Councilism Dupont

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Councilism, Solutionism &

The Communist Critique

A collection of excerpts

by Frere Dupont

Layout by: Yadira Lopez

[email protected]


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1. I am at pains to relate the question of workers councils tothe existence of many millions of people and their relationto their environment rather than to the question of politicalpositions, this involves the application of certain theoreticallters.

2. To this end, I did not want to nd myself in agreementwith the left-anarchist position on self-management but I didnot want to simply disagree with it.

3. It may seem strange, it does to me, to propose a critique ofevents and actions that have not yet occurred, but my interestis not so much located in the future as in the alterations thatare effected within possible positions we are able adopt inthe present with regard to possible future events. Obviously,the alteration in denition of a future goal transforms theactivities that are deployed in the present which are aimed atachieving/relating (to) it. I say obviously but as the goal onlyreally exists in purposeful activities in the present, its transfor-mation is quite subtle and complex.

4. Specically, in attempting to think in terms of algorithmsand the functions within processes playing out or unfolding itremoves that terrible, and tragic, burden of having to decidewhich reality to choose (as if that were in any way possible).

5. The more decision, policy making and so on are contex-tualised, the less the tyranny of either/or will dictate - inthe case of any proposed free decision making at any criticaljuncture mere prejudice and fear have a much greater impactthan any of us are prepared to admit.

existence of radical groups, all of which are contained withinthe political-cultural eld and are neutralised along the linesof politics and culture. Better to not engage at all, do nothing,make no comment.

Cultural preference, especially the pursuit of the authentic,is not an appropriate form of communist struggle. The only

important cultural forms for communists are those that maybe reused to articulate and illuminate experience of negationand engagement within the economy. Walter Benjamin, forexample, observed that the machinery of the fairground ac-celerates, through shocks and jolts to the senses, the processby which workers are habituated to the horrors of mecha-nised work; at no point did he argue for the organisation ofradical or alternative fairground forms to oppose desensitisa-tion, indeed all such theatres of cruelty, and confrontationalcircuses, despite their radical ideology, only thrust the capital-ist form further into peoples heads. Benjamins conclusionwas simply that as this unavoidable disciplining could not beeffectively opposed on its own terms, it was therefore to behoped that the always decreasing distance between workersand industrial machinery would somehow facilitate the work-ers expropriation of the machines.

-Monsieur Dupont, 2003

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There will be workers councils, if there is a genuine economic crisisof capital, there will be workers councils.

The problem ought not to be viewed as the advocacy of councilswithin a milieu where it is set up on its merits against other options,as a strategy or solution that must be pursued, but of what happens

next, what happens once the councils are established.

It is inevitable, as capital ees from industrial crisis, i.e. from its in-ability to reproduce the terms of its relation and extract value fromits processes, that process will attempt to manage itself. During acrisis in the productive relation the proletariat will go with the pres-sure of necessity and step in to take control of production - generaleconomic conditions will force such a move, the proletariat willrespond posivitively initially to ensure its own survival, and becausethat will seem like the only realistic option open to it. It will attempt

to manage business as usual because it will not yet understand thecontradiction in that act, i.e. that its continued existence within theproductive relation (and production itself) is contrary to its interest.

There will be no reason to advocate the instigation of self-managementwhen this will inevitably emerge anyway as an algorithmic workingout of the liberated forces of production. The problem is whatthese liberated forces will then be saying to humanity in general atthat particular moment and through self-management, its necessaryform. We know what the councilists and left anarchists want thecouncil form to express:it being the institution of the triumph of use overexchange.

But I do not think productive forces willforgettheir exploitative char-acter and allowthemselves to be socialised as easily as many left anar-chists imagine. Class based existence is written through the processesof the factory and this will automatically attempt to reassert itselfbehind, beyond and through any decisions (and decision making bod-ies) set up against it, and in favour of socialised production.

through a maximisation of the role of the culture industrythrough lottery funding, 24 hour broadcast media, the inter-net, and the manufacture of celebrity as a product but noth-ing could be duller than our bungey-jump society createdout of the unholy union of capital and radical imagination.The preference for extreme, to the max entertainment hassomething Roman about it but it remains spectacular, that is

beyond critique or engagement.

The answer of revolutionaries to the perceived threat ofcultural recuperation is to push itstill further, nding aes-thetic beauty in the ugly and discordant real of everyday life,delinquency is celebrated as a form of total resistance (ratherthan the state supervised macho social incontinence that itreally is). In Kings Lynn, Britain, Spring 2001, a pizza deliverydriver was surrounded by a gang that demanded the contentsof his van and then beat him up. Some pro-revolutionarieswould probably celebrate the youths for attacking a repre-sentative of domination and the Americanised food industry.Some would say, of course, that the gang should have drawnthe line at physically attacking the driver, but, even so, suchevents are often routinely portrayed by pro-revolutionariesas signs ofmovement, of escalation, of an emergent generalisedradical consciousness, the gang may even be celebrated forenacting the revolutionary necessity of the redistribution offood (we have seen how attacking McDonalds or parked cars

has been advocated as direct action, but, in fact, these acts arecultural and based upon certain aesthetics of preference). Thepursuit of radicality or social and political extremism within asociety grounded in extreme maximisation of exploitation isan impossible and unsustainable strategy, all cultural extrem-ism feeds into the amphitheatre; extreme gestures become,literally, a kind of trailblazing of cultural forms. The cul-tural elitism inherent to anti-capitalist forms, which claim topose more realforms (music, language, literature etc), to themystications of the establishment, disprove themselves by

their own existence; capitalism is easily capable of supplyingdissonant forms, the proof for which is to be found in the

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Will the workers council form ever have sufcient power torein in and transform the autonomous capitalist character ofthe forces of production? There is no evidence that it will.

The question beyond that of the relation of workers coun-cils to crisis, the question raised after that of the councilsestablished existence as the embodiment of suspended value

production, is located in the critiques which will be developedbecause the councils exist, because of their algorithmic aspectwithin production, and their relation to value, their role in thereturn to the capitalist form, but also, in the other direction,to the prospect of a genuine human community.

Most left anarchists will be transported into patriotic ecsta-sies by thecoming-to-beof the council form because the formitself is their ideology. They will not be troubled by the formsintrinsic, just-so quality, this after all can be explainedhistorically

as a new phase, a new epoch. As the councils are established,the anarchists will institute their bureaucracies, principles, anddeclarations that set the limit of society and humanity itselfas the celebration of the form. These partisans of the coun-cil, and of the fetish for self-management, will be the lastto recognise that these ideologies also function as a fetter(to use Marxs term), and thus will become ther reactionarydefenders of the new alienation.

By contrast, the inevitable critique will initially be undertakenin terms of the alienation experienced from the allegedlyobjective character of the forces of production, both bycommunists, who will illuminate the non-identity betweencommunism and the council form, and by the individualistanarchists via their revolt against the generalised impositionof work and the ideological character of use.

popular culture (Dean, Presley, Brando, and later Guevara)also contributed to the legitimisation of pursuing the formsof ideological oppositions. In the end it became, and it isthis mockery that present day advertisers use as a jemmy, theopposition of boring normality against the coolly different revolutionaries were the cool sect.

The mainstream media now grounds its operations in theproduction of maximised untypicality; on any single eveningit is possible to nd on TV celebratory reference to cannabis,sexual fetishism, independentpop music, spiced and groovyfoods, stylised homes and gardens. It is assumed that normal-ity is now individualised, there is a background of millions ofpeople going off backpacking to faraway places, people areyoung, they are funky, they want more than their parents had,more in the sense of different. Very amusing and slightly em-barrassing but nonetheless not at all revolutionary. And so thepro-revolutionary, operating with the Sixties legacy of IT, Oz,The SIand within the cultural/ideological sphere, must push itfurther: pirate radio, webcasts, clubnights (there are more leaf-lets given out at Reclaim The Streetsevents for raves than forpolitical positions); the real thing, that is, the subjective condi-tioning and autonomous production of non-conformity mustbe even more cutting edge, more knowing and more stylisti-cally radical than the latest Ball and Theakston product. Un-fortunately, style, the production of stylisation, is dependent

on who has the best video editing technology; so the BBC,the not so stuffy any more BBC (the BBC of The Love ParadeGreat Britain) can now produce images, sequences, culturalproducts that outstrip the efforts of any pro-revolutionaryand his photocopier in radicality of form. Thus the efforts ofRTS to parody The London Evening StandardandMonopolyseemrather tame and formally conservative.

Imagination is taking power used to be a slogan of the libertar-ian left as it role-played a series of surface oppositions that

portrayed the establishment as inhibitive and itself as carnivalharlequin; now imagination is in power, it has been recruited

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The theoretical critique of workers councils begins in thegeneral tendency experienced in all historical examples of theform - that is, self-management of production by the prole-tariat has always, and without exception, facilitated the returnof capitalism. The question of the nature of this facilitationis open to discussion in this seminar: either, 1) the coun-cils were too weak, not generalised or organised enough to

impose themselves; or 2) they are, in their essence, an emer-gency capitalist form which is made to appear when all otherforms are unable to function.

How many of you are there?

A few more, than the original guerrilla nucleus in the, Sierra Madre,

but with fewer weapons. A few less than the delegates in London in

1864 who founded the International Workingmens Association, but

with a more coherent program. As unyielding as the Greeks at Thermo-

pylae (Passerby, go tell them at Lacedaemon...), but with a brighter

future.-SI Questionnaire

Revolutionary groups, in the absence of the realisation ofthe unity of theory and practice, sought to establish the real-ity of truth in two places at once: in their own heads and inthe objectively constituted but autonomous working classengagement with the economy. But the contemplative roleof the revolutionary cell soon became restrictive, and so to

compensate for this, or at least to address this discomfort, thegroups sought out means, events, modes, ideologies, wherebythey could justify their appearance on the stage as actors. It isimportant that the move towards action and its justicationwas begun in response to initial passivity, that is, direct politi-cal engagement was begun from a predication of subjective,ideological factors; for the revolutionary groups becomingdgety it soon became morally insupportable that they shouldsit by whilst momentous events were unfolding, that theyshould sit around theorising, when they ought to be out

there showing solidarity and getting our ideas across, Butwhat can ten or twelve dclass individuals do? Make situa-tions of course. It is at the juncture where the individual orsmall group seeks to make itself signicant to the world thatleftist ideology becomes less concerned with inconceivablemasses and more focused on conceptions of the self. FromS.o.B.s initial transformation of the formula for social divi-sion from owner/worker to ordergiver/ordertaker, a suddenrush of new theories of polarity went in and out of leftbank

fashion: authentic/inauthentic, tuned in/straight, spectator/actant. Existentialism, Marcuse and the mythic heroes of

SelectionfromNihilistC

ommunism.Published2003

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Workers councils and productive forces

That the workers will take control of production. That theworkers are a product of production. That production will bethe product of the workers. That production is the combina-tion of past and present labour. That if capitalist exploitationis removed from production then production and labour are

liberated from capitalist exploitation. That the passage fromcapitalist production to social production will be facilitated byproletarian control of production. That capitalism has pro-duced the proletariat. That the proletariat will bury capital-ism. That capitalism has produced the proletariat and that theproletariat will produce the end of capitalism and the begin-ning of communism. That the passage into communism willbe piloted by the proletariat. That the proletariat, the productof capitalism, will produce in its turn, communism. That thebeginning of the next phase will be found in the end of this

phase. That the essence of the next phase will be found in theaccumulated techniques of this phase. That the powers inap-propriately developed in this phase will be put to proper usein the next. And Hegel wrote:

The relationship of the proletariat to production is essentiallycontinuous from capitalism to communism but is ameliorat-ed, mitigated, recognised. Effectively, the fetish of the com-modity is replaced by the fetish of labour which achieves theactualisation of its role in production labour does not alterits character so much as it is no longer obscured by mediatingthings work is not abolished so much as institutionalised as

Value.

However, the experience of the worker within instrumental-ist-communism would remain unchanged, the basic, immedi-ate sense of alienation that he had felt in capitalism would gounchallenged in communism except to say that he wouldhave become his own alienator.

If it is decided to run the factories communistically then it isdecided that capitalism is immediately abolished. That is, therate of exploitation is immediately reduced to an acceptablelevel, despite the proletariat continuing to undertake exactlythe same tasks.

The worker would continue to be dictated to by the needsof the processes that were rst organised by commodityproduction and which materially express the fetish characterof the productive relation... within this understanding, thegreater part of capitalism goes unopposed, on the contrary,

the objective developments of capitalism are understoodpositively and the question set by instrumentalist-communistsonly concerns the re-direction of the means of productiontowards social needs.

-Frere Dupont, 2008

Hence it is that, in the case of various kinds of knowledge, wend that what in former days occupied the energies of menof mature mental ability sinks to the level of information,

exercises, and even pastimes, for children; and in this educa-

tional progress we can see the history of the worlds culturedelineated in faint outline. This bygone mode of existence has

already become an acquired possession of the general mind,which constitutes the substance of the individual, and, by thus

appearing externally to him, furnishes his inorganic nature.In this respect culture or development of mind (Bildung),regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquir-ing what lies at his hand ready for him, in making its inorganicnature organic to himself, and taking possession of it forhimself. Looked at, however, from the side of universal mind

qua general spiritual substance, culture means nothing elsethan that this substance gives itself its own self-consciousness,

brings about its own inherent process and its own reectioninto self.

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On the reduction of the rate of exploitation

If the discourse of the critique of alienation is abandoned,all that is left for communists is a discourse based upon theproposal of a reduction in the rate of exploitation of labour and such relativistic formulations are not the stuff of

communism at all.

The identication of communism with the objective contu-ity of the forces of production is a gambit based upon an apriori and unexamined assumption concerning the objectivelyacceptable rate of exploitation of labour.

Within the capitalist mode of production the rate of exploita-tion is considered currently too high but nonetheless this hasproduced a benet in the form of the material accumulation

of dead labour which, under different managerial directioncould facilitate an objective reduction in the rate of exploita-tion.

This reduction of the rate of exploitation by dead things ofliving activity is called self-management.

That communism itself is synonymous with a relativelyreduced rate of exploitation of the proletariat within theproductive relation.

The material base of the commodity relation, it is foreseen,may be simply disconnected from commodity productionitself through, what is in effect, a change of government.

It is strange, or I think it is strange, this notion of an inher-ited objectivity that was developed out of subjective revoltagainst inherited objectivity. It is strange, or I think it isstrange, that the struggle to break free from inherited formsshould be conceived as a developmental emergence: thebud, the blossom the fruit. I also think it is strange that aftereverything, that after all the myriad details of history Marx

should adopt the model of primogeniture as the means forexplaining the passage of one form of human society to an-other. The idea that much of what capitalism is, ie what Marxcalled the forces of production, as well as the human needsthat this specic form of production presupposes, will becarried into communist society, is truly bafing. It seems notto have occurred to many who advocate self-management toconsider whether the character of technological progression,a progression driven solely by the production of commodi-ties, might cause human society, as it is realised in its needs, toregress. In other words it is not possible for the proletariat tomanage all moments within the development of productiveforces equally - in most situations the character of the pro-ductive forces (what they are, what they do) is in active revoltagainst self-management.

Given that the productive forces dictate the reproduction ofthe productive relations and that communist revolution isrealised by the proletariat expropriating the productive forces

then marxists dene communist society as capitalist produc-tive forces under workers self management, or, as Lenin said,soviet power plus electrication. I nd this conception ofMarxist revolution, of the objective continuity in the accumu-lation of productive activity, to be an unprepossessing pros-pect - it is as Wellington said of Napoleons strategic genius,hes just a pounder after all. Marx is just a pounder after all.

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Perhaps an alternative to the proposed pamphlet would beentitled Anarchism for Marx; the strength of anarchism is itsunder-theoretisation, i.e. its escape from the German Idealistcategories which dominate marxism. Anarchism, or rather,true anarchism (lets say, insurrectionism, primitivism) main-tains its critique of capitalism at the level of intuitive con-sciousness of alienation from the position of actually lived

experience. By contrast, the critique of alienation is almostentirely lost from organisationalist anarchism precisely be-cause of its cross-fertilisation with crude marxism, in fact,class struggle organisationalist anarchism, to the degree that ithas adopted crude marxist economist categories, has given upits critique of the capitalist social relation altogether devel-oping instead a progressivist, forces of production argumentltered through an ideology of self-managment.

...The supposed maturity that rebels accede to when they readMarx is in reality an indicator of their stepping back fromthe critique of capitalism, a coming to terms, a truce with theforces that rst produced their alienation.

As if there were nothing to dispute about the specic natureof the productive forces, as if the material that has beendeveloped from alienated labour can be divided from the ex-ploitative relation which set the process in motion, as if, evenas we make the break from capitalism, we are condemnedto live within the modes of existence that we have inheritedfrom it - that we are objectively, and not merely contingently,

of its lineage. The metaphors of pregnancy that Marx de-ployed as some sort of threat of inevitability through whichcapitalisms limit was set by objective social development,now come back to haunt us... it seems we cannot escape thewomb of our castrating mother, our revolution is dictated bywhat we are in revolt against.

Communism is not a place where meaning will rest and solu-tions be discovered but rather it will hold within its framethe constant and living intensity of relations which we mightterm as, an appropriately scaled and directed revolt against reexive

conditions.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not asit has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary,

just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in everyrespect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped

with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it

emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives backfrom society -- after the deductions have been made -- ex-

actly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his indi-vidual quantum of labour. For example, the social workingday consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the

individual labour time of the individual producer is the part

of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it.He receives a certicate from society that he has furnishedsuch-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour

for the common funds); and with this certicate, he drawsfrom the social stock of means of consumption as much as

the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour

which he has given to society in one form, he receives back inanother.

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Success, or the effects of conscious

purpose on human adaptation

Do you not think that successful struggles within capitalismproduce (however temporarily) the kind of direct social rela-tions between people that pregure communisation? Obvi-ously these cant coexist in a stable way with capitalist ones,either being pushed through to communisation or dissipatingas they achieve their limited goals or are defeated, but thefuture is not of a different dimension to the present, howevermuch of a rupture is required to realise it.

I think the shortest response I can give is that I have at leasta basic grasp of the reasons why our individual assessmentsof the outcomes of particular struggles never exhaust thematter, and that the reception, or recycling, of an outcome isof greater importance than the outcome itself. It is a clich tosay that success is relative but it is also true that further prob-lematics appear from the vantage point of an achieved objec-tive. Each breakthrough discovers another border againstwhich it must set itself.

There are few rules set in advance by which we might predictoutcomes for a potentially communisable endeavour otherthan that it must be commanded by a lived element (ratherthan say, by the unstoppable inertia of historically accumulat-ed forces of production). We cannot say that the demand, theobjective, the organisational vehicle adequately express whatsuccess might be exactly, or what it would mean to us, theseelements are already given, they belong to the political vernac-ular when what is being felt for is that bouncing rhythmicality

of the transcendent.

The abandonment of the critique of alienation

and the fetishisation of Germanist

objectivist/economist categories

Here is a whole different transformation problem to grapplewith: the critique of political economy does not precipitate

any particular set of politics because it is no more than aninterpretive tool for understanding political economy. AsRedtwister/Chris has said elsewhere, the critique of politi-cal economy is not a critique of the capitalist social relation;the former is an analytic/interpretive method, the latter is a

political intervention aimed at the totality of human life in thepresent. There is no necessary connection between the twoand furthermore opposition to capitalism does not requiregrounding in the exegisis of overly-valued texts.

It is clear that marxism has produced a small number ofuseful interpretive tools for the better understanding ofcontingent aspects of human society (although the predic-tive capacity of these tools is extremely limited) however, thepolitical interventions and organisational attempts supposedlyderived from this interpretive method have signally failed

primarily because, in my opinion, they do not accurately lo-cate the essence of human existence, which is not labour butambivalence.

If it is true that anarchists grow up to become marxists, itseems this urge to read Marx is only a pseudo-maturation,by contrast the most interesting marxist politics only really

achieve authentic maturity when they discover the limitationsof their orthodox framework and must depart them (Perlmanis a case in point).

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.

There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we

know we dont know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are

things we dont know we dont know.

-Donald Rumsfeld

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The prosaic framework of our demands does not at all articu-late what it is that we need, which is always something otherthan that set by the terms of the struggle. And when we arenot careful in what we pray for, as in the case of the abolitionof the Poll Tax, we are humiliated by our successes, we ndthey are worth nothing to us. It seems, from experience, thatmore elaborated criteria for evaluating particular successes

can only be applied with rigour retrospectively - unfortu-nately, we are able to understand failure within such endeav-ours after the event but we are not able to extrapolate fromthis a set of criteria for making accurate predictions aboutfurther events. The reverse is true in fact, a successful dem-onstration for example is repeatedly restaged with less andless effect until the organisers have destroyed that bouncingspontaneity which dened the success in the rst place andwhich they have vainly sought to recapture. As a consequenceof the great variety of variables involved, all any of us withan interest in these matters can do in relation to the struggle,is continue as best we think t whilst hopefully developing asubjective and communicable capacity for critical reexivity.

However, this doesnt imply that there is nothing else to sayon the matter. We can at least sketch in some of the param-eters for evaluating relative successes, particularly as this is theissue under discussion here.

The question of success within a hostile environment is es-sentially one of adaptation (and even of exaptation, cooptionand pre-adaptation). But rst we must note and keep in minda taxonomic disjunction which will inuence our evaluationsconcerning the success of an event or project. This disjunc-tion relates to events occurring within different scales, andmay be stated simply as a rule, that which is signicant forthe group or individual is not necessarily signicant for theclass, but that which is signicant for the class is always sig-nicant for the individual or group (although this may not be

consciously recorded as such.)

for all those workers who cant face work without tranquillis-ers, drinking a bottle of whiskey a day, or ghting down there

fear and desperation; and for those who hit their kids, whoget divorced, who get to 60 somehow and then die, havingachieved literally nothing as individuals. This perspective, this

experience, is discounted, if we take the factory system assimply a method of making things. It is ironic, to me, that

much of class struggle politics, idealises the work systemand denies the unhappiness of work.

It really is not okay to say that the misery and early death isworth it. The capitalist system, above all, is located in theexploitation of labour and the conversion of alienated life-force into abstract labour. As a communist I can only attackthe process as an individual work unit (my inuence is belownegligible) but I am in a better position to attack the ideolo-gies that legitimise the system, that have become habituated

to the process and take it to be a second nature. As far asI am concerned communism is the transvaluation of all values, itbrings everything into question, it demands that all aspects of human

being are questioned, negated, altered, re-valued.There is nothingbelonging to now that is not infected with the problems ofnow, therefore everything must be challenged and then chal-lenged again. I will not accept a progressivist/cumulative

account of history because that severs my connection, myhumanity, from all the human beings who have suffered and

died as a result of capitalist process.

As a communist I put actual human experience, and ex-perience is synonymous with shock and pain, at the fore-front of my project. I want to articulate it and I want it tobe addressed. I would suggest that lived experience ratherthan solutions or processes ought to be the main frame ofreference for communist engagement with proletarianisation.

Others will take another view and these different perspectivesare combined socially at a much higher level than individual

opinion but I will ght as best I can for the for-human approach tocommunismand against the tendency to emphasise processwhichoccurs elsewhere within our milieu.9

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If you argue that we must retain factories, you are also argu-ing that we retain the dictatorship by things over life. I see myrole as a communist is to point this out and to problematisethe smug, hostile, intolerant, progressivist accounts of humansociety which see this question as already settled, and which Iwas arguing against. The solutions are not found to the prob-lems of human society and must be undertaken consciously,

piece by piece this other process of setting the human atthe centre of social production rather than as an adjunct tothe production of things, is what I understand communisa-tion to mean.

I do not say I have the solutions to the factory system but, inthe absence of anyone else, I will put forward the perspectivederived from experience of factory conditions, the perspec-tive based on human alienation, I will argue that the illnesses,the drudgery, the pain, the alienation are not worth it forsake of the bigger picture. I do not say my view cancelsevery other view out, only that it must be taken account of. Iattempt to express the human costs of factory life.

I understand that most of the people I was arguing againstare white collar workers, thats okay, that is what I am nowbut I also have direct experience of factory conditions, oforganising with factory/manual workers and intimate experi-ence of the health costs of factory production. My father

worked 40 years in a factory, when he retired he died froma work related lung illness (idiopathic aveolitis) caused frominhaling solder fumes. His brothers have the same illness,because they worked the same lines... millions and millionsof people have lived truncated, damaged, unfullled livesbecause of their employment in the factories. Sometimes inthe mid-90s my wife had to force me to go to work, we wereliving in such desperate conditions; I would literally cry as Icycled miles to work at 4 in the morning. I would drink my-self stupid at weekends and sleep like death only for it all to

start again on Monday. Every aspect of our lives was dictatedto by the miseries of work. I speak from my life experience,

In other words, none of us as individuals can really perceivein its entirety the complexity of the conditions which havecreated our cognitive-perceptive faculties.

Historical society is a stochastic system based upon the sepa-ration of what we as humans are consciously capable of onone side (e.g. elective, direct relations) and all the random

factors which thwart consciousness on the other. The natureof the relation of part to whole means that we (from theperspective of being a part within the whole) are unableto pass nal judgement on the determination of surfaceevents by shifts in underlying general relations (our infer-ences within this eld are fraught with dangers). If successis nality, i.e. the loss of energy from a particular struggle,then it is a condition reached only by transformations occur-ing beyond the terms of the struggle, that is when historicalconditions themselves have changed. Otherwise, as a con-ict remains current, its status and signicance is subject tomultiple reversals - it may have seemed to those participatingthat a particular event, say the 1905 revolution, was a disasterbut then later it may be viewed as, for example, a necessarystep (and visa versa, a perceived great success may turn outto have subsequent negative effects - the dispersing effects ofthe anti-poll tax or anti-CPE campaigns as examples).

Taking the denition of success you mention above as direct

social relations that pregure communisation with the pro-viso obviously, these cant coexist in a stable way with capi-talist ones... etc. we understand the concept success struc-turally to mean an event or tendency which feeds back intoits environment and changes it. From this denition we cango on to identify positive successes and negative successes,the former where, as you say, a set of relations are pushedthrough to communisation, the latter being the productionof unforeseen and hostile outcomes (the negative success ofthe situationists occurs to me as an immediate example).

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Beyond the limited particularity of specic struggles, suc-cess in terms of the general social relation would be denedby a higher rate in occurrence of similarly identiable eventswhich presently only occur sporadically. A higher rate of dis-crete successes during moments of social crisis could be seenas an identiable pattern or movement particularly whenthey begin to feed into each other, culminating in the genera-

tion of an autonomous environment, or cycle, of successfuloccurrences. Evidently, such a movement would only occurwhen underlying conditions have themselves changed, thesuccesses acting as an expression of the separation of eventsfrom the previous form of the relation.

But our understanding of what are, essentially, autonomouszones still founders on the (Hegelian) logical paradox ofcontainment of smaller events by larger forces, i.e. if a localstrike culminates in a success then this outcome remainswithin a context of hostile relations - and thus still expressesthe length and breadth of that relation.

Ordinarily understood, successful discrete opposition to thegeneral conditions which gives rise to the particular forms ofopposition in the rst place, never exceeds the limits of thoseconditions. Specic manifestations of success are equallyexpressions of systemic success. The tension between anenvironment and its supported lifeforms perhaps is the main

factor which ensures the health of that environment. DuringDecember 2008 Greek anarchists exploited the 1974 asy-lum law, which has forbidden entry to the universities by thepolice unless they are invited by the university authorities, inthe cause of their protests. The social standing of the autono-mous base nuclei that has developed on the legal frameworkof asylum in Greece is derived from the militarys attack onstudent occupiers of the Athens Polytechnic in 1973 when 24students were killed. In other words, although the anarchistsseem to successfully attack their conditions, this success also

successfully expresses the legally dened limits of those con-

My argument is that because they have let go their critiqueof work, the entire body of their critique of capitalism hasshifted. They have ended up actually afrming the greaterpart of capitalism. To understand this, it is important to seewhat capitalism is as a social relationship rather than, say, as asystem of producing things. It is important to think of it as arelation between people rather than, a process of getting jobs

done, things produced etc.

If we look at the various moments in the most basic circuitof capitalism, this issue becomes clearer: (a) the conversionof life energy into labour; (b)the channelling and exploitationof labour within imposed processes; (c)the conversion oflabour (representing life energy) into both (i)material thingsand a further abstraction into (ii) Value; (d) Value retains thelife energy of human energy but in abstracted form, its poweris then deployed to attract and combine further life energy soas to reproduce itself in a spiral of abstraction, condensation,precipitation.

This process is concentrated in what we recognise asfactories. Yes, factories produce things but their mainpurpose is to convert life energy into higher and more potentforms of abstract Value. In order to routinize or preserve thiscircuit of energy conversion, by which life is converted toconcentrated, truncated behaviours timed in hours, measured

in outputs of things, capital has to ensure the factorisationof the entirety of life; this is called proletarianisation, orthe reproduction of labour. The reproduction of labour isensured by the conversion of life into things which becomethe object and purpose of individual life. These dead thingswhich are the output of alienated activity, because they arethe object of life, literally tell us what to do; our life is gov-erned/corrected/channelled as if we were the products ona production line and the processes of production were themost important thing in life.

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The critique of alienation vs. the

critique of political economy

Well, no doubt it will be some form of factory/mass pro-duction. It is not for me to say, it is a problem that must besettled at a higher organising level than individual opinion.The point is to ask this question: what is the appropriatecommunist response to the basic capitalist mode of accumu-lation and production? As far as I am concerned, it is to ndfault, and problematise the totality of what currently existsrather than attempting to isolate, afrm and identify with

aspects of capitalism which you agree with.

Do not forget, that the people arguing favour of factoriesalso argued in favour in prisons, they also argued in favourof forced medicalisation of those who refused it, they alsodenied any relation between the stress of modern life and thecauses/exacerbation of illness.

In other words, these people do not have much of a critiqueof capitalism, in fact they afrm all the historical objec-tive forces and preserve their critique purely for the politicaldirection, or management of, those forces. IN my opinion,the identication with contingent historic forms of theproductive forces of society is an anti-proletarian ideology,it neglects, even negates peoples experience of their conver-sion into labour units. For them, communism is materially thesame as capitalism only with a more humane form of gov-ernment although, as I have pointed out, their version ofhumane is rather prescriptive and intolerant of those who

disagree with it.

ditions. Success, in conventional terms is always supported bythe environment of which it is a product... a dened environ-ment of available resources is able to support a greater orlesser diversity of successes in terms of lifeforms, popula-tions, behaviours etc. and which, at all levels, always tend tooptimise the resources that are available to themselves. In thisway, success should be understood as an optimised relation

between competing species and between the species (indi-vidually and collectively) and the environment of which theyare an outcome.

The supportive environment only reaches a critical conditionwhen a particular form of success expropriates resourcesbeyond the ordinary limit of what is available to it. A positivefeedback loop exacerbates the success of a particular out-come of an environment at the environments expense - inthis situation, the system itself behaves in such a manner thatfacilitates the continued uncontrolled growth of just one ofits outcomes at the expense of diverse others. In the case ofthe Greek anarchists, a feedback runaway would have beenestablished, that is a truly extralegal position would have beenachieved, only where the supportive legal environment passedinto a critical condition, thus exacerbating the revolt. Appar-ently, such an exacerbation is possible only where those whoactively produce society withdraw their productive activity.This simalaneously adds to the destabilising factors whilst

subtracting essential elements from ordinary process. If thesereinforcing factors do not occur then the apparent subjectivesuccess remains within the terms and resources allocated tosocial dissonance by a system that retains its equilibrium inpart via a dened quantity of revolt. The continued equilib-rium of an enviromental system is its denition of success,and this is attained by means of nourishing a proliferation indiverse life-forms. Evidently, this systemic success is of adifferent magnitude to that of the anarchists in Athens, bearmarkets spirals on the stock exchanges, the spread of cholera

in Zimbabwe, or the locust swarms in Australia.

Your opponents seemed so intent on convincing the two of you otherwise

(that factories cannot exist in any form whatsoever in communism), that

they forgot to ask a simple yet crucial question. I am not interested in

arguing for the existence of factories under communism, but your position

begs the question: how exactly will we build anything in communism then?

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At this point, we must set ourselves this question: what dowe think is the historical signicance of discreet examplesof direct social relations? If we hold to an aggregationalperspective, as do many political activists, then we wouldargue that there must be a colonisation of the world successby success; we would also argue that struggles must be con-nected and that this conscious imposition of connectivity will

eventually achieve a critical mass. But if we maintain an es-sentially Hegelian understanding (by which I mean the local isdetermined by the structure of the general) then all successesremain within a hostile territory and still express the depthand exibility of the totality of the social relations of whichthey are a product.

As we go... Back, back and forth and forth. This is not todeny that the territory itself sometimes become uid and thatthe simultaneous spontaneous appearance in many differentlocations of similar events and actions are the rst indicatorsof a possible alteration in the general relation. Even so, iden-tifying what is new and belonging on a new designed terrainwill not be an easy matter when so much else is thrown upinto the air simultaneously.

We are left with a structural paradox, something like a Catch22, in order for communising acts to occur there must rstbe general communist relations and yet this generality has

no prospect of becoming established without identiableinstances of communisation undertaken by actually iden-tiable groups of people. Similarly, although capitalism wasderived from the activity of actual human beings, the capital-ist organisation of these people, and the globalised capitalistsocial relation always existed prior to any specic capitalistundertaking. The structure must be in place so that instancesbelonging to it are validated by it. Unfortunately, for thoseinvolved (and how is this for a lapse into calvinist theology?)the signicance of communising undertakings, does not lie in

the authenticity of the acts themselves, but in their increased

That messianic time is not a rupture with what has gone be-fore, in the sense of a separate future but rather the predict-ing of a different past. I am thinking of that line in NegativeDialectics, history is not a steam roller, Adorno at his mostBenjamin-like.

Very often philosophy by which I mean the abandonning of

lines in favour of elds occurs at the point where indi-viduals cease to adhere to an ism... so it is that departuresfrom orthodoxy become fascinating (e.g. Camatte, Foucault,Perlman, Debord, Deleuze... these are people who departedset frameworks). It is often said that anarchists grow up tobecome marxists but the best of the marxists grow up torediscover, what we shall call, anarchism (an unacceptabledesignation but one which denes that other place beyondintellectual commitment their becoming honest and thesubstitution of desire with acceptance of, and honesty be-fore, the big A other of systemic failure).

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At this point, it is appropriate to mention that I am notbeholden to the underlying pragmatist conception of humannature that most leftists adhere to - I am not hung up onbringing the masses to a rational evaluation of their interest. Ido not accept that the proletariat lack a necessary conscious-ness-component or that the addition of such a componentwould improve the prospect of their interest if expressed

in the revolutionary events that might attempt to follow the(inadequate) political outlines of such a consciousness. Theimplication of this is that the proletariat does not behave asthe left expects it to, that is in accordance with a rationalisedrepresentation of its interest, and nor will it ever achieve thatdegree of subjectivity.

Although, this will seem like some late addition to the post-Kojeve framing of French intellectual life of the mid-1950sit remains the case that when we are evaluating instances of

success we soon discover that we are simultaneously chartingthe movement of the Other, and the movement of the (bigA) Other takes on very precise forms as it drifts through proj-ects, events, organisations, causing them to fail. We can seefrom the operation of rationalised systems, and communismin most formulations appears as the successful implementa-tion of a rationalised productivist system that is organisedaround instituted claims for use-value, that they tend to pro-duce curiously characteristic displacements of irrationality, to

give 3 mentioned examples from the news in the last week:

1. The economic dependence on intricately planned globaldistribution has produced lucrative opportunities for pirateswho happen to be located, inopportunely for insurance com-panies, in Somalia (a failed nation) for ease of operation inthe Gulf of Aden where information concerning the highlyco-ordinated movement of shipping is obviously available onthe black-market.

2. The increased use of surveillance cameras in the UK per-haps 4.2million (some utilising face recognition technology)alongside harvesting technologies such as the national DNAdatabase of 3.1 million people (the Forensic Science Servicecan handle 10,000 crime stain samples and 50,000 individualsdna samples per month) indicates a massive technologisationof forensic investigation. And yet this investment in forensic

systems has resulted in a decline in violent crime detectionfrom 71% in 1998/9 to 49% in 2006/7 (that is, during thevery period we would expect a sharp rise in technologi-cally driven convictions). Rationalised processing within thecriminal justice industry produces strange transgressive ghostssuch as the German woman without a face who has accord-ing to forensic investigation left a dna trace at more than 20scenes of theft, assault and murder, hundreds of miles apartand over a 10 year period.

3. The violent death of the child legally designated Baby Poccurred not only under intensive scruitny by child protectionagencies but also because of active decisions that they made.This case is is an exemplar for the critique of the welfarestate form, within it we nd a number of systemic failuresof which I will list a few. The rst is stated in the principleeverything that can go wrong must go wrong (or Mur-phys Law) but it is a characteristic of defensively designedbureaucratic structures that if every unit can malfunction

individually then, at some random point, every unit will gowrong simultaneously and systemically (a negative exampleof transcendent bounce). Another aspect of systemic failureis a process of desensitisation to, and relativisation of, ethicalvalues. Professional detachment shades into brutalised indif-ference - managers, case workers and clients learn the limitsof the system and play it as a game. This periodically reachesa cyclical climax in bursts of vile, and always unprecedented,irrationality. As a subset of this, tolerance levels are denedvery precisely, but also rigidly, and it is easy to lose sight of

the wider picture, after all, what is being managed here isabuse of young people by older people.

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