Revolutionary reformism - the project of creating socialism on the
foundation of capitalism and in continuity with the capitalist mode of
production - disintegrated between 1913 and 1945. It is the end of
what turned out to be an illusion: the illusion of being able to
direct the development of the productive forces in a direction which
differed from the one they had taken in reality. We can actually agree
with Marx's view that after 1848 communism was possible precisely
because the irruption of the capitalist mode of production had broken
all social and natural barriers and made free development possible. But
the mentality, the representations of people were such that they could
neither concieve nor perceive such a future. They were too dependent on
the millenarian movement of value, or they were too debilitated by the
limitations of the perverted remains of their ancient communities, to
be able to set out on a new path to reach another community. Even Marx
and Engels ultimately considered capitalism a necessary moment, and
thought that all human beings everywhere would inevitably come to
experience it. Only the revolts of the Russian populists, and their
desire to avoid the capitalist road, made Marx understand his error.
But this recognition was insufficient. From the middle of the 19th
century, with the justification provided by Marxist theory (the
theory of the proletariat), all humanity set out to wander:
to develop productive forces.
If
we can no longer accept Marx's theoretical analysis of the role of the
productive forces, we can nevertheless agree with him after a detour.
Capital enslaves humanity in the very name of humanity because it is
anthropomorphized. This is nothing other than the reign of death. Human
beings are dominated by their past being, while they contemplate it. It
is a process which continually starts over again. Capital penetrates
thought, consciousness, and thus destroys human beings such as they
have been produced by centuries of class society. Their loss of
substance is the loss of their former being, which capital has pumped
out of them. Since this process is almost over, capital is now turning
from its attack against the past dimension of humanity to an attack
against its future dimension: it must now conquer imagination.
The human being is thus despoiled and tends to be reduced to the
biological dimension. The phenomenon reaches the roots. In other words,
the development of productive forces appears to have been necessary for
the destruction of old schemas, modes of thought, archaic
representations which limited human beings (this destruction is
now being analyzed by philosophers like Foucault). Threatened in
their purely biological existence, human beings are beginning to rise
against capital. It is at this point that everything can be
re-conquered by generalized creation. But this becoming is not simple,
unilinear. Capital can still profit from the creativity of human
beings, regenerating and resubstantializing itself by plundering their
imaginations. The importance and profundity of the struggle can be
grasped in the face of the alternative: communism or destruction
of the human species. And it should not be forgotten that during the
wandering various revolutionary movements looked for an exit and
various possibilities were blocked; they can now manifest
themselves. [20]
We have to stop wandering and destroy the repressive consciousness
which inhibits the emergence of communism. To do this we have to stop
perceiving communism as a prolongation of the capitalist mode of
production, and stop thinking it is enough to suppress exchange value
and make use value triumphant. This dichotomy no longer signifies
anything. Use value is tied to value even if it revolves around the
principle of utility instead of productivity; related to the direct
domination of human beings, it is inseparable from private property.
Communism is not a new mode of production [21] ; it is the affirmation of a new community. It is a question of being,
of life, if only because there is a fundamental displacement:
from generated activity to the living being who produced it. Until now
men and women have been alienated by this production. They will not
gain mastery over production, but will create new relations among
themselves which will determine an entirely different activity.
Nor is communism a new society. [22] Society grows out of the subjugation of some ethnic groups by others,
or out of the formation of classes. Society is the network of social
relations which quickly become despotic intermediaries. Man in society
is man enslaved by society.
Communism
puts an end to castes, classes and the division of labor (onto
which was grafted the movement of value which in turn animates and
exalts this division). Communism is first of all union. It is not
domination of nature but reconciliation, and thus regeneration of
nature: human beings no longer treat nature simply as an object
for their development, as a useful thing, but as a subject (not
in the philosophic sense) not separate from them if only because
nature is in them. The naturalization of man and the humanization of
nature (Marx) are realized; the dialectic of subject and
object ends.
What
follows is the destruction of urbanization and the formation of a
multitude of communities distributed over the earth. This implies the
suppression of monoculture, another form of division of labor, and a
complete transformation of the transportation system:
transportation will diminish considerably. Only a communal
(communitarian) mode of life can allow the human being to
rule his reproduction, to limit the (at present mad) growth
of population without resorting to despicable practices (such as
destroying men and women).
The
domination of one group over another, the society of classes,
originates in the sedentarization of the human being. We still live
with the myths generated at the time of this fixation somewhere in our
mother-earth: myths of the homeland, the foreigner; myths which
limit the vision of the world, which mutilate. It is obvious that the
reaction cannot be a return to a nomadism of a type practiced by our
distant ancestors who were gatherers. Men and women will acquire a new
mode of being beyond nomadism and sedentarism. Sedentary lives
compounded by corporeal inactivity are the root cause of almost all the
somatic and psychological illnesses of present-day human beings. An
active and unfixed life will cure all these problems without medicine
or psychiatry.
The
passage to communism implies a transformation of technique. Technology
is not a neutral thing; it is determined by the mode of production. In
the West, more than elsewhere, the various modes of production
increasingly separated human beings from technology, which was
originally no more than a modality of human being. The call for a
convenient technology is a call for a technology which is again a
prolongation of the human being and not an autonomous thing at the
service of an oppressive being. [23]
Human beings in communism cannot be defined as simple users; this would
be communism conceived as a terestrial paradise where people dispose of
what there is with such immediacy that human beings are
indistinguishable from nature (man, as Hegel said in this
context, would be an animal). Human beings are creators,
producers, users. The entire process is reconstituted at a higher
level, and for every individual. In relations between individuals, the
other is no longer considered in terms of utility; behavior in terms of
utility ends. The sexes are reconciled while retaining their
differences; they lose the differences and rigid oppositions produced
by millenia of antagonism.
These few characteristics should adequately clarify how the movement of ascent to the human community can be conceived.
We
are all slaves of capital. Liberation begins with the refusal to
perceive oneself in terms of the categories of capital, namely as
proletarian, as member of the new middle class, as capitalist, etc.
Thus we also stop perceiving the other - in his movement toward
liberation - in terms of those same categories. At this point the
movement of recognition of human beings can begin. This is obviously
only the beginning of the liberation movement, and is continually
threatened with failure. Refusing to take this into account denies the
power of capital. What has to be perceived is a dynamic. We are slaves;
our goal is not to become masters, even without slaves, but to abolish
the entire dialectic of master and slave. This goal cannot be realized
by the establishment of communities which, always isolated, are never
an obstacle to capital, can easily be surrounded by capital, and are no
more than deviations in relation to its norm (deviations which
make that norm visible for what it is). Nor can the goal be
reached by the cultivation of one's individual being, in which one
would finally find the real human being. In reality these approaches
should be connected. Perceiving oneself as a human being unshackled by
any attributes already removes the dog collar imposed by class society.
The desire for community is absolutely necessary. The reaffirmation of
individuality (especially in its temporal aspect) is a
rejection of domestication. But this is inadequate even as a first
element of rebellion; the human being is an individuality and a Gemeinwesen. The reduction of the human being to his present inexpressive state could take place only because of the removal of Gemeinwesen,
of the possibility for each individual to absorb the universal, to
embrace the entirety of human relations within the entirety of time.
The varied religions, philosophies and theories are mere substitutes
for this essential component of human being. Since communism is the
death of sameness, of repetition, human beings will emerge in all their
diversity; Gemeinwesen will be affirmed by each. This implies that as of now we reject the despotism of a religion, a philosophy, a theory.
The refusal to be trapped by a theory is not a rejection of all
theoretical reflection. It is just the opposite. But this refusal does
postulate that the theoretical act is insufficient. Theory can call for
the reconciliation of senses and brain but it remains within the
boundaries of this separation. What must be affirmed is the whole of
life, the entirety of its manifestations, the whole unified being. It
may still be necessary to proceed with the help of Marx's insights, for
example, but it becomes increasingly imbecile to proclaim oneself a
Marxist. Furthermore, like repressive consciousness, theory can become
a simple alibi for inaction. At the start, the refusal to act might be
perfectly justifiable. Nevertheless, separation from reality often
leads to failure to perceive new phenomena which shape it. At that
point theory, instead of helping establish contact with reality,
becomes an agent of separation, of removal, and in the end is
transformed into a protrusion, an ejection from the world. Waiting is
particularly difficult for those who do not want to recognize that
others can arrive at theory without us, our group, or our party as
intermediaries. Theory, like consciousness, demands objectification to
such an extent that even an individual who rejects political rackets
can elevate theory to the status of a racket. In a subject posing as
revolutionary, theory is a despotism: everyone should recognize
this.
After
the domination of the body by the mind for more than two millenia, it
is obvious that theory is still a manifestation of this domination.
It
is the whole of life that becomes determining. All the varied
productions of the past - art, philosophy, science - are fragments.
They are elements of the vast despoliation of human beings as well as
attempts to remedy it. But the point is no longer to realize art or
philosophy; capital has already done this in its way; the point is to
conquer and create another world: a world where all the
biological potentialities of the species can finally develop. In this
vast movement, it is futile to want to present oneself as the
repository of truth. First of all truth, like value, needs a measure, a
standard, a general equivalent, a norm, hence a State.
Secondly, truth is never more than one truth. The historical inflation
of this concept parallels the ever more thorough destruction of human
beings. Nothing less can be proposed than another life where the
gestures, the words, the imaginations and all the feelings of human
beings will no longer be chained, where senses and brain will unite -
only this union can eliminate all the fixations of madness. It is
obvious that all this can only be conquered by the destruction of the
capitalist mode of production. It is all of humanity perceived through
time that is hostile to capital. Human beings will have to undergo a
profound revolutionization to be able to oppose capital; the actions of
this movement are accompanied by the production of revolutionaries.
The
emergence of revolution in all the domains of our lives leads some
people to overemphasize the places where they felt this emergence.
Revolution
does not emerge from one or another part of our being - from body,
space or time. Our revolution as a project to reestablish community was
necessary from the moment when ancient communities were destroyed. The
reduction of communist revolution to an uprising which was to resolve
the contradictions posed by the capitalist mode of production was
pernicious. Revolution has to resolve all the old contradictions
created by the class societies absorbed by capital, all the
contradictions between relatively primitive communities and the
movement of exchange value currently being absorbed by the movement of
capital (in Asia and especially in Africa). Beyond this,
the revolutionary movement is the revolution of nature, accession to
thought, and mastery of being with the possibility of using the
prefrontal centers of the brain which are thought to relate to the
imagination. Revolution has a biological and therefore cosmic
dimension, considering our universe limited (to the solar
system); cosmic also in the meaning of the ancient philosophers
and mystics. This means that revolution is not only the object of the
passion of our epoch, but also that of millions of human beings,
starting with our ancient ancestors who rebelled against the movement
of exchange value which they saw as a fatality, passing through Marx
and Bordiga who, in their dimension as prophets, witnessed this
inextinguishable passion to found a new community, a human community.
Wanting to situate the revolution is like wanting to fix its height.
Saint-Just said that revolution could not stop until happiness was
realized, thus showing the falsity of wanting to judge men in terms of
the purely historical-material facts of a given epoch. The human being
is never a pure being-there. He can only be by superseding and he
cannot be only that which has to be superseded (Nietzsche).
Structurally and biologically man is a supersession because he is an
overpowerful being. In other words, human beings are explorers of the
possible and are not content with the immediately realizable,
especially if it is imposed on them. They lose this passion, this
thirst for creation - for what is the search for the possible if not
invention? - when they are debased, estranged, cut off from
their Gemeinwesen and therefore mutilated, reduced to simple individuals. It is only with
the real domination of the capitalist mode of production that the human
being is completely evacuated.
All
the revolutions of the species are revolutions which try to go beyond
the present moment, beyond what is permitted by the development of
productive forces (Bordiga). This reach beyond the possible
is what constitutes the continuity among the human generations, just as
the perspective of communism conceived as the destruction of classes,
exchange, and value constitutes the continuity among the varied
revolutionaries; this is what, following Marx, we call the historical
party. [24]
The struggle against reduction of the amplitude of the revolution is
already a revolutionary struggle. The reader should not be astonished
if to support this amplitude we refer to authors classically tagged
religious, mystical, etc. What matters is the reappropriation of Gemeinwesen (and past beings are part of it), which can only be done
after the unification of the species, and this unification can only be
conceived by grasping the aspiration, desire, passion and will for
community expressed through the ages. The human being can
simultaneously be a Gemeinwesen only if humanity lives in
community. As soon as fragmentation appears, the need to recompose a
unity emerges. In the West this unity had a mediate and coercive
form: the individual was defined by the State; knowledge was a
means for hierarchization and for justification of the established
order; the vicious circle of practice-theory emerged.
Communist
revolution is complete revolution. Biological, sexual, social, economic
revolutions are no more than partial attributes; the predominance of
one is a mutilation of revolution, which can only be by being all.
Communist
revolution can be conceived only if it is grasped through the history
and paleontology of human beings as well as all other living beings. By
grasping this we become aware that, if this revolution has long been
necessary, it can now be realized. Earlier it was possible but not
unavoidable. There were still other "human" paths in that they still
allowed a human development; specifically, they allowed the
externalization of human powers. Now almost everything has been
externalized and plundered by capital, which describes the only path
other than communist revolution: the total negation of human
beings. Therefore we must understand our world; we must understand the
despotism of capital and the movement of rebellion breaking out against
it. This act of understanding which is taking place not only
intellectually but also sensually (the rebellion is to a large
extent bodily rebellion) can only be reached by rejecting the
wandering and the repressive consciousness.
[20] Absolute irreversibility
is not a fact of history. Possibilities which appeared thousands or
hundreds of years ago were not abolished for all time. History is not a
Moloch which swallows possibilities, condemning the human future to an
inevitable and irremediable despoliation. In that case history would be
no more than a justification for what happened. Many would like to
reduce history to this, making it the worst of despots.
Hegel's philosophy with its dialectic of supersession (Aufhebung),
of movement which abolishes and preserves at one and the same time, was
an attempt to salvage what human beings had produced in earlier epochs.
Hegel was troubled by the problems of loss of reality, of the
multiplicity of manifestations and possibles, etc. Thus he attached
enormous importance to memory (see particularly the chapter
"Absolute Knowledge," in the Phenomenology of Mind.)
By contrast, the movement of capital abolishes the memory of its
previous stages (by mystification and magic) as well as the
stages of humanity, and presents itself, as it is, at its highest level
of development - the "reified" (or ossified) form"
(See Marx, Theories of Surplus Value,[Moscow: 1971] , Vol. III, chapter on "Revenue and its Sources. Vulgar Political Economy."
[21] The concept of mode of
production is in reality valid only for the capitalist mode of
production, just as the concept of class is in reality operative only
in bourgeois society. The concept of production in Marx's work is quite
rich in attributes. It becomes impoverished when we move from the 1844 Manuscripts and The German Ideology to Capital.
It is closely related to the concept of nature and also to a certain
conception of the human being. In other words, we have a much more
complex "given" when we can examine it only in relation to the
existence of initial communist communities and their dissolution. The
separation of the human being from the community (Gemeinwesen)
is a despoliation. The human being as worker has lost a mound of
attributes which formed a whole when he was related to his community.
The
process of expropriation of human beings is real. Those who do not
understand this do not understand what capital is. Man has been reduced
to an inexpressive being; he has lost his senses, and his activity has
been reduced to quantified labor. Man turned into abstract being longs
for music which still preserves the ancestral sensuality (thus
the vogue of jazz and South American music). The reduced human
being now has only one element relating him to the external
world: sexuality which fills the void of the senses. It is
precisely this which explains the pansexuality, or more exactly the
pansexualization of being which Freud interpreted as an invariant
characteristic of human beings, whereas it is the result of their
mutilation. What is the subconscious if not the affective-sensual life
of the human being repressed by capital? The human being has to
be domesticated, shaped to a rationality which he must internalize -
the rationality of the process of production of capital. Once this
domestication is achieved, the human being is dispossessed of this
repressed sensual life which becomes an object of knowledge, of
science; it becomes capitalizable. The unconscious, becoming an object
of commerce, is thinly sliced and retailed in the market of knowledge.
The unconscious did not always exist, and it exists now only as a
component in the discourse of capital; this is also true of human
perversions.
Reduced
to perfect inexpressivity, the human being increasingly becomes
comparable point by point to the elementary particle studied by nuclear
physics, where one can find the principles of the psychology of the
capitalized human being who is moved by the field of capital.
[22] It is also unsound to
speak of primitive society. We will substantiate this by making a new
analysis of primitive communities. If it is true that Marx's work does
not deal adequately with the existence, development and dissolution of
primitive communities, it is not true that Marx is absolutely wrong
because of Europocentrism or the spirit of enlightenment, namely that
his work suffers from the same shortcomings as bourgeois theory. The
majority of those who hold this view have not understood the question
of community in Marx's work and have reduced his work to a simple
historical materialism.
What
Marx's work lacks is a detailed analysis of the way "the economy"
appears in primitive communities and provokes their disintegration.
We should add that it is becoming increasingly misleading to speak of capitalist society. We will return to this.
[23] In primitive communities
human beings rule technology. Technology starts to become autonomous in
ancient Western society, and this was feared by the ancients.
Technology forces man to copy nature, even if later he can find a
procedure not found in nature; thus he is subjected to a compulsory
procedure, a how-to-do, a sort of natural order. He seems to lose the
capacity to create freely. (On this subject, see the comments of
J.P. Vernant in Mythe et pensée chez les grecs, Ed.
Maspéro.) When human beings no longer fear technology, they
simultaneously become reconciled with art, which had been disparaged at
the end of slave society. This took place at the time of the
Renaissance, when philosophers defined man as a being who makes himself
(See Cassirer, Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy).
But the development of technology did not lead man toward nature; on
the contrary, it led to the expropriation of man and the destruction of
nature. The human being increasingly loses the faculty of creativity.
In this sense, the fear of the ancients was justified.
From
the philosophers of the Renaissance, through Descartes and Hegel, to
Marx, the human being is defined in relation to technology (man
is a tool-maker: Franklin) and to production. To go beyond
Marx, it is necessary to reexamine the "human phenomenon" from the
disintegration of primitive communities until today and to rethink the
works of philosophers and economists from Aristotle to Marx in order to
understand more clearly how human beings perceived themselves in a
period when value and then capital dominated, and in order to
understand how, now that we have come to the end of the phenomenon
value, we can conceive humanity, and thus communism.
[24] "Origine et fonction de la forme parti" (1961), published in Invariance, No. 1, Serie 1.