Over a century has passed since the critique of the economy (1) put forward that the dictatorship of value valorising itself is the essence of capitalist society and that the usefulness of the objects produced is merely a means serving this omnipresent dictatorship. Use value merely supports exchange value, value in process.

All misery, all dictatorships, all wars, all human exploitation and oppression are the expression of this infernal tyranny of value that has become the true subject, the God of the whole society.

The world is not ruled by ideas, politics or laws but by the economy, thirst for profit and money; ideas, politics, rights and state terrorism only serve to maintain and consolidate the expanded reproduction of this tyranny.

In other words, the state, democracy,... ie. the structuring of Capital as a force of domination (in whatever form it organises itself), only prolong of the profound dictatorship of value over human life. Terrorism, be it overt or covert, parliamentarist or bonapartist, fascist or antifascist, is no more than the expression of the merciless reality of a world submitted to the law of value.

The fact of showing that exploitation, dictatorship, oppression, misery,... are not caused by any particular person, "exploiting boss" or government with a crazy or racist leadership (2), but are the inevitable expression of the development of value in process, was a theoretical point of decisive importance for the revolutionary movement. Demonstrating that all contradictions and torments of bourgeois society are already contained in the basic cells of this society, in the commodity, in the contradiction between use and exchange value, was not only an added stimulus for the process of the development of international revolutionary associationism over the years, but also brought clear elements of revolutionary direction and programmatical content.

Of course, all these programmatical affirmations, this theory which strips capitalism bare, were the product of international worker associationism at a moment of affirmation, and, as Marx and Engels frequently stated, were the work of the Party... This organisational and programmatical strengthening of the revolutionary movement concretised itself later in the Communist Party Manifesto, in the development of the revolutionary press, in the proletariat’s direct action, its efforts of centralisation,... as well as later in the First International, the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in Mexico (1868-1870), in France (1870-1871), etc.

Communism thus armed itself with decisive weapons to understand and denounce any kind of reformism and made a fundamental step towards the affirmation of its own programme. Indeed, at the same time, a huge number of theories and bourgeois parties (both formal and informal social-democratic) aimed at the workers were expressing themselves for the first time as a reaction to the development of the proletarian movement. These forces and ideologies denounced some of the evils of bourgeois society and proposed "solutions" and reforms that left the essence of mercantile society intact, for example Proudhon’s theory and plans. Some called themselves socialist, progressive, anarchist, social-democratic, communist, anti-authoritarian,... but it was clear (3) that they were just the miserable expression of the left of bourgeois society itself and their programme only proposed to eliminate one or other "unfortunate" consequence of mercantile society, leaving the basic cell (the commodity), its reproduction, value producing society and thus exchange and wage labour intact.

Thus the practical antagonism of revolutionary movement versus reformism and the affirmation of the programme of the revolution itself developed and asserted themselves simultaneously. A change of government, the "democratisation" of a state, state control of the means of production, agrarian reform, banks for the poor or remuneration based on labour vouchers... can never truly oppose the general dictatorship of value valorising itself and it is ridiculous to think that they could. The only solution, for the whole of humanity, is the abolition of the law of value, the total and despotic destruction of the tyranny of the economy. This is the centre, the heart of the communist programme, the key to the invariance of the revolutionary programme for the destruction of capitalism as much for today’s militants as for the militants of yesterday.

The need for the violent destruction of all bourgeois social structures, for the proletariat to organise into class and party, for the dictatorship of the poor and later, more clearly, for the dictatorship of the proletariat had already been expressed long before Marx and Engels systematised the essence of the revolutionary programme around the destruction of the economy. With Marx and Engels, the need for and the possibility of dictatorship of the proletariat found its practical basis, thus relegating to utopia any pretentions to radical change without the destruction of the commodity. The revolutionary dictatorship for the abolition of the mercantile society was then practically (although not always formally) written on the flag of every real proletarian struggle against capitalism and the state.

Up until then revolutionaries had been seen as utopians (4), but were now able to show that it is actually reforms or partial "revolutions" that constitute utopias.

"It is not radical revolution or universal human emancipation which is a utopian dream...; it is the partial, merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the building standing" (K.Marx, "Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right", 1844.)

The ABC of the revolutionary programme: the dictatorship of the proletariat

Considering the extent of the distortion and ideological falsification characterising the present time, it is not superfluous to clarify an ABC of the revolutionary programme. The essence of capitalism today is (and it could not be any other way) exactly the same as yesterday. As we have said many times before, the revolutionary programme is invariant; only the dictatorship of the proletariat and the resulting abolition of the commodity and wage-labour can bring a real solution for humanity.

We would very much like to reopen the discussion on the content and extent of what we, the communists, call the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat; we would like to concentrate on certain aspects of our programme that have been distorted and corrupted by the counterrevolution and that will be essential at the time of the next worldwide revolutionary wave of struggle.

Starting from the historical necessity for the destruction of the dictatorship of value, it will be of prime importance to fight against all ideologies (like that of one-nation socialism) that see the dictatorship of the proletariat as a political dictatorship, as a formal dictatorship of one or other sector or party of the "proletariat" or "socialist party". We must oppose them with our own conception that the social character (the total character) of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the historical revenge of use value against value, the affirmation of human necessities against value in process. This clarifies why the proletariat has never been able to impose its dictatorship and that, as the antagonism which will triumph against commodity and all its laws, can only impose itself on a worldwide scale. It then becomes clear that, apart from certain struggles of class against class, as in Mexico at the beginning of this century, in Russia from ’17 to ’19, in Germany a little later or in Spain in the 30’s, when we fought against the thousand and one expressions of the law of value, it is a nonsense to talk about "dictatorship of the proletariat" in any country. Even in exemplary cases of organisation of revolutionary action by our class we have just mentionned, we can only talk about prefiguration and attempts to impose class dictatorship - not about the dictatorship of the proletariat itself, which can only be worldwide.

In the same way that revisionism and reformism invented the absurd theory of one-nation socialism and the dominant class of the world took pleasure in talking about "socialist countries" or "communist countries", certain more radical sectors of the marxist bourgeois Left invented the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country or, worse still, the theory of the workers’ state, first in Russia and later in other countries.

We also want to stress how the need to abolish autonomous decisions by productive units, to abolish the autonomy of sellers and buyers, of supply and demand and to abolish the equality of the individual and his freedom to decide (the very basis of mercantile society) is an essential aspect of the dictatorship of the proletariat and will be decisive in coming battles of the proletariat. We want to emphasise that the dictatorship of the proletariat will not only have to abolish firms in their present condition, but also units which are autonomous in their decision-making, whether as groups of factories or as economic sectors, as both of these imply the existence of exchange between them. We want to show the vital need to abolish democracy in all its expressions, not only parliamentary but also "councilist", workerist, etc. Last, but not least, we would like to develop the key elements in the fight against the ensemble of ideologies (such as federalism, workerism, "anarchism",...) which will be an obstacle to the development of revolutionary and organic centralisation against the law of value.

The programmatical determinations of revolution develop in antagonism to the programmatical determinations of capitalism and to its attempts at reform, which is precisely whywe feel it is indispensable to draw these general lines concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat in this text on the dictatorship of value, the dictatorship of the economy. However, further development of topics linked to the destruction of the dictatorship of value will take us too far away from the aims of this text and will soon be the focus of another text (5).

Open discourse on the dictatorship of the economy

Here we want to underline some aspects of the dictatorship of the economy today, the modern development of the dictatorship imposed by value in process on all spheres of human life, the current forms of dominant discourse which aim to increasingly subject human beings to the faceless monster which is the economy.

Even though the dictatorship of the economy has always been a constant feature of capital, it nevertheless required a long process before the duty to serve the economy, the need to sacrifice oneself for competitiveness, the obligation to make an effort for the national economy or any demand to tighten belts to "boost" the economy could be declared openly. Much water has gone under the bridge and much blood been shed throughout the world until it has finally become accepted as the natural order of things that man is worthless and the only thing that matters is the national economy, competitiveness...

Although bourgeois society, and particularly the national economy, has always considered human beings as a mere means of enrichment, capitalism in previous centuries concealed its aims (at least ideologically and partially) and no government would have been able to say, as openly as they do today, that people must sacrifice their life in the interests of the economy. Dominant factions of the bourgeoisie looked for (and, for the most part, found) ways of presenting the interests and needs of their class and faction as beneficial to their own class in the first instance and, second, to the whole society (an essential condition to enable class domination to impose itself without any major explosions). They never tired of repeating that the problems of the disinherited masses would be solved in the medium or long term and that the world would become a better place. Governments promised a brilliant future in the same way that priests promised the kingdom of heaven.

Today, there is no such talk, no further promises of a better future on earth, no mention of a solution to hunger and misery - they state openly and defiantly that we must continue to sweat our guts out and that the future will be even worse. In the past, although few believed it, it was said that misery would decline, that the starving and miserable would be saved by economic growth and that, in the future, there would be less and less of them. Today, they do not even attempt to hide the fact that in the world they promise, there will always be people in rags, ever more and more on the scrap heap.

Politicians and governments no longer make speeches demanding sacrifices in the name of a better world for all. They openly state the need to condemn more people to unemployment, starvation, misery,... the need to make cut-backs in social expenditure, etc, because the economy requires it in order to make businesses competitive. Given that the development of capital imposes one sole programme on all bourgeois factions, the more uniform their speeches become, the more apparent it is that there are no differences between politicians and governments. Their electoral campaigns, their parliamentary struggles and their coups are not setting different programmes or factions against each other, but are only quarrelling over their share of the spoils, bribes and other tricks, which is doled out according to the fierceness/eagerness of their struggle to increase exploitation and the appropriation of surplus-value: the greater their capacity to give a framework and to adhere to austerity measures, the greater their share.

The economy itself has become the dominant issue for all politicians and all governments. In the past, the decisive place of the economy was hidden behind religion, politics or various other ideologies and there was no way in which it could be used as an argument of force against human beings; moreover, a politician or a government would fall into disgrace if he dared to reveal the secret of domination and openly declare that all should be sacrificed on the altar of the economy, of the national economy’s competitiveness.

The original guilt complex of the bourgeoisie (that imposed its social system in the name of the people and social equality -"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity") lead it to hide the fact that this system sacrifices human beings on the altar of money. Politicians hid what cynical and lucid bourgeois economists (such as David Ricardo) had discovered and written down in their scientific works. Politicians, ideologists, and governors assumed the task of keeping the "secret" in the circle of the "initiated". Today, on the contrary, they proclaim it far and wide: the only thing that matters is the drive for profit, the competitiveness of the national economy and if people must starve for it, then this is just a necessary evil. Every politician tries to show off his entrepreneurial skills, calling on the population to work harder and earn less.

The destruction of man and of solidarity between men has reached paranoid levels: It has become normal, logical and natural that people should starve to allow businesses to be profitable. In the same way that we are advised to take our umbrella with us when it is raining, we are told that hundreds of thousands of people, millions of human beings will have to suffer for the sake of the national economy, and that the only way to escape this disaster is to work harder. As a way of trying to deprive us of our last remaining grains of class solidarity, it is suggested that we give a donation to an NGO or buy non-perishable goods at our local corner shop for them to send to the poor in another part of the world. Sacrifice and individual welfare are the order of the day.

Further explanation or justification is not really necessary - it is obvious that the degree of separation, of alienation from human need and human community is so enormous that is seems perfectly normal to everybody for a politician to drone on for hours about economic statistics, the need for people to make sacrifices and the benefits for businesses. The concrete, the reality of man, is turned into a complete abstraction, so that what appears to be concrete and real for the amorphous mass of citizen-spectators is infact a total abstraction: the well-being of the country, the future of the national economy. The famous revolution in communication, that has infact resulted in human separation at levels never previously experienced, is a decisive factor in this generalised abstraction of the human race. It would have been totally impossible to convince a proletarian in past centuries or at the beginning of this century that it was not him, his comrades, his children, his parents,... that is to say his class, humanity... that mattered, but rather the "Maastricht criteria", the Mercosur (6), "Plan A or Plan B", the "benefits to our economy offered by the latest tax",... and this abstraction has a greater right to exist than man made of flesh and blood. This is why any proletarian acting according to his needs and the needs of his class is conspiring against established democratic order.

It is beyond the framework of this text to discuss up to what point this situation marks the objective and historical limits of the whole of the bourgeois social system, given that the ruling class is no longer able to offer any viable plan for the human race or, on the contrary, whether the present situation reveals that this system can carry on imposing any kind of sacrifice, given that the proletariat is not capable of reconstituting itself as class, as an historical force at this time in our history. In any case, we think that both these realities characterise the present international situation, in so far as the ruling class always acts as if it has no limits and the proletariat only occasionally and regionally responds, without managing to constitute itself into a worldwide force. This situation continues to determine an ensemble of contradictory characteristics in present-day struggles (7).

"Crisis" or "recovery", it’s always the same old song

"The crisis has arrived, we have to tighten our belts", "the recovery is fragile, just a little bit more effort",... "we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, now is not the time to be making demands", "We are doing better, but growth is still weak"... is what we hear from the left and from the right of this spectacle aimed at submitting us to the dictatorship of the economy. If this damned economy goes wrong we have to make sacrifices to put it back on track, if it’s going okay, we have to continue to make an effort so as not to thwart it and so as to improve it even more, if it is struggling, we have to make further sacrifices to enable it to recover. This is the ever clearer order of the system that we are subjected to. What they are telling us is "keep on rowing, it’s impossible to leave this galley."

It is like believing in Father Christmas to live in hope that a government, a political party, a union or a TV channel,... will ever announce the good news that we can now make the most of life with no more sacrifices, that we will live a better life and even the poorest will be privileged, with increases in wages and social assistance, all of us working less and eating more.

Notes

1. To be more accurate, we should say "the criticism of economy in its theoretical expression" because we are referring to the first theoretical formulations and explanations of this process. In reality, the dictatorship of value has developed since the origin of exchange, the autonomisation of exchange value and the development of the general equivalent, up until the institution of the community of money as the sole and unique community of yielded men: the whole of the human species is submitted to this dictatorship (practice will show, against all kinds of ideologies, including "marxist" ones, that since that historical moment, regardless of immediate forms of production, human beings have become nothing more than a labour force for the reproduction of world capital). As the proletariat is the very object of this dictatorship and opposes it in a total, existential and vital way, its criticism of the economy begins with its own existence.

2. Of course, capitalism still teaches that some bosses are exploiters (as if they were not all) or that dictatorship, war and barbarism can be blamed on some crazy men such as Pinochet, Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

3. The term "clear" is not to be taken in the democratic sense of the word, meaning that the majority of proletarians would clearly spot their enemy within these movements, but in the sense that the social practice of all reformism objectively opposes itself to the historical and social interests of the whole of the proletariat, in the sense that any reformism reproduces and maintains mercantile society, the root of all evil. Only a more or less organised minority, more or less centralised into an autonomous force depending on the epoch, can openly and explicitly denounce it. It is obvious that the affirmation of the revolutionary programme, the result of the general antagonism of the whole of the proletariat against capitalist society, can only be consciously crystallised by a minority of proletarians; to pretend the opposite would be equivalent to working towards the dissolution of the class, sabotaging the historical action of the constitution of the proletariat into the party.

4. We do not mean that up until that moment total revolution has been a utopia, but that until then the programmes, social projects had stemmed from the ideas and desires of revolutionaries and were still mixed up with the purification of the world of that time. Therefore, although the revolutionaries’ acts totally opposed those of the reformists, their projects did not express the same level of rupture and antagonism. For example, we are referring to everything that has been called "utopian socialism and communism" in which revolutionary affirmations coexisted with minor reforms of the bourgeois world.

5. The best way to develop these points lies in the analysis of the experience of the proletariat in its revolutionary attempts, more specifically in the analysis of the causes of its defeats. In this sense, we are continuing our fundamental programmatical work on the revolutionary period 1917-1923 worldwide, as well as the revolutionary attempts in Mexico at the beginning of the century and in Spain in the 30’s.

6. Commercial agreements uniting Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

7. On this subject, also read "General Characteristics of the struggles of the present time", in Communism n°9.

8. This does not mean that this article is any more or less important than other more abstract or global texts such as the introduction to the dictatorship of the economy. Both texts express different levels of the same content that are both necessary and essential for our struggle.

The first one "The Economy is in crisis... May it die!" was translated and published in French in 1998. Written by Akefalos in Spain, it talks about the dictatorship of economy, the real domination of monetary abstraction and, while formulating a classist criticism of capital and state, it describes with precision and richness the present forms of domination, separation of human beings, imposition of dominant ideology, of citizenship, of generalised imbecilisation.

The second text "Death to recovery" was published in french in Communisme nº 42 (1995). Written on a relatively concrete and illustrative level it shows, on the basis of official figures and quotations (8), that even given the best possible scenario, the situation of the proletariat is getting worse and worse.

Written at different periods, in different countries and in different circumstances, they both denounce essentially the same thing. They both express the struggle against the current, criticise the official discourse of all bourgeois fractions and oppose capital and the state with the direct action of the proletariat.

________________________________________

The Economy is in crisis...

May it die!

* * *

We won’t believe in the crisis until the rich begin killing themselves

Extracts (1)

The bluff of the year ’92 has passed (2). After having hypnotised people with a "prosperous" period featuring the consumption of rubbish, debt, and the growth of speculative benefits, now the crisis is being pushed on us. Ah yes, the national selection won the medal and the untouchable Barça won the soccer championship. Some time before the PSOE, with its reconversion, as a loyal servant of Capital carried out the transición (3) and began the modernisation of Oppression in an accelerated way. In doing so it erased from the map the assembly movements, which characterised the end of Franquism and the transición. Civilised trade-unionism was implanted and ill-being was framed in the language of state-capital: economy, politics. When trade-unions (and other forms of civic opposition) say No we can be sure that it’s a Yes in disguise, in that the State needs an opposition to carry out sham strikes so as to demobilise and discourage people. In government/trade-union negotiations the function of the latter appears clearly in the spectacular game of politics: control the poor and inject the "raison d’état" into our heads.

We live in a society in which politics have displaced the very language of the oppressed (4). This lie is decided, managed, and disguised into a single reality. Our misery and our monotony are managed. Wealth, which is already abstract and non-existent is managed like God in the middle ages. No one can be outside of today’s christianism: the cult of monetary abstraction, Economy, and Politics. Projects are managed and developed to manage the deficits, benefits, and repression.

The social priests with their social services domesticate, recompose, re-use marginality for the humanitarian commerce of the concept of Solidarity, reappropriated by the State. The spectacle of social costs, and their decrease, and of the fictitious struggle that’s created once more, are developed.

The useless, the fired, and the specialists of social emptiness investigate, calculate, redefine the problems so as to solve them through their own self-perpetuation. In reality, they are our problems.

Marginalisation takes place by putting people on the dole for life. Marginalisation takes place through the fruitful business of drug repression, of "delinquency", thanks to the great commerce of total control of society. They manage, manage, manage,... They manage as they infest our lives with "security" and with mortal social boredom.

The means of communication diffuse their lies, the hypocritical gesticulations of superfluous commercials of information. Our neurones are paralysed... Beware! They speak, inform, broadcast, sell, form. They destroy, immobilise what exists, the desire of life which is revolt, and which only takes on an existence when it dies and becomes sellable by all mediums (of diffusion). Only their vision of the world exists, a world in their image and which resembles them.

They frighten us. They incite fear in us. They integrate us into their paranoid game of apparent realities. Computer control, control through information, political circus, invention of races, reality show, recyclable ecological-and-selling-so-very-well survival, they close us into this routine.

How to define this "modern" permanent counterrevolution in this piece of the pie?

At the end of the 1960s there developed a process of modernisation of oppression throughout Europe (5) (in part so as to end the wild and non-mediated struggles such as the French May ’68 or the Italian autumn), which made the world even more unbearable for us. The real communication, without any intermediary, which had risen up from experience and struggle was cut. The gap which separated the ruling class, the State, and the oppressed, and which could be perilous for domination, is overcome by politics, trade-unionism, consumerism, and the need of money. Money brings about distance and isolation among the poor. The need of money determines a qualitative loss in relations (6). The anguish of money as a distorting element comes into our behaviour: appearance, facade. We show it all, we have to show it all even though we know very well that we can never own more than a tiny part, generally the most kitsch, the ersatz...

The caricature of "wealth" is shown, and it is precisely a caricature because it is exhibited in the world of the poor.

All we know about the world of the rich is what we are shown on television series. And we know that there is nothing more fake, but it’s also what we most desire and what we imitate the most.

Society shows itself capable, time and again, to digest and sometimes to create revolts, be it through repression, recuperation, or both at the same time. The dynamism of society manages to integrate, be it willingly, or by force.

During the transición and under the government of the PSOE the domesticating role of the trade-unions, as apparatuses in the service of State-Capital was quite clear. Faced with these trade-unions there were, at times, assembly movements (7) which in outflanking them confronted capital. The State recreated the trade-unions so as to control struggles through bureaucracy, representation, and the act of negotiating by delegation. Today the trade-unions have very few adherents.

They reach less than 15% of wage workers (8) and are greatly subsidised by the State. Thus they form an integrated part of the State and are, in themselves, an institution of the latter at the same time as its best servant.

The "Raison d’état" ended up imposing itself by liquidating the assembly movement through trade-union recuperation, repression (many times very bloody as in the case of Vitoria, Reinosa, Euskalduna, against the dockers,... going so far as to murder proletarians), and division. It managed in this way to impose its dynamic, its discourse, its way of living.

Democratic spectacle tries to channel social insubordination. The very holy trinity State-Capital-Economy is above all criticism and so is unattackable. Everything is submitted to the logic of money, that is, to the logic of mere subsistence, all the way to its maximal expression of economic abstraction. Abstraction of a lie, which is universal and in which we believe.

The impossible ideal of modern capitalism is to transform metropolitan workers into middle-managers. Faced with this collective failure, an important part of workers and a great deal of developing countries (9) are forced into misery and marginality. The lie of belonging to a pacifist middle class, serves as to muffle the blow of potential social deflagration. Absurd notions such as users and civic spirit appear here. They flow out of, and also provoke, the submission of daily behaviour. Citizens? A grateful term used by the masters for the good slaves, poor but honest.

And in the idea of a middle class appears a new contradiction: decrease in budgets, increasingly costly standard of living, and new commercial expansion for the big ones. The multinationals dominate the market, absorb and annihilate the little ones and, at the same time, decentralise production in small groups which, in most cases are only companies which hide the reality of autonomous workers, dependent on the multinational itself, or else they create centres where new urban workers are hired by the day.

Of course with this crisis yuppies aren’t jumping out of windows

Immersed in the shit of survival loaded with alluring advertisements and shop windows ready to rob us of our miserable wages. The ground is strewn with coins or alms for those on the dole. Knives pulled out so as to get a dose even if it means ending up in the nick. Workers in self-employment, or what comes out to the same thing, in self-exploitation (10). Workers submitted to the account of others, the exploiter is the client, the user and the tax department. Self-management of exploitation, emptiness of social struggle. Too much work, it’s time to take a shower and shout out an arrogant "I’m my own master". Never has a worker so clearly proclaimed his eternal self-prostitution, his will to integrate himself in the innocuous middle class. And let’s hope that all of this will not be assumed as it’s done by the small businessman.

Urban day labourers. People looking for odd jobs so as to subsist. Swamped jobs. The dole for life. Precarious jobs. Workers domesticated by costs, threats, contracts, credentials. Trade-unions which decide for you, enterprises for the reproduction of labour power. Mobility, a euphemism for immigration for the first class citizen, that is with an indigenous slave passport. If it’s ever more unbearable to continue working, in these conditions of submission and growing control, it’s also ever more difficult to survive without working. That is, it’s more and more difficult to obtain the means of subsistence without working.

Our lives are invaded by cybernetic images which distract yet stupefy. The television is the summit: a girl in her room with a video watches how Michael Jackson fucks Mickey Mouse, while a woman buys a shoe polisher thanks to interactive television. The computer decomposes the child’s Martian neurones as he desperately tries to kill aliens even though the remote control doesn’t work. Speech disappears, only Capital, the raisond’état speaks. They technically organise and control the solitude which they oblige us to live in. The microchip does piece work in an isolated way. The State is the heart of what we live most intimately, it controls the aspects of daily life, and diverts it to its liking.

By atomising and breaking down communication between people, by invading private life, the State tries to distort the struggle which seems to be led against it.

There is nothing without the State. Everything must take place under the State’s surveillance, with the protection and the benediction of politics. It is the most important gain of the second world war. The democratic State affirms itself as the only valid and recognised speaker, the only valid and recognised mediator, and the only valid and recognised communicator of ideas.

Democracy is the illusion of communication. Through it and in it politicians express their ideas which end up becoming those of the majority. The Power to be able to communicate and to know how to communicate between us is taken away from us, the words on our lips are erased so as to be substituted by ideological lies.

Democracy is nothing other than the appropriation of communication (the power to communicate) by politicians who convert themselves into representatives and delegates of our never expressed ideas.

Democracy is the appearance of the confrontation of rival lies which complement one another and to which the only and primordial end is to preserve the raison d’état.

What the telly doesn’t show doesn’t exist

Whatever is excluded, whatever is situated outside of its reality and its lie does not exist. And so if you see something, it’s not what you’ve seen but what the telly says which is reality. It resembles a lie, but it works very well for them. There are people who see not with their own eyes but only through the eyes of the State, be it by fear, or out of the apathy of their cerebral microchips.

Fucking society (11) based on information! Microelectronics, genetics, control, ecology, services, post-industrialism in the centres, industrialisation in the semi-periphery, and war in the periphery.

The crisis which is imposed on us allows the headlong rush of Capitalism to continue to reproduce itself...

The Society of the Spectacle, of Commodity, of Control has come along and has developed itself in terms which go well beyond the predictions and observations of the situationists. At the same time, for us the crisis is the fear of the dole and the police in the heart of our lives.

They have announced the crisis, we have always been in crisis

Under the pretext of the crisis they justify the necessity of tightening the grip of exploitation and control of the population. It all depends on "how far people are ready to go". From the worker of well-being, to precariousness. Loss of a century of concessions and conquests. But in this country we’ve never known the "welfare State". We’ve always known the "welfare of the State".

The general strike is a part of the function of trade-unions in the middle of domination. They move forwards in creating a movement so as to channel the dissatisfaction due to the increase in exploitation which means the crisis and all of the juridico-economic consequences which it provokes: new laws on employment and the decrease in social costs. Social dissatisfaction is held back so that it doesn’t get dangerous.

The trade-unions saw themselves rejected several times for their role in the polico-socio-economic spectacle. That’s why during the capitalist offensive of reconversion in 1992, and during the crisis which followed, they had to radicalize themselves in appearance so as to continue playing their role, that is, so as to continue existing. They now transform the weapon of the strike into an inoffensive show with data and political numbers. These trade-union shows are directed against ourselves and our own...

In the same way in which the individual has been converted into an isolated producer consumer, struggles remain isolated inside of the circus of information. We must struggle as much against the atomisation which they impose on us as against the isolation of our collectives and the struggles against power. And thus the importance of communication, the diffusion of our speech, and of collective practices which ought to speak for themselves without resorting to ideological justifications, flags, uniforms, or acronyms.

Turn the tables on the use that State-capital gives to streets. Circulation of cars and of commodities, shop window of solitude. Faced with boredom and the binomial money-amusement, seeking a really amusing time out. That is re-creative of life. Subversive of order.

Reaffirming acts of insubordination on all levels. When insubordination is real (refuse of dialogue with Power) carries with it a victory because Democracy needs a question-and-answer so as to function. A theory and practice debate is needed on the forms of struggles to take. Experimenting the forms of our struggles and those of those close to us.

Foreign to ourselves, cancelled, alienated. This world is a world foreign to us and in which life no longer belongs to us. This world does not affirm us, on the contrary it negates us. That’s why we can only think in negative terms. There is no other alternative, if the economy is in crisis, may it die!

Notes

1. The following text is an extract from a debate published some years ago (1995-96) in the issue #8 of the periodical Akefalos (Apartado de Correos 37120-08080 Barcelona, Spain). A photocopy of the full text is available at our central address. The editors of "Akefalos" explain the name of the journal as follows: "Greek mythology describes a group of people without heads, with neither leaders nor subordination. Because we are people who have lost our heads, in the sense that it’s considered impossible. Eccentric beings with no common sense, we fight against the social normality of slaves and their masters." The notes at the bottom of the pages are from the editors of Communism.

2. The bluff of ’92 which is mentioned here refers to the World Fair in Seville, the commemoration of the 500 years since the "discovery" of the Americas, the Olympic Games in Barcelona... If in some ways this article refers to Spain the reader will quickly notice that other aspects are clearly valid in a much wider way. This is what incited us to publish this text.

3. In Spain the transición is the period of "democratisation of franquism" during which the state reorganised itself thanks to the management of the Spanish Socialist Labour Party (PSOE).

4. One of the aspects which we liked about this text is that comrades having a different political formation and ideas different from ours, should come to formulate in such precise terms things so similar to what we express about society. The contents of the following sentence for example seems very clear to us, even if we doubtless would have formulated it differently, in saying that democracy (not only political, but social and economic, integral democracy) destroys communication within our class, by negating associative ties. In the same way we perfectly see how democracy "displaces the very language of the oppressed", because it disintegrates them as a class, because it atomises, because it transforms them into buyers and sellers, into useful idiots and citizens.

5. What is described here is applicable to far more than just "throughout Europe".

6. The authors of the article are completely right to affirm that money separates men. But they consider this to be something relatively local or new, yet it’s a phenomenon generalised to all of the capitalist world for several centuries. In the "Manuscripts of 1843/44", Marx makes reference to previous centuries and perfectly describes the way the community of money eliminates the community of men. We do not deny that things get worse as they go along and that’s why we agree to underline this, as does Akefalos which tries to express a qualitative leap in the dehumanisation of human relations due to money. But we ought never to forget that these elements are the very essence of the world capitalist system, a system which humanity endures since at least 5 centuries, and not only in Europe but in all the world.

7. The opposition between workers’ assemblies and trade-unions as apparatuses of the capital is logical in certain circumstances, when the trade-union bureaucratism is such that the trade-unions don’t function on the basis of factory assemblies. But we ought not forget that when the radicalisation of the proletariat is important, the trade-unions also function on the basis of "workers’ assemblies" so as to better carry out their function of containing and liquidating proletarian struggles.

8. Contrary to other affirmations of this text which are valid for the rest of the world, what is affirmed here touches a specific reality in Spain. Indeed, even if all of the world trade-unions constitute apparatuses of the State, and though we’ve seen through these last years a decrease in the number of trade-union members and thus a decrease in the control over the working class, the explanation for such a meagre percentage of trade-union members typical of Spain is to be found today in the weakening of the trade-unions which a left government systematically implicates in its management business. And indeed what credibility must remain in the trade-union protests coming from parties and organisations which share the government? It’s so as to regain credibility that the trade-unions and the parties so often need an "opposition treatment".

9. The use of terms such as "developing countries" and the dichotomy between countries which it implies constitutes in such a clear text surprising ideological concessions to public opinion and the vision of the world imposed by the media.

10. At other times we have already noted that the instructions "self-management = self-exploitation" is not accurate, despite the propaganda power which it contains. The subject of exploitation is always capital and never oneself as the formulation "self-exploitation" seems to indicate. More so, the object of exploitation, the exploited, is always the proletariat, the proletarians. Through this sort of formulation branded against those who praise self-management in capitalism, we want to remark that in reality it is capital which keeps the management and control of exploitation, and that with self-management workers, rather than liberating themselves from exploitation, collectively watch over it so as to make it more effective. It is a question of self-control, self-discipline, and in most cases even a quantitative and qualitative increase in exploitation... but always for the benefit of capital. And in this way we can see as the consequence of this affirmation a certain confusion about the subject of exploitation: neither the client, nor the user may be, in the strict sense of the term, exploiters. And it does not make a lot of sense to put them together with the tax department, which is part of the subject of exploitation to the degree that the surplus value which the state appropriates is used to the benefit of collective capital. But once more the tax department is not the subject of exploitation, it is capital. The expression "self-management of exploitation" which the comrades use further along in the text is however, accurate in the sense that it is the worker himself who contributes to the management of the exploitation carried out by capitalism.

11. The term used in Spanish is "suciedad", a play on words between "sucio" ("dirty") and "sociedad" ("society").

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Death to "recovery"

* * *

Despite the local examples used in this text, we want to stress that capital is a worldwide relationship, that value develops on a worldwide scale and imposes its rule on every inch of this planet.

"The recovery is here, we must press on!" is what we hear day in, day out. Newspapers, politicians, journalists, economists, etc. stuff our heads by way of that mindless box - the television. They explain to us, with supporting figures and graphs, that the recovery, even if weak and unsteady on its feet, is finally back. They then go on to justify sickening austerity policies by telling us to "Carry on tightening your belts and the recovery will be even stronger!". The bourgeoisie wants to chain us to the defence of the economy as well as to make us believe that this time we are really "out of the tunnel" at last.

As if "the god of the Economy" would bless us with some godsend after having ignored us for 20 years! For what possible reasons would growth (1) have returned?

In answering this question, let’s first remind ourselves of bourgeois terminology: what they mean by ‘recovery’ or ‘growth’ is an increase in their wealth in one country or a group of countries (increase in the Gross Domestic Product). Expanded reproduction is a rule inherent to capital and this is how ideologists refer to it. Recession is an insufficient increase in the GDP. Bourgeois rhetoric boils down to saying that "we" in the USA and Great Britain are richer compared to 3 or 4 years ago and the whole world is compared to one year ago.

Behind that "we" lies in fact "the people", i.e. the statistical average between classes, with proletarians and bourgeoisie lumped together. Quoting a 3% recovery over one year is the equivalent of saying that there was 3% more wealth in that country by the end of that year. It clearly does not mean that each "individual" is 3% better-off. Indeed, we will go on to show how the bourgeoisie’s wealth has increased at the expense of an intensification of proletarians’ misery. Moreover, since the 3% increase is mathematically (2) redistributed amongst all, it means that the relative increase in the bourgeois’ wealth is far greater than 3% and our poverty continues to worsen. What’s the reality behind this explosion of wealth?

Let’s talk about the USA, considered by the world bourgeoisie to be the "star pupil". The figures speak for themselves: Since 1991, 3-4% growth per year, rate of unemployment at 5-6%, 3% inflation rate and the creation of about 2 million jobs a year.

For several years, some American companies (3) have made huge profits. Records have been beaten in the computer science sector by Microsoft, in the pharmaceutical industry by Pfizer (several billion dollars), in the car industry by Chrysler (3,8 billion dollars). Obviously, these figures would give even the most blasé of stockmarket speculators a hard-on. However, we set our reality against the one-sided picture painted by the bourgeoisie. This is, therefore, another point of view, that of those who produce the wealth, those who, as always in this fucking system, are deprived of the enjoyment of their product.

How can these companies make such profits? The answer is simple: they lay off workers in order to reduce production costs and then put more pressure on the remaining proletarians.

The following is a quotation by F.Rohatyn who is, amongst others, an official adviser to Bill Clinton and the director of a bank:

"The race for productivity is accompanied by structural unemployment that spares no one: blue collar workers, white collar workers,... and it will continue. All big companies are now looking to reduce their staffing levels. For example Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company that I know well beause I am a member of its board of directors, have just decided to get rid of 4.000 jobs (10% through early retirement or sackings). And yet, the company earns billions. We live in a rather frightening period: take a look at IBM, Intel and Microsoft. They all have roughly the same stockmarket value of between 20 and 25 billion dollars. But IBM has 150,000 employees, Intel 15,000 and Microsoft 6000. This means that the creation of wealth will need a smaller and smaller but more and more qualified, adaptable and flexible workforce."

What this bourgeois is cynically telling us is that proletarians at IBM sweat 25 times less surplus-value than those at Microsoft and 10 times less than those at Intel. It is easy to understand why IBM has laid off scores of workers over the past few years. The example of Pfizer is representative of current practice.

There are many other similar examples across the globe:

• In the chemical industry in Germany, 1994 profits were huge: up 99.2% for BASF to 1.209 billion DM, up 83% for Hoechst to 1.69 billion DM, up 32.2% for Bayer to 2.38 billion DM. Manfred Schneider, Bayer’s chairman, stated that "there will not be, under any circumstances, an increase in the number of jobs". Indeed, his company has just sacked another 3,400 of us.

• In France, the 63 biggest French industrial groups made huge profits after reducing employment by 3.5% in ‘93 and 2.5% in ‘94. They are planning another O.5% reduction in 1995.

• In 1994, in the French car industry, PSA and Renault made enormous profits and reached record levels of production. To show their gratitude to the proletarians who worked themselves into the ground, these industrialists announced planned lay-offs of 3500 and 5000 workers respectively between 1995 and 1996.

• In the telecommunications sector, the steel industry, the air transport sector, the paper industry... it’s the same old story, as much in the USA as in Europe, Asia or Africa.

• In 1994, the profits of British banks increased by 100% to 176%. News that will, no doubt, delight the tens of thousands made homeless by the beneficial effects of the recovery in Great Britain in the same year.

• In the USA, more than 10% of the population live in absolute poverty and do not register in official statistics. Moreover, 25% to 35% (depending on the source) are on the threshold of poverty. This allows us to relativise the official unemployment rate (4).

As for the number of jobs created in the USA (5), what we are not told is that every year 2,000,000 low-paid industrial jobs (10 to 15 US$ per hour, with social cover) are abolished, whereas 2,000,000 new jobs, easy to relocate and with even lower wages ($4.5 per hour, with no social cover) are created.

Gail Forler, a cynical manager of capital summarised the situation very clearly:

" The well-paid industrial jobs of the ‘70’s are over!", adding that "Neither new technology, nor new markets will be sufficient reasons to create jobs. In order to solve their labour problems, employers prefer to buy a new machine or to reorganise their staff."

It is therefore crystal clear that proletarians who still have a job will not only have do the work of those who have been sacked, but will also be forced to work in a way that ensures the company produces more than before!

Still on the subject of the USA, the "mass-media" announced that poverty has increased by 10% in 20 years. This figure is nonsensical: which proletarian in the United-States can be convinced that with 1995’s wages he can buy 90% of what he bought in 1975?

Figures on inflation are meaningless. All that interests us is that wages are decreasing and prices rising! All the penpushers sound surprised:

"In total, despite the recovery, 30 million people, that is a quarter of the working population, are said to be outside the normal channels of employment (doing the kind of shit jobs that we’ve just talked about, ed.) and suffer the aberration of being both below the poverty line yet being workers."

Alain Lebaube, le Monde, Bilan économique et social 1994)

Our very point, gentlemen! Work never makes the slave rich, but always the slave-driver. If working made one rich, the bourgeoisie would have banned the proletariat from working years ago and done the work itself!

The reality or unreality of the "recovery" must be put in the much wider context of the different phases of the absurd and inhuman system that is capitalism. If not, it is impossible to understand and it becomes a religious question.

It is only possible to understand the "recovery" if we refer back to Capital’s fundamental contradiction: that between valorisation and devalorisation (see below).

We then realise that there is no "general recovery", insofar as to achieve this Capital needs destruction on a far greater scale than is occurring in current wars, which are not sufficiently widespread to allow the devalorisation required to engender "recovery". On the contrary, the crisis is deepening and speeches on the "recovery" only refer to a "technical recovery", i.e. a cyclical recovery corresponding to the short cycle of Capital, itself determined by a relative renovation of fixed capital; it is therefore a short term phenomenon that will last as long as proletarians continue to accept increasing poverty (6).

It is the proletariat’s apathy that enables the bourgeoisie to put some of us on the dole, while stepping up the pace for those still doing paid hard labour. With this kind of growth, the absolute misery of proletarians becomes generalised. Infact, the only time when the bourgeoisie can count on a fruitful and longterm valorisation is following generalised war: the period of "reconstruction". It is a privileged time for the investment and circulation of capital on a large scale, but which, for our class, signifies an ever-increasing rise in relative misery (relative to the wealth we produce).

Reconstruction then gives way to crisis (crisis of overproduction of capital) that can only be resolved by another generalised war, thus closing the circle of death imposed by value.

We do not defend any of the phases of this system, all periods of which reproduce inhumanity and for which war is the only solution.

We are not making a moralistic critique of "nasty capitalists" who are too selfish to share the fruits of their labour with the "poor exploited proletarians". No way! We know that it is Value and its cycle that impose themselves as much on the bourgeoisie as on the proletariat.

The so-called "recovery", drummed into us on a daily basis, holds nothing good in store for us proletarians. Today, just as yesterday and as always in this system of death, we can only look forward to more tears, more bloodshed, more sweat... as much on the front of wage labour as on those of the next generalised war.

Let’s drown this "recovery", presented like a fragile baby, in its own bathwater!

Let’s refuse all sacrifices! The economy is ill.Let’s help it to die along with all its defenders!

By sabotaging the "recovery", we are uncompromisingly fightingfor our class interests!

Notes

1. "Growth" and "recovery" are synonymous. Moreover, the bourgeoisie uses both terms together, as in "The recovery of growth".

2. Let us not delude ourselves. This redistribution is confined to statistics and is consequently only a virtual reality - we proletarians will still be poor for some time to come.

3. Competition is raging: that’s a rule of the system. While some companies make huge profits, others are either phagocytosed by them or forced into bankruptcy. But the result is always the same for us - more misery!

4. This is not specific to the USA. In fact, all governments doctor their statistics. For example, in Belgium the official unemployment rate is about 14% of the working population (approximately 500,000 out of work). This figure obviously "forgets" that, for the past 10 years, anyone over the age of 55 is no longer included in the statistics (roughly 50,000). '14%' also "leaves out" the 180,000 who have been excluded from unemployment benefits over last two years and "ignores" the 400,000 "ghost jobs" paid for by unemployment insurance funds. Making a very quick calculation, taking into account the 50.000 unemployed excluded for over two years, gives us a figure of 1,180,000 true unemployed. In terms of percentage, on the basis of 3,500,000 people of working age in Belgium, this shows a real unemployment rate of about 33%. It goes without saying that this kind of criticism could apply to all figures and all countries.

5. Yet another example illustrating the terminology used by the bourgeoisie to impose its point of view: "jobs created", "creation of jobs"... these words creep into everyday language and tend to present the capitalist as a "work giver" rather than as an exploiter. The State is not a philanthropic association striving to provide us with a means of survival: when employing and paying proletarians, the only aim of the capitalist class is to extort surplus-value from them.

6. This is one of the aims pursued by the bourgeoisie with their mythical "recovery": to show us our immediate future through rose-tinted glasses and thus to make us accept our ever- worsening living conditions.

"¢
Massive bombings or "surgical strikes", massacres on a large scale or "collateral damage",... while putting the planet to fire and sword, the bourgeois defend the peace of their world of misery through terror.
"¢
Special courts, military decrees, "administrative internments", unlimited detentions, trials in camera,... they sharpen their weapons to condemn all proletarian suspected to break the public order, the national security, to break the social peace, the dictatorship of the economy.
"¢
Increase in the number of the international exchanges of information, international arrest warrants,... Lists are circulating with the names of groups or individuals to destroy,... at this day, in the USA, 5000 people are aimed at.
"¢
Antiterrorism is used as a pretext to violently accelerate the spiral: decreases of wages, layoffs, starvation, armament,... In the air, road transport,... the postal services, the chemistry, insurances,... layoffs are showered, by hundreds of thousand, in the USA, in Europe, in Asia,... On the other hand, in the sectors of repression (armament, electronic surveillance, cops,...) they invest and hire!

Facing the proletarian struggles that "threaten" to develop all States support themselves and unite.

Antiterrorism is the monopoly of weapons in the hands of the State against our struggles!

Let's open our eyes and let's recognize that the war in Afghanistan, in Yugoslavia, in Iraq,... is a war against our own struggles!

Let's open our eyes and let's recognize that the struggles of our class brothers in Algeria, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iran, in Indonesia,... are our own struggles!

To submit to the antiterrorist campaigns, it is accepting the brutal reduction of wages over there as here and it is contributing to the repression of our comrades over there as here.

Our struggle is here and now against what makes of us slaves of labour, of shortage, of money, of capital.

THE ENEMY IS IN OUR OWN COUNTRY THIS IS OUR OWN BOURGEOISIE!

While the capital claims to be socialist or liberal, warmongering or pacifist, polluting or biodegradable, from the South or from the North,... it is always dictatorship of money, of the rate of profit, and, from summits to antisummits, from referendum to elections, it puts on stage the bourgeois who will determine what fate has in store for us.

Let's organize beyond the borders, outside and against the summits and antisummits and any other structure of the bourgeois State!

The only alternative is THE WORLDWIDE REVOLUTION!

The direct relationship of labour to its products is the relationship of the worker to the objects of his production. The relationship of the rich man to the objects of production and to production itself is only a consequence of this first relationship, and confirms it. Later, we shall consider this second aspect. Therefore, when we ask what is the essential relationship of labour, we are asking about the relationship of the worker to production.

Up to now, we have considered the estrangement, the alienation of the worker, only from one aspect -- i.e., his relationship to the products of his labour. But estrangement manifests itself not only in the result, but also in the act of production, within the activity of production itself. How could the product of the worker’s activity confront him as something alien if it were not for the fact that in the act of production he was estranging himself from himself? After all, the product is simply the resume of the activity, of the production. So if the product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation. The estrangement of the object of labour merely summarizes the estrangement, the alienation in the activity of labour itself.

What, then, constitutes the alienation of labour?

Firstly, the fact that labour is external to the worker -- i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself. Its alien character is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, it is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally, the external character of labour for the worker is demonstrated by the fact that it belongs not to him but to another, and that in it he belongs not to himself but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, the human brain, and the human heart, detaches itself from the individual and reappears as the alien activity of a god or of a devil, so the activity of the worker is not his own spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is a loss of his self.

The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions -- eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment, etc.-- and in his human functions he no longer feels to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.

It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal.

We have considered the act of estrangement of practical human activity, of labour, from two aspects: 1°) the relationship of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object that has power over him. The relationship is, at the same time, the relationship to the sensuous external world, to natural objects, as an alien world confronting him, in hostile opposition. 2°) The relationship of labour to the act of production within labour. This relationship is the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity [Leiden], power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life -- for what is life but activity? -- as an activity directed against himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him. Here we have self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object [Sache] mentioned above."

Extract from the chapter on "Estranged Labour", from the 1844 Manuscripts by Karl Marx.

* * *
"Another source of the workers’ immorality is that they are the damned of work. If free productive activity is the greatest pleasure which we know, forced labour is the cruellest and most degrading of tortures. Nothing is more terrible than to have to perform, from morning until evening, something which is repugnant to you. And the more a worker has human feelings, the more he must loathe his work, because he feels the constraint it implies and the uselessness that this work represents for him."

F. Engels, The Situation of the Working Class in England. "‘Worry’ is nothing other than the feeling of oppression and anguish which, in the bourgeoisie, necessarily accompanies work, this vile activity of needy bread-winning. ‘Worry’ blooms in its purest form in the brave German bourgeois: for him it is chronic and "always equal to itself", miserable, and scornful, whereas the misery of the proletarian always takes on the sharpest, violent form, forcing him to engage in a fight to the death, making him revolutionary and producing, as a result, not ‘worry’ but passion. Thus if communism wants to abolish the ‘worry’ of the bourgeois as much as the misery of the proletarian, it goes without saying that he cannot do it without abolishing the cause of both one and the other: work."

Karl Marx, The German Ideology.
"We have indeed grown puny and degenerate. Embalmed beef, potatoes, doctored wine, and Prussian Schnapps, judiciously combined with compulsory labour, have weakened our bodies and narrowed our minds. And the times when man tightens his belt and the machine enlarges its output are the very times when the economists preach Malthusian theory to us, the religion of abstinence and the dogma of work. Really, it would be better to pluck out such tongues and throw them to the dogs."

Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy, 1848. "If the working class were to arise in its terrible strength, tearing from its heart the vice which dominates it and degrades its nature, not to demand the Rights of Man, which are but the rights of capitalist exploitation, not to demand the Right to Work, which is but the right to misery, but to forge a brazen law forbidding any man to work more than three hours a day, the earth, the old earth, trembling with joy would feel a new universe leaping within her..."

Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy, 1848.

Concerning slogans such as:

"Protect work"
"Protect the workplace"
"Protect the company"
"Protect the national economy"

In periods like the ones we’re going through factory, mine, or farm closures or "restructuring" based on massive unemployment are common currency. In the face of this bourgeois attack which condemns it to unemployment and thus to ever increasing misery, the proletariat can only respond by struggle, by direct action. On very many occasions this struggle for proletarian interests takes up slogans like the ones above as its banners. However, contrary to what the protagonists believe, they do not reflect the interests of the proletariat in any way, but on the contrary those of its enemies: the bourgeois.

The interest of the proletarian is to satisfy his human needs, to appropriate a less miserable share of the social product, to be less dispossessed of the product of his labour (the interest of the proletariat, as a class, is clearly to appropriate the whole of the social product - both past and present - to abolish exploitation, the state, and to suppress itself as a class by abolishing all social classes). When the bourgeoisie gives him the sack, the proletarian is fully conscious that this separates him even more from the means of life and that, from then on, he will be even more deprived of what he needs than in the past. Revolutionary militants will always find difficulties in being able to express the interests of the class they belong to in clear, incisive, agitating slogans. This difficulty is relatively simplified when things are demanded directly, for example "bread" in revolutionary Russia, "housing" in the Chile of Allende and again in Naples more than ten years ago. In this case the interest of the proletariat expresses itself directly for what it is, always with the same outcome, a direct attack on private property, since for proletarians the cause of all deprivation is indeed the fact that they are deprived of the means of life and of their production.

But, in the majority of cases, the interest of the proletariat is filtered by the dominant ideology and camouflaged by its agents, especially trade-unionists and journalists, by means of a whole set of mediations which appear necessary (in the sense that this is the way it has to be) to the proletariat, and which disfigure it to the point of transforming it into its opposite: the praise of labour, of the company, of the factory,... It is important to explain this process of ideological transformation by which the attack on private property is recuperated and turned into its opposite, that is, into the defence of our own exploiters’ private property. Even if we must always differentiate the real struggle of the proletariat, based upon its interests, from the banners or slogans which emerge, these do transform themselves objectively into weaknesses of this struggle. Indeed, struggle of the proletariat in which bourgeois banners are expressed is easily recuperated and destroyed. In all workers’ struggles bourgeois banners imply an (almost always) fatal weakness.

It immediately appears natural to the proletariat that it cannot take the means of life which it needs from those who have it in their possession, although it would naturally be more human to do so. It does not even occur to the proletariat to take what is necessary to satisfy its needs as a human being (or if it does he is immediately put off by the whole apparatus of state terror). In the brutal disassociation between the indispensable means for his survival and his being, in this beastly and bloody separation, the proletariat does not see an aggression but instead something "natural". This naturalisation of the social relationship of privatisation is the product of centuries of exploitation and the transmission from generation to generation of the ideology of private property.

The absence of consciousness concerning practical alienation practically develops alienated consciousness. With the same social naturalness which assimilates this separation, money is accepted as an indispensable mediation. In the same way that it appears natural to the human species not to be able to use the means of living which it needs, which it produces, yet which are within its reach, it considers it natural that in order to enjoy these means of living one must dispose of money to buy them. In this way, a historical social relationship just as specific as money becomes both natural and necessary. As money appears indispensable for obtaining the means of life it therefore appears as the symbol of all of objects of life and even of life itself.

However the question does not end there, because whilst money represents a necessary mediation for the proletarian, he himself does not have any. And any proletarian knows, even if his alienation does not allow him to grasp any more than this, that to obtain it - apart from through a general attack (revolution) or a partial attack (recuperation) on private property - he has nothing else to resort to than woork. This not only means being disposed to sell his labour force commodity (hundreds of millions of proletarians find no buyer) but also meeting a buyer, someone who is effectively disposed to hand over money for the sale of the only thing which he possesses: his labour force.

Not only does he consider it natural not to appropriate what he needs, his own and exclusive creation (1), not only does he consider money to be natural and necessary, but now even his labour, in fact torture, which separates him from his really human activity (2) appears as something indispensable, inherent to the realisation of his life. The alienation of his life, the sale of himself and his humanity from then on becomes, from the point of view of alienated consciousness, an act of liberty, the liberty to sell one’s own labour force. Trade-unionists, politicians, do nothing other than fashion this alienated consciousness into pretty slogans: "Protect labour", "Struggle for free labour" (3), "Our laws guarantee the freedom of each individual"

It is obvious that the proletarian is at least conscious that he does not work because it is his desire, but rather because he has no other solution (4), that labour is not the realisation of his life but an indispensable means for living and what he associates with his real life is always outside of work. Yet this does not keep him from considering work to be a necessary mediation for possessing the objects which he needs to live.

In many cases alienated consciousness goes even further. To live one must consume, to consume one must be able to buy, to buy one must dispose of money, to dispose of money one must work, to work one must find a boss ready to buy one’s labour force. But the possibility of there being bosses disposed to buy one’s labour power depends on the profitability of the company, on the national economy functioning well. It’s in this way that even more mediations are added which end up turning the wage slave into the most subservient defender not only of slavery in general (long live work!) and consequently of the historical interests of the bourgeoisie (the perpetuation of the system of wage slavery), but also the immediate interests of his immediate enemy, his boss, his exploiter, the national fraction of Capital which exploits him: "Defend the company", "Take care of the machines", "Not too many demands or else the company could shut down", "Let’s sacrifice ourselves for the national economy", "Let’s produce our own goods, against foreign imports!". In reality, the boss, the trade-unionist, the politician, do not even have to defend the need for all of these mediations to obtain a "good job", a job to get money, money to procure the means of living, since centuries and centuries of production of alienated consciousness make each of these mediations (in reality artificial, or unnecessary from a historical point of view) as natural as the meeting of the sperm and the egg permitting the reproduction of the human species and thus the existence of men and women.

When the company or mine closes, or threatens to do so, because it is no longer profitable, the society of workers bearing this alienated consciousness reaches supreme levels. "Protection of labour", "of the workplace", "of the company"... is made concrete by proposing sacrifices. Recent experience has shown us that in periods like the present, even when a real proletarian struggle rises up in reaction to a factory closure, this struggle does not come to terms with itself for what it really is - a struggle against the increase in workers’ poverty. There is, amongst the workers in struggle, an almost general persistence of this set of slogans typical of the alienated proletariat, that is to say, belonging to a dominated class reproducing the ideology of its own domination and exploitation.

Once we have exposed the process of ideological naturalisation by which alienated consciousness assumes deprivation and alienation to be necessary and natural, and once we have made explicit all mediations which, as precise historical products, ideally consolidate themselves as eternal and indispensable mediations between man and the satisfaction of his needs, we must ask ourselves what is the duty of revolutionary militants in such situations, faced with such slogans?

Communists participate in all proletarian movements even if they oppose their banners or formal leaders which, in general, are not the expression of the real movement but only of its banners. They must oppose them openly by criticising, mercilessly, all of the ideological expressions of the bourgeoisie at the heart of the proletarian movement, because the future of the movement is at stake. If the movement continues to struggle against the boss in front of it, against the state, against capital in general... despite expressing itself through slogans like "Protect the workplace", it remains alive and the essential issue is that of direction, perspective. But these slogans almost always end up killing the movement. When alienated consciousness begins to dictate all the actions and the movement really transforms itself into the protection of the company, the mine, the national economy by accepting sacrifices,... the rupture from the revolutionaries is total and the most they can aspire to is gaining a small group of militants and starting to draw a balance sheet of the life and death of the movement.

Yet it is important to ask whether revolutionaries criticise all of the inaccurate slogans in the movement itself in the same way or, to put it another way, whether the various banners that we have mentioned in this text are all equally harmful for the proletariat? The answer is no, there are different levels of alienation of consciousness which correspond to the different mediations which we have analysed.

The immediate interests and the historical programmes of the two social classes confront each other through polarity. The slogans which are totally accurate from the revolutionary point of view are those which openly and directly expose in a straightforward way proletarian (and consequently human) needs, that is when no mediation is accepted as natural but always as historical and directly maintained by the state. In these cases, private property and the state are attacked directly and the social polarisation between revolution and counter-revolution is inevitable. At the opposite extreme, all of these mediations are considered to be natural, slaves defending their slavery, the means of their slavery and even their slave masters. Worse still, the protection of the company, the economy and self-sacrifice increase the competition which workers make between themselves, they increase the global rate of exploitation and destroy the proletariat as a class, transforming it into a multitude of atoms of capital killing one another (capitalism is the war of all against all!).

But it is the intermediate cases which are the most difficult, which pose the most problems for militants. When, in their struggle against capital, instead of struggling directly against exploitation, seeking to appropriate a larger part of the social product, massively attacking private property, proletarians ask for more money (wage rises, increased unemployment and social benefits,...) the slogans correspond to the proletarian content of the movement, the interests of capital are attacked in every way and the interests of the proletariat are demanded. In this sense, the development of the struggle and of these slogans contains the revolutionary struggle (5). But the acceptance of these first mediations as natural is, without doubt, a definite weakness which we must criticise and correct. In practice the whole of their consequences can be harmful.

Firstly, with the acceptance of the mediation of money follows an ever-present tendency to accept all of the other mediations which we live. Secondly, the demand itself makes it seem like the one who is prepared to make a concession - the boss or the State - is no longer something to be destroyed but someone with whom to negotiate. Thirdly, as a result of the above factors, the state even appears to be a necessary mediation to obtain our needs, particularly in the case of unemployment benefits and social security (let’s take into account that, in the past, such crumbs for the maintainance of the labour force were not handed down by the state but depended upon the internal solidarity of the proletariat). Fourthly, expression of the social product as money, as opposed to as a share, contains a set of ideological distortions specific to it, tending to convince the proletarian that he has bettered his situation when, in reality, it has become worse. This last point, in a list which is not exhaustive, is by no means the least important: the wages in terms of money can increase whilst the wages in terms of objects decrease (due to inflation, the problem between nominal wages and real wages). In the same way, the wages in objects can increase while the rate of exploitation increases, implying a decrease in participation in the social product by the proletariat (due to the increase in the productivity of labour appropriated by capital, the problem between real wages -and nominal- and relative wages). In the face of all of this, revolutionary militants (6), active in these movements, never forget the critique and the assertion of the interests of the whole of the class (the struggle against private property, for the abolition of wage labour), at the same time as criticising any possible fixation on these insufficiently clear slogans. The revolutionary militant, specifically where wages and the struggle for wage rises are concerned (7), denounces both vulgar traps (rises in nominal wages) and subtle ones (rises in real wages) used by the bourgeoisie to pass off increases in the rate of the worker’s exploitation and social misery as increases in his well-being. The revolutionary militant bases his action and slogans on the demand for a real attack against the rate of exploitation, the only real struggle of the proletariat which, at the same time, brings the struggle for wage rises to its final conclusion, making its character inseparable from the struggle for the abolition of wage labour.

If we go from the proletarian pole of openly proletarian slogans to openly counter-revolutionary bourgeois slogans, if thus we advance, whilst incorporating these mediations which appear natural in alienated consciousness, there is necessarily a point, a moment, where a qualitative step takes place. We are not claiming that these slogans in themselves, rising up out of this consciousness are either a proletarian guarantee or a counter-revolutionary guarantee. We have already given examples of proletarian movements with totally bourgeois slogans. Consequently, the difficulty lies in locating the qualitative step by which a proletarian struggle is liquidated and wherein the workers in the movement transform themselves objectively into agents of capital, not only in the productive sense (which is always the case) but also in the sense of defending wage slavery and the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie (defending private property, its means of production, and its rate of exploitation). It is particularly difficult to situate this qualitative leap at each specific moment of the class struggle without making it depend in a linear way on the slogans, while at the same time considering the slogans as part of the real movement.

Thus, for example, when the "the protection of work", "the protection of the company", "the protection of the mine" are demanded, the movement (if there still is one) kills itself. This must be clearly denounced and is one of the most important tasks of revolutionaries who participate in the struggle. But we insist on the fact that we have seen bourgeois slogans appear a thousand times at the heart of objectively proletarian movements against the bourgeoisie.

When the worker shouts "Protect work", "Protect the company"... what really interests him is neither work, which often he spits on all day long, nor the dark tomb which is for him the mine or the company, but what he needs to live better. However, he is not bold enough to proclaim his own interests, society has taught him that this is not the done thing. The radical trade-unionist, the leftist, the Trotskist, will say that even if these slogans are not the best it is better to stick to them "because if not we’ll isolate ourselves from the masses"(!!??), or because public opinion is more accepting of the fact that "they are not making demands for their selfish interests but for the interests of the whole nation". The duty of revolutionaries is precisely the opposite, to see to it that the movement assumes its own interests. This has nothing to do with the supposed transformation of an economic struggle into a political struggle, nor with the introduction of political consciousness into economic struggle, as social-democracy advocates in all its various forms. Instead it means, through the struggle itself, making conscious the real interests contained within this movement for proletarian needs.

When there really is a proletarian movement against capital (one cannot transform a workers’ non-struggle into a workers’ struggle by the introduction of ideas!!) the key problem is to assume itself as such, to break from the whole ideological spider’s web. Thus reemerges the problem of knowing what slogans to use in opposition to those of the bourgeoisie. The answer has appeared throughout the whole of this text. All bourgeois slogans start from a natural and logical presentation of everything that is social and, in human terms, absurd. Contrary to this, the slogans which make the struggle advance are those which, even if they appear socially as illogical or absurd, start from the needs of the proletariat as human beings, and therefore from all that signifies the real improvement of its standard of living, to the detriment of the bourgeoisie and the national economy.

Consequently the answer is not complicated. On the contrary, it is the counter-revolution which complicates everything: it manages to present even our own needs and everything that makes us suffer deep in our guts as illogical and absurd and at the same time, it portrays our sacrifice at the altar of the national economy as being most natural and human.

The answer is to be found, to express it brutally, in the guts of all proletarians who struggle. The right slogans and banners will vary according to the circumstances, but they can never consist of accepting these mediations as natural, of accepting the sacrifice of needs. On the contrary, they are the real expression of these needs.

To stick to human needs, against all attempts by bourgeois intellectuals to introduce consciousness into proletarian ranks, is not only the line of action which leads to revolution but is also what dictates to revolutionary militants the way in which to act.

Notes

1. We are not referring to the individual worker who, in the strict sense of the term, is not even productive but to the whole of the proletariat, to the collective worker who is the single producer of the means of life (let us also recall that he is also the single producer of all of the rubbish which capital needs "to produce" to valorise itself, that is use values that have nothing to do with human needs).

2. On this subject, "From man’s alienation to human comunity" in Communism n°6 and "Human activity against labour" in Communism n°5.

3. Marx already said "It is not about freeing work but suppressing it".

4. It is only in the case of extreme tyranny and the total destruction of workers’ resistance that the human being can be oppressed to the point of considering work as an end and not as a means for living. This is what Stalinism, Nazism, the Popular Fronts, and closer to us, Castrism, and, to a lesser extent, Sandinism attempted. But the limits of such experiences can be demonstrated by the ever-increasing number of proletarians accused of sabotaging work who are sentenced, imprisoned or murdered.

5. As the reader will have noticed, in this sort of analysis it is decisive to fight the old conception of a separation between the economic and the political, between the immediate and the historical, by showing their indivisible unity, and by showing within each of these aspects, upon which social-democracy has built its theory, the allegedly opposed or less distinct aspects are contained.

6. Neither those who are satisfied with these slogans nor the ones who abandon the struggle because these slogans are not revolutionnary enough or those who declare from the heights of their theoretical platforms that all struggle for the immediate interests of the proletariat is historically outdated deserve this name.

7. Whilst reformists enclose the struggle in the framework of the increase of the nominal or the real wage, the idealist isolates himself from the movement by declaring that he cannot fight for a wage increase because he is against wage labour.

The meeting of the G8 held in Genoa last summer (2001) have been the scene of a violent repression. But this repression had already been launched before. Many groups and militants were arrested and questioned during their preparatory meetings. It was the case of the group "Precari Nati" ("Born Precarious") who wanted to circulate in Genoa a leaflet against the summits and counter-summits which they considered as huge masquerades. But Precari Nati did not circulate their leaflet because the police raided their premises, arrested 13 comrades and kept them for seven hours. Two of these comrades were accused of possessing arms (Swiss knifes) and more than thousand leaflets were confiscated. The militants arrested belonged to the following groups: Precari Nati (Italy), Kolinko (Germania), Workers against Work (England).

We reproduce below the content of the confiscated leaflet and want to stress the clearness with which these comrades dissociate themselves from the antiglobalisation ideology, and the strength of their denunciation of the social-democrat current who only aim a t the "modernisation of capitalism and who hope that their proposals (e.g. tobin tax) will be able to save capitalist social relations, i.e. the same relations which "perpetuate our alienation and exploitation"

1. See Communisme n°52 and Comunismo n°47

If we are here, it is not as professional activists of anti-globalisation, trying to find a position of mediation between the puppets of the economy and its ‘victims’, by acting on behalf of others (the "invisible", the revolted proletarians against the IMF or the World Bank, the refugees, the precarious workers.) We are not interested in representing anyone, and we spit in the face of those who wish to represent us. We do not understand exclusion as exclusion from the centers of economic decision-making but as the loss of our everyday life and activity as proletarians because of the economy.

If we are here, it is not because we prefer fair trade to free trade, it is not because we believe that globalisation weakens the authority of nation-states. We are not here because we think that the state is controlled by non-democratic institutions, nor because we want more control over the market. We are here because all trade is the trade of human misery, because all states are prisons, because democracy conceals the dictatorship of capital.

If we are here it is not because we see proletarians as victims, nor because we want to place ourselves as their protectors. We didn’t come here to be impressed by spectacular riots but to learn the tactics of everyday class war by the strikers of Ansaldo and the disobedient proletarians in the metal industry. We come here to exchange our own experiences as the dispossessed of the whole world.

If we are here, we do not come as members of the numerous NGO’s, official lobbies, ATTAC or the rest of those who merely wish to be included in the discussions over the modernisation of capitalism and who hope that their proposals (e.g. tobin tax) will be able to save capitalist social relations, i.e. the same relations which perpetuate our alienation and exploitation.

If we are here, it is as proletarians who recognise capitalism not in the meetings of the various gangsters but in the daily robbery of our lives in the factories, in the call-centers, as unemployed, for the needs of the economy. We do not speak on behalf of anyone, we start from our own conditions. Capitalism does not exist because of the G8, the G8 exists because of capitalism. Capitalism is nothing but the expropriation of our activity, which turns against us as an alien force.

Our festival against capital does not have a beginning or an end, it is not a pre-determined spectacle, it does not have a fixed date. Our future lies beyond all mediations, beyond nation-states, beyond all attempts to reform capitalism. Our future lies in the destruction of the economy.

FOR THE TOTAL ABOLITION OF THE STATE AND CAPITAL.
FOR THE WORLD HUMAN COMMUNITY.
PROLETARIANS AGAINST THE MACHINE.

Precari Nati, Email: [email protected],
Kolinko, Workers Against Work.