexts designed to provoke repression. Even in the
most âprivilegedâ milieus there are usually more than enough problems
without needing to add to them. The point is to reveal the contrast
between present conditions and present possibilities; to give people
enough taste of real life that theyâll want more.
Leftists often imply that a lot of simplification, exaggeration and
repetition is necessary in order to counteract all the ruling propaganda
in the other direction. This is like saying that a boxer who has been
made groggy by a right hook will be restored to lucidity by a left hook.
Peopleâs consciousness is not âraisedâ by burying them under an
avalanche of horror stories, or even under an avalanche of information.
Information that is not critically assimilated and used is soon
forgotten. Mental as well as physical health requires some balance
between what we take in and what we do with it. It may sometimes be
necessary to force complacent people to face some outrage they are
unaware of, but even in such cases harping on the same thing ad nauseam
usually accomplishes nothing more than driving them to escape to less
boring and depressing spectacles.
One of the main things that keeps us from understanding our situation is
the spectacle of other peopleâs apparent happiness, which makes us see
our own unhappiness as a shameful sign of failure. But an omnipresent
spectacle of misery also keeps us from seeing our positive potentials.
The constant broadcasting of delirious ideas and nauseating atrocities
paralyzes us, turns us into paranoids and compulsive cynics.
Strident leftist propaganda, fixating on the insidiousness and
loathsomeness of âoppressors,â often feeds this delirium, appealing to
the most morbid and mean-spirited side of people. If we get caught up in
brooding on evils, if we let the sickness and ugliness of this society
pervade even our rebellion against it, we forget what we are fighting
for and end up losing the very capacity to love, to create, to enjoy.
The best âradical artâ cuts both ways. If it attacks the alienation of
modern life, it simultaneously reminds us of the poetic potentialities
hidden within it. Rather than reinforcing our tendency to wallow in
self-pity, it encourages our resilience, enables us to laugh at our own
troubles as well as at the asininities of the forces of âorder.â Some of
the old IWW songs and comic strips are good examples, even if the IWW
ideology is by now a bit musty. Or the ironic, bittersweet songs of
Brecht and Weill. The hilarity of The Good Soldier Svejk is probably a
more effective antidote to war than the moral outrage of the typical
antiwar tract.
Nothing undermines authority like holding it up to ridicule. The most
effective argument against a repressive regime is not that it is evil,
but that it is silly. The protagonists of Albert Cosseryâs novel La
violence et la dérision, living under a Middle-Eastern dictatorship,
plaster the walls of the capital with an official-looking poster that
praises the dictator to such a preposterous degree that he becomes a
laughingstock and is forced to resign out of embarrassment. CossĂ©ryâs
pranksters are apolitical and their success is perhaps too good to be
true, but somewhat similar parodies have been used with more radical
aims (e.g. the Li I-Che coup mentioned on page 304 [A Radical Group in
Hong Kong]). At demonstrations in Italy in the 1970s the Metropolitan
Indians (inspired perhaps by the opening chapter of Lewis Carrollâs
Sylvie and Bruno: âLess Bread! More Taxes!â) carried banners and chanted
slogans such as âPower to the Bosses!â and âMore work! Less pay!â
Everyone recognized the irony, but it was harder to dismiss with the
usual pigeonholing.
Humor is a healthy antidote to all types of orthodoxy, left as well as
right. Itâs highly contagious and it reminds us not to take ourselves
too seriously. But it can easily become a mere safety valve, channeling
dissatisfaction into glib, passive cynicism. Spectacle society thrives
on delirious reactions against its most delirious aspects. Satirists
often have a dependent, love-hate relation with their targets; parodies
become indistinguishable from what they are parodying, giving the
impression that everything is equally bizarre, meaningless and hopeless.
In a society based on artificially maintained confusion, the first task
is not to add to it. Chaotic disruptions usually generate nothing but
annoyance or panic, provoking people to support whatever measures the
government takes to restore order. A radical intervention may at first
seem strange and incomprehensible; but if it has been worked out with
sufficient lucidity, people will soon understand it well enough.
Imagine being at Strasbourg University at the opening of the school year
in fall 1966, among the students, faculty and distinguished guests
filing into an auditorium to hear a commencement address. You find a
little pamphlet placed on each seat. A program? No, something about âthe
poverty of student life.â You idly open it up and start to read: âIt is
pretty safe to say that the student is the most universally despised
creature in France, apart from the policeman and the priest...â You look
around and see that everyone else is also reading it, reactions ranging
from puzzlement or amusement to shock and outrage. Who is responsible
for this? The title page reveals that it is published by the Strasbourg
Student Union, but it also refers to âthe Situationist International,â
whatever that might be...
What made the Strasbourg scandal different from some college prank, or
from the confused and confusing capers of groups like the Yippies, was
that its scandalous form conveyed an equally scandalous content. At a
moment when students were being proclaimed as the most radical sector of
society, this text was the only one that put things into perspective.
But the particular poverties of students just happened to be the point
of departure; equally scathing texts could and should be written on the
poverty of every other segment of society (preferably by those who know
them from inside). Some have in fact been attempted, but none have
approached the lucidity and coherence of the situationist pamphlet, so
concise yet so comprehensive, so provocative yet so accurate, moving so
methodically from a specific situation through increasingly general
ramifications that the final chapter presents the most pithy existing
summary of the modern revolutionary project. (See SI Anthology, pp.
204â212, 319â337 [On the Poverty of Student Life and Our Goals and
Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal].)
The situationists never claimed to have single-handedly provoked May
1968 â as they said, they predicted the content of the revolt, not the
date or location. But without the Strasbourg scandal and the subsequent
agitation by the SI-influenced Enragés group (of which the more well
known March 22^(nd) Movement was only a belated and confused imitation)
the revolt might never have happened. There was no economic or
governmental crisis, no war or racial antagonism destabilizing the
country, nor any other particular issue that might have fostered such a
revolt. There were more radical worker struggles going on in Italy and
England, more militant student struggles in Germany and Japan, more
widespread countercultural movements in the United States and the
Netherlands. But only in France was there a perspective that tied them
all together.
Carefully calculated interventions like the Strasbourg scandal must be
distinguished not only from confusionistic disruptions, but also from
merely spectacular exposés. As long as social critics confine themselves
to contesting this or that detail, the spectacle-spectator relation
continually reconstitutes itself: if such critics succeed in
discrediting existing political leaders, they themselves often become
new stars (Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, etc.) whom slightly more aware
spectators admiringly rely on for a continuing flow of shocking
information that they rarely do anything about. The milder exposés get
the audience to root for this or that faction in intragovernmental power
struggles; the more sensational ones feed peopleâs morbid curiosity,
sucking them into consuming more articles, news programs and docudramas,
and into interminable debates about various conspiracy theories. Most
such theories are obviously nothing but delirious reflections of the
lack of critical historical sense produced by the modern spectacle,
desperate attempts to find some coherent meaning in an increasingly
incoherent and absurd society. In any case, as long as things remain on
the spectacular terrain it hardly matters whether any of these theories
are true: those who keep watching to see what comes next never affect
what comes next.
Certain revelations are more interesting because they not only open up
significant issues to public debate, but do so in a manner that draws
lots of people into the game. A charming example is the 1963 âSpies for
Peaceâ scandal in England, in which a few unknown persons publicized the
location of a secret bomb shelter reserved for members of the
government. The more vehemently the government threatened to prosecute
anyone who reproduced this âstate secretâ information which was no
longer secret from anyone, the more creatively and playfully it was
disseminated by thousands of groups and individuals (who also proceeded
to discover and invade several other secret shelters). Not only did the
asininity of the government and the insanity of the nuclear war
spectacle became evident to everyone, the spontaneous human chain
reaction provided a taste of a quite different social potential.
âSince 1814 no Liberal government had come in except by violence.
CĂĄnovas was too intelligent not to see the inconvenience and the danger
of that. He therefore arranged that Conservative governments should be
succeeded regularly by Liberal governments. The plan he followed was,
whenever an economic crisis or a serious strike came along, to resign
and let the Liberals deal with it. This explains why most of the
repressive legislation passed during the rest of the century was passed
by them.â
â Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth
The best argument in favor of radical electoral politics was made by
Eugene Debs, the American socialist leader who in 1920 received nearly a
million votes for president while in prison for opposing World War I:
âIf the people donât know enough to know who to vote for, theyâre not
going to know who to shoot at.â On the other hand, the workers during
the 1918â19 German revolution were confused about who to shoot at
precisely by the presence of âsocialistâ leaders in the government who
were working overtime to repress the revolution.
In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other
(those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing
their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into
relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more
significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative
initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have
a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning
for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than
what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative
regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes
more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support.
If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in
any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of
some greater evil.
Even in the rare case when a âradicalâ politician has a realistic chance
of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of
people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal
discovered in his personal life, or because he inadvertently says
something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it
looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear
of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost
never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except
perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues;
which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making
whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office
indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new
interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he
deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes.
Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few âprogressiveâ
measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up
as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many
more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come.
As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, âItâs painful to submit to our
bosses; itâs even more stupid to choose them!â
Referendums on particular issues are less susceptible to the
precariousness of personalities; but the results are often no better
since the issues tend to be posed very simplistically, and any measure
that threatens powerful interests can usually be defeated by the
influence of money and mass media.
Local elections sometimes offer people a more realistic chance to affect
policies and keep tabs on elected officials. But even the most
enlightened communities cannot insulate themselves from the
deterioration of the rest of the world. If a city manages to preserve
desirable cultural or environmental features, these very advantages put
it under increasing economic pressure. The fact that human values have
been given precedence over property values ultimately causes enormous
increases in the latter (more people will want to invest or move there).
Sooner or later this property-value increase overpowers the human
values: local policies are overruled by high courts or by state or
national governments, outside money is poured into municipal elections,
city officials are bribed, residential neighborhoods are demolished to
make room for highrises and freeways, rents skyrocket, the poorer
classes are forced out (including the diverse ethnic groups and artistic
bohemians who contributed to the cityâs original liveliness and appeal),
and all that remains of the earlier community are a few isolated sites
of âhistorical interestâ for tourist consumption.
Still, âacting locallyâ may be a good place to start. People who feel
that the global situation is hopeless or incomprehensible may
nevertheless see a chance to affect some specific local matter. Block
clubs, co-ops, switchboards, study groups, alternative schools, free
health clinics, community theaters, neighborhood newspapers,
public-access radio and television stations and many other kinds of
alternative institutions are worthwhile for their own sake, and if they
are sufficiently participatory they may lead to broader movements. Even
if they donât last very long, they provide a temporary terrain for
radical experimentation.
But always within limits. Capitalism was able to develop gradually
within feudal society, so that by the time the capitalist revolution
cast off the last vestiges of feudalism, most of the mechanisms of the
new bourgeois order were already firmly in place. An anticapitalist
revolution, in contrast, cannot really build its new society âwithin the
shell of the old.â Capitalism is far more flexible and all-pervading
than was feudalism, and tends to coopt any oppositional organization.
Nineteenth-century radical theorists could still see enough surviving
remnants of traditional communal forms to suppose that, once the
overarching exploitive structure was eliminated, they might be revived
and expanded to form the foundation of a new society. But the global
penetration of spectacular capitalism in the present century has
destroyed virtually all forms of popular control and direct human
interaction. Even the more modern efforts of the sixties counterculture
have long been integrated into the system. Co-ops, crafts, organic
farming and other marginal enterprises may produce better quality goods
under better working conditions, but those goods still have to function
as commodities on the market. The few successful ventures tend to evolve
into ordinary businesses, with the founding members gradually assuming
an ownership or managerial role over the newer workers and dealing with
all sorts of routine commercial and bureaucratic matters that have
nothing to do with âpreparing the ground for a new society.â
The longer an alternative institution lasts, the more it tends to lose
its volunteer, experimental, nothing-to-lose character. Permanent paid
staffs develop a vested interest in the status quo and avoid rocking the
boat for fear of offending supporters or losing their government or
foundation funding. Alternative institutions also tend to demand too
much of the limited free time people have, bogging them down, robbing
them of the energy and imagination to confront more general issues.
After a brief period of participation most people get burned out,
leaving the work to the dutiful types or to leftists trying to make an
ideological point. It may sound nice to hear about people forming block
clubs, etc., but unless a real local emergency comes up you may not want
to attend interminable meetings to listen to your neighborsâ complaints,
or otherwise commit yourself to matters you donât really care about.
In the name of realism, reformists limit themselves to pursuing
âwinnableâ objectives, yet even when they win some little adjustment in
the system it is usually offset by some other development at another
level. This doesnât mean that reforms are irrelevant, merely that they
are insufficient. We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we
also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones
until we put an end to it. To suppose that a series of reforms will
eventually add up to a qualitative change is like thinking we can get
across a ten-foot chasm by a series of one-foot hops.
People tend to assume that because revolution involves much greater
change than reforms, it must be more difficult to bring about. In the
long run it may actually be easier, because in one stroke it cuts
through so many petty complications and arouses a much greater
enthusiasm. At a certain point it becomes more practical to start fresh
than to keep trying to replaster a rotten structure.
Meanwhile, until a revolutionary situation enables us to be truly
constructive, the best we can do is be creatively negative â
concentrating on critical clarification, leaving people to pursue
whatever positive projects may appeal to them but without the illusion
that a new society is being âbuiltâ by the gradual accumulation of such
projects.
Purely negative projects (e.g. abolition of laws against drug use,
consensual sex and other victimless crimes) have the advantage of
simplicity, immediately benefiting virtually everyone (except for that
symbiotic duo, organized crime and the crime-control industry) while
requiring little if any followup work once they are successful. On the
other hand, they provide little opportunity for creative participation.
The best projects are those that are worthwhile for their own sake while
simultaneously containing an implicit challenge to some fundamental
aspect of the system; projects that enable people to participate in
significant issues according to their own degree of interest, while
tending to open the way to more radical possibilities.
Less interesting, but still worthwhile, are demands for improved
conditions or more equal rights. Even if such projects are not in
themselves very participatory, they may remove impediments to
participation.
Least desirable are mere zero-sum struggles, where one groupâs gain is
anotherâs loss.
Even in the latter case the point is not to tell people what they should
do, but to get them to realize what they are doing. If they are
promoting some issue in order to recruit people, it is appropriate to
expose their manipulative motives. If they believe they are contributing
to radical change, it may be useful to show them how their activity is
actually reinforcing the system in some way. But if they are really
interested in their project for its own sake, let them go for it.
Even if we disagree with their priorities (fundraising for the opera,
say, while the streets are filled with homeless people) we should be
wary of any strategy that merely appeals to peopleâs guilt, not only
because such appeals generally have a negligible effect but because such
moralism represses healthy positive aspirations. To refrain from
contesting âquality of lifeâ issues because the system continues to
present us with survival emergencies is to submit to a blackmail that no
longer has any justification. âBread and rosesâ are no longer mutually
exclusive.[8]
âQuality of lifeâ projects are in fact often more inspiring than routine
political and economic demands because they awaken people to richer
perspectives. Paul Goodmanâs books are full of imaginative and often
amusing examples. If his proposals are âreformist,â they are so in a
lively, provocative way that provides a refreshing contrast to the
cringing defensive posture of most present-day reformists, who confine
themselves to reacting to the reactionariesâ agenda. (âWe agree that it
is essential to create jobs, fight crime, keep our country strong; but
moderate methods will accomplish this better than the conservativesâ
extremist proposals.â)
Other things being equal, it makes sense to concentrate oneâs energy on
issues that are not already receiving public attention; and to prefer
projects that can be done cleanly and directly, as opposed to those that
require compromises, such as working through government agencies. Even
if such compromises donât seem too serious, they set a bad precedent.
Reliance on the state almost always backfires (commissions designed to
root out bureaucratic corruption themselves develop into new corrupt
bureaucracies; laws designed to thwart armed reactionary groups end up
being used primarily to harass unarmed radicals).
The system is able to kill two birds with one stone by maneuvering its
opponents into offering âconstructive solutionsâ to its own crises. It
in fact needs a certain amount of opposition to warn it of problems, to
force it to rationalize itself, to enable it to test its instruments of
control, and to provide excuses to impose new forms of control.
Emergency measures imperceptibly become standard procedures as
regulations that might ordinarily be resisted are introduced during
situations of panic. The slow, steady rape of the human personality by
all the institutions of alienated society, from school and factory to
advertising and urbanism, is made to seem normal as the spectacle
focuses obsessively on sensational individual crimes, manipulating
people into law-and-order hysteria.
Above all, the system thrives when it can deflect social contestation
into squabbles over privileged positions within it.
This is a particularly thorny area. All social inequalities need to be
challenged, not only because they are unfair, but because as long as
they remain they can be used to divide people. But attaining equal wage
slavery or equal opportunity to become a bureaucrat or a capitalist
hardly amounts to any victory over bureaucratic capitalism.
It is both natural and necessary that people defend their own interests;
but if they try do so by identifying too exclusively with some
particular social group they tend to lose sight of the larger picture.
As increasingly fragmented categories scramble over the crumbs allotted
to them, they get caught up in petty mutual-blame games and the notion
of abolishing the whole hierarchical structure is forgotten. People who
are normally quick to denounce the slightest hint of derogatory
stereotyping get carried away into lumping all men or all whites as
âoppressors,â then wonder why they run up against such powerful
backlashes among the vast majority of the latter, who are quite aware
that they have little real power over their own lives, much less over
anyone elseâs.
Aside from the reactionary demagogues (who are pleasantly surprised to
find âprogressivesâ providing them with such easy targets for ridicule)
the only people who actually benefit from these internecine squabbles
are a few careerists struggling for bureaucratic posts, government
grants, academic tenure, publishing contracts, commercial clienteles or
political constituencies at a time when there is increasingly limited
space at the trough. Sniffing out âpolitical incorrectnessâ enables them
to bash rivals and critics and reinforce their own positions as
recognized specialists or spokespeople of their particular fragment. The
various oppressed groups that are foolish enough to accept such
spokespeople get nothing but the bittersweet thrill of self-righteous
resentment and a ludicrous official terminology reminiscent of Orwellâs
Newspeak.[9]
There is a crucial, though sometimes subtle, distinction between
fighting social evils and feeding on them. People are not empowered by
being encouraged to wallow in their own victimhood. Individual autonomy
is not developed by taking refuge in some group identity. Equal
intelligence is not demonstrated by dismissing logical reasoning as a
âtypical white male tactic.â Radical dialogue is not fostered by
harassing people who donât conform to some political orthodoxy, much
less by striving to get such orthodoxy legally enforced.
Nor is history made by rewriting it. We do need to free ourselves from
uncritical respect for the past and to become aware of the ways it has
been distorted. But we have to recognize that despite our disapproval of
past prejudices and injustices, it is unlikely that we would have done
any better had we ourselves lived under the same conditions. Applying
present-day standards retroactively (smugly correcting earlier authors
every time they use the formerly conventional masculine forms, or trying
to censor Huckleberry Finn because Huck doesnât refer to Jim as a
âperson of colorâ) only reinforces the historical ignorance that the
modern spectacle has been so successful in fostering.
A lot of this nonsense stems from the false assumption that being
radical implies living up to some moral âprincipleâ â as if no one could
work for peace without being a total pacifist, or advocate the abolition
of capitalism without giving away all their money. Most people have too
much common sense to actually follow such simplistic ideals, but they
often feel vaguely guilty that they donât. This guilt paralyzes them and
makes them more susceptible to blackmail by leftist manipulators (who
tell us that if we donât have the courage to martyrize ourselves, we
must uncritically support those who do). Or they try to repress their
guilt by disparaging others who seem even more compromised: a manual
laborer may take pride in not selling out mentally like a professor; who
perhaps feels superior to an ad designer; who may in turn look down on
someone who works in the arms industry...
Turning social problems into personal moral issues deflects attention
from their potential solution. Trying to change social conditions by
charity is like trying to raise the sea level by dumping buckets of
water in the ocean. Even if some good is accomplished by altruistic
actions, to rely on them as a general strategy is futile because they
will always be the exception. Most people naturally look out first for
themselves and for those closest to them. One of the merits of the
situationists was to have cut through the traditional leftist appeal to
guilt and self-sacrifice by stressing that the primary reason to make a
revolution is for ourselves.
âGoing to the peopleâ in order to âserveâ or âorganizeâ or âradicalizeâ
them usually leads to manipulation and often meets with apathy or
hostility. The example of othersâ independent actions is a far stronger
and healthier means of inspiration. Once people begin to act on their
own they are in a better position to exchange experiences, to
collaborate on equal terms and, if necessary, to ask for specific
assistance. And when they win their own freedom itâs much harder to take
it back from them. One of the May 1968 graffitists wrote: âIâm not a
servant of the people (much less of their self-appointed leaders) â let
the people serve themselves.â Another put it even more succinctly:
âDonât liberate me â Iâll take care of that.â
A total critique means that everything is called into question, not that
everything must be totally opposed. Radicals often forget this and get
caught up in outbidding each other with increasingly extremist
assertions, implying that any compromise amounts to selling out or even
that any enjoyment amounts to complicity with the system. Actually,
being âforâ or âagainstâ some political position is just as easy, and
usually just as meaningless, as being for or against some sports team.
Those who proudly proclaim their âtotal oppositionâ to all compromise,
all authority, all organization, all theory, all technology, etc.,
usually turn out to have no revolutionary perspective whatsoever â no
practical conception of how the present system might be overthrown or
how a postrevolutionary society might work. Some even attempt to justify
this lack by declaring that a mere revolution could never be radical
enough to satisfy their eternal ontological rebelliousness.
Such all-or-nothing bombast may temporarily impress a few spectators,
but its ultimate effect is simply to make people blasé. Sooner or later
the contradictions and hypocrisies lead to disillusionment and
resignation. Projecting their own disappointed delusions onto the world,
the former extremists conclude that all radical change is hopeless and
repress the whole experience; or perhaps even flip to some equally silly
reactionary position.
If every radical had to be a Durruti we might as well forget it and
devote ourselves to more realizable concerns. But being radical does not
mean being the most extreme. In its original sense it simply means going
to the root. The reason it is necessary to strive for the abolition of
capitalism and the state is not because this is the most extreme goal
imaginable, but because it has unfortunately become evident that nothing
less will do.
We need to find out what is both necessary and sufficient; to seek
projects that we are actually capable of doing and realistically likely
to do. Anything beyond this is just hot air. Many of the oldest and
still most effective radical tactics â debates, critiques, boycotts,
strikes, sit-ins, workers councils â caught on precisely because they
are at once simple, relatively safe, widely applicable, and open-ended
enough to lead to broader possibilities.
Simplistic extremism naturally seeks the most extremist foil for itself.
If all problems can be attributed to a sinister clique of âtotal
fascists,â everything else will seem comfortingly progressive by
comparison. Meanwhile the actual forms of modern domination, which are
usually more subtle, proceed unnoticed and unopposed.
Fixating on reactionaries only reinforces them, makes them seem more
powerful and more fascinating. âIt matters little if our opponents mock
us or insult us, if they represent us as clowns or criminals; the
essential thing is that they talk of us, preoccupy themselves with usâ
(Hitler). Reich pointed out that âby drilling people to hate the police
one only strengthens police authority and invests it with mystic power
in the eyes of the poor and the helpless. The strong are hated but also
feared and envied and followed. This fear and envy felt by the
âhave-notsâ accounts for a portion of the political reactionariesâ
power. One of the main objectives of the rational struggle for freedom
is to disarm reactionaries by exposing the illusionary character of
their powerâ (People in Trouble).
The main problem with compromising is not so much moral as practical:
itâs difficult to attack something when we ourselves are implicated in
it. We hedge our critiques lest others criticize us in turn. It becomes
harder to think big, to act boldly. As has often been noted, many of the
German people acquiesced to Nazi oppression because it began fairly
gradually and was at first directed mainly at unpopular minorities
(Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals); by the time it began affecting
the general population, they had become incapable of doing anything
about it.
In hindsight itâs easy to condemn those who capitulated to fascism or
Stalinism, but itâs unlikely that most of us would have done any better
had we been in the same position. In our daydreams, picturing ourself as
a dramatic personage faced with a clear-cut choice in front of an
appreciative audience, we imagine that we would have no trouble making
the right decision. But the situations we actually face are usually more
complex and obscure. Itâs not always easy to know where to draw the
line.
The point is to draw it somewhere, stop worrying about guilt and blame
and self-justification, and take the offensive.
This spirit is well exemplified by those Italian workers who have gone
on strike without making any demands whatsoever. Such strikes are not
only more interesting than the usual bureaucratic union negotiations,
they may even be more effective: the bosses, uncertain of how far they
have to go, frequently end up offering much more than the strikers would
have dared to demand. The latter can then decide on their next move
without having committed themselves to anything in return.
A defensive reaction against this or that social symptom at best wins
some temporary concession on the specific issue. Aggressive agitation
that refuses to limit itself exerts far more pressure. Faced with
widespread, unpredictable movements like the sixties counterculture or
the May 1968 revolt â movements calling everything in question,
generating autonomous contestations on many fronts, threatening to
spread throughout the whole society and too vast to be controlled by
cooptable leaders â rulers hasten to clean up their image, pass reforms,
raise wages, release prisoners, declare amnesties, initiate peace talks
â anything in the hope of preempting the movement and reestablishing
their control. (The sheer unmanageability of the American
counterculture, which was spreading deeply into the army itself,
probably played as great a role as the explicit antiwar movement in
forcing the end of the Vietnam war.)
The side that takes the initiative defines the terms of the struggle. As
long as it keeps innovating, it also retains the element of surprise.
âBoldness is virtually a creative power... Whenever boldness meets
hesitation it already has a significant advantage because the very state
of hesitation implies a loss of equilibrium. It is only when it
encounters cautious foresight that it is at a disadvantageâ (Clausewitz,
On War). But cautious foresight is quite rare among those who run this
society. Most of the systemâs processes of commodification,
spectacularization and hierarchization are blind and automatic:
merchants, media and leaders merely follow their natural tendencies to
make money or grab audiences or recruit followers.
Spectacle society is often the victim of its own falsifications. As each
level of bureaucracy tries to cover for itself with padded statistics,
as each âinformation sourceâ outbids the others with more sensational
stories, and as competing states, governmental departments and private
companies each launch their own independent disinformation operations
(see chapters 16 and 30 of Debordâs Comments on the Society of the
Spectacle), even the exceptional ruler who may have some lucidity has a
hard time finding out what is really happening. As Debord observes
elsewhere in the same book, a state that ends up repressing its own
historical knowledge can no longer conduct itself strategically.
âThe whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all
concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle...
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without
plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The
struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.â
â Frederick Douglass
Anyone with any knowledge of history is aware that societies do not
change without stubborn and often savage resistance by those in power.
If our ancestors had not resorted to violent revolt, most of those who
now self-righteously deplore it would still be serfs or slaves.
The routine functioning of this society is far more violent than any
reaction against it could ever be. Imagine the outrage that would greet
a radical movement that executed 20,000 opponents; thatâs a conservative
estimate of the number of children that the present system allows to
starve to death each day. Vacillations and compromises allow this
ongoing violence to drag on indefinitely, ultimately causing a thousand
times more suffering than a single decisive revolution.
Fortunately a modern, genuinely majority revolution would have
relatively little need for violence except to neutralize those elements
of the ruling minority who try to violently maintain their own power.
Violence is not only undesirable in itself, it generates panic (and thus
manipulability) and promotes militaristic (and thus hierarchical)
organization. Nonviolence entails more open and democratic organization;
it tends to foster composure and compassion and to break the miserable
cycle of hatred and revenge.
But we have to avoid making a fetish out of it. The common retort, âHow
can you work for peace with violent methods?â is no more logical than it
would be to tell a drowning man that if he wants to get to dry land he
must avoid touching water. Striving to resolve âmisunderstandingsâ
through dialogue, pacifists forget that some problems are based on
objective conflicts of interest. They tend to underestimate the malice
of enemies while exaggerating their own guilt, berating themselves even
for their âviolent feelings.â The seemingly personal practice of
âbearing witnessâ actually reduces the activist to a passive object,
âanother person for peaceâ who (like a soldier) puts her body on the
line while abdicating personal investigation or experimentation. Those
who want to undermine the notion of war as exciting and heroic must get
beyond such a cringing, beggarly notion of peace. Defining their
objective as survival, peace activists have had little to say to those
who are fascinated by global annihilation precisely because they are
sick of an everyday life reduced to mere survival, who see war not as a
threat but as a welcome deliverance from a life of boredom and constant
petty anxiety.
Sensing that their purism would not hold up under the test of reality,
pacifists usually remain deliberately ignorant about past and present
social struggles. Though often capable of intensive study and stoic
self-discipline in their personal spiritual practices, they seem to feel
that a Readerâs Digest level of historical and strategical knowledge
will suffice for their ventures into âsocial engagement.â Like someone
hoping to eliminate injurious falls by abolishing the law of gravity,
they find it simpler to envision a never-ending moral struggle against
âgreed,â âhatred,â âignorance,â âbigotry,â than to challenge the
specific social structures that actually reinforce such qualities. If
pressed, they sometimes complain that radical contestation is a very
stressful terrain. It is indeed, but this is a strange objection to hear
from those whose spiritual practices claim to enable people to confront
problems with detachment and equanimity.
Thereâs a wonderful moment in Uncle Tomâs Cabin: As a Quaker family is
helping some slaves escape to Canada, a Southern slave catcher appears.
One of the Quakers points a shotgun at him and says, âFriend, thee isnât
wanted here.â I think thatâs just the right tone: not caught up in
hatred, or even contempt, but ready to do what is necessary in a given
situation.
Reactions against oppressors are understandable, but those who get too
caught up in them risk becoming mentally as well as materially enslaved,
chained to their masters by âbonds of hate.â Hatred of bosses is partly
a projection of peopleâs self-hatred for all the humiliations and
compromises they have accepted, stemming from their secret awareness
that bosses ultimately exist only because the bossed put up with them.
Even if there is some tendency for the scum to rise to the top, most
people in positions of power donât act much differently than would
anyone else who happened to find themselves in the same position, with
the same new interests, temptations and fears.
Vigorous retaliation may teach enemy forces to respect you, but it also
tends to perpetuate antagonisms. Forgiveness sometimes wins over
enemies, but in other cases it simply gives them a chance to recover and
strike again. Itâs not always easy to determine which policy is best in
which circumstances. People who have suffered under particularly vicious
regimes naturally want to see the perpetrators punished; but too much
revenge sends a message to other present and future oppressors that they
may as well fight to the death since they have nothing to lose.
But most people, even those who have been most blamably complicitous
with the system, will tend to go whichever way the wind blows. The best
defense against counterrevolution is not to be preoccupied with sniffing
out peopleâs past offenses or potential future betrayals, but to deepen
the insurgence to the point that everyone is drawn in.
âAs soon as the relations of exploitation and the violence that
underlies them are no longer concealed by the mystical veil, there is a
breakthrough, a moment of clarity, the struggle against alienation is
suddenly revealed as a ruthless hand-to-hand fight with naked power,
power exposed in its brute force and its weakness, a vulnerable giant
... sublime moment when the complexity of the world becomes tangible,
transparent, within everyoneâs grasp.â
â Raoul Vaneigem, Basic Banalities (SI Anthology, p. 93 [Revised Edition
p. 121])
Itâs hard to generalize about the immediate causes of radical
breakthroughs. There have always been plenty of good reasons to revolt,
and sooner or later instabilities will arise where something has to
give. But why at one moment and not another? Revolts have often occurred
during periods of social improvement, while worse conditions have been
endured with resignation. If some have been provoked by sheer
desperation, others have been touched off by relatively trivial
incidents. Grievances that have been patiently accepted as long as they
seemed inevitable may suddenly seem intolerable once it appears possible
to remove them. The meanness of some repressive measure or the asininity
of some bureaucratic blunder may bring home the absurdity of the system
more clearly than a steady accumulation of oppressions.
The systemâs power is based on peopleâs belief in their powerlessness to
oppose it. Normally this belief is well founded (transgress the rules
and you are punished). But when for one reason or another enough people
begin to ignore the rules that they can do so with impunity, the whole
illusion collapses. What was thought to be natural and inevitable is
seen to be arbitrary and absurd. âWhen no one obeys, no one commands.â
The problem is how to reach this point. If only a few disobey, they can
easily be isolated and repressed. People often fantasize about wonderful
things that might be achieved âif only everyone would agree to do such
and such all at once.â Unfortunately, social movements donât usually
work that way. One person with a six-gun can hold off a hundred unarmed
people because each one knows that the first six to attack will be
killed.
Of course some people may be so infuriated that they attack regardless
of risk; and their apparent determination may even save them by
convincing those in power that itâs wiser to give in peacefully than to
be overwhelmed after arousing even more hatred against themselves. But
it is obviously preferable not to depend on acts of desperation, but to
seek forms of struggle that minimize risk until a movement has spread so
far that repression is no longer feasible.
People living under particularly repressive regimes naturally begin by
taking advantage of whatever rallying points already exist. In 1978 the
Iranian mosques were the only place people could get away with
criticizing the Shahâs regime. Then the huge demonstrations called by
Khomeini at 40-day intervals began providing the safety of numbers.
Khomeini thus became recognized as a general symbol of opposition, even
by those who were not his followers. But tolerating any leader, even as
a mere figurehead, is at best a temporary measure that should be
abandoned as soon as more independent action becomes possible â as did
those Iranian oil workers who by fall 1978 felt they had enough leverage
to strike on days different from those called for by Khomeini.
The Catholic Church in Stalinist Poland played a similarly ambiguous
role: the state used the Church to help control the people, but the
people also used the Church to help them get around the state.
Fanatical orthodoxy is sometimes the first step toward more radical
self-expression. Islamic fundamentalists may be extremely reactionary,
but by getting used to taking events in their own hands they complicate
any return to âorderâ and may even, if disillusioned, become genuinely
radical â as happened with some of the similarly fanatical Red Guards
during the Chinese âCultural Revolution,â when what was originally a
mere ploy by Mao to lever out some of his bureaucratic rivals eventually
led to uncontrolled insurgency by millions of young people who took his
antibureaucratic rhetoric seriously.[10]
If someone proclaimed: âI am the greatest, strongest, noblest,
cleverest, and most peace-loving person in the world,â he would be
considered obnoxious, if not insane. But if he says precisely the same
things about his country he is looked upon as an admirably patriotic
citizen. Patriotism is extremely seductive because it enables even the
most miserable individual to indulge in a vicarious collective
narcissism. The natural nostalgic fondness for oneâs home and
surroundings is transformed into a mindless cult of the state. Peopleâs
fears and resentments are projected onto foreigners while their
frustrated aspirations for authentic community are mystically projected
onto their own nation, which is seen as somehow essentially wonderful
despite all its defects. (âYes, America has its problems; but what we
are fighting for is the real America, what America really stands for.â)
This mystical herd-consciousness becomes almost irresistible during war,
smothering virtually all radical tendencies.
Yet patriotism has sometimes played a role in triggering radical
struggles (e.g. Hungary 1956). And even wars have sometimes led to
revolts in the aftermath. Those who have borne the greatest share of the
military burden, supposedly in the name of freedom and democracy, may
return home to demand a fairer share for themselves. Seeing historic
struggle in action and acquiring the habit of dealing with obstacles by
destroying them, they may be less inclined to believe in a changeless
status quo.
The dislocations and disillusionments produced by World War I led to
uprisings all over Europe. If World War II did not do the same, it was
because genuine radicalism had since been destroyed by Stalinism,
fascism and reformism; because the victorsâ rationales for the war,
though full of lies as always, were more credible than usual (the
defeated enemies were more obvious villains); and because this time the
victors had taken care to work out the postwar reestablishment of order
in advance (eastern Europe was handed over to Stalin in exchange for his
guaranteeing the docility of the French and Italian Communist Parties
and his abandonment of the insurgent Greek CP). Nevertheless the global
jolt of the war was sufficient to open the way for an autonomous
Stalinist revolution in China (which Stalin had not wanted, as this
threatened his exclusive domination of the âsocialist campâ) and to give
a new impetus to the anticolonial movements (which the European colonial
powers naturally did not want, though they were eventually able to
retain the more profitable aspects of their domination through the sort
of economic neocolonialism that the United States was already
practicing).
Faced with the prospect of a postwar power vacuum, rulers often
collaborate with their ostensible enemies in order to repress their own
people. At the end of the Franco-German war of 1870â71 the victorious
German army helped surround the Paris Commune, enabling the French
rulers to crush it more easily. As Stalinâs army approached Warsaw in
1944 it called on the people of the city to rise against the Nazi
occupiers, then waited outside the city for several days while the Nazis
wiped out the thus-exposed independent elements which might later have
resisted the imposition of Stalinism. We have recently seen a similar
scenario in the de facto Bush-Saddam alliance in the aftermath of the
Gulf war, when, after calling on the Iraqi people to rise against
Saddam, the American military systematically massacred Iraqi conscripts
retreating from Kuwait (who, if they had regained their country, would
have been ripe for revolt) while leaving Saddamâs elite Republican
Guards intact and free to crush the immense radical uprisings in
northern and southern Iraq.[11]
In totalitarian societies the grievances are obvious but revolt is
difficult. In âdemocraticâ societies struggles are easier, but the goals
are less clear. Controlled largely by subconscious conditioning or by
vast, seemingly incomprehensible forces (âthe state of the economyâ) and
offered a wide range of apparently free choices, itâs difficult for us
to grasp our situation. Like a flock of sheep, weâre herded in the
desired direction, but allowed enough room for individual variations to
enable us to preserve an illusion of independence.
Impulses toward vandalism or violent confrontation can often be seen as
attempts to break through this frustrating abstractness and come to
grips with something concrete.
Just as the first organization of the classical proletariat was
preceded, during the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the nineteenth, by a period of isolated âcriminalâ acts aimed at
destroying the machines of production that were depriving people of
their work, we are presently witnessing the first appearance of a wave
of vandalism against the machines of consumption that are just as
certainly depriving us of our life. In both cases the significance
obviously does not lie in the destruction itself, but in the
rebelliousness which could potentially develop into a positive project
going to the point of reconverting the machines in a way that increases
peopleâs real power over their lives. (SI Anthology, p. 82 [Revised
Edition p. 108] [The Bad Days Will End].)
(Note that last sentence, incidentally: To point out a symptom of social
crisis, or even to defend it as an understandable reaction, does not
necessary imply recommending it as a tactic.)
Many other triggers of radical situations could be enumerated. A strike
may spread (Russia 1905); popular resistance to some reactionary threat
may overflow official bounds (Spain 1936); people may take advantage of
token liberalization in order to push further (Hungary 1956,
Czechoslovakia 1968); exemplary small group actions may catalyze a mass
movement (the early civil rights sit-ins, May 1968); a particular
outrage may be seen as the last straw (Watts 1965, Los Angeles 1992);
the sudden collapse of a regime may leave a power vacuum (Portugal
1974); some special occasion may bring people together in such numbers
that itâs impossible to prevent them from expressing their grievances
and aspirations (Tiananmen Square 1976 and 1989); etc.
But social crises involve so many imponderables that it is rarely
possible to predict them, much less provoke them. In general it seems
best to pursue projects we are personally most drawn to, while trying to
remain aware enough to quickly recognize significant new developments
(dangers, urgent tasks, favorable opportunities) that call for new
tactics.
Meanwhile, we can move on to examine some of the crucial stages in
radical situations once they do get started.
A radical situation is a collective awakening. At one extreme it may
involve a few dozen people in a neighborhood or workplace; at the other
it shades into a full-fledged revolutionary situation involving millions
of people. Itâs not a matter of numbers, but of open-ended public
dialogue and participation. The incident at the beginning of the1964
Free Speech Movement (FSM) is a classic and particularly beautiful
example. As police were about to take away an arrested civil rights
activist on the university campus in Berkeley, a few students sat down
in front of the police car; within a few minutes hundreds of others
spontaneously followed their example, surrounding the car so it could
not move. For the next 32 hours the car roof was turned into a platform
for freewheeling debate. The May 1968 occupation of the Sorbonne created
an even more radical situation by drawing in much of the nonstudent
Parisian population; the workersâ occupation of factories throughout
France then turned it into a revolutionary situation.
In such situations people become much more open to new perspectives,
readier to question previous assumptions, quicker to see through the
usual cons. Every day some people go through experiences that lead them
to question the meaning of their lives; but during a radical situation
practically everyone does so all at once. When the machine grinds to a
halt, the cogs themselves begin wondering about their function.
Bosses are ridiculed. Orders are ignored. Separations are broken down.
Personal problems are transformed into public issues; public issues that
seemed distant and abstract become immediate practical matters. The old
order is analyzed, criticized, satirized. People learn more about
society in a week than in years of academic âsocial studiesâ or leftist
âconsciousness raising.â Long repressed experiences are revived.[12]
Everything seems possible â and much more is possible. People can hardly
believe what they used to put up with in âthe old days.â Even if the
outcome is uncertain, the experience is often seen as worthwhile for its
own sake. âIf we only have enough time ...â wrote one May 1968
graffitist; to which a couple others responded: âIn any case, no
regrets!â and âAlready ten days of happiness.â
As work comes to a halt, rat-race commuting is replaced by leisurely
circulation, passive consumption by active communication. Strangers
strike up lively discussions on street corners. Debates continue round
the clock, new arrivals constantly replacing those who depart for other
activities or to try to catch a few hours of sleep, though they are
usually too excited to sleep very long. While some people succumb to
demagogues, others start making their own proposals and taking their own
initiatives. Bystanders get drawn into the vortex, and go through
astonishingly rapid changes. (A beautiful example from May 1968: The
director of the national Odéon Theater was at first dismayed at its
being taken over by the radical crowds; but after taking in the
situation for a few minutes, he came forward and exclaimed: âYes! Now
that you have it, keep it, never give it up â burn it rather than do
that!â)
Of course, not everyone is immediately won over. Some people simply lay
low, anticipating the time when the movement will subside and they can
recover their possessions or their positions, and take their revenge.
Others waver, torn between desire for change and fear of change. An
opening of a few days may not be enough to break a lifetime of
hierarchical conditioning. The disruption of habits and routines can be
disorienting as well as liberating. Everything happens so fast itâs easy
to panic. Even if you manage to keep calm, itâs not easy to grasp all
the factors in play quickly enough to determine the best thing to do,
which may appear obvious in hindsight. One of the main purposes of the
present text is to point out certain typical recurring patterns so that
people can be prepared to recognize and exploit such opportunities
before itâs too late.
Radical situations are the rare moments when qualitative change really
becomes possible. Far from being abnormal, they reveal how abnormally
repressed we usually are; they make our ânormalâ life seem like
sleepwalking. Yet of the vast number of books that have been written
about revolutions, few have much to say about such moments. Those
dealing with the most radical modern revolts are usually merely
descriptive, perhaps giving a hint of what such experiences feel like
but seldom providing any useful tactical insights. Studies of bourgeois
and bureaucratic revolutions are generally even less relevant. In such
revolutions, where the âmassesâ played only a temporary supporting role
for one leadership or another, their behavior could to a large degree be
analyzed like the motions of physical masses, in terms of the familiar
metaphors of rising and ebbing tides, pendulum swings from radicality to
reaction, etc. But an antihierarchical revolution requires people to
cease being homogenous, manipulable masses, to get beyond the
subservience and unconsciousness that make them subject to this sort of
mechanistic predictability.
During the sixties it was widely felt that the best way to foster such
demassification was to form âaffinity groupsâ: small associations of
close friends with compatible lifestyles and perspectives. Such groups
do have many obvious advantages. They can decide on a project and
immediately carry it out; they are difficult to infiltrate; and when
necessary they can link up with others. But even leaving aside the
various pitfalls to which most of the sixties affinity groups soon
succumbed, thereâs no getting around the fact that some matters require
large-scale organization. And large groups will soon revert to accepting
some sort of hierarchy unless they manage to organize themselves in a
manner that renders leaders unnecessary.
One of the simplest ways for a large gathering to begin organizing
itself is for those who have something to say to line up or sign up,
with each person allowed a certain time within which they can talk about
anything they want. (The Sorbonne assembly and the FSM gathering around
the police car each established a three-minute limit, occasionally
extended by popular acclaim.) Some of the speakers will propose specific
projects that will precipitate smaller, more workable groups. (âI and
some others intend to do such and such; anyone who wants to take part
can join us at such and such time and place.â) Others will raise issues
involving the general aims or ongoing functioning of the assembly
itself. (Whom does it include? When will it meet again? How will urgent
new developments be dealt with in the interim? Who will be delegated to
deal with specific tasks? With what degree of accountability?) In this
process the participants will soon see what works and what doesnât â how
strictly delegates need to be mandated, whether a chairperson is needed
to facilitate discussion so that everyone isnât talking at once, etc.
Many modes of organization are possible; what is essential is that
things remain open, democratic and participatory, that any tendency
toward hierarchy or manipulation is immediately exposed and rejected.
Despite its naïveté and confusions and lack of rigorous delegate
accountability, the FSM is a good example of the spontaneous tendencies
toward practical self-organization that arise in a radical situation.
Some two dozen âcentralsâ were formed to coordinate printing, press
releases, legal assistance, to rustle up food, speaker systems and other
necessary supplies, or to locate volunteers who had indicated their
skills and availability for different tasks. Phone trees made it
possible to contact over twenty thousand students on short notice.
But beyond mere questions of practical efficiency, and even beyond the
ostensible political issues, the insurgents were breaking through the
whole spectacular façade and getting a taste of real life, real
community. One participant estimated that within a few months he had
come to know, at least as a nodding acquaintance, two or three thousand
people â this at a university that was notorious for âturning people
into numbers.â Another movingly wrote: âConfronting an institution
apparently and frustratingly designed to depersonalize and block
communication, neither humane nor graceful nor responsive, we found
flowering in ourselves the presence whose absence we were at heart
protesting.â[13]
A radical situation must spread or fail. In exceptional cases a
particular location may serve as a more or less permanent base, a focus
for coordination and a refuge from outside repression. (Sanrizuka, a
rural region near Tokyo that was occupied by local farmers during the
1970s in an effort to block the construction of a new airport, was so
stubbornly and successfully defended for so many years that it came to
be used as a headquarters for diverse struggles all over Japan.) But a
fixed location facilitates manipulation, surveillance and repression,
and being stuck with defending it inhibits peopleâs freedom to move
around. Radical situations are always characterized by a lot of
circulation: while some people converge to key locations to see whatâs
happening, others fan out to spread the contestation to other areas.
A simple but essential step in any radical action is for people to
communicate what they are actually doing and why. Even if what they have
done is very limited, such communication is in itself exemplary: besides
spreading the game to a wider field and inciting others to join in, it
cuts through the usual reliance on rumors, news media and self-appointed
spokespeople.
Itâs also a crucial step in self-clarification. A proposal to issue a
collective communiqué presents concrete alternatives: Who do we want to
communicate with? For what purpose? Who is interested in this project?
Who agrees with this statement? Who disagrees? With which points? This
may lead to a polarization as people see the different possibilities of
the situation, sort out their own views, and regroup with like-minded
persons to pursue diverse projects.
Such polarization clarifies matters for everyone. Each tendency remains
free to express itself and to test its ideas in practice, and the
results can be discerned more clearly than if contradictory strategies
were mixed together in some lowest-common-denominator compromise. When
people see a practical need for coordination, they will coordinate; in
the mean time, the proliferation of autonomous individuals is far more
fruitful than the superficial, top-down âunityâ for which bureaucrats
are always appealing.
Large crowds sometimes enable people to do things that would be
imprudent if undertaken by isolated individuals; and certain collective
actions, such as strikes or boycotts, require people to act in concert,
or at least not to go against a majority decision. But many other
matters can be dealt with directly by individuals or small groups.
Better to strike while the iron is hot than to waste time trying to
argue away the objections of masses of spectators who are still under
the sway of manipulators.
Small groups have every right to choose their own collaborators:
specific projects may require specific abilities or close accord among
the participants. A radical situation opens up broader possibilities
among a broader range of people. By simplifying basic issues and cutting
through habitual separations, it renders masses of ordinary people
capable of carrying out tasks they could not even have imagined the week
before. In any case, the self-organized masses are the only ones who can
carry out those tasks â no one else can do it on their behalf.
What is the role of individual radicals in such a situation? It is clear
that they must not claim to represent or lead the people. On the other
hand, it is absurd to declare, in the name of avoiding hierarchy, that
they should immediately âdissolve into the massesâ and cease putting
forward their own views or initiating their own projects. They should
hardly do less than the ordinary âmassâ individuals, who have to express
their views and initiate their projects or nothing at all would happen.
In practice those radicals who claim to be afraid of âtelling people
what to doâ or of âacting in place of the workersâ generally end up
either doing nothing or disguising their endless reiterations of their
ideology as âreports of discussions among some workers.â
The situationists and Enragés had a considerably more lucid and
forthright practice during May 1968. During the first three or four days
of the Sorbonne occupation (14â17 May) they openly expressed their views
on the tasks of the assembly and of the general movement. On the basis
of those views one of the Enragés, René Riesel, was elected to the first
Sorbonne Occupation Committee, and he and his fellow delegates were
reelected the following day.
Riesel and one other delegate (the rest apparently slipped away without
fulfilling any of their responsibilities) endeavored to carry out the
two policies he had advocated: maintaining total democracy in the
Sorbonne and disseminating the most widespread appeals for occupying the
factories and forming workers councils. But when the assembly repeatedly
allowed its Occupation Committee to be overridden by various unelected
leftist bureaucracies and failed to affirm the call for workers councils
(thereby denying the workers the encouragement to do what the assembly
itself was doing in the Sorbonne), the Enragés and situationists left
the assembly and continued their agitation independently.
There was nothing undemocratic about this departure: the Sorbonne
assembly remained free to do whatever it wanted. But when it failed to
respond to the urgent tasks of the situation and even contradicted its
own pretensions of democracy, the situationists felt that it had no
further claim to be considered a focal point of the most radical
possibilities of the movement. Their diagnosis was confirmed by the
subsequent collapse of any pretense of participatory democracy at the
Sorbonne: after their departure the assembly had no more elections and
reverted to the typical leftist form of self-appointed bureaucrats
running things over the heads of passive masses.
While this was going on among a few thousand people in the Sorbonne,
millions of workers were occupying their factories throughout the
country. (Hence the absurdity of characterizing May 1968 as a âstudent
movement.â) The situationists, the EnragĂ©s and a few dozen other
councilist revolutionaries formed the Council for Maintaining the
Occupations (CMDO) with the aim of encouraging those workers to bypass
the union bureaucrats and directly link up with each other in order to
realize the radical possibilities their action had already opened
up.[14]
âVirtuous indignation is a powerful stimulant, but a dangerous diet.
Keep in mind the old proverb: anger is a bad counsellor... Whenever your
sympathies are strongly stirred on behalf of some cruelly ill used
person or persons of whom you know nothing except that they are ill
used, your generous indignation attributes all sorts of virtues to them,
and all sorts of vices to those who oppress them. But the blunt truth is
that ill used people are worse than well used people.â
â George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Womanâs Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism
âWe shall abolish slaves because we canât stand the sight of them.â
â Nietzsche
Fighting for liberation does not imply applauding the traits of the
oppressed. The ultimate injustice of social oppression is that it is
more likely to debase the victims than to ennoble them.
A lot of traditional leftist rhetoric stemmed from obsolete work-ethic
notions: the bourgeois were bad because they didnât do productive work,
whereas the worthy proletarians deserved the fruits of their labor, etc.
As labor has become increasingly unnecessary and directed to
increasingly absurd ends, this perspective has lost whatever sense it
may once have had. The point is not to praise the proletariat, but to
abolish it.
Class domination hasnât gone away just because a century of leftist
demagogy has made some of the old radical terminology sound pretty
corny. While phasing out certain kinds of traditional blue-collar labor
and throwing whole sectors of the population into permanent
unemployment, modern capitalism has proletarianized almost everyone
else. White-collar workers, technicians, and even middle-class
professionals who formerly prided themselves on their independence
(doctors, scientists, scholars) are increasingly subject to the crassest
commercialization and even to virtually assembly-line style
regimentation.
Less than 1% of the global population owns 80% of the worldâs land. Even
in the supposedly more egalitarian United States, economic disparity is
extreme and constantly growing more extreme. Twenty years ago the
average CEO salary was 35 times that of the average production worker;
today itâs 120 times as much. Twenty years ago the richest half-percent
of the American population owned 14% of the total private wealth; they
now own 30% of it. But such figures do not convey the full extent of
this eliteâs power. The âwealthâ of the lower and middle classes is
almost entirely devoted to covering their day-to-day expenses, leaving
little or nothing for investment at any significant, socially empowering
level. A magnate who owns as little as five or ten percent of a
corporation will usually be able to control it (due to the apathy of the
unorganized mass of small stockholders), thus wielding as much power as
if he owned the whole thing. And it only takes a few major corporations
(whose directorates are closely interlinked with each other and with
upper government bureaucracies) to buy out, wipe out or marginalize
smaller independent competitors and effectively control the key
politicians and media.
The omnipresent spectacle of middle-class prosperity has concealed this
reality, especially in the United States where, because of its
particular history (and despite the violence of many of its past class
conflicts), people are more naĂŻvely oblivious to class divisions than
anywhere else in the world. The wide variety of ethnicities and the
multitude of complex intermediate gradations has buffered and blurred
the fundamental distinction between top and bottom. Americans own so
many commodities that they fail to notice that someone else owns the
whole society. Except for those at the very bottom, who canât help
knowing better, they generally assume that poverty is the fault of the
poor, that any enterprising person has plenty of opportunity, that if
you canât make a satisfactory living in one place you can always make a
fresh start somewhere else. A century ago, when people could just pick
up and head further west, this belief had some foundation; the
persistence of nostalgic frontier spectacles obscures the fact that
present conditions are quite different and that we no longer have
anywhere else to go.
The situationists sometimes used the term proletariat (or more
precisely, the new proletariat) in a broadened sense, to refer to âall
those who have no power over their own lives and know it.â This usage
may be rather loose, but it has the merit of stressing the fact that
society is still divided into classes, and that the fundamental division
is still between the few who own and control everything and the rest who
have little or nothing to exchange but their own labor power. In some
contexts it may be preferable to use other terms, such as âthe peopleâ;
but not when this amounts to indiscriminately lumping exploiters with
exploited.
The point is not to romanticize wage laborers, who, not surprisingly,
considering that the spectacle is designed above all to keep them
deluded, are often among the most ignorant and reactionary sectors of
society. Nor is it a matter of scoring points to see who is most
oppressed. All forms of oppression must be contested, and everyone can
contribute to this contestation â women, youth, unemployed, minorities,
lumpens, bohemians, peasants, middle classes, even renegades from the
ruling elite. But none of these groups can achieve a definitive
liberation without abolishing the material foundation of all these
oppressions: the system of commodity production and wage labor. And this
abolition can be achieved only through the collective self-abolition of
wage laborers. They alone have the leverage not only to directly bring
the whole system to a stop, but to start things up again in a
fundamentally different way.[15]
Nor is it a matter of giving anyone special privileges. Workers in
essential sectors (food, transportation, communications, etc.) who have
rejected their capitalist and union bosses and begun to self-manage
their own activities will obviously have no interest in holding on to
the âprivilegeâ of doing all the work and every interest in inviting
everyone else, whether nonworkers or workers from obsolete sectors (law,
military, sales, advertising, etc.), to join them in the project of
reducing and transforming it. Everyone who takes part will share in the
decisionmaking; the only ones left out will be those who remain on the
sidelines claiming special privileges.
Traditional syndicalism and councilism have tended to take the existing
division of labor too much for granted, as if peopleâs lives in a
postrevolutionary society would continue to center around fixed jobs and
workplaces. Even within the present society such a perspective is
becoming increasingly obsolete: as most people work at absurd and
frequently only temporary jobs without in any way identifying with them,
while many others donât work on the wage market at all, work-related
issues become merely one aspect of a more general struggle.
At the beginning of a movement it may be appropriate for workers to
identify themselves as such. (âWe, the workers of such and such company,
have occupied our workplace with such and such aims; we urge workers in
other sectors to do likewise.â) The ultimate goal, however, is not the
self-management of existing enterprises. For, say, media workers to have
control over the media just because they happen to work there would be
almost as arbitrary as the present control by whoever happens to own
them. Workersâ management of the particular conditions of their work
will need to be combined with community management of matters of general
concern. Housewives and others working in relatively separated
conditions will need to develop their own forms of organization to
enable them to express their own particular interests. But potential
conflicts of interest between âproducersâ and âconsumersâ will be
quickly superseded when everyone becomes directly involved in both
aspects; when workers councils interlink with neighborhood and community
councils; and when fixed work positions fade through the obsoleting of
most jobs and the reorganization and rotation of those that remain
(including housework and child care).
The situationists were certainly right to strive for the formation of
workers councils during the May 1968 factory occupations. But it should
be noted that those occupations were triggered by actions of largely
nonworker youth. The post-1968 situationists tended to fall into a sort
of workerism (though a resolutely anti-work-ethic one), seeing the
proliferation of wildcat strikes as the major indicator of revolutionary
possibilities while paying less attention to developments on other
terrains. Actually, blatant union sellouts often force into wildcat
struggles workers who are in other respects not particularly radical;
and on the other hand, people can resist the system in many other ways
besides strikes (including avoiding wage labor as much as possible in
the first place). The situationists rightly recognized collective
self-management and individual âradical subjectivityâ as complementary
and equally essential aspects of the revolutionary project, but without
quite succeeding in bringing them together (though they certainly came
closer than did the surrealists, who tried to link cultural and
political revolt simply by declaring their fervent adhesion to one or
another version of Bolshevik ideology).[16]
Wildcat strikes do present interesting possibilities, especially if the
strikers occupy their workplace. Not only does this make their position
more secure (it prevents lockouts and scabbing, and the machines and
products serve as hostages against repression), it brings everyone
together, virtually guaranteeing collective self-management of the
struggle and hinting at the idea of self-managing the whole society.
Once the usual operation has been stopped, everything takes on a
different ambience. A drab workplace may be transfigured into an almost
sacred space that is jealously guarded against the profane intrusion of
bosses or police. An observer of the 1937 sitdown strike in Flint,
Michigan, described the strikers as âchildren playing at a new and
fascinating game. They had made a palace out of what had been their
prison.â (Quoted in Sidney Fineâs Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of
1936â1937.) Though the aim of the strike was simply to win the right to
unionize, its organization was virtually councilist. During the six
weeks that they lived in their factory (using car seats for beds and
cars for closets) a general assembly of all 1200 workers met twice daily
to determine policies regarding food, sanitation, information,
education, complaints, communication, security, defense, sports and
recreation, and to elect accountable and frequently rotated committees
to implement them. There was even a Rumor Committee, whose purpose was
to counteract disinformation by tracking down the source and checking
the validity of every rumor. Outside the factory, strikersâ wives took
care of rounding up food and organizing pickets, publicity, and liaison
with workers in other cities. Some of the bolder ones organized a
Womenâs Emergency Brigade which had a contingency plan to form a buffer
zone in case of a police attack on the factories. âIf the police want to
fire then theyâll just have to fire into us.â
Unfortunately, although workers retain a pivotal position in some
crucial areas (utilities, communication, transportation), workers in
many other sectors have less leverage than they used to. Multinational
companies usually have large reserves and can wait it out or shift
operations to other countries, while workers have a hard time holding
out without wages coming in. Far from threatening anything essential,
many present-day strikes are mere appeals to postpone shutting down
obsolete industries that are losing money. Thus, while the strike
remains the most basic worker tactic, workers must also devise other
forms of on-the-job struggle and find ways to link up with struggles on
other terrains.
Like worker strikes, consumer strikes (boycotts) depend on both the
leverage they can exert and the support they can enlist. There are so
many boycotts in favor of so many causes that, except for a few based on
some glaringly clear moral issue, most of them fail. As is so often the
case in social struggles, the most fruitful consumer strikes are those
in which people are fighting directly for themselves, such as the early
civil rights boycotts in the South or the âself-reductionâ movements in
Italy and elsewhere in which whole communities have decided to pay only
a certain percentage of utility bills or mass transit fares. A rent
strike is a particularly simple and powerful action, but itâs difficult
to achieve the degree of unity necessary to get one started except among
those who have nothing to lose; which is why the most exemplary
challenges to the fetish of private property are being made by homeless
squatters.
In what might be called reverse boycotts, people sometimes join in
supporting some popular institution that is threatened. Raising money
for a local school or library or alternative institution is usually
fairly banal, but such movements occasionally generate a salutary public
debate. In 1974 striking reporters took over a major South Korean
newspaper and began publishing exposés of government lies and
repression. In an effort to bankrupt the paper without having to openly
suppress it, the government pressured all the advertisers to remove
their ads from the paper. The public responded by buying thousands of
individual ads, using their space for personal statements, poems,
quotations from Tom Paine, etc. The âFreedom of Speech Support Columnâ
soon filled several pages of each issue and circulation increased
significantly before the paper was finally suppressed.
But consumer struggles are limited by the fact that consumers are at the
receiving end of the economic cycle: they may exert a certain amount of
pressure through protests or boycotts or riots, but they donât control
the mechanisms of production. In the above-mentioned Korean incident,
for example, the public participation was only made possible by the
workersâ takeover of the paper.
A particularly interesting and exemplary form of worker struggle is what
is sometimes called a âsocial strikeâ or âgiveaway strike,â in which
people carry on with their jobs but in ways that prefigure a free social
order: workers giving away goods they have produced, clerks
undercharging customers, transportation workers letting everyone ride
free. In February 1981 11,000 telephone workers occupied exchanges
throughout British Columbia and carried on all phone services without
charge for six days before being maneuvered out by their union. Besides
winning many of their demands, they seem to have had a delightful
time.[17] One can imagine ways of going further and becoming more
selective, such as blocking business and government calls while letting
personal calls go through free. Postal workers could do likewise with
mail; transportation workers could continue to ship necessary goods
while refusing to transport police or troops...
But this type of strike would make no sense for that large majority of
workers whose jobs serve no sensible purpose. (The best thing that such
workers can do is to publicly denounce the absurdity of their own work,
as some ad designers nicely did during May 1968.) Moreover, even useful
work is often so parcelized that isolated groups of workers can
implement few changes on their own. And even the small minority who
happen to produce finished and salable products (as did the workers who
in 1973 took over the bankrupt Lip watch factory in Besançon, France,
and started running it for themselves) usually remain dependent on
commercial financing and distribution networks. In the exceptional case
where such workers make a go of it on their own, they simply become one
more capitalist company; more often, their self-management innovations
merely end up rationalizing the operation for the benefit of the owners.
A âStrasbourg of the factoriesâ might occur if workers finding
themselves in a Lip-type situation use the facilities and publicity it
gives them to go farther than the Lip workers (who were struggling
simply to save their jobs) by calling on others to join them in
superseding the whole system of commodity production and wage labor. But
this is unlikely to happen until there is a sufficiently widespread
movement to enlarge peopleâs perspectives and offset the risks â as in
May 1968, when most of the factories of France were occupied:
If, in a single large factory, between 16 May and 30 May, a general
assembly had constituted itself as a council holding all powers of
decision and execution, expelling the bureaucrats, organizing its
self-defense and calling on the strikers of all the enterprises to link
up with it, this qualitative step could have immediately brought the
movement to the ultimate showdown... A very large number of enterprises
would have followed the course thus discovered. This factory could
immediately have taken the place of the dubious and in every sense
eccentric Sorbonne of the first days and have become the real center of
the occupations movement: genuine delegates from the numerous councils
that already virtually existed in some of the occupied buildings, and
from all the councils that could have imposed themselves in all the
branches of industry, would have rallied around this base. Such an
assembly could then have proclaimed the expropriation of all capital,
including state capital; announced that all the countryâs means of
production were henceforth the collective property of the proletariat
organized in direct democracy; and appealed directly (by finally seizing
some of the telecommunications facilities, for example) to the workers
of the entire world to support this revolution. Some people will say
that such a hypothesis is utopian. We answer: It is precisely because
the occupations movement was objectively at several moments only an hour
away from such a result that it spread such terror, visible to everyone
at the time in the impotence of the state and the panic of the so-called
Communist Party, and since then in the conspiracy of silence concerning
its gravity. [SI Anthology, pp. 234â235 [Revised Edition pp. 299â300]
(Beginning of an Era).]
What prevented this from happening was above all the labor unions, in
particular the largest one in the country: the Communist Party-dominated
CGT. Inspired by the rebellious youth who had fought the police in the
streets and taken over the Sorbonne and other public buildings, ten
million workers ignored their unions and occupied virtually all the
factories and many of the offices in the country, launching the first
wildcat general strike in history. But most of these workers were
unclear enough as to what to do next that they allowed the union
bureaucracy to insinuate itself into the movement it had tried to
prevent. The bureaucrats did everything they could to brake and fragment
the movement: calling brief token strikes; setting up phony
ârank-and-fileâ organizations composed of loyal Party members; seizing
control of the loudspeaker systems; rigging elections in favor of
returning to work; and most crucially, locking the factory gates in
order to keep workers isolated from each other and from the other
insurgents (on the pretext of âguarding against outside provocateursâ).
The unions then proceeded to negotiate with the employers and the
government a package of wage and vacation bonuses. This bribe was
emphatically rejected by a large majority of the workers, who had the
sense, however confused, that some more radical change was on the
agenda. In early June, de Gaulleâs presenting the carrot/stick
alternative of new elections or civil war finally intimidated many
workers into returning to work. There were still numerous holdouts, but
their isolation from each other enabled the unions to tell each group
that all the others had resumed work, so that they would believe they
were alone and give up.
As in May 1968, when the more developed countries are threatened with a
radical situation, they usually rely on confusion, concessions, curfews,
distractions, disinformation, fragmentation, preemption, postponement
and other methods of diverting, dividing and coopting the opposition,
reserving overt physical repression as a last resort. These methods,
which range from the subtle to the ludicrous,[18] are so numerous that
it would be impossible here to mention more than a few.
A common method of confusing the issues is to distort the apparent
alignment of forces by projecting diverse positions onto a linear,
left-versus-right schema, implying that if you are opposed to one side
you must be in favor of the other. The communism-versus-capitalism
spectacle served this purpose for over half a century. Since the recent
collapse of that farce, the tendency has been to declare a centrist
pragmatic global consensus, with any opposition being lumped with
lunatic-fringe âextremismsâ (fascism and religious fanaticism on the
right, terrorism and âanarchyâ on the left).
One of the classic divide-and-rule methods has been discussed earlier:
encouraging the exploited to fragment into a multitude of narrow group
identities, which can be manipulated into directing their energies into
squabbling with each other. Conversely, opposed classes can be lumped
together by patriotic hysteria and other means. Popular fronts, united
fronts and similar coalitions serve to obscure fundamental conflicts of
interest in the name of joint opposition to a common enemy
(bourgeoisie + proletariat versus a reactionary regime;
military-bureaucratic strata + peasantry versus foreign domination). In
such coalitions the upper group generally has the material and
ideological resources to maintain its control over the lower group,
which is tricked into postponing self-organized action on its own behalf
until itâs too late. By the time victory has been attained over the
common enemy, the upper group has had time to consolidate its power
(often in a new alliance with elements of the defeated enemy) in order
to crush the radical elements of the lower group.
Any vestige of hierarchy within a radical movement will be used to
divide and undermine it. If there are no cooptable leaders, a few will
be created by intensive media exposure. Leaders can be privately
bargained with and held responsible for their followers; once they are
coopted, they can establish similar chains of command beneath them,
enabling a large mass of people to be brought under control without the
rulers having to deal with all of them openly and simultaneously.
Cooption of leaders serves not only to separate them from the people,
but also divides the people among themselves â some seeing the cooption
as a victory, others denouncing it, others hesitating. As attention
shifts from participatory actions to the spectacle of distant
leader-celebrities debating distant issues, most people become bored and
disillusioned. Feeling that matters are out of their hands (perhaps even
secretly relieved that somebody else is taking care of them), they
return to their previous passivity.
Another method of discouraging popular participation is to emphasize
problems that seem to require specialized expertise. A classic instance
was the ploy of certain German military leaders in 1918, at the moment
when the workers and soldiers councils that emerged in the wake of the
German collapse at the end of World War I potentially had the country in
their hands:
On the evening of November 10, when the Supreme Command was still at
Spa, a group of seven enlisted men presented themselves at headquarters.
They were the âExecutive Committeeâ of the Supreme Headquarters
Soldiersâ Council. Their demands were somewhat unclear, but obviously
they expected to play a role in the command of the Army during its
retreat. At the very least they wanted the right to countersign the
Supreme Commandâs orders and to insure that the field army was not used
for any counterrevolutionary purpose. The seven soldiers were
courteously received by a Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm von Faupel, who had
been carefully rehearsed for the occasion... Faupel led the delegates
into the Supreme Commandâs map room. Everything was laid out on a
gigantic map which occupied one wall: the huge complex of roads, railway
lines, bridges, switching points, pipelines, command posts and supply
dumps â the whole an intricate lace of red, green, blue and black lines
converging into narrow bottlenecks at the crucial Rhine bridges...
Faupel then turned to them. The Supreme Command had no objection to the
soldiersâ councils, he said, but did his hearers feel competent to
direct the general evacuation of the German Army along these lines of
communication? ... The disconcerted soldiers stared uneasily at the
immense map. One of them allowed that this was not what they had really
had in mind â âThis work can well be left to the officers.â In the end,
the seven soldiers willingly gave the officers their support. More than
this, they practically begged the officers to retain command... Whenever
a soldiersâ council delegation appeared at Supreme Headquarters, Colonel
Faupel was trotted out to repeat his earlier performance; it always
worked. [Richard Watt, The Kings Depart: Versailles and the German
Revolution.]
Terrorism has often served to break the momentum of radical situations.
It stuns people, turns them back into spectators anxiously following the
latest news and speculations. Far from weakening the state, terrorism
seems to confirm the need to strengthen it. If terrorist spectacles fail
to spontaneously arise when it needs them, the state itself may produce
them by means of provocateurs. (See Sanguinettiâs On Terrorism and the
State and the last half of Debordâs Preface to the Fourth Italian
Edition of âThe Society of the Spectacle.â)
A popular movement can hardly prevent individuals from carrying out
terrorist or other thoughtless actions, actions that may sidetrack and
destroy it as surely as if they were the work of a provocateur. The only
solution is to create a movement with such consistently forthright and
nonmanipulative tactics that everyone will recognize individual
stupidities or police provocations for what they are.
An antihierarchical revolution can only be an âopen conspiracy.â
Obviously some things require secrecy, especially under the more
repressive regimes. But even in such cases the means should not be
inconsistent with the ultimate goal: the supersession of all separate
power through the conscious participation of everyone. Secrecy often has
the absurd result that the police are the only ones who know what is
happening, and are thus able to infiltrate and manipulate a radical
group without anyone else being aware of it. The best defense against
infiltration is to make sure thereâs nothing of any importance to
infiltrate, i.e. that no radical organization wields any separate power.
The best safety is in numbers: once thousands of people are openly
involved, it hardly matters if a few spies are among them.
Even in small group actions safety often lies in maximum publicity. When
some of the Strasbourg scandal participants started to get cold feet and
suggested toning things down, Mustapha Khayati (the SI delegate who was
the main author of the Student Poverty pamphlet) pointed out that the
safest course would not be to avoid offending the authorities too much â
as if they would be grateful for being only moderately and hesitantly
insulted! â but to perpetrate such a widely publicized scandal that they
wouldnât dare retaliate.
To get back to the May 1968 factory occupations, suppose that the French
workers had rejected the bureaucratic maneuvers and established a
councilist network throughout the country. What then?
In such an eventuality, civil war would naturally have been
inevitable... Armed counterrevolution would certainly have been launched
immediately. But it would not have been certain of winning. Some of the
troops would obviously have mutinied; the workers would have figured out
how to get weapons, and they certainly would not have built any more
barricades â a good form of political expression at the beginning of the
movement, but obviously ridiculous strategically... Foreign intervention
would have inevitably followed ... probably beginning with NATO forces,
but with the direct or indirect support of the Warsaw Pact. But then
everything would once again have hinged on the European proletariat:
double or nothing. [SI Anthology, p. 235 [Revised Edition pp. 300â301]
(Beginning of an Era).]
Roughly speaking, the significance of armed struggle varies inversely
with the degree of economic development. In the most underdeveloped
countries social struggles tend to be reduced to military struggles,
because without arms there is little that the impoverished masses can do
that will not hurt them more than the rulers, especially when their
traditional self-sufficiency has been destroyed by a one-crop economy
geared for export. (But even if they win militarily, they can usually be
overpowered by foreign intervention or pressured into compliance with
the global economy, unless parallel revolutions elsewhere open up new
fronts.)
In more developed countries armed force has relatively less
significance, though it can, of course, still be an important factor at
certain critical junctures. It is possible, though not very efficient,
to force people to do simple manual labor at gunpoint. It is not
possible to do this with people who work with paper or computers within
a complex industrial society â there are too many opportunities for
troublesome yet untraceable âmistakes.â Modern capitalism requires a
certain amount of cooperation and even semicreative participation from
its workers. No large enterprise could function for a day without its
workersâ spontaneous self-organization, reacting to unforeseen problems,
compensating for managersâ mistakes, etc. If workers engage in a
âwork-to-ruleâ strike in which they do nothing more than strictly follow
all the official regulations, the whole operation will be slowed down or
even brought to a complete halt (forcing the managers, who are unable to
openly condemn such strictness, into the amusingly awkward position of
having to hint to the workers that they should get on with their work
without being quite so rigorous). The system survives only because most
workers are relatively apathetic and, in order not to cause trouble for
themselves, cooperate enough to keep things going.
Isolated revolts may be repressed one at a time; but if a movement
spreads fast enough, as in May 1968, a few hundred thousand soldiers and
police can hardly do anything in the face of ten million striking
workers. Such a movement can be destroyed only from the inside. If the
people donât know what they need to do, arms can scarcely help them; if
they do know, arms can scarcely stop them.
Only at certain moments are people âtogetherâ enough to revolt
successfully. The more lucid rulers know that they are safe if they can
only disperse such threats before they develop too much momentum and
self-awareness, whether by direct physical repression or by the various
sorts of diversion mentioned above. It hardly matters if the people
later find out that they were tricked, that they had victory in their
hands if they had only known it: once the opportunity has passed, itâs
too late.
Ordinary situations are full of confusions, but matters are generally
not so urgent. In a radical situation things are both simplified and
speeded up: the issues become clearer, but there is less time to resolve
them.
The extreme case is dramatized in a famous scene in Eisensteinâs
Potemkin. Mutinous sailors, heads covered by a tarp, have been lined up
to be shot. Guards aim their rifles and are given the order to fire. One
of the sailors cries out: âBrothers! Do you realize who you are
shooting?â The guards waver. The order is given again. After a
suspenseful hesitation the guards lower their weapons. They help the
sailors to raid the armory, together they turn against the officers, and
the battle is soon won.
Note that even in this violent showdown the outcome is more a matter of
consciousness than of brute power: once the guards come over to the
sailors, the fight is effectively over. (The remainder of Eisensteinâs
scene â a drawn-out struggle between an officer villain and a martyrized
revolutionary hero â is mere melodrama.) In contrast to war, in which
two distinct sides consciously oppose each other, âclass struggle is not
just a battle waged against an external enemy, the bourgeoisie; it is
equally the struggle of the proletariat against itself: against the
devastating and degrading effects of the capitalist system on its class
consciousnessâ (LukĂĄcs, History and Class Consciousness). Modern
revolution has the peculiar quality that the exploited majority
automatically wins as soon as it becomes collectively aware of the game
it is playing. The proletariatâs opponent is ultimately nothing but the
product of its own alienated activity, whether in the economic form of
capital, the political form of party and union bureaucracies, or the
psychological form of spectacular conditioning. The rulers are such a
tiny minority that they would be immediately overwhelmed if they had not
managed to bamboozle a large portion of the population into identifying
with them, or at least into taking their system for granted; and
especially into becoming divided against each other.
The tarp, which dehumanizes the mutineers, making it easier for the
guards to shoot them, symbolizes this divide-and-rule tactic. The
âBrothers!â shout represents the countertactic of fraternization.
While fraternization refutes lies about what is happening elsewhere, its
greatest power probably stems from the emotional effect of direct human
encounter, which reminds soldiers that the insurgents are people not
essentially different from themselves. The state naturally tries to
prevent such contact by bringing in troops from other regions who are
unfamiliar with what has taken place and who, if possible, donât even
speak the same language; and by quickly replacing them if they
nevertheless become too contaminated by rebellious ideas. (Some of the
Russian troops sent in to crush the 1956 Hungarian revolution were told
that they were in Germany and that the people confronting them in the
streets were resurgent Nazis!)
In order to expose and eliminate the most radical elements, a government
sometimes deliberately provokes a situation that will lead to an excuse
for violent repression. This is a dangerous game, however, because, as
in the Potemkin incident, forcing the issue may provoke the armed forces
to come over to the people. From the rulersâ standpoint, the optimum
strategy is to brandish just enough of a threat that there is no need to
risk the ultimate showdown. This worked in Poland in 1980â81. The
Russian bureaucrats knew that to invade Poland might bring about their
own downfall; but the constantly hinted threat of such an invasion
successfully intimidated the radical Polish workers, who could easily
have overthrown the state, into tolerating the persistence of
military-bureaucratic forces within Poland. The latter were eventually
able to repress the movement without having to call in the Russians.
âThose who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves.â A
revolutionary movement cannot attain some local victory and then expect
to peacefully coexist with the system until itâs ready to try for a
little more. All existing powers will put aside their differences in
order to destroy any truly radical popular movement before it spreads.
If they canât crush it militarily, theyâll strangle it economically
(national economies are now so globally interdependent that no country
would be immune from such pressure). The only way to defend a revolution
is to extend it, both qualitatively and geographically. The only
guarantee against internal reaction is the most radical liberation of
every aspect of life. The only guarantee against external intervention
is the most rapid internationalization of the struggle.
The most profound expression of internationalist solidarity is, of
course, to make a parallel revolution in oneâs own country (1848,
1917â1920, 1968). Short of this, the most urgent task is at least to
prevent counterrevolutionary intervention from oneâs own country, as
when British workers pressured their government not to support the slave
states during the American Civil War (even though this meant greater
unemployment due to lack of cotton imports); or when Western workers
struck and mutinied against their governmentsâ attempts to support the
reactionary forces during the civil war following the Russian
revolution; or when people in Europe and America opposed their
countriesâ repression of anticolonial revolts.
Unfortunately, even such minimal defensive efforts are few and far
between. Positive internationalist support is even more difficult. As
long as the rulers remain in control of the most powerful countries,
direct personal reinforcement is complicated and limited. Arms and other
supplies may be intercepted. Even communications sometimes donât get
through until itâs too late.
One thing that does get through is an announcement that one group is
relinquishing its power or claims over another. The 1936 fascist revolt
in Spain, for example, had one of its main bases in Spanish Morocco.
Many of Francoâs troops were Moroccan and the antifascist forces could
have exploited this fact by declaring Morocco independent, thereby
encouraging a revolt at Francoâs rear and dividing his forces. The
probable spread of such a revolt to other Arab countries would at the
same time have diverted Mussoliniâs forces, which were supporting
Franco, to defend Italyâs North African possessions. But the leaders of
the Spanish Popular Front government rejected this idea for fear that
such an encouragement of anticolonialism would alarm France and England,
from whom they were hoping for aid. Needless to say this aid never came
anyway.[19]
Similarly, if, before the Khomeiniists had been able to consolidate
their power, the insurgent Iranians in 1979 had supported total autonomy
for the Kurds, Baluchis and Azerbaijans, this would have won them as
firm allies of the most radical Iranian tendencies and might have spread
the revolution to the adjacent countries where overlapping portions of
those peoples live, while simultaneously undermining the Khomeiniist
reactionaries in Iran.
Encouraging othersâ autonomy does not imply supporting any organization
or regime that might take advantage of it. Itâs simply a matter of
leaving the Moroccans, the Kurds, or whomever to work out their own
affairs. The hope is that the example of an antihierarchical revolution
in one country will inspire others to contest their own hierarchies.
Itâs our only hope, but not an entirely unrealistic one. The contagion
of a genuinely liberated movement should never be underestimated.
âIt will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is
quite impractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly
true. It is impractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why
it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a
practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already
in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing
conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects
to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and
foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will
change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that
it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The
systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature,
and not on its growth and development.â
â Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Marx considered it presumptuous to attempt to predict how people would
live in a liberated society. âIt will be up to those people to decide
if, when and what they want to do about it, and what means to employ. I
donât feel qualified to offer them any advice on this matter. They will
presumably be at least as clever as we areâ (letter to Kautsky, 1
February 1881). His modesty in this regard compares favorably with those
who accuse him of arrogance and authoritarianism while themselves not
hesitating to project their own fancies into pronouncements as to what
such a society can or cannot be.
It is true, however, that if Marx had been a little more explicit about
what he envisioned, it would have been that much more difficult for
Stalinist bureaucrats to pretend to be implementing his ideas. An exact
blueprint of a liberated society is neither possible nor necessary, but
people must have some sense of its nature and feasibility. The belief
that there is no practical alternative to the present system is one of
the things that keeps people resigned.
Utopian speculations can help free us from the habit of taking the
status quo for granted, get us thinking about what we really want and
what might be possible. What makes them âutopianâ in the pejorative
sense that Marx and Engels criticized is the failure to take present
conditions into consideration. There is usually no serious notion of how
we might get from here to there. Ignoring the systemâs repressive and
cooptive powers, utopian authors generally envision some simplistic
cumulative change, imagining that, with the spread of utopian
communities or utopian ideas, more and more people will be inspired to
join in and the old system will simply collapse.
I hope the present text has given some more realistic ideas of how a new
society might come about. In any case, at this point I am going to jump
ahead and do a little speculating myself.
To simplify matters, let us assume that a victorious revolution has
spread throughout the world without too much destruction of basic
infrastructures, so that we no longer need to take into consideration
problems of civil war, threats of outside intervention, the confusions
of disinformation or the delays of massive emergency reconstruction, and
can examine some of the issues that might come up in a new,
fundamentally transformed society.
Though for clarity of expression I will use the future tense rather than
the conditional, the ideas presented here are simply possibilities to
consider, not prescriptions or predictions. If such a revolution ever
happens, a few years of popular experimentation will change so many of
the variables that even the boldest predictions will soon seem laughably
timid and unimaginative. All we can reasonably do is try to envision the
problems we will confront at the very beginning and some of the main
tendencies of further developments. But the more hypotheses we explore,
the more possibilities we will be prepared for and the less likely we
will be to unconsciously revert to old patterns.
Far from being too extravagant, most fictional utopias are too narrow,
generally being limited to a monolithic implementation of the authorâs
pet ideas. As Marie Louise Berneri notes in the best survey of the field
(Journey Through Utopia), âAll utopias are, of course, the expression of
personal preferences, but their authors usually have the conceit to
assume that their personal tastes should be enacted into laws; if they
are early risers the whole of their imaginary community will have to get
up at four oâclock in the morning; if they dislike womenâs make-up, to
use it is made a crime; if they are jealous husbands infidelity will be
punished by death.â
If there is one thing that can be confidently predicted about the new
society, it is that it will be far more diverse than any one personâs
imagination or any possible description. Different communities will
reflect every sort of taste â aesthetic and scientific, mystical and
rationalist, hightech and neoprimitive, solitary and communal,
industrious and lazy, spartan and epicurean, traditional and
experimental â continually evolving in all sorts of new and
unforeseeable combinations.[20]
There will be a strong tendency toward decentralization and local
autonomy. Small communities promote habits of cooperation, facilitate
direct democracy, and make possible the richest social experimentation:
if a local experiment fails, only a small group is hurt (and others can
help out); if it succeeds it will be imitated and the advantage will
spread. A decentralized system is also less vulnerable to accidental
disruption or to sabotage. (The latter danger, however, will probably be
negligible in any case: itâs unlikely that a liberated society will have
anywhere near the immense number of bitter enemies that are constantly
produced by the present one.)
But decentralization can also foster hierarchical control by isolating
people from each other. And some things can best be organized on a large
scale. One big steel factory is more energy-efficient and less damaging
to the environment than a smelting furnace in every community.
Capitalism has tended to overcentralize in some areas where greater
diversity and self-sufficiency would make more sense, but its irrational
competition has also fragmented many things that could more sensibly be
standardized or centrally coordinated. As Paul Goodman notes in People
or Personnel (which is full of interesting examples of the pros and cons
of decentralization in various present-day contexts), where, how and how
much to decentralize are empirical questions that will require
experimentation. About all we can say is that the new society will
probably decentralize as much as possible, but without making a fetish
of it. Most things can be taken care of by small groups or local
communities; regional and global councils will be limited to matters
with broad ramifications or significant efficiencies of scale, such as
environmental restoration, space exploration, dispute resolution,
epidemic control, coordination of global production, distribution,
transportation and communication, and maintenance of certain specialized
facilities (e.g. hightech hospitals or research centers).
It is often said that direct democracy may have worked well enough in
the old-fashioned town meeting, but that the size and complexity of
modern societies make it impossible. How can millions of people each
express their own viewpoint on every issue?
They donât need to. Most practical matters ultimately come down to a
limited number of options; once these have been stated and the most
significant arguments have been advanced, a decision can be reached
without further ado. Observers of the 1905 soviets and the 1956
Hungarian workers councils were struck by the brevity of peopleâs
statements and the rapidity with which decisions were arrived at. Those
who spoke to the point tended to get delegated; those who spouted hot
air got flak for wasting peopleâs time.
For more complicated matters, committees can be elected to look into
various possibilities and report back to the assemblies about the
ramifications of different options. Once a plan is adopted, smaller
committees can continue to monitor developments, notifying the
assemblies of any relevant new factors that might suggest modifying it.
On controversial issues multiple committees reflecting opposing
perspectives (e.g. protech versus antitech) might be set up to
facilitate the formulation of alternative proposals and dissenting
viewpoints. As always, delegates will not impose any decisions (except
regarding the organization of their own work) and will be elected on a
rotating and recallable basis, so as to ensure both that they do a good
job and that their temporary responsibilities donât go to their heads.
Their work will be open to public scrutiny and final decisions will
always revert to the assemblies.
Modern computer and telecommunication technologies will make it possible
for anyone to instantly check data and projections for themselves, as
well as to widely communicate their own proposals. Despite current hype,
such technologies do not automatically promote democratic participation;
but they have the potential to facilitate it if they are appropriately
modified and put under popular control.[21]
Telecommunications will also render delegates less necessary than during
previous radical movements, when they functioned to a great extent as
mere bearers of information back and forth. Diverse proposals could be
circulated and discussed ahead of time, and if an issue was of
sufficient interest council meetings could be hooked up live with local
assemblies, enabling the latter to immediately confirm, modify or
repudiate delegate decisions.
But when the issues are not particularly controversial, mandating will
probably be fairly loose. Having arrived at some general decision (e.g.
âThis building should be remodeled to serve as a daycare centerâ), an
assembly might simply call for volunteers or elect a committee to
implement it without bothering with detailed accountability.
Idle purists can always envision possible abuses. âAha! Who knows what
subtle elitist maneuvers these delegates and technocratic specialists
may pull off!â The fact remains that large numbers of people cannot
directly oversee every detail at every moment. Any society has to rely
to some extent on peopleâs good will and common sense. The point is that
abuses are far less possible under generalized self-management than
under any other form of social organization.
People who have been autonomous enough to inaugurate a self-managed
society will naturally be alert to any reemergence of hierarchy. They
will note how delegates carry out their mandates, and rotate them as
often as practicable. For some purposes they may, like the ancient
Athenians, choose delegates by lot so as to eliminate the
popularity-contest and deal-making aspects of elections. In matters
requiring technical expertise they will keep a wary eye on the experts
until the necessary knowledge is more widely disseminated or the
technology in question is simplified or phased out. Skeptical observers
will be designated to sound the alarm at the first sign of chicanery. A
specialist who provides false information will be quickly found out and
publicly discredited. The slightest hint of any hierarchical plot or of
any exploitive or monopolistic practice will arouse universal outrage
and be eliminated by ostracism, confiscation, physical repression or
whatever other means are found necessary.
These and other safeguards will always be available to those worried
about potential abuses, but I doubt if they will often be necessary. On
any serious issue people can insist on as much mandating or monitoring
as they want to bother with. But in most cases they will probably give
delegates a reasonable amount of leeway to use their own judgment and
creativity.
Generalized self-management avoids both the hierarchical forms of the
traditional left and the more simplistic forms of anarchism. It is not
bound to any ideology, even an âantiauthoritarianâ one. If a problem
turns out to require some specialized expertise or some degree of
âleadership,â the people involved will soon find this out and take
whatever steps they consider appropriate to deal with it, without
worrying about whether present-day radical dogmatists would approve. For
certain uncontroversial functions they might find it most convenient to
appoint specialists for indefinite periods of time, removing them only
in the unlikely event that they abuse their position. In certain
emergency situations in which quick, authoritative decisions are
essential (e.g. fire-fighting) they will naturally grant to designated
persons whatever temporary authoritarian powers are needed.
But such cases will be exceptional. The general rule will be consensus
when practicable, majority decision when necessary. A character in
William Morrisâs News from Nowhere (one of the most sensible, easygoing
and down-to-earth utopias) gives the example of whether a metal bridge
should be replaced by a stone one. At the next Mote (community assembly)
this is proposed. If there is a clear consensus, the issue is settled
and they proceed to work out the details of implementation. But
if a few of the neighbors disagree to it, if they think that the beastly
iron bridge will serve a little longer and they donât want to be
bothered with building a new one just then, they donât count heads that
time, but put off the formal discussion to the next Mote; and meantime
arguments pro and con are flying about, and some get printed, so that
everybody knows what is going on; and when the Mote comes together again
there is a regular discussion and at last a vote by show of hands. If
the division is a close one, the question is again put off for further
discussion; if the division is a wide one, the minority are asked if
they will yield to the more general opinion, which they often, nay, most
commonly do. If they refuse, the question is debated a third time, when,
if the minority has not perceptibly grown, they always give way; though
I believe there is some half-forgotten rule by which they might still
carry it on further; but I say, what always happens is that they are
convinced, not perhaps that their view is the wrong one, but they cannot
persuade or force the community to adopt it.
Note that what enormously simplifies cases like this is that there are
no longer any conflicting economic interests â no one has any means or
any motive to bribe or bamboozle people into voting one way or the other
because he happens to have a lot of money, or to control the media, or
to own a construction company or a parcel of land near a proposed site.
Without such conflicts of interest, people will naturally incline to
cooperation and compromise, if only to placate opponents and make life
easier for themselves. Some communities might have formal provisions to
accommodate minorities (e.g. if, instead of merely voting no, 20%
express a âvehement objectionâ to some proposal, it must pass by a 60%
majority); but neither side will be likely to abuse such formal powers
lest it be treated likewise when the situations are reversed. The main
solution for repeated irreconcilable conflicts will lie in the wide
diversity of cultures: if people who prefer metal bridges, etc.,
constantly find themselves outvoted by Morris-type arts-and-crafts
traditionalists, they can always move to some neighboring community
where more congenial tastes prevail.
Insistence on total consensus makes sense only when the number of people
involved is relatively small and the issue is not urgent. Among any
large number of people complete unanimity is rarely possible. It is
absurd, out of worry over possible majority tyranny, to uphold a
minorityâs right to constantly obstruct a majority; or to imagine that
such problems will go away if we leave things âunstructured.â
As was pointed out in a well-known article many years ago (Jo Freemanâs
âThe Tyranny of Structurelessnessâ), thereâs no such thing as a
structureless group, there are simply different types of structures. An
unstructured group generally ends up being dominated by a clique that
does have some effective structure. The unorganized members have no
means of controlling such an elite, especially when their
antiauthoritarian ideology prevents them from admitting that it exists.
Failing to acknowledge majority rule as a backup when unanimity is not
attainable, anarchists and consensists are often unable to arrive at
practical decisions except by following those de facto leaders who are
skilled at maneuvering people into unanimity (if only by their capacity
to endure interminable meetings until all the opposition has got bored
and gone home). Fastidiously rejecting workers councils or anything else
with any taint of coercion, they themselves usually end up settling for
far less radical lowest-common-denominator projects.
Itâs easy to point out shortcomings in the workers councils of the past,
which were, after all, just hurried improvisations by people involved in
desperate struggles. But if those brief efforts were not perfect models
to blindly imitate, they nevertheless represent the most practical step
in the right direction that anyone has come up with so far. Rieselâs
article on councils (SI Anthology, pp. 270â282 [Revised Edition pp.
348â362]) discusses the limitations of these old movements, and rightly
stresses that council power should be understood as the sovereignty of
the popular assemblies as a whole, not merely of the councils of
delegates they have elected. Some groups of radical workers in Spain,
wishing to avoid any ambiguity on this latter point, have referred to
themselves as âassemblyistsâ rather than âcouncilists.â One of the CMDO
leaflets (SI Anthology, p. 351 [Revised Edition p. 444] [Address to All
Workers]) specifies the following essential features of councilist
democracy:
them
liberated life
Once these features are recognized and implemented, it will make little
difference whether people refer to the new form of social organization
as âanarchy,â âcommunalism,â âcommunist anarchism,â âcouncil communism,â
âlibertarian communism,â âlibertarian socialism,â âparticipatory
democracyâ or âgeneralized self-management,â or whether its various
overlapping components are termed âworkers councils,â âantiwork
councils,â ârevolutionary councils,â ârevolutionary assemblies,â
âpopular assemblies,â âpopular committees,â âcommunes,â âcollectives,â
âkibbutzes,â âbolos,â âmotes,â âaffinity groups,â or anything else.
(âGeneralized self-managementâ is unfortunately not very catchy, but it
has the advantage of referring to both means and goal while being free
of the misleading connotations of terms like âanarchyâ or âcommunism.â)
In any case, itâs important to remember that large-scale formal
organization will be the exception. Most local matters can be handled
directly and informally. Individuals or small groups will simply go
ahead and do what seems appropriate in any given situation
(âadhocracyâ). Majority rule will merely be a last resort in the
progressively diminishing number of cases in which conflicts of interest
cannot otherwise be resolved.
A nonhierarchical society does not mean that everyone magically becomes
equally talented or must participate equally in everything; it simply
means that materially based and reinforced hierarchies have been
eliminated. Although differences of abilities will undoubtedly diminish
when everyone is encouraged to develop their fullest potentials, the
point is that whatever differences remain will no longer be transformed
into differences of wealth or power.
People will be able to take part in a far wider range of activities than
they do now, but they wonât have to rotate all positions all the time if
they donât feel like it. If someone has a special taste and knack for a
certain task, others will probably be happy to let her do it as much as
she wants â at least until someone else wants a shot at it. âIndependent
specializationsâ (monopolistic control over socially vital information
or technologies) will be abolished; open, nondominating specializations
will flourish. People will still ask more knowledgeable persons for
advice when they feel the need for it (though if they are curious or
suspicious they will always be encouraged to investigate for
themselves). They will still be free to voluntarily submit themselves as
students to a teacher, apprentices to a master, players to a coach or
performers to a director â remaining equally free to discontinue the
relation at any time. In some activities, such as group folksinging,
anyone can join right in; others, such as performing a classical
concerto, may require rigorous training and coherent direction, with
some people taking leading roles, others following, and others being
happy just to listen. There should be plenty of opportunity for both
types. The situationist critique of the spectacle is a critique of an
excessive tendency in present society; it does not imply that everyone
must be an âactive participantâ twenty-four hours a day.
Apart from the care necessary for mental incompetents, the only
unavoidable enforced hierarchy will be the temporary one involved in
raising children until they are capable of managing their own affairs.
But in a safer and saner world children could be given considerably more
freedom and autonomy than they are now. When it comes to openness to the
new playful possibilities of life, adults may learn as much from them as
vice versa. Here as elsewhere, the general rule will be to let people
find their own level: a ten-year-old who takes part in some project
might have as much say in it as her adult co-participants, while a
nonparticipating adult will have none.
Self-management does not require that everyone be geniuses, merely that
most people not be total morons. Itâs the present system that makes
unrealistic demands â pretending that the people it systematically
imbecilizes are capable of judging between the programs of rival
politicians or the advertising claims of rival commodities, or of
engaging in such complex and consequential activities as raising a child
or driving a car on a busy freeway. With the supersession of all the
political and economic pseudoissues that are now intentionally kept
incomprehensible, most matters will turn out not to be all that
complicated.
When people first get a chance to run their own lives they will
undoubtedly make lots of mistakes; but they will soon discover and
correct them because, unlike hierarchs, they will have no interest in
covering them up. Self-management does not guarantee that people will
always make the right decisions; but any other form of social
organization guarantees that someone else will make the decisions for
them.
The abolition of capitalism will eliminate the conflicts of interest
that now serve as a pretext for the state. Most present-day wars are
ultimately based on economic conflicts; even ostensibly ethnic,
religious or ideological antagonisms usually derive much of their real
motivation from economic competition, or from psychological frustrations
that are ultimately linked to political and economic repression. As long
as desperate competition prevails, people can easily be manipulated into
reverting to their traditional groupings and squabbling over cultural
differences they wouldnât bother about under more comfortable
circumstances. War involves far more work, hardship and risk than any
form of constructive activity; people with real opportunities for
fulfillment will have more interesting things to do.
The same is true for crime. Leaving aside victimless âcrimes,â the vast
majority of crimes are directly or indirectly related to money and will
become meaningless with the elimination of the commodity system.
Communities will then be free to experiment with various methods for
dealing with whatever occasional antisocial acts might still occur.
There are all sorts of possibilities. The persons involved might argue
their cases before the local community or a âjuryâ chosen by lot, which
would strive for the most reconciling and rehabilitating solutions. A
convicted offender might be âcondemnedâ to some sort of public service â
not to intentionally unpleasant and demeaning shitwork administered by
petty sadists, which simply produces more anger and resentment, but to
meaningful and potentially engaging projects that might introduce him to
healthier interests (ecological restoration, for example). A few
incorrigible psychotics might have to be humanely restrained in one way
or another, but such cases would become increasingly rare. (The present
proliferation of âgratuitousâ violence is a predictable reaction to
social alienation, a way for those who are not treated as real persons
to at least get the grim satisfaction of being recognized as real
threats.) Ostracism will be a simple and effective deterrent: the thug
who laughs at the threat of harsh punishment, which only confirms his
macho prestige, will be far more deterred if he knows that everyone will
give him the cold shoulder. In the rare case where that proves
inadequate, the variety of cultures might make banishment a workable
solution: a violent character who was constantly disturbing a quiet
community might fit in fine in some more rough-and-tumble, Wild
West-type region â or face less gentle retaliation.
Those are just a few of the possibilities. Liberated people will
undoubtedly come up with more creative, effective and humane solutions
than any we can presently imagine. I donât claim that there will be no
problems, only that there will be far fewer problems than there are now,
when people who happen to find themselves at the bottom of an absurd
social order are harshly punished for their crude efforts to escape,
while those at the top loot the planet with impunity.
The barbarity of the present penal system is surpassed only by its
stupidity. Draconian punishments have repeatedly been shown to have no
significant effect on the crime rate, which is directly linked to levels
of poverty and unemployment as well as to less quantifiable but equally
obvious factors like racism, the destruction of urban communities, and
the general alienation produced by the commodity-spectacle system. The
threat of years in prison, which might be a powerful deterrent to
someone with a satisfying life, means little to those with no meaningful
alternatives. It is hardly very brilliant to slash already pitifully
inadequate social programs in the name of economizing, while filling
prisons with lifers at a cost of close to a million dollars each; but
like so many other irrational social policies, this trend persists
because it is reinforced by powerful vested interests.[22]
A liberated society must abolish the whole money-commodity economy. To
continue to accept the validity of money would amount to accepting the
continued dominance of those who had previously accumulated it, or who
had the savvy to reaccumulate it after any radical reapportionment.
Alternative forms of âeconomicâ reckoning will still be needed for
certain purposes, but their carefully limited scope will tend to
diminish as increasing material abundance and social cooperativity
render them less necessary.
A postrevolutionary society might have a three-tier economic setup along
the following lines:
without any accounting whatsoever.
âcredits.â
Unlike money, credits will be applicable only to certain specified
goods, not to basic communal property such as land, utilities or means
of production. They will also probably have expiration dates to limit
any excessive accumulation.
Such a setup will be quite flexible. During the initial transition
period the amount of free goods might be fairly minimal â just enough to
enable a person to get by â with most goods requiring earning credits
through work. As time goes on, less and less work will be necessary and
more and more goods will become freely available â the tradeoff between
the two factors always remaining up to the councils to determine. Some
credits might be generally distributed, each person periodically
receiving a certain amount; others might be bonuses for certain types of
dangerous or unpleasant work where there is a shortage of volunteers.
Councils might set fixed prices for certain luxuries, while letting
others follow supply and demand; as a luxury becomes more abundant it
will become cheaper, perhaps eventually free. Goods could be shifted
from one tier to another depending on material conditions and community
preferences.
Those are just some of the possibilities.[23] Experimenting with
different methods, people will soon find out for themselves what forms
of ownership, exchange and reckoning are necessary.
In any case, whatever âeconomicâ problems may remain will not be serious
because scarcity-imposed limits will be a factor only in the sector of
inessential âluxuries.â Free universal access to food, clothing,
housing, utilities, health care, transportation, communication,
education and cultural facilities could be achieved almost immediately
in the industrialized regions and within a fairly short period in the
less developed ones. Many of these things already exist and merely need
to be made more equitably available; those that donât can easily be
produced once social energy is diverted from irrational enterprises.
Take housing, for example. Peace activists have frequently pointed out
that everyone in the world could be decently housed at less than the
cost of a few weeks of global military expenditure. They are no doubt
envisioning a fairly minimal sort of dwelling; but if the amount of
energy people now waste earning the money to enrich landlords and real
estate speculators was diverted to building new dwellings, everyone in
the world could soon be housed very decently indeed.
To begin with, most people might continue living where they are now and
concentrate on making dwellings available for homeless people. Hotels
and office buildings could be taken over. Certain outrageously
extravagant estates might be requisitioned and turned into dwellings,
parks, communal gardens, etc. Seeing this trend, those possessing
relatively spacious properties might offer to temporarily quarter
homeless people while helping them build homes of their own, if only to
deflect potential resentment from themselves.
The next stage will be raising and equalizing the quality of dwellings.
Here as in other areas, the aim will probably not be a rigidly uniform
equality (âeveryone must have a dwelling of such and such
specificationsâ), but peopleâs general sense of fairness, with problems
being dealt with on a flexible, case-by-case basis. If someone feels he
is getting the short end of the stick he can appeal to the general
community, which, if the grievance is not completely absurd, will
probably bend over backward to redress it. Compromises will have to be
worked out regarding who gets to live in exceptionally desirable areas
for how long. (They might be shared around by lot, or leased for limited
periods to the highest bidders in credit auctions, etc.) Such problems
may not be solved to everyoneâs complete satisfaction, but they will
certainly be dealt with much more fairly than under a system in which
accumulation of magic pieces of paper enables one person to claim
âownershipâ of a hundred buildings while others have to live on the
street.
Once basic survival needs are taken care of, the quantitative
perspective of labor time will be transformed into a qualitatively new
perspective of free creativity. A few friends may work happily building
their own home even if it takes them a year to accomplish what a
professional crew could do more efficiently in a month. Much more fun
and imagination and love will go into such projects, and the resulting
dwellings will be far more charming, variegated and personal than what
today passes for âdecent.â A nineteenth-century rural French mailman
named Ferdinand Cheval spent all his spare time for several decades
constructing his own personal fantasy castle. People like Cheval are
considered eccentrics, but the only thing unusual about them is that
they continue to exercise the innate creativity we all have but are
usually induced to repress after early childhood. A liberated society
will have lots of this playful sort of âworkâ: personally chosen
projects that will be so intensely engaging that people will no more
think of keeping track of their âlabor timeâ than they would of counting
caresses during lovemaking or trying to economize on the length of a
dance.
Fifty years ago Paul Goodman estimated that less than ten percent of the
work then being done would satisfy our basic needs. Whatever the exact
figure (it would be even lower now, though it would of course depend on
precisely what we consider basic or reasonable needs), it is clear that
most present-day labor is absurd and unnecessary. With the abolition of
the commodity system, hundreds of millions of people now occupied with
producing superfluous commodities, or with advertising them, packaging
them, transporting them, selling them, protecting them or profiting from
them (salespersons, clerks, foremen, managers, bankers, stockbrokers,
landlords, labor leaders, politicians, police, lawyers, judges, jailers,
guards, soldiers, economists, ad designers, arms manufacturers, customs
inspectors, tax collectors, insurance agents, investment advisers, along
with their numerous underlings) will all be freed up to share the
relatively few actually necessary tasks.
Add the unemployed, who according to a recent UN report now constitute
over 30% of the global population. If this figure seems large it is
because it presumably includes prisoners, refugees, and many others who
are not usually counted in official unemployment statistics because they
have given up trying to look for work, such as those who are
incapacitated by alcoholism or drugs, or who are so nauseated by the
available job options that they put all their energy into evading work
through crimes and scams.
Add millions of old people who would love to engage in worthwhile
activities but who are now relegated to a boring, passive retirement.
And teenagers and even younger children, who would be excitedly
challenged by many useful and educational projects if they werenât
confined to worthless schools designed to instill ignorant obedience.
Then consider the large component of waste even in undeniably necessary
work. Doctors and nurses, for example, spend a large portion of their
time (in addition to filling out insurance forms, billing patients,
etc.) trying with limited success to counteract all sorts of socially
induced problems such as occupational injuries, auto accidents,
psychological ailments and diseases caused by stress, pollution,
malnutrition or unsanitary living conditions, to say nothing of wars and
the epidemics that often accompany them â problems that will largely
disappear in a liberated society, leaving health-care providers free to
concentrate on basic preventive medicine.
Then consider the equally large amount of intentionally wasted labor:
make-work designed to keep people occupied; suppression of labor-saving
methods that might put one out of a job; working as slowly as one can
get away with; sabotaging machinery to exert pressure on bosses, or out
of simple rage and frustration. And donât forget all the absurdities of
âParkinsonâs Lawâ (work expands to fill the time available), the âPeter
Principleâ (people rise to their level of incompetence) and similar
tendencies that have been so hilariously satirized by C. Northcote
Parkinson and Laurence Peter.
Then consider how much wasted labor will be eliminated once products are
made to last instead of being designed to fall apart or go out of style
so that people have to keep buying new ones. (After a brief initial
period of high production to provide everyone with durable, high-quality
goods, many industries could be reduced to very modest levels â just
enough to keep those goods in repair, or to occasionally upgrade them
whenever some truly significant improvement is developed.)
Taking all these factors into consideration, itâs easy to see that in a
sanely organized society the amount of necessary labor could be reduced
to one or two days per week.
But such a drastic quantitative reduction will produce a qualitative
change. As Tom Sawyer discovered, when people are not forced to work,
even the most banal task may become novel and intriguing: the problem is
no longer how to get people to do it, but how to accommodate all the
volunteers. It would be unrealistic to expect people to work full time
at unpleasant and largely meaningless jobs without surveillance and
economic incentives; but the situation becomes completely different if
itâs a matter of putting in ten or fifteen hours a week on worthwhile,
varied, self-organized tasks of oneâs choice.
Moreover, many people, once they are engaged in projects that interest
them, will not want to limit themselves to the minimum. This will reduce
necessary tasks to an even more minuscule level for others who may not
have such enthusiasms.
Thereâs no need to quibble about the term work. Wage work needs to be
abolished; meaningful, freely chosen work can be as much fun as any
other kind of play. Our present work usually produces practical results,
but not the ones we would have chosen, whereas our free time is mostly
confined to trivialities. With the abolition of wage labor, work will
become more playful and play more active and creative. When people are
no longer driven crazy by their work, they will no longer require
mindless, passive amusements to recover from it.
Not that thereâs anything wrong with enjoying trivial pastimes; itâs
simply a matter of recognizing that much of their present appeal stems
from the absence of more fulfilling activities. Someone whose life lacks
real adventure may derive at least a little vicarious exoticism from
collecting artifacts from other times and places; someone whose work is
abstract and fragmented may go to great lengths to actually produce a
whole concrete object, even if that object is no more significant than a
model ship in a bottle. These and countless other hobbies reveal the
persistence of creative impulses that will really blossom when given
free play on a broader scale. Imagine how people who enjoy fixing up
their home or cultivating their garden will get into recreating their
whole community; or how the thousands of railroad enthusiasts will jump
at the chance to rebuild and operate improved versions of the rail
networks that will be one of the main ways to reduce automobile traffic.
When people are subjected to suspicion and oppressive regulations, they
naturally try to get away with doing as little as possible. In
situations of freedom and mutual trust there is a contrary tendency to
take pride in doing the best job possible. Although some tasks in the
new society will be more popular than others, the few really difficult
or unpleasant ones will probably get more than enough volunteers,
responding to the thrill of the challenge or the desire for
appreciation, if not out of a sense of responsibility. Even now many
people are happy to volunteer for worthy projects if they have the time;
far more will do so once they no longer have to constantly worry about
providing for the basic needs of themselves and their families. At
worst, the few totally unpopular tasks will have to be divided up into
the briefest practicable shifts and rotated by lot until they can be
automated. Or there might be auctions to see if anyone is willing to do
them for, say, five hours a week in lieu of the usual workload of ten or
fifteen; or for a few extra credits.
Uncooperative characters will probably be so rare that the rest of the
population may just let them be, rather than bothering to pressure them
into doing their small share. At a certain degree of abundance it
becomes simpler not to worry about a few possible abuses than to enlist
an army of timekeepers, accountants, inspectors, informers, spies,
guards, police, etc., to snoop around checking every detail and
punishing every infraction. Itâs unrealistic to expect people to be
generous and cooperative when there isnât much to go around; but a large
material surplus will create a large âmargin of abuse,â so that it wonât
matter if some people do a little less than their share, or take a
little more.
The abolition of money will prevent anyone from taking much more than
their share. Most misgivings about the feasibility of a liberated
society rest on the ingrained assumption that money (and thus also its
necessary protector: the state) would still exist. This money-state
partnership creates unlimited possibilities for abuses (legislators
bribed to sneak loopholes into tax laws, etc.); but once it is abolished
both the motives and the means for such abuses will vanish. The
abstractness of market relations enables one person to anonymously
accumulate wealth by indirectly depriving thousands of others of basic
necessities; but with the elimination of money any significant
monopolization of goods would be too unwieldy and too visible.
Whatever other forms of exchange there may be in the new society, the
simplest and probably most common form will be gift-giving. The general
abundance will make it easy to be generous. Giving is fun and
satisfying, and it eliminates the bother of accounting. The only
calculation is that connected with healthy mutual emulation. âThe
neighboring community donated such and such to a less well off region;
surely we can do the same.â âThey put on a great party; letâs see if we
can do an even better one.â A little friendly rivalry (who can create
the most delicious new recipe, cultivate a superior vegetable, solve a
social problem, invent a new game) will benefit everyone, even the
losers.
A liberated society will probably function much like a potluck party.
Most people enjoy preparing a dish that will be enjoyed by others; but
even if a few people donât bring anything thereâs still plenty to go
around. Itâs not essential that everyone contribute an exactly equal
share, because the tasks are so minimal and are spread around so widely
that no one is overburdened. Since everyone is openly involved, thereâs
no need for checking up on people or instituting penalties for
noncompliance. The only element of âcoercionâ is the approval or
disapproval of the other participants: appreciation provides positive
reinforcement, while even the most inconsiderate person realizes that if
he consistently fails to contribute he will start getting funny looks
and might not be invited again. Organization is necessary only if some
problem turns up. (If there are usually too many desserts and not enough
main dishes, the group might decide to coordinate who will bring what.
If a few generous souls end up bearing an unfair share of the cleanup
work, a gentle prodding suffices to embarrass others into volunteering,
or else some sort of systematic rotation is worked out.)
Now, of course, such spontaneous cooperation is the exception, found
primarily where traditional communal ties have persisted, or among
small, self-selected groups of like-minded people in regions where
conditions are not too destitute. Out in the dog-eat-dog world people
naturally look out for themselves and are suspicious of others. Unless
the spectacle happens to stir them with some sentimental human-interest
story, they usually have little concern for those outside their
immediate circle. Filled with frustrations and resentments, they may
even take a malicious pleasure in spoiling other peopleâs enjoyments.
But despite everything that discourages their humanity, most people, if
given a chance, still like to feel that they are doing worthy things,
and they like to be appreciated for doing them. Note how eagerly they
seize the slightest opportunity to create a moment of mutual
recognition, even if only by opening a door for someone or exchanging a
few banal remarks. If a flood or earthquake or some other emergency
arises, even the most selfish and cynical person often plunges right in,
working twenty-four hours a day to rescue people, deliver food and
first-aid supplies, etc., without any compensation but othersâ
gratitude. This is why people often look back on wars and natural
disasters with what might seem like a surprising degree of nostalgia.
Like revolution, such events break through the usual social separations,
provide everyone with opportunities to do things that really matter, and
produce a strong sense of community (even if only by uniting people
against a common enemy). In a liberated society these sociable impulses
will be able to flourish without requiring such extreme pretexts.
Present-day automation often does little more than throw some people out
of work while intensifying the regimentation of those who remain; if any
time is actually gained by âlabor-savingâ devices, it is usually spent
in an equally alienated passive consumption. But in a liberated world
computers and other modern technologies could be used to eliminate
dangerous or boring tasks, freeing everyone to concentrate on more
interesting activities.
Disregarding such possibilities, and understandably disgusted by the
current misuse of many technologies, some people have come to see
âtechnologyâ itself as the main problem and advocate a return to a
simpler lifestyle. How much simpler is debated â as flaws are discovered
in each period, the dividing line keeps getting pushed farther back.
Some, considering the Industrial Revolution as the main villain,
disseminate computer-printed eulogies of hand craftsmanship. Others,
seeing the invention of agriculture as the original sin, feel we should
return to a hunter-gatherer society, though they are not entirely clear
about what they have in mind for the present human population which
could not be sustained by such an economy. Others, not to be outdone,
present eloquent arguments proving that the development of language and
rational thought was the real origin of our problems. Yet others contend
that the whole human race is so incorrigibly evil that it should
altruistically extinguish itself in order to save the rest of the global
ecosystem.
These fantasies contain so many obvious self-contradictions that it is
hardly necessary to criticize them in any detail. They have questionable
relevance to actual past societies and virtually no relevance to present
possibilities. Even supposing that life was better in one or another
previous era, we have to begin from where we are now. Modern technology
is so interwoven with all aspects of our life that it could not be
abruptly discontinued without causing a global chaos that would wipe out
billions of people. Postrevolutionary people will probably decide to
reduce human population and phase out certain industries, but this canât
be done overnight. We need to seriously consider how we will deal with
all the practical problems that will be posed in the interim.
If it ever comes down to such a practical matter, I doubt if the
technophobes will really want to eliminate motorized wheelchairs; or
pull the plug on ingenious computer setups like the one that enables
physicist Stephen Hawking to communicate despite being totally
paralyzed; or allow a woman to die in childbirth who could be saved by
technical procedures; or accept the reemergence of diseases that used to
routinely kill or permanently disable a large percentage of the
population; or resign themselves to never visiting or communicating with
people in other parts of the world unless theyâre within walking
distance; or stand by while people die in famines that could be averted
through global food shipments.
The problem is that meanwhile this increasingly fashionable ideology
deflects attention from real problems and possibilities. A simplistic
Manichean dualism (nature is Good, technology is Bad) enables people to
ignore complex historical and dialectical processes; itâs so much easier
to blame everything on some primordial evil, some sort of devil or
original sin. What begins as a valid questioning of excessive faith in
science and technology ends up as a desperate and even less justified
faith in the return of a primeval paradise, accompanied by a failure to
engage the present system in any but an abstract, apocalyptical way.[24]
Technophiles and technophobes are united in treating technology in
isolation from other social factors, differing only in their equally
simplistic conclusions that new technologies are automatically
empowering or automatically alienating. As long as capitalism alienates
all human productions into autonomous ends that escape the control of
their creators, technologies will share in that alienation and will be
used to reinforce it. But when people free themselves from this
domination, they will have no trouble rejecting those technologies that
are harmful while adapting others to beneficial uses.
Certain technologies â nuclear power is the most obvious example â are
indeed so insanely dangerous that they will no doubt be brought to a
prompt halt. Many other industries which produce absurd, obsolete or
superfluous commodities will, of course, cease automatically with the
disappearance of their commercial rationales. But many technologies
(electricity, metallurgy, refrigeration, plumbing, printing, recording,
photography, telecommunications, tools, textiles, sewing machines,
agricultural equipment, surgical instruments, anesthetics, antibiotics,
among dozens of other examples that will come to mind), however they may
presently be misused, have few if any inherent drawbacks. Itâs simply a
matter of using them more sensibly, bringing them under popular control,
introducing a few ecological improvements, and redesigning them for
human rather than capitalistic ends.
Other technologies are more problematic. They will still be needed to
some extent, but their harmful and irrational aspects will be phased
out, usually by attrition. If one considers the automobile industry as a
whole, including its vast infrastructure (factories, streets, highways,
gas stations, oil wells) and all its inconveniences and hidden costs
(traffic jams, parking, repairs, insurance, accidents, pollution, urban
destruction), it is clear that any number of alternative methods would
be preferable. The fact remains that this infrastructure is already
there. The new society will thus undoubtedly continue to use existing
automobiles and trucks for a few years, while concentrating on
developing more sensible modes of transportation to gradually replace
them as they wear out. Personal vehicles with nonpolluting engines might
continue indefinitely in rural areas, but most present-day urban traffic
(with a few exceptions such as delivery trucks, fire engines,
ambulances, and taxis for disabled people) could be superseded by
various forms of public transit, enabling many freeways and streets to
be converted to parks, gardens, plazas and bike paths. Airplanes will be
retained for intercontinental travel (rationed if necessary) and for
certain kinds of urgent shipments, but the elimination of wage labor
will leave people with time for more leisurely modes of travel â boats,
trains, biking, hiking.
Here, as in other areas, it will be up to the people involved to
experiment with different possibilities to see what works best. Once
people are able to determine the aims and conditions of their own work,
they will naturally come up with all sorts of ideas that will make that
work briefer, safer and more pleasant; and such ideas, no longer
patented or jealously guarded as âbusiness secrets,â will rapidly spread
and inspire further improvements. With the elimination of commercial
motives, people will also be able to give appropriate weight to social
and environmental factors along with purely quantitative labor-time
considerations. If, say, production of computers currently involves some
sweatshop labor or causes some pollution (though far less than classic
âsmokestackâ industries), thereâs no reason to believe that better
methods cannot be figured out once people set their minds to it â very
likely precisely through a judicious use of computer automation.
(Fortunately, the more repetitive the job, the easier it usually is to
automate.)
The general rule will be to simplify basic manufactures in ways that
facilitate optimum flexibility. Techniques will be made more uniform and
understandable, so that people with a minimal general training will be
able to carry out construction, repairs, alterations and other
operations that formerly required specialized training. Basic tools,
appliances, raw materials, machine parts and architectural modules will
probably be standardized and mass-produced, leaving tailor-made
refinements to small-scale âcottage industriesâ and the final and
potentially most creative aspects to the individual users. Once time is
no longer money we may, as William Morris hoped, see a revival of
elaborate âlaborâ-intensive arts and crafts: joyful making and giving by
people who care about their creations and the people for whom they are
destined.
Some communities might choose to retain a fair amount of (ecologically
sanitized) heavy technology; others might opt for simpler lifestyles,
though backed up by technical means to facilitate that simplicity or for
emergencies. Solar-powered generators and satellite-linked
telecommunications, for example, would enable people to live off in the
woods with no need for power and telephone lines. If earth-based solar
power and other renewable energy sources proved insufficient, immense
solar receptors in orbit could beam down a virtually unlimited amount of
pollution-free energy.
Most Third World regions, incidentally, lie in the sun belt where solar
power can be most effective. Though their poverty will present some
initial difficulties, their traditions of cooperative self-sufficiency
plus the fact that they are not encumbered with obsolete industrial
infrastructures may give them some compensating advantages when it comes
to creating new, ecologically appropriate structures. By drawing
selectively on the developed regions for whatever information and
technologies they themselves decide they need, they will be able to skip
the horrible âclassicâ stage of industrialization and capital
accumulation and proceed directly to postcapitalist forms of social
organization. Nor will the influence necessarily be all one way: some of
the most advanced social experimentation in history was carried out
during the Spanish revolution by illiterate peasants living under
virtually Third World conditions.
Nor will people in developed regions need to accept a drab transitional
period of âlowered expectationsâ in order to enable less developed
regions to catch up. This common misconception stems from the false
assumption that most present-day products are desirable and necessary â
implying that more for others means less for ourselves. In reality, a
revolution in the developed countries will immediately supersede so many
absurd commodities and concerns that even if supplies of certain goods
and services are temporarily reduced, people will still be better off
than they are now even in material terms (in addition to being far
better off in âspiritualâ terms). Once their own immediate problems are
taken care of, many of them will enthusiastically assist less fortunate
people. But this assistance will be voluntary, and most of it will not
entail any serious self-sacrifice. To donate labor or building materials
or architectural know-how so that others can build homes for themselves,
for example, will not require dismantling oneâs own home. The potential
richness of modern society consists not only of material goods, but of
knowledge, ideas, techniques, inventiveness, enthusiasm, compassion, and
other qualities that are actually increased by being shared around.
A self-managed society will naturally implement most present-day
ecological demands. Some are essential for the very survival of
humanity; but for both aesthetic and ethical reasons, liberated people
will undoubtedly choose to go well beyond this minimum and foster a rich
biodiversity.
The point is that we can debate such issues open-mindedly only when we
have eliminated the profit incentives and economic insecurity that now
undermine even the most minimal efforts to defend the environment
(loggers afraid of losing their jobs, chronic poverty tempting Third
World countries to cash in on their rain forests, etc.).[25]
When humanity as a species is blamed for environmental destruction, the
specific social causes are forgotten. The few who make the decisions are
lumped with the powerless majority. Famines are seen as natureâs revenge
against overpopulation, natural checks that must be allowed to run their
course â as if there was anything natural about the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, which force Third World countries to
cultivate products for export rather than food for local consumption.
People are made to feel guilty for using cars, ignoring the fact that
auto companies (by buying up and sabotaging electric transit systems,
lobbying for highway construction and against railroad subsidies, etc.)
have created a situation in which most people have to have cars.
Spectacular publicity gravely urges everyone to reduce energy
consumption (while constantly inciting everyone to consume more of
everything), though we could by now have developed more than enough
clean and renewable energy sources if the fossil-fuel companies had not
successfully lobbied against devoting any significant research funding
to that end.
The point is not to blame even the heads of those companies â they too
are caught in a grow-or-die system that impels them to make such
decisions â but to abolish the setup that continually produces such
irresistible pressures.
A liberated world should have room both for human communities and for
large enough regions of undisturbed wilderness to satisfy most of the
deep ecologists. Between those two extremes I like to think that there
will be all sorts of imaginative, yet careful and respectful, human
interactions with nature. Cooperating with it, working with it, playing
with it; creating variegated interminglings of forests, farms, parks,
gardens, orchards, creeks, villages, towns.
Large cities will be broken up, spaced out, âgreened,â and rearranged in
a variety of ways incorporating and surpassing the visions of the most
imaginative architects and city planners of the past (who were usually
limited by their assumption of the permanence of capitalism).
Exceptionally, certain major cities, especially those of some aesthetic
or historical interest, will retain or even amplify their cosmopolitan
features, providing grand centers where diverse cultures and lifestyles
can come together.[26]
Some people, drawing on the situationistsâ early âpsychogeographicalâ
explorations and âunitary urbanismâ ideas, will construct elaborate
changeable decors designed to facilitate labyrinthine wanderings among
diverse ambiences â Ivan Chtcheglov envisioned âassemblages of castles,
grottos, lakes,â ârooms more conducive to dreams than any drug,â and
people living in their own personal âcathedralsâ (SI Anthology, pp. 3â4
[Revised Edition p. 6] [Formulary for a New Urbanism]). Others may
incline more to the Far Eastern poetâs definition of happiness as living
in a hut beside a mountain stream.
If there arenât enough cathedrals or mountain streams to go around,
maybe some compromises will have to be worked out. But if places like
Chartres or Yosemite are presently overrun, this is only because the
rest of the planet has been so uglified. As other natural areas are
revitalized and as human habitats are made more beautiful and
interesting, it will no longer be necessary for a few exceptional sites
to accommodate millions of people desperate to get away from it all. On
the contrary, many people may actually gravitate toward the most
miserable regions because these will be the ânew frontiersâ where the
most exciting transformations will be taking place (ugly buildings being
demolished to make way for experimental reconstruction from scratch).
The liberation of popular creativity will generate lively communities
surpassing Athens, Florence, Paris and other famous centers of the past,
in which full participation was limited to privileged minorities. While
some people may choose to be relatively solitary and self-sufficient
(hermits and nomads will be free to keep to themselves except for a few
minimal arrangements with nearby communities), most will probably prefer
the pleasure and convenience of doing things together, and will set up
all sorts of public workshops, libraries, laboratories, laundries,
kitchens, bakeries, cafés, health clinics, studios, music rooms,
auditoriums, saunas, gyms, playgrounds, fairs, flea markets (without
forgetting some quiet spaces to counterbalance all the socializing).
City blocks might be converted into more unified complexes, connecting
outer buildings with hallways and arcades and removing fences between
back yards so as to create larger interior park, garden or nursery
areas. People could choose among various types and degrees of
participation, e.g. whether to sign up for a couple days per month of
cooking, dishwashing or gardening entitling them to eat at a communal
cafeteria, or to grow most of their own food and cook for themselves.
In all these hypothetical examples itâs important to bear in mind the
diversity of cultures that will develop. In one, cooking might be seen
as a tedious chore to be minimized as much as possible and precisely
apportioned; in another it might be a passion or a valued social ritual
that will attract more than enough enthusiastic volunteers.
Some communities, like Paradigm III in Communitas (allowing for the fact
that the Goodmansâ schema still assumes the existence of money), may
maintain a sharp distinction between the free sector and the luxury
sector. Others may develop more organically integrated social patterns,
along the lines of Paradigm II of the same book, striving for maximum
unity of production and consumption, manual and intellectual activity,
aesthetic and scientific education, social and psychological harmony,
even at the cost of purely quantitative efficiency. The Paradigm III
style might be most appropriate as a initial transitional form, when
people are not yet used to the new perspectives and want some fixed
economic frame of reference to give them a sense of security against
potential abuses. As people get the bugs out of the new system and
develop more mutual trust, they will probably tend more toward the
Paradigm II style.
As in Fourierâs charming fantasies, but minus his eccentricities and
with much more flexibility, people will be able to engage in a variety
of pursuits according to elaborately interrelated affinities. A person
might be a regular member of certain ongoing groupings (affinity group,
council, collective, neighborhood, town, region) while only temporarily
taking part in various ad hoc activities (as people do today in clubs,
hobbyist networks, mutual-aid associations, political-issue groups and
barnraising-type projects). Local assemblies will keep tallies of offers
and requests; make known the decisions of other assemblies and the
current state of projects in progress or problems yet unresolved; and
form libraries, switchboards and computer networks to gather and
disseminate information of all kinds and to link up people with common
tastes. Media will be accessible to everyone, enabling them to express
their own particular projects, problems, proposals, critiques,
enthusiasms, desires, visions. Traditional arts and crafts will
continue, but merely as one facet of continuously creative lives. People
will still take part, with more zest than ever, in sports and games,
fairs and festivals, music and dancing, lovemaking and child raising,
building and remodeling, teaching and learning, camping and traveling;
but new genres and arts of life will also develop that we can now hardly
imagine.
More than enough people will gravitate to socially necessary projects,
in agronomy, medicine, engineering, educational innovation,
environmental restoration and so on, for no other reason than that they
find them interesting and satisfying. Others may prefer less utilitarian
pursuits. Some will live fairly quiet domestic lives; others will go in
for daring adventures, or live it up in feasts and orgies; yet others
may devote themselves to bird-watching, or exchanging zines, or
collecting quaint memorabilia from prerevolutionary times, or any of a
million other pursuits. Everyone can follow their own inclinations. If
some sink into a passive spectator existence, theyâll probably
eventually get bored and try more creative ventures. Even if they donât,
that will be their affair; it wonât harm anyone else.
For anyone who finds the earthly utopia too insipid and really wants to
get away from it all, the exploration and colonization of the solar
system â perhaps eventually even migration to other stars â will provide
a frontier that will never be exhausted.
But so will explorations of âinner space.â
An antihierarchical revolution will not solve all our problems; it will
simply eliminate some of the anachronistic ones, freeing us to tackle
more interesting problems.
If the present text seems to neglect the âspiritualâ aspects of life,
this is because I wanted to stress some basic material matters that are
often overlooked. But these material matters are only the framework. A
liberated society will be based far more on joy and love and spontaneous
generosity than on rigid rules or egoistic calculations. We can probably
get a more vivid sense of what it might be like from visionaries like
Blake or Whitman than from pedantic debates about economic credits and
recallable delegates.
I suspect that once peopleâs basic material needs are generously taken
care of and they are no longer subjected to a constant barrage of
commercial titillation, most of them (after brief binges of
overindulgence in things they were previously deprived of) will find the
greatest satisfaction in relatively simple and uncluttered lifestyles.
The erotic and gustatory arts will undoubtedly be enrichened in many
ways, but simply as facets of full, rounded lives that also include a
wide range of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual pursuits.
Education, no longer limited to conditioning young people for a narrow
role in an irrational economy, will become an enthusiastic lifelong
activity. In addition to whatever formal educational institutions there
may still be, people will have instant access via books and computers to
information on any subject they wish to explore, and theyâll be able to
get hands-on experience in all sorts of arts and skills, or to seek out
anyone for personal instruction or discussion â like the ancient Greek
philosophers debating in the public marketplace, or the medieval Chinese
monks wandering the mountains in search of the most inspiring Zen
master.
The aspects of religion that now serve as mere psychological escapes
from social alienation will fade away, but the basic questions that have
found more or less distorted expression in religion will remain. There
will still be pains and losses, tragedies and frustrations, people will
still face sickness, old age and death. And in the process of trying to
figure out what, if anything, it all means, and how to deal with it,
some of them will rediscover what Aldous Huxley, in The Perennial
Philosophy, refers to as the âhighest common factorâ of human
consciousness.
Others may cultivate exquisite aesthetic sensibilities like the
characters in Murasakiâs Tale of Genji, or develop elaborate
metacultural genres like the âglass bead gamesâ in Hermann Hesseâs novel
(freed from the material limits that formerly confined such pursuits to
narrow elites).
I like to think that as these diverse pursuits are alternated, combined
and developed, there will be a general tendency toward the personal
reintegration envisioned by Blake, and toward the genuine âI-Thouâ
relations envisioned by Martin Buber. A permanent spiritual revolution
in which joyous communion does not preclude rich diversity and âgenerous
contention.â Leaves of Grass, Whitmanâs wishful thinking about the
potentialities of the America of his day, perhaps comes as close as
anything to conveying the expansive state of mind of such communities of
fulfilled men and women, ecstatically working and playing, loving and
loitering, strolling down the never-ending Open Road.
With the proliferation of continually developing and mutating cultures,
travel could once again become an unpredictable adventure. The traveler
could âsee the cities and learn the ways of many different peoplesâ
without the dangers and disappointments faced by the wanderers and
explorers of the past. Drifting from scene to scene, from encounter to
encounter; but occasionally stopping, like those barely visible human
figures in Chinese landscape paintings, just to gaze into the immensity,
realizing that all our doings and sayings are just ripples on the
surface of a vast, unfathomable universe.
These are just a few hints. We arenât limited to radical sources of
inspiration. All sorts of creative spirits of the past have manifested
or envisioned some of our almost unlimited possibilities. We can draw on
any of them as long as we take care to extricate the relevant aspects
from their original alienated context.
The greatest works do not so much tell us something new as remind us of
things we have forgotten. We all have intimations of what life can be
like at its richest â memories from early childhood, when experiences
were still fresh and unrepressed, but also occasional later moments of
love or camaraderie or enthusiastic creativity, times when we canât wait
to get up in the morning to continue some project, or simply to see what
the new day will bring. Extrapolating from these moments probably gives
the best idea of what the whole world could be like. A world, as Whitman
envisions it,
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity
of elected persons, ...
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend
on themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as
the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as
the men ...
The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
Shapes of turbulent manly cities,
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
Â
[1] Ken Knabb (ed. and trans.), Situationist International Anthology
(Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p. 81 [Revised Edition pp. 106â107]
[Geopolitics of Hibernation]. Here and elsewhere I have sometimes
slightly modified my original SI Anthology translations.
[2] See Maurice Brintonâs The Bolsheviks and Workersâ Control:
1917â1921, Volineâs The Unknown Revolution, Ida Mettâs The Kronstadt
Uprising, Paul Avrichâs Kronstadt 1921, Peter Arshinovâs History of the
Makhnovist Movement, and Guy Debordâs The Society of the Spectacle
§§98â113. (These and most of the other texts cited in this book can be
obtained through the distributors listed at the end of the Situationist
Bibliography.)
[3] âThe journalistsâ and governmentsâ superficial references to the
âsuccessâ or âfailureâ of a revolution mean nothing for the simple
reason that since the bourgeois revolutions no revolution has yet
succeeded: not one has abolished classes. Proletarian revolution has so
far not been victorious anywhere, but the practical process through
which its project manifests itself has already created at least ten
revolutionary moments of historic importance that can appropriately be
termed revolutions. In none of these moments was the total content of
proletarian revolution fully developed; but in each case there was a
fundamental interruption of the ruling socioeconomic order and the
appearance of new forms and conceptions of real life: variegated
phenomena that can be understood and evaluated only in their overall
significance, including their potential future significance... The
revolution of 1905 did not bring down the Czarist regime, it only
obtained a few temporary concessions from it. The Spanish revolution of
1936 did not formally suppress the existing political power: it arose,
in fact, out of a proletarian uprising initiated in order to defend that
Republic against Franco. And the Hungarian revolution of 1956 did not
abolish Nagyâs liberal-bureaucratic government. Among other regrettable
limitations, the Hungarian movement had many aspects of a national
uprising against foreign domination; and this national-resistance aspect
also played a certain, though less important, role in the origin of the
Paris Commune. The Commune supplanted Thiersâs power only within the
limits of Paris. And the St. Petersburg Soviet of 1905 never even took
control of the capital. All the crises cited here as examples, though
deficient in their practical achievements and even in their
perspectives, nevertheless produced enough radical innovations and put
their societies severely enough in check to be legitimately termed
revolutions.â (SI Anthology, pp. 235â236 [Revised Edition pp. 301â302]
[Beginning of an Era].)
[4] âWeâre not interested in hearing about the exploitersâ economic
problems. If the capitalist economy is not capable of fulfilling
workersâ demands, that is simply one more reason to struggle for a new
society, one in which we ourselves have the decisionmaking power over
the whole economy and all social life.â (Portuguese airline workers, 27
October 1974.)
[5] The SIâs dissemination of a text denouncing an international
gathering of art critics in Belgium was a fine example of this: âCopies
were mailed to a large number of critics or given to them personally.
Others were telephoned and read all or part of the text. A group forced
its way into the Press Club where the critics were being received and
threw the leaflets among the audience. Others were tossed onto the
sidewalks from upstairs windows or from a car... In short, all steps
were taken to leave the critics no chance of being unaware of the text.â
(SI Anthology, p. 49 [Revised Edition pp. 60â61] [Action in Belgium].)
[6] âThe absence of a revolutionary movement in Europe has reduced the
Left to its simplest expression: a mass of spectators who swoon with
rapture each time the exploited in the colonies take up arms against
their masters, and who cannot help seeing these uprisings as the epitome
of Revolution... Wherever there is a conflict they always see Good
fighting Evil, âtotal revolutionâ versus âtotal reaction.â ...
Revolutionary criticism begins beyond good and evil; it is rooted in
history and operates on the totality of the existing world. In no case
can it applaud a belligerent state or support the bureaucracy of an
exploitive state in the process of formation... It is obviously
impossible at present to seek a revolutionary solution to the Vietnam
war. It is first of all necessary to put an end to the American
aggression in order to allow the real social struggle in Vietnam to
develop in a natural way; i.e. to allow the Vietnamese workers and
peasants to rediscover their enemies at home: the bureaucracy of the
North and the propertied and ruling strata of the South. Once the
Americans withdraw, the Stalinist bureaucracy will seize control of the
whole country â thereâs no getting around this... The point is not to
give unconditional (or even conditional) support to the Vietcong, but to
struggle consistently and uncompromisingly against American
imperialism.â (SI Anthology, pp. 195â196, 203 [Revised Edition pp.
252â253, 262] [Two Local Wars].)
[7] âIn its mystified form, dialectics became the fashion in Germany
because it seemed to transfigure and glorify the existing state of
things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to
bourgeois society and its doctrinaire professors, because in
comprehending the existing state of things it simultaneously recognizes
the negation of that state, its inevitable breaking up; because it sees
the fluid movement of every historically developed social form, and
therefore takes into account its transience as well as its momentary
existence; because it lets nothing impose on it, and is in its essence
critical and revolutionary.â (Marx, Capital.)
The split between Marxism and anarchism crippled both sides. The
anarchists rightly criticized the authoritarian and narrowly economistic
tendencies in Marxism, but they generally did so in an undialectical,
moralistic, ahistorical manner, contraposing various absolute dualisms
(Freedom versus Authority, Individualism versus Collectivism,
Centralization versus Decentralization, etc.) and leaving Marx and a few
of the more radical Marxists with a virtual monopoly on coherent
dialectical analysis â until the situationists finally brought the
libertarian and dialectical aspects back together again. On the merits
and flaws of Marxism and anarchism see The Society of the Spectacle
§§78â94.
[8] âWhat surfaced this spring in Zurich as a demonstration against the
closing of a youth center has crept across Switzerland, feeding on the
restlessness of a young generation anxious to break out of what they see
as a suffocating society. âWe donât want a world where the guarantee of
not dying of hunger is paid for by the certainty of dying of boredom,â
proclaim banners and spray-painted storefronts in Lausanne.â (Christian
Science Monitor, 28 October 1980.) The slogan is from Vaneigemâs The
Revolution of Everyday Life.
[9] For some hilarious examples see Henry Beard and Christopher Cerfâs
The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (Villard,
1992): itâs often hard to tell which of the Correctspeak terms are
satirical and which have actually been seriously proposed or even
officially adopted and enforced. The only antidote to such delirium is a
lot of healthy guffaws.
[10] On the Cultural Revolution, see SI Anthology, pp. 185â194 [Revised
Edition pp. 240â251] [The Explosion Point of Ideology in China], and
Simon Leysâs The Chairmanâs New Clothes.
[11] âAs Shiites and Kurds battle the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraqi
opposition parties try to patch together a democratic future, the United
States finds itself in the awkward position of, in effect, supporting
continuing one-party rule in Iraq. US government statements, including
those of President Bush, have stressed the desire to see Saddam Hussein
overthrown, but not to see Iraq broken apart by civil strife. At the
same time, Bush administration officials have insisted that democracy is
not currently a viable alternative for Iraq... This may account for the
fact that thus far, the administration has refused to meet with Iraqi
opposition leaders in exile ... âThe Arabs and the US have the same
agenda,â says a coalition diplomat. âWe want Iraq in the same borders
and Saddam to disappear. But we will accept Saddam in Baghdad in order
to have Iraq as one state.ââ (Christian Science Monitor, 20 March 1991.)
[12] âI am flabbergasted at the memory people retain of their own
revolutionary past. Present events have shaken that memory. Dates never
learned at school, songs never sung openly, are recalled in their
totality... The noise, the noise, the noise is still ringing in my ears.
The horns tooting in joy, the shouting, the slogans, the singing and
dancing. The doors of revolution seem open again, after forty-eight
years of repression. In that single day everything was replaced in
perspective. Nothing was god-given, all was man-made. People could see
their misery and their problems in a historical setting... A week has
passed, although it already feels like many months. Every hour has been
lived to the full. It is already difficult to remember what the papers
looked like before, or what people had then said. Hadnât there always
been a revolution?â (Phil Mailer, Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?)
[13] One of the most powerful moments was when the sitdowners around the
police car averted a potentially violent confrontation with a mob of
fraternity hecklers by remaining totally silent for half an hour. With
the wind taken out of their sails, the hecklers became bored and
embarrassed, and eventually dispersed. Such collective silence has the
advantage of dissolving compulsive reactions on both sides; yet because
it is nonspecific it does this without the dubious content of many
slogans and songs. (Singing âWe Shall Overcomeâ has also served to calm
people in difficult situations, but at the cost of sentimentalizing
reality.)
The best account of the FSM is David Lance Goinesâs The Free Speech
Movement (Ten Speed Press, 1993).
[14] On May 1968 see SI Anthology, pp. 225â256, 343â352 [Revised Edition
pp. 288â325, 435â457] [The Beginning of an Era and May 1968 Documents],
and RenĂ© ViĂ©netâs EnragĂ©s and Situationists in the Occupation Movement.
Also recommended is Roger GrĂ©goire and Fredy Perlmanâs Worker-Student
Action Committees, France May â68 (Black and Red, 1969).
[15] âLabor will not only SHUT DOWN the industries, but Labor will
REOPEN, under the management of the appropriate trades, such activities
as are needed to preserve public health and public peace. If the strike
continues, Labor may feel led to avoid public suffering by reopening
more and more activities. UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT. And that is why we
say that we are starting on a road that leads â NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!â
(Announcement on the eve of the 1919 Seattle general strike.) See Jeremy
Brecherâs Strike! (South End, 1972), pp. 101â114. More extensive
accounts are included in Root and Branch: The Rise of the Workersâ
Movements and in Harvey OâConnorâs Revolution in Seattle, both currently
out of print.
[16] Raoul Vaneigem (who incidentally wrote a good brief critical
history of surrealism) represented the clearest expression of both
aspects. His little book De la grĂšve sauvage Ă lâautogestion gĂ©nĂ©ralisĂ©e
(literally âFrom Wildcat Strike to Generalized Self-Management,â but
partially translated as Contributions to the Revolutionary Struggle)
usefully recapitulates a number of basic tactics during wildcat strikes
and other radical situations as well as various possibilities of
postrevolutionary social organization. Unfortunately it is also padded
with the inflated verbiage characteristic of Vaneigemâs post-SI
writings, attributing to worker struggles a Vaneigemist content that is
neither justified nor necessary. The radical-subjectivity aspect was
rigidified into a tediously repeated ideology of hedonism in Vaneigemâs
later books (The Book of Pleasures, etc.), which read like cotton-candy
parodies of the ideas he dealt with so trenchantly in his earlier works.
[17] âOne day into this thing, and Iâm tired, but compared to the
positive sensations that are passing through this place, fatigue doesnât
stand a chance... Who will ever forget the look on managementâs faces
when we tell them we are now in control, and their services are
obviously no longer needed... Everything as normal, except we donât
collect phone bills... Weâre also making friends from other departments.
Guys from downstairs are coming up to help out and learn our jobs...
Weâre all flying... Sailing on pure adrenalin. Itâs like we own the
bloody thing... The signs on the front door say, CO-OP TEL: UNDER NEW
MANAGEMENT â NO MANAGEMENT ALLOWED.â (Rosa Collette, âOperators Dial
Direct Action,â Open Road, Vancouver, Spring 1981.)
[18] âA South African company is selling an anti-riot vehicle that plays
disco music through a loudspeaker to soothe the nerves of would-be
troublemakers. The vehicle, already bought by one black nation, which
the company did not identify, also carries a water cannon and tear gas.â
(AP, 23 September 1979.)
[19] If this question had been openly posed to the Spanish workers (who
had already bypassed the vacillating Popular Front government by seizing
arms and resisting the fascist coup by themselves, and in the process
launched the revolution) they would probably have agreed to grant
Moroccan independence. But once they were swayed by political leaders â
including even many anarchist leaders â into tolerating that government
in the name of antifascist unity, they were kept unaware of such issues.
The Spanish revolution remains the single richest revolutionary
experience in history, though it was complicated and obscured by the
simultaneous civil war against Franco and by the sharp contradictions
within the antifascist camp â which, besides two or three million
anarchists and anarchosyndicalists and a considerably smaller contingent
of revolutionary Marxists (the POUM), included bourgeois republicans,
ethnic autonomists, socialists and Stalinists, with the latter in
particular doing everything in their power to repress the revolution.
The best comprehensive histories are Pierre BrouĂ© and Emile TĂ©mimeâs
Revolution and the War in Spain and Burnett Bollotenâs The Spanish
Revolution (the latter is also substantially incorporated in Bollotenâs
monumental final work, The Spanish Civil War). Some good first-hand
accounts are George Orwellâs Homage to Catalonia, Franz Borkenauâs The
Spanish Cockpit, and Mary Low and Juan BreĂĄâs Red Spanish Notebook.
Other books worth reading include Vernon Richardsâs Lessons of the
Spanish Revolution, Murray Bookchinâs To Remember Spain, Gerald Brenanâs
The Spanish Labyrinth, Sam Dolgoffâs The Anarchist Collectives, Abel
Pazâs Durruti: The People Armed, and Victor Alba and Stephen Schwartzâs
Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M.
[20] P.M.âs Boloâbolo (1983; new edition: Semiotext(e), 1995) has the
merit of being one of the few utopias that fully recognize and welcome
this diversity. Leaving aside its flippancies and idiosyncrasies and its
rather unrealistic notions about how we might get there, it touches on a
lot of the basic problems and possibilities of a postrevolutionary
society.
[21] Although the so-called networking revolution has so far been
limited mainly to increased circulation of spectator trivia, modern
communications technologies continue to play an important role in
undermining totalitarian regimes. Years ago the Stalinist bureaucracies
had to cripple their own functioning by restricting the availability of
photocopy machines and even typewriters lest they be used to reproduce
samizdat writings. The newer technologies are proving even more
difficult to control:
âThe conservative Guangming Daily reported new enforcement measures
targeted at an estimated 90,000 illegal fax machines in Beijing. Chinese
analysts say the regime fears that the proliferation of fax machines is
allowing information to flow too freely. Such machines were used
extensively during student demonstrations in 1989 that resulted in a
military crackdown... In the comfort of their own homes in Western
capitals, such as London, oppositionists can tap out messages to
activists in Saudi Arabia who, by downloading via Internet in their own
homes, no longer have to fear a knock on the door in the middle of the
night... Every taboo subject from politics to pornography is spreading
through anonymous electronic messages far beyond the governmentâs iron
grip... Many Saudis find themselves discussing religion openly for the
first time. Atheists and fundamentalists regularly slug it out in Saudi
cyberspace, a novelty in a country where the punishment for apostasy is
death... But banning the Internet is not possible without removing all
computers and telephone lines... Experts claim that for those willing to
work hard enough to get it, there is still little any government can do
to totally deny access to information on the Internet. Encrypted e-mail
and subscribing to out-of-country service providers are two options
available to net-savvy individuals for circumventing current Internet
controls... If there is one thing repressive East Asian governments fear
more than unrestricted access to outside media sources, it is that their
nationsâ competitiveness in the rapidly growing information industry may
be compromised. Already, protests have been voiced in the business
communities of Singapore, Malaysia, and China that censoring the
Internet may, in the end, hamper those nationsâ aspirations to be the
most technologically advanced on the block.â (Christian Science Monitor,
11 August 1993, 24 August 1995 and 12 November 1996.)
[22] âIn the post-Cold War era politicians have discovered crime-baiting
as a substitute for red-baiting. Just as the fear of communism propelled
the unimpeded expansion of the military-industrial complex,
crime-baiting has produced the explosive growth of the
correctional-industrial complex, also known as the crime-control
industry. Those who disagree with its agenda of more prisons are branded
criminal sympathizers and victim betrayers. Since no politician will
risk the âsoft on crimeâ label, an unending spiral of destructive
policies is sweeping the country... Repression and brutalization will be
further promoted by the institutions that are the primary beneficiaries
of such policies. As California increased its prison population from
19,000 to 124,000 over the past 16 years, 19 new prisons were built.
With the increase in prisons, the California Correctional Peace Officers
Association (CCPOA), the guardsâ union, emerged as the stateâs most
powerful lobby... As the percentage of the state budget devoted to
higher education has fallen from 14.4 percent to 9.8 percent, the share
of the budget for corrections has risen from 3.9 percent to 9.8 percent.
The average salary and benefits for prison guards in California exceeds
$55,000 â the highest in the nation. This year the CCPOA, along with the
National Rifle Association, has directed its substantial war chest to
promote the passage of the âthree strikes, youâre outâ initiative that
would triple the current size of Californiaâs prison system. The same
dynamics that evolved in California will certainly result from Clintonâs
crime bill. As more resources are poured into the crime-control
industry, its power and influence will grow.â (Dan Macallair, Christian
Science Monitor, 20 September 1994.)
[23] Other possibilities are presented in considerable detail in
Workersâ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society (London
Solidarityâs edition of a Socialisme ou Barbarie article by Cornelius
Castoriadis). This text is full of valuable suggestions, but I feel that
it assumes more centering around work and workplace than will be
necessary. Such an orientation is already somewhat obsolete and will
probably become much more so after a revolution.
Michael Albert and Robin Hahnelâs Looking Forward: Participatory
Economics for the Twenty First Century (South End, 1991) also includes a
number of useful points on self-managed organization. But the authors
assume a society in which there is still a money economy and the
workweek is only slightly reduced (to around 30 hours). Their
hypothetical examples are largely modeled on present-day worker co-ops
and the âeconomic participationâ envisaged includes voting on marketing
issues that will be superseded in a noncapitalist society. As we will
see, such a society will also have a far shorter workweek, reducing the
need to bother with the complicated schemes for equal rotation among
different types of jobs that occupy a large part of the book.
[24] Fredy Perlman, author of one of the most sweeping expressions of
this tendency, Against His-story, Against Leviathan! (Black and Red,
1983), provided his own best critique in his earlier book about C.
Wright Mills, The Incoherence of the Intellectual (Black and Red, 1970):
âYet even though Mills rejects the passivity with which men accept their
own fragmentation, he no longer struggles against it. The coherent
self-determined man becomes an exotic creature who lived in a distant
past and in extremely different material circumstances... The main drift
is no longer the program of the right which can be opposed by the
program of the left; it is now an external spectacle which follows its
course like a disease... The rift between theory and practice, thought
and action, widens; political ideals can no longer be translated into
practical projects.â
[25] Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohlâs Our Angry Earth: A Ticking
Ecological Bomb (Tor, 1991) is among the more cogent summaries of this
desperate situation. After demonstrating how inadequate current policies
are for dealing with it, the authors propose some drastic reforms that
might postpone the worst catastrophes; but such reforms are unlikely to
be implemented as long as the world is dominated by the conflicting
interests of nation-states and multinational corporations.
[26] For a wealth of suggestive insights on the advantages and drawbacks
of different types of urban communities, past, present and potential, I
recommend two books: Paul and Percival Goodmanâs Communitas and Lewis
Mumfordâs The City in History. The latter is one of the most penetrating
and comprehensive surveys of human society ever written.