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en:crisis-and-communisation [2011/09/25 19:03]
titorelli |
en:crisis-and-communisation [2011/09/25 19:03]
titorelli |
| Since the communisation process is characterised by the abolition of all social classes, including the proletariat, it leads – if it is completed – to an end of class struggle. It would be a big mistake, however, to imagine this process as one of gradually diminishing class antagonism, concurrently with communist relations pushing aside the capitalist ones. Communisation is a rupture with the everyday class struggle in that it is no longer any kind of defence of labour. Still, it is //from the beginning to the end// a //class practice//. (From having struggled to exist one now struggles for not having to exist.) Communisation is thus not an alternative way of life; it won’t be a social experiment of free individuals. Communisation is on the whole not a //free choice// but again an immediate need in a certain situation, a task which the proletarians impose on themselves, compelled by material conditions, when their situation has become unbearable and incompatible with the accumulation of capital. It is only the struggle with capital which can drive the proletariat to the point where it is compelled to smash the State, abolish capital and itself, in order to escape from its situation. Communisation should thus not be seen as a strategy or a method that can be chosen in an abundance of others, as if the proletariat had been standing in front of a smörgåsbord of possible revolutionary solutions. When we speak of revolution it is instead as material //necessity//, and the object of theory is to define this necessity: the conditions for the abolition of the capitalist mode of production. Only an analysis of the //existing// contradictory relation, of the conditions of its reproduction and of its //non-reproduction//, as well as a careful and detailed analysis of the 'empirical' class struggles that we witness and take part in today, can contribute to this being anything but a pious hope or pure speculation. | Since the communisation process is characterised by the abolition of all social classes, including the proletariat, it leads – if it is completed – to an end of class struggle. It would be a big mistake, however, to imagine this process as one of gradually diminishing class antagonism, concurrently with communist relations pushing aside the capitalist ones. Communisation is a rupture with the everyday class struggle in that it is no longer any kind of defence of labour. Still, it is //from the beginning to the end// a //class practice//. (From having struggled to exist one now struggles for not having to exist.) Communisation is thus not an alternative way of life; it won’t be a social experiment of free individuals. Communisation is on the whole not a //free choice// but again an immediate need in a certain situation, a task which the proletarians impose on themselves, compelled by material conditions, when their situation has become unbearable and incompatible with the accumulation of capital. It is only the struggle with capital which can drive the proletariat to the point where it is compelled to smash the State, abolish capital and itself, in order to escape from its situation. Communisation should thus not be seen as a strategy or a method that can be chosen in an abundance of others, as if the proletariat had been standing in front of a smörgåsbord of possible revolutionary solutions. When we speak of revolution it is instead as material //necessity//, and the object of theory is to define this necessity: the conditions for the abolition of the capitalist mode of production. Only an analysis of the //existing// contradictory relation, of the conditions of its reproduction and of its //non-reproduction//, as well as a careful and detailed analysis of the 'empirical' class struggles that we witness and take part in today, can contribute to this being anything but a pious hope or pure speculation. |
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| There are those who maintain that communism is necessary now: 'To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.' This you can read in //The Coming Insurrection//, a book which has attracted much attention recently. This is not theory, however, but rhetoric and propaganda. It is a call for action, just like the authors’ previous book //Call//. What is assumed here (if not explicitly) is that the objective conditions of the revolution are ready, or rather overripe, and that now only a subjective condition is needed which can smash 'a dying social system [that] has no other justification to its arbitrary nature but its absurd determination – its senile determination – to simply //linger on//…' (//Call//, p. 4.) We do not conceive of the revolution as the coincidence of objective and subjective conditions. Revolution, communisation, is actually not a necessity here and now, for we can still not witness it. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be necessary tomorrow! It is easy to become impatient when one sees where the world is heading, and we may all feel trapped inside an 'absurd determinism'. The law of determinacy is inexorable however; never can we act in a way which makes ourselves independent from this determinism. But as a part of determinism, as //necessarily determined// by class antagonism, we can act //in accordance with what we are – against what we have been – and as a class abolish all classes//, when we are one day brought face to face with this awful task. | There are those who maintain that communism is necessary now: 'To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality that we must choose sides.' This you can read in //The Coming Insurrection//, a book which has attracted much attention recently. This is not theory, however, but rhetoric and propaganda. It is a call for action, just like the authors’ previous book //Call//. What is assumed here (if not explicitly) is that the objective conditions of the revolution are ready, or rather overripe, and that now only a subjective condition is needed which can smash ‘a dying social system [that] has no other justification to its arbitrary nature but its absurd determination – its senile determination – to simply //linger on//…’ (//Call//, p. 4.) We do not conceive of the revolution as the coincidence of objective and subjective conditions. Revolution, communisation, is actually not a necessity here and now, for we can still not witness it. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be necessary tomorrow! It is easy to become impatient when one sees where the world is heading, and we may all feel trapped inside an 'absurd determinism'. The law of determinacy is inexorable however; never can we act in a way which makes ourselves independent from this determinism. But as a part of determinism, as //necessarily determined// by class antagonism, we can act //in accordance with what we are – against what we have been – and as a class abolish all classes//, when we are one day brought face to face with this awful task. |
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| :: March 2011 | :: March 2011 |