This is an old revision of the document!
With the restructuring of the capitalist mode of production, the contradiction between the classes is found at the level of their respective reproduction. In its contradiction with capital, the proletariat puts itself into question.1)
Presumably the most important of the texts by Théorie communiste that we have traslated and the one which comes closest to a sort of manifesto is Self-organisation is the first act of the revolution; it then becomes an obstacle which the revolution has to overcome. This text, written in 2005, is dealing with what TC sees as characteristic of class struggle today compared with before. Here they are reasoning from a number of contemporary and historical examples of struggles from different countries, for example Italy, France, Argentina and Algeria. The emphasis lies on the question of how a revolutionary opening can be created out of the existing immideate struggles and the sharp qualitative rupture which a revolutionary process according to them, by necessity, has to entail.
In contrast with the view of communism as a paradise on earth that we are to enter “after the revolution”, TC understands (together with Dauvé and others) the communist revolution in our time as that of communisation, the immediate suppression of all capitalist relations: wage labour, exchange, division of labour, property, the state and all the classes in society.
The proletarian revolution is about the dissolution of the proletariat, and therefore the proletariat's movement of communisation will by necessity come in contradiction with its own self-organisation as a class. This because self-organisation does not go beyond the proletariat's organisation as proletarians.
The supersession of really existing self-organisation will not be accomplished by the production of the 'true', the 'right', the 'good' self-organisation, it will be achieved against really existing self-organisation, but within it, from it.2)
In the light of this view on the supersession of self-organisation, TC maintains that the teories of workers' autonomy becomes insufficient and that they can not be be used to grasp the process of revolution. The bottom line, however, is not that autonomous, self-organised struggles (for example occupations of factories) are “bad” (since they can not be revolutionary measures). Instead TC says that they in actual fact are indispensable, that it is so class struggle has to express itself initially. If the possible revolution can not be anything else but the thorough communisation of society, which we mean, this communisation also has to start from somewhere, and it has to emerge out of the class contradictions of this society. Thus, the opening for a social movement of communisation arises out of the self-organisation, but as a break, a rupture, with it. It would be absurd to be against self-organisation on principle.
A central idea in the text, which we find immensely important, is that the syndicalism which characterises all everyday class struggles can not be explained by the existence of trade unions, or that this nature would somehow disappear in the struggle outside the union; syndicalism does not exist because of institutionalisation. But if trade unions organise proletarians as workers and go into negotiations with the buyer of labour power, while the self-organised, autonomous workers struggle defends the proletarians conditions of life as proletarians, is it then any differences of importance between them? Yes and no. The difference is not found in that the former are the administrators of labour while the latter represent the revolt against work.
On the other hand, there is an important distiction between trade union and self-organisation when it comes to the possibilities for how far the syndicalist struggle can be fought. In the text they say that first self-organisation must be reached and triumph in order to be superseded later, and that this is the only way in which the proletarians gains practical knowledge of their situation and that, ultimately, all capitalist categories and the own class belonging constitute an exterior constraint in the struggle and themselves can ask the question of communisation.
The self-organisation of struggles is a crucial moment of the revolutionary supersession of struggles over immediate demands. To carry on the struggle over immediate demands intransigently and to the very end cannot be achieved by unions, but by self-organisation and workers’ autonomy. To carry on the struggle over immediate demands through workers’ autonomy on the basis of irreconcilable interests is to effect a change of level in the social reality of the capitalist mode of production.3)
TC are saying that nowdays the proletarians simply gets fed up with the self-organisation as soon as it gets established, because when they look at themselves in the mirror, they see nothing but their own existence. However, they first need to see this reflection in order to knuckle down this existence and thereby to go beyond self-organisation.
There is a qualitative leap when the workers unite against their existence as wage labourers, when they integrate the destitute and smash market mechanisms; not when one strike ‘transforms’ itself into a ‘challenge’ to power. The change is a rupture.4)
[The proletarians can] fight against market relations, seize goods and the means of production while integrating into communal production those that wage-labour can’t integrate, make everything free, get rid of the factory framework as the origin of products, go beyond the division of labour, abolish all autonomous spheres (and in the first place the economy), dissolve their autonomy to integrate in non-market relations all the impoverished …; in this case, it is precisely their own previous existence and association as a class that they go beyond as well as (this is then a detail) their economic demands. The only way to fight against exchange and the dictatorship of value is by undertaking communisation.5)
For TC, it is the class relation understood as exploitation which gives the proletariat its position as a capitalist category and at the same time delivers the key to the dissolvement of the classes and the capitalist categories. With exploitation class struggle does not become one thing and the Marxian (economic) concepts something else. 'It is the insufficiency of surplus-value in relation to accumulated capital which is at the heart of the crisis of exploitation.'6) It is not the falling rate of profit which push on class struggle, as with the 'objectivist', or the opposite, that class struggle push on the falling rate of profit, as with the 'subjectivist'. '[T]he fall of the rate of profit is a contradiction between classes.'7)
In 2003 the publishing collective Senonevero, in which among others TC participate, took an initiative to try bring together all the different groups sharing the perspective of revolution as communisation: the 'communising current'. This on the basis of a miniplatform and around the review project Meeting. A number of indivuals and groups swallowed the bait, however not those around Troploin Newsletter (Dauvé & co.) who gives their explanation to this in the text 'Communisation: a “Call” and an “Invitation”'. The working with Meeting is going on while this is beeing written, but it should probably be mentioned that a lot of the discussions have orbited around whether the platform in 'Invitation' is entirely perfect. In light of this you can probably say that there exists a communising current, where some are gathering around Meeting, but that it is not entirely easy to define. Either way, it is clear that we welcome this initiative.
October 2006