Whatever happened to "For Ourselves"? (1976)

Introduction

All of you who are being sent this letter, whether you are a long-standing correspondent of FOR OURSELVES or someone who has written to us within the last six months for the first time, will have noticed our silence and wondered what it meant. This letter and the signed statements which it introduces are intended to clarify what has happened.

FOR OURSELVES has dissolved as a distinct group with a more or less continuous shared activity. However, the fallacy of the traditional "letter of dissolution" is that it implies an abstract negation; that what was "something" has become "nothing". It is rather the case that something has become something else. We do not see the dissolution of FO as a regression, but as the beginning of a process of supersession, of going beyond what we were and did together. Thus, in the statements which follow, we attempt to define what we are becoming, as well as to clarify what we were, and what went wrong with it.

In past letters of dissolution we have seen, there has been a tendency to discuss only the theoretical differences which led to the break; or to imagine that, because this particular organization proved impossible, all organization of revolutionaries is impossible. For our part, we want to avoid both these ideological tendencies: we want to locate FOR OURSELVES in its historical context and to reveal something of our "interpersonal" processes, our day-to-day practice, as the concrete conditions in which our theoretical and practical differences evolved.

Because a unity of perspective can precisely no longer be assumed among the former members of FO, we are in no sense agreed upon this document as a whole. Instead, the former members who so wished have each contributed their own analyses and perspectives, which are contained in the signed statements. These individuals can be contacted through the names and addresses they have given.

ex-FOR OURSELVES

1/12/76

Contents

• For Ourselves: A history and a psychological critique
• For Ourselves is gone: long live the proletariat for itself!
• The No Growth Political Economy of For Ourselves - Jenny
• No More "FOR OURSELVES", But Still For Ourselves - Feanor
• FOR OURSELVES: Elements for a Self-Critique
• Untitled - Charles Lutwildge