BRING OUT YOUR DEAD

2
 "The trad ition of all dead generations weighs l i ke 1 Karl M arx, The 18th Bru-
a nightmare on the brai n of the living . . . The social maire of Louis Bonaparte,
revolution of the n i neteenth century can n ot take 1852 (MEcw 11), pp. 103-
its poetry from the past but o n ly from the future. It 106. All references to the
cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away works of M arx and En-
all superstition about the past. The former revolu- gels a r e to t h e Lawrence
tions requ i red recol l ections of the past i n order to & Wis h h art Marx-Engels
smother their own content. I n order to arrive at its Collected Works ( MEcw) .
own content, the revolution of the n ineteenth cen-
t u ry must let the dead b u ry their dead:'1 2 'Now, The SI' (IS no. 9,
1964). C h ristopher G ray,
If this was true when Marx wrote this passage, when Lea ving the Twentieth
one could o n ly speak of comm u n is m i n the futu re Century: the incomplete
tense, it is all the more so of today, now that anarchists Works of the Situation
and com m u n ists can speak of their own " h i stories", ist International (Rebel
indeed seem to speak of little else. Marxism itself is Press 1 998).
now a trad ition of d ead generations, and even latter
day situationists seem to have d ifficulty in " leaving the
twentieth century:2

We write this not from any special i nfatuation with the

present, or any resultant desire to bring comm u nist
theory "up-to-date". The twenty-first century - just as
much as the previous one - is formed by the contra
d iction between labour and capital, the separation
between work and " life", and the domination of every
thing by the abstract forms of value. It is therefore just
as worth leaving as its predecessor. Yet the "twenti
eth century" fam il iar to the situationists, its contours
of class relat i o n s , its t e m poral ity of progress, a n d
i t s post-capitalist h o rizon s , is obviously b e h i n d us.
We've become bored with theories of novelty - with
post-modernism, post- Ford ism, and each n ew prod
uct of the academy - not so much because they fai l
t o captu re an essential conti n u ity, b u t because the
capitalist restructuring of the 1 970s and 80s is no
longer novel.

Bring Out Your Dead

3
In this prelimi nary issue of Endnotes we have assem
bled a series of texts ( basically an exchange between
two com m u n ist groups in France ) all concerned with
the h i story of revo l ut i o n s in the twentieth century.
As the texts make clear, the history of these revolu
tions is a h istory of fai l u re , either because they were
crushed by capitalist counter-revolution or because
their "victories" took the form of counter-revolutions
themselves - setting u p social systems which, in their
reliance on monetary exchange and wage-labour, failed
to t ranscend capital ism. Yet the latter was not simply
a " betrayal " ; any more than the former was the result
of "strategic errors" or missing " h istorical conditions."
When we address the q u estion of these fail u res we
cannot resort to "what if" counterfactuals - blam i n g
the defeat o f revolutionary movements on everything
( leaders, forms of organisations, wrong ideas, u n ripe
conditions ) other than the movements themselves i n
their determinate content. I t is t h e nature of this content
which is at issue in the exchange which follows.

In publishing such "historical" texts we have no wish

to encourage an interest i n history per se, nor to cel
ebrate the legacy of the workers' movement. We hope
that i n considering the content of the strugg les of the
last century we will help to undermine the i llusion that
this is somehow "our" past, something to be protected
or preserved. Marx's d ictu m rem inds us of the need
to shed the d ead weight of trad ition . Strictly speak
ing we have nothing to learn from the fail u res of past
revolutions - no need to replay them to discover their
"errors" or d isti l their "truths" - for it would i n any case
be impossible to repeat them. In d rawing the balance
of this h istory, i n taking it to be over, we are d rawing
a l i n e that foregrounds the struggles of our own time.

The two parties to the exchange we are publishing,

Trop/oin and Theorie Communiste, both emerged from

Endnotes
4
a tendency in the early 1 970s that, on the basis of new
characteristics of the class struggle, critically appro
priated the h istorical ultra-left i n both its German I
Dutch (cou ncil communist) and Italian (Bordigist) vari
eties, as well the more recent work of the Situation ist
I nternational and Socialisme ou Barbarie. Before we
can introduce the texts themselves we m ust therefore
introd uce this common backg rou n d .

F R O M T H E R E F U SAL O F W O R K TO " CO M M U N I SATI O N "

When G u y Debord wrote " n ever work" on t h e wall of 3 "We shall never work,
a left-bank alleyway in 1 954, the slogan, appropriated o h waves of fi re!' Arth u r
from Rimbaud3, was still heavily indebted to surrealism R i m baud, Ou'est-ce pour
and its avant-garde progeny. That is to say, it evoked nous, mon creur ( 1872)
at least in part a romanticised vision of late n ineteenth i n : CEuvres completes
century bohemia - a world of declasse artists and intel (Renevi l l e & Mouquet,
lectuals who had become caught between trad itional 1954), p. 1 24.
relations of patronage and the new cultural market
place i n which they were obliged to vend their wares. 4 La Revolution Surrea/iste
The bohemians' negative attitude towards work had no. 4 (1925). In practice
been both a revolt against, and an expression of, this the s u rreal i sts' refusal
polarized condition : caught between an aristocratic of work was often re
d isdain for the " p rofessional", and a petit-bourgeois stricted to artists, with
resentment of all other social classes, they came to d e n u nciations of the
see all work, their own included, as debased. This pos i nfluence of wage-la
ture of refusal was rendered political by the su rrealists, bour on creativity and
who transformed the n i h i l istic gestures of Rimbaud, demands for p u b l i c
Lautreamont, and the dadaists, into the revolutionary subsidies to pay f o r t h e i r
call for a "war on work".4 Yet for the su rrealists, along living costs. E v e n t h e
with other unorthodox revolutionaries (e.g. Lafarg ue, text co-writte n by Bre
elements of the IWW, as well as the you n g Marx) , the ton and Trotsky, Towards
abolition of work was postponed to a utopian horizon a Free Revolutionary Art,
on the other side of a revolution d efined i n its imme seems to disti n g u i s h be
d i acy by the socialist prog ramme of the liberation of tween two revol ution ary
work - the triumph of the workers' movement and the reg imes, one for artists/
e l evation of t h e workin g class to t h e position of a i ntel lectuals and one for
new ru l i n g class. The goal of t h e abolition of work workers: 'if, for a bette r

Bring Out Y o u r Dead

5
would t h u s paradoxically be achieved t h ro u g h first development of the
removing all of work's l i m its (e.g. the capitalist as a forces of m aterial p ro
parasite upon labou r, the relations of production as d u ction, the revolution
a fetter to production) - thereby extending the condi m u st build a socialist
tion of work to everyone ("those who don't work shall reg i m e with central
not eat") and rewarding labour with its rightful share ized control, to develop
of the valu e it produces (th rough various schemes of i ntel lectual c reation
labou r-accounting) . an an arch ist reg i m e
o f i n d ividual l i be rty
This apparent contradiction between means and ends, s h o u l d from the fi rst
evinced in the surrealists' troubled relationship with the be established." Thus
French Com m u n ist Party, was typical of revol utionary one reason the s u r-
theories throughout the ascendant period of the work real i sts neglected the
ers' movement. From anarcho-syndicalists to Stalinists, contrad iction between
the broad swathe of this movement put their hopes the l i beration and aboli
for the overcom ing of capitalism and class society in tion of labour m ay have
general i n the rising power of the working class withi n been that they saw the
capitalism. A t a certain point this workers' power was former as a m atter for
expected to seize the means of production, ushering others.
i n a " period of transition" to comm u n ism or anarchism,
a period which would witness not the abolition of the
situation of the working class, but its generalisation.
Thus the final end of the e l i m ination of class society
coexisted with a whole gamut of revolutionary means
which were premised on its perpetuation.

The Situationist I nternational (SI) inherited the surreal

ists' opposition between the concrete political means
of the l iberation of work and the utopian end of its
abo l ition. The i r principle ach ievement was to trans
pose it from an external opposition mediated by the
transition of the socialist programme into an i nternal
one that propelled their conception of revolutionary
activity. This latter consisted of a rad ical reth inking
of t h e l i b e ration of work, along l i n e s which e m pha
sised the refusal of any separation between revo l u
tionary action a n d the total transformation o f l ife - an
idea expressed i m p l icitly i n their original p roject of

Endnotes
6
"creating situations". The i mportance of this develop 5 The s ituationists were
ment should not be u nderestimated, for the "critique aware of this potential
of separation" here implied a negation of any temporal critique and tried to de
hiatus between means and ends (th u s of any period fl ect it. In 'Pre l i m i naries
of transition) , as well as a refusal of any synchronic o n Councils and Council
mediations - insisting on u niversal (direct democratic) ist Organ isation' (IS no. 1 2,
participation in revolutionary actio n . Yet in spite of 1 969) Riesel writes "it
this abil ity to reth i n k the space and time of revolution, i s known that we h ave
the Si's transcendence of t h e opposition between n o i n c l i n ation towards
the l iberation and abolition of work woul d ultimately worke rism of any form
consist in collapsing its two poles i nto one another, whatsoever", but goes on
i nto an i m m e d iate contrad ictory u n ity, transpos i n g to describe how workers
t h e opposition betwee n m e a n s and e n d s into o n e remain the "central force"
between form and con ten t. with i n the councils and
the revol ution. Where
After their encou nter with the neo-co u n c i l ist group they get closest to ques
Socia/isme o u Barbarie at the beg i n n i n g of the six tion i n g the affirmation of
ties, the S I wholeheartedly adopted the revo l ution the p roletariat, in the the
ary prog ramme of council comm u n i s m , lauding the o ry of "generalized self
council - the apparatus throug h which workers would manageme nt", they are
self-manage their own production and, together with at their most i n co h e rent
other councils, grasp the entirety of social power - as - e.g.: "only the prol etariat,
the "finally ach ieved form" of the proletarian revolution. by negati n g itself, gives
From then on all the potential and all the l i m its of the clear s hape to the project
SI were contained i n the tension between their call to of generalized self
"abolish work" and their central slogan , "all power to management, becau se it
the workers' councils:' On the one hand the content of bears the p roject with i n
the revolution was to i nvolve a radical q uestioning of itself s u bjectively and
work itself (and not merely its organisation), with the objectively" (Vaneigem,
goal of overcoming the separation between work and "Notice to the Civil ized
leisure ; yet on the other hand the form of this revolu Concern i n g Gen eralised
tion was to be workers taking over their workplaces Self-Management" ibid.).
and run n i n g them democratical ly.5 If the proletariat bears
the p roject of self-man
What prevented the SI from overcoming this contra agement "wit h i n itself"
d iction was that the polarities of content and form then it follows that it
were both rooted in an affi rmation of the workers' m u st negate t h i s p roject
movement and the l iberation of work. For althou g h in "negati ng itself".

Bring Out Your Dead

7
t h e SI appro priated from t h e you n g M a rx (and t h e
sociological i n q u i ries o f Socia/isme o u Barbarie) a
preoccupation with the alienation of labour, they none
theless saw the crit i q u e of this alienation as made
possible by the tech nological prosperity of modern
capital ism (th e "leisure society" potentials of automa
tion) and the battalions of the workers' movement who
were capable of both compe l l i n g (in their day to day
stru g gles) and appropriat i n g (in t h e i r revolutionary
counci ls) these techn i cal advances. It was t h u s on
the basis of an existing workers' power at the points
of production that they saw the abolition of work as
becoming possible, both from a tech nical and organi
sational standpoint. I n transposing the tech n i q ues of
the cyberneticians and the gestures of the bohemian
anti-artist into the trusted, cal l ou sed hands of t h e
organised working class, the situationists were able
to imag i n e the abolition of work as the direct result
of its l iberation ; that is, to imagine the overcoming of
alienation as a result of an immed iate appropriation of
the workplace by the workers themselves.

I n this sense the Si's theory represents the last sin

cere gesture of faith in a revolutionary conception of
self-management i nteg ral to t h e prog ram m e of t h e
l iberation o f work. But i t s critique o f work wou l d b e
taken u p and transformed b y t h o s e who sought t o
theorise the n e w struggles that eme rged when t h i s
programme h a d entered i nto i rreversible crisis i n t h e
1 9 7 0 s . T h e latter wou ld u n d e rstand this critiq u e a s
rooted n o t in an affirmation o f the workers' movement,
but in new forms of struggles which coincided with its
decomposition. However, i n the writi ngs of In variance,
La Vielle Taupe, Mouvement Communiste and others,
the attem pt to overcome the central contradiction of
the SI would first be expressed in a critique of "formal
ism", the privileging of form over content, within the
ideology of council comm u n ism.

Endnotes
8
T H E C R I T I Q U E OF CO U N C I LI S M

Contrary to the instructions of the SI, the workers who 6 The S I revealed their
took part i n the mass strike of May '68 i n France did se lf-delusion by ret
not seize the means of production, form councils, or rospectively clai m i n g
try to run the factories under workers' control.6 I n the that workers h a d been
vast majority of occupied workplaces workers were 'objectively at several
content to leave all the organisation in the hands of moments o n ly an h o u r
their u n ion delegates, and the latter often had trouble away' f r o m setting u p
in convi ncing workers to show u p to the occupation councils d u ri n g t h e M ay
assembl ies to vote for the contin uation of the strike.7 events. 'Th e Beg in-
I n the most important class struggles of the ensuing ning of an Era' (IS no. 1 2,
years, e.g. those in Italy, the council form, consistently 1 969).
the epitome of proletarian rad icalism i n the foregoing
cycle (Germany ' 1 9, Italy ' 2 1 , Spain '36, H u ngary ' 5 6) , 7 Bru no Astarian, Les
was notably absent. Yet these years paradoxically saw greves en France en mai
a revival of the ideology of cou ncilism, as the percep juin 1968, (Echanges et
tion of an increasingly u n ruly worki ng class and the Mouvement 2003).
decreasing viabil ity of the old organisations seemed
to suggest that the only thing missing was the form
most adequate to spontaneous and non-hierarch ical
struggles. I n this context groups like Informations Cor
respondance Ou vrieres (ICO) in France, Solidarity i n
England, Root and Branch i n the U S , and to some
extent the operaisti current i n Italy, managed to revive
an interest in the German/ Dutch Left through blaming
the old enem ies of council ism - al l the left parties and
u n ions, all the " b u reaucrats" i n the language of the
SI - for the fai l u re of each new insurgency.

It would not take long for this perspective to be chal

lenged, and this chal lenge would in itially take the form
of a revival of the other left-communist tradition. Under
the i ntellectual leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, the Ital
ian Left had long criticised council communism (which
they thought had been u nfairly l u m ped together with
the Italian Left i n Len i n ' s " Left-wing Com m u nism, an
I nfantile Disorder") for its championing of form over

Bring Out Your Dead

9
 content, and its uncritical conception of democracy.8 8 e . g . : " [T] h e formu lae
It is this critique, filtered through the influence of the 'workers' control' and
d issident Bordig ist j o u rnal In variance, which under 'workers' management'
lies G i l les Dauve's analysis of councilism i n " Len i n are lacking in any con
ism and the U ltraleft", one o f the fou ndational texts tent. . .. The 'content'
of the tendency we are describing.9 Dauve accuses [ of socialism ] won't be
c o u n c i l com m u n i s m of formalism o n two c o u n t s : proletarian auton omy,
t h e i r approach to the q u estion o f organ isation sees control, and manage
the form of o rg a n isation as the decisive factor (an ment of p rod u ction, but
" i n ve rted Len i n i s m " ) , and t h e i r conception of post the disappearance of
revolutionary society transforms the form (the council) the prol etarian class;
into the content of social ism, through depicting the of the wage system ; of
latter as fundamentally a question of management. For exchange - even in its
Dauve, as for Bordiga, this was a false q uestion, for last s u rviving form as
capitalism is not a mode of management but a mode the exchange of money
of prod uction, in which "managers" of any sort (capital for labou r-power; and,
ists, bureaucrats, or even workers) are merely the func final ly, the in dividual en
tionaries through which the law of value is articulated. terprise wil l disappear
As Pierre Nashua (La Vielle Taupe) and Carsten J u h l as well. There will be
(Invariance) would later argue, t h e preoccupation with nothing to control and
form over content effectively replaced the comm u nist manage, and nobody
goal of the destruction of the economy with a mere to demand autonomy
opposition to its management by the bourgeoisie . 1 0 from." Amadeo Bordiga,
The Fundamentals of
C R I T I QU E O F W O R K R E D UX Revolutionary Commu
nism (1957) (ICP, 1 972).
In itself this critique of council comm unism could only
lead to reworking the canonical theses of the Italian 9 First p u b lished in
Left, either through an i mmanent critique (In variance) E n g lish in Eclipse and
or by developing a sort of ltalo-Germanic hybrid (Mou- Re-Emergence of the
vement Communiste) . What provided the i m petus for Communist Movement
a new conception of revol ution and comm u n ism (as ( Black and Red, 1 974).
communisation) was not simply an u nderstanding of
the content of communism derived from a close reading 10 Pierre Nash ua ( Pierre
of Marx and Bord iga, but also the influence of a whole G uil lau m e ) , Perspec-
wave of class struggles of the late sixties and early tives on Councils,
seventies which would g ive a new meaning to "the Workers ' Management
refusal of work" as a specific content of the revolution. and the German Left

Endnotes
10
By the early 1 970s journalists and sociologists began (La Vielle Tau pe 1974).
to speak of a " revolt against work" affl icti ng an entire Carsten J u h l, 'The Ger
new generation of workers in trad itional i n d u stries, man Revol ution and the
with rapidly rising rates of absenteeism and sabotage, Spectre of the prole
as well as a widespread d isregard for the authority tariat' (Invariance Series
of the u n io n . Commentators variously blamed : the 11 no. 5, 1974).
feeling of expendabil ity and insecu rity brought about
by automation ; the increasing assertiveness of trad i
tionally oppressed m i n orities; the influence of an anti
authoritarian counter-culture ; the power and sense of
entitlement afforded by the prolonged post-war boom
and its hard-won "social wage". Whatever the reason
for these developments, what seemed to characterize
the new struggles was a breakdown in the trad itional
forms through which workers sought to gain control
over the labour process, leaving o n ly the expression
of an apparent desire to work less. For many of those
who had been i nfluenced by the SI, this new proletar
ian "assault" was characterized by a " refusal of work"
shorn of the techno-utopian and bohemian-artistic ele
ments which the SI had never been able to abandon.
G roups l i ke Negation and Intervention Communiste
arg ued that it was not o n ly the power of the u n i o n
w h i c h was b e i n g undermined i n these struggles, b u t
the entire Marxist and Anarch ist prog ram me of t h e
l iberation o f work a n d t h e triumph o f "workers' power".
Far from l iberating their work, bringing it under their
own control, and using it to seize control of soci
ety through self-manag i n g their workplaces, i n the
French May and the s u bsequent "creeping May" in
Italy, the "critique of work" took the form of h u n d reds
of thousands of workers deserting their workplaces.
Rather than an ind ication that struggles had n 't gone
far enough, the absence of workers' cou ncils d u ring
this period was thus u nderstood as an expression of
a rupt u re with what would come to be known as "the
old workers' movement."

Bring Out Your Dead

11
THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNISATION

J ust as it had been influential in spread ing the above- 11 Jacq ues Camatte, ' Pro-
mentioned critique of cou ncilism, the dissident Bordi letariat and Revol ution'
g ist journal In variance was an important forerunner (Invariance Series I I
of critical reflection on the history and function of the no. 6 , 1975).
workers' movement. For In variance the old workers'
movement was integral to a development of capital- 12 Camatte, particu larly
ism from a stage of merely "formal" to one of " real through h i s influence
d o m i n at i o n :' The workers' fai l u res were necessary on Fredy Perlman,
since it was capital that constituted their organizing would go on to become
principle: a principle i n s p i ration
for prim itivist thought
"The example of the German, and above all, of the - see This World We
Russian revol utions, shows that the proletariat was Must Leave: and Other
fully capable of d estroy i n g a social order which Essays (Autonomed ia,
presented an obstacle to the development of the 1995).
pro d u ctive forces, and t h u s to t h e d evelopment
of capital, but that at the moment that it became
a matter of establishing a d ifferent com m u n ity, it
remained a prisoner of the l o g i c of the rational
ity of the development of those prod uctive forces,
and confined itself within the problem of managi ng
them! ' 1 1

Th us a q uestion that for Bordiga had been one of theo

retical and organisational error came for Camatte to
defi ne the h istoric function of the workers' movement
with i n capital ism. The self-l i beration of the worki n g
c l a s s meant o n ly t h e deve l o p m e n t of t h e prod u c
tive forces, s i n c e the principle productive force was
the worki ng class itself. One did not need to follow
Camatte into the wilderness 1 2 in order to agree with
this estimation. After all, by the 1 970s it was clear that
in the East the workers' movement had been integral ,
at least at the beg i n n i n g , to an unprecedented rise i n
the prod uctive capacity o f the social ist states ; whi lst
in the West workers' struggles for better conditions

Endnotes
12
had played a key role in bringing about the post-war 13 Marx & Engels, The Ger
boom and the resulting global expansion of the capital man Ideology ( MECW 5),
ist mode of productio n . Yet for many the crisis of the p. 49.
i nstitutions of the workers' movement i n the 1 970s
showed that this capitalist function was itself coming 14 The idea of a "period of
i nto crisis, and workers would fi nally be able to shed tran sition", fo u n d notably
the burden of this h istory. i n the political writi ngs
of Marx and Engels, had
Thus for Mouvement Communiste, Negation, Interven been s hared by almost
tion Communiste, and others the breakdown of the old every te ndency of the
workers' movement was something to be celebrated, workers' movement.
not because the corrupt leaders h i p of the workers' D u r i n g such a period
organisations wou l d no longer be able to restrain the workers were s u pposed
autonomy of the masses, but because such a sh ift to seize control of the
represented a transcendence of the historical function pol itical (Le n i n i st) or
of the workers' movement. A transcendence that would eco n o m i c (synd ical i st)
mark the reemergence of the comm unist movement, ap paratuses and run
the " real movement which abolishes the present state them i n their own i nter
of things". 1 3 And it did so in an immediate sense, for the ests. This corresponded
riots and wildcat strikes of that decade were read by to an ass u m ption that
these g roups as a refusal of all the med iations of the workers could run their
workers' movement, not i n favou r of some other more workp laces better than
"democratic" med iation l i ke that of workers' councils, their bosses, and thus
but in a way that posed the immediate prod uction of that to take over produc
communist relations as the only concievable revolution tion would equally be
ary horizon. Thus whereas comm u n ism had previously to develop it (resolving
been seen as something that needed to be created i n efficiencies, i rration
after the revolution, the revolution was now seen as alities and i nj u stices).
noth ing other than the production of communism (abol I n d i s placing the com
ishing wage labour and the state) . Such g roups thus m u n ist q u estion (the
followed the S I in rejecting any notion of a period of practical q u estion of the
transition, 1 4 but rooted this rejection not in an artistic abolition of wage-labo u r,
ideal of u nmed iated experience, but in the l ived real ity exchange, and the state)
of contemporary class struggle. to after the transition,
the i m m e d iate goal, the
revol ution, became a
matter of overc o m i n g
certain 'bad" aspects of

Bring O u t Your Dead

13
In a recent text Dauve sums u p this estimation of the capitalism (inequal ity,
old workers' movement: the tyranny of a parasit
ical class, the "anarchy"
"The workers' movement that existed in 1 900, or still of the market, the "irra
in 1 9 3 6 , was neither crushed by fascist repression tional ity" of " u n p roduc
nor bought off by transistors or fridges : it destroyed tive" pursuits . . . ) whi lst
itself as a force of change because it aimed at pre preserv i n g aspects
serving the proletarian condition, not supersed ing of capitalist prod uc
it. . . . The pu rpose of the old labour movement was tion in a more " rational"
to take over the same world and manage it in a new and less " u nj u st" form
way: putting the idle to work, developing produc (equal ity of the wage
tion, introd ucing workers' democracy (in principle, and of the obligation
at least) . O n ly a tiny m i n o rity, 'anarchist' as well to work, the entitle
as ' marxist', held that a d ifferent society meant the ment to the full val u e
destruction of State, commod ity and wage labour, of o n e ' s product after
although it rarely defined this as a process, rather ded uctions for "social
as a programme to put into practice after the seizure costs" . . . ) .

of power . . . " 1 5
15 G i lles Dauve, 'Out of
Against such a programmatic approach, g roups l i ke the Future' in Eclipse
Mouvement Communiste, Negation, and La Guerre and Reemergence of
Socia/e stood for a conception of revol ution as the the Communist Move
immed iate destruction of capitalist relations of pro ment (1997) p p. 1 2-13.
d u ct i o n , o r " co m m u n i sati o n ". As we shall see, the
u n derstan d i n g of com m u n isation d iffered between
d ifferent g roups, but it essentially meant the applica
tion of commu n ist measures within the revolution - as
the condition of its survival and its principle weapon
against capital . Any "period of transition" was seen
as inherently counter-revolutionary, not j u st in so far
as it entailed an alternative power struct u re which
wou l d resist "withering away" (c.f. anarchist critiques
of "the d ictators h i p of t h e proletariat") , n o r s i m ply
because it always seemed to leave u nchallenged fun
damental aspects of the relations of prod uction, but
because the very basis of workers' power on which
such a transition was to be erected was now seen to
be fundamentally alien to the struggles themselves.

Endnotes
14
Workers' power was just the other side of the power of 1& It s h o u l d be n oted that
capital, the power of reprod ucing workers as workers ; something like a com-
henceforth the only available revolutionary perspective m u nisation thesis was
wou l d be the abolition of t h i s reci p rocal relation. 16 arrived at independently
by Alfredo Bonan n o
CO M M U N I SATI O N A N D CYCLES O F STR U G G LE : and other "in s u rrection
TROPLO/N A N D THEOR/E COMMUN/STE ary anarchists' in the
1980s. Yet they tended
The milieu in which the idea of communisation emerged to u n d e rstand it as a
was never very u n ified, and the d ivisions only g rew as lesson to be applied to
time went on. Some ended up abandoning whatever every particu lar strug
was left of the councilist rejection of the party and gle. As Debord says of
returned to what remained of the legacy of the Italian anarchism in gene ral,
Left, congregating around atavistic sects such as the such an idealist and
I nternational Comm u nist Current (ICC) . Many others normative methodology
took the questioning of the old workers' movement and "abandons the historical
the ideal of workers' councils to requ i re a q uestion ing terrain' in assuming that
of the revolutionary potential of the working class. In the adequate forms of
its most extreme form with the journal Invariance this practice have all been
led to an abandoning of "the theory of the proletariat", fou n d (Debord, Society
replacing it by a p u rely normative demand to " leave of the Spectacle (Rebel
this world ", a world in which the com m u n ity of capital Press, 1992), 93 p.49).
has, throug h real domination, supplanted the h u man Like a broken clock,
community. Yet even among those who didn't go as far, such anarchism is al
there was an abiding sense that as long as struggles ways capable of telling
remained attached to the workplace they could only the rig ht time, but only
ex press themselves as a defence of the condition of at a sin g l e instant, so
the working class. In spite of their different approaches, that when the tim e fi
Mou vement Communiste, La Guerre Sociale, Nega nally comes it wil l make
tion, and their descendants ended u p affirming the little difference that it is
workplace revolts of the 1 970s, and the g rowth of finally rig ht.
struggles around reproduction with which they coin
cided, to the extent that they seemed to escape the
constraints of class identity, freei n g the " class for
itself" from the "class i n - itself", and thus reveal i n g
t h e potential for comm u n isation as t h e realisation
of t h e true h u man com m u n ity. A few people asso
ciated with this tendency (notably Pierre G u illaume

Bring O u t Your Dead

15
and Dominique Blanc) wou ld take the critique of anti 17 Robert Fau risson i s
fascism (shared to some extent by all of those who a bourgeois h i storian
defended the communisation thesis) to an extreme and who attracted atten
become entang led in the " Faurisson Affair" of the late- tion to h i mself i n the
1 970s. 1 7 Another tendency, represented by Theorie late 70s by denying
Communiste (hereafter TC), attempted to historicise the existence of gas
the comm u nisation thesis itself, u n derstanding it in cham bers at Auschwitz
terms of changes i n class relations which were in the (th o u g h n ot the Nazi's
process of undermining the institutions of the work systematic mass m u r
ers' movement and working class identity in general. der of civil ians). For this
They wou ld go on to conceptualise this change as a Fau risson was put on
fu ndamental restructu ri n g of the capitalist mode of trial. For reasons o n ly
production in accordance with the term ination of one really known to h i m
cycle of struggle and the emergence, via a success self, Pie rre G u i l laume
ful cou nter-revolution, of a new cycle. The distinguish became a pro m i nent
ing feature of this new cycle for TC is that it carries defe n d e r of Fau risson
within it the potential for com m u nisation as the l i m it and managed to attract
of a class contrad iction newly situated at the level of several affil iates of La
reproduction (see the afterword below for a clarifica Vielle Taupe and La
tion of TC's theory in this respect) . 1 8 Guerre Sociale (notably
D o m i n i q u e Blanc) to
Whilst TC developed their theory o f t h e restructu ring h i s cause. This created
at the end of the 1 970s, others wou ld fol low suit i n an i nternec i n e polemic
t h e 1 9 80s a n d 90s, and the g roup Troploin (consist with i n the Parisian
ing principally of G i l les Dauve and Karl N esic) has u ltra-left which lasted
recently attempted something of that order in "Wither more than a decade.
the World" and " I n for a Storm ". The d ifference be-
tween these conceptions is marked, not least because 1a Other groups which
the latter seems to have been at least partly developed trace their descent
i n opposition to the former. The exchange between from this (loosely de-
Theorie Communiste and Troploin we are publishing fined) te ndency i n t h e
here took place i n the last ten years, and u n derly- 1970s: La Banquise,
ing the assessment of the revolutionary history of the L'lnsecurite Sociale, Le
twentieth century to be found i n these texts, are d if- Brise Glace, Le Voyou,
ferent conceptions of capitalist restructuring and op- Crise Communiste, Hie
posed interpretations of the cu rrent period . Salta, La Materielle,
Temps Critiques.

Endnotes
16
The fi rst text, When Insurrections Die, is based on an 19 see below p. 204.
earl ier introd uction by G i l les Dauve to a collection of
articles from the Italian Left journal Bi/an on the Span-
ish Civil War. I n this text Dauve is concerned to show
how the wave of proletarian revolts i n the first half of
the twentieth century were crushed by the vicissitudes
of war and ideology. Thus i n Russia the revo l ution is
sacrificed to the civil war, and destroyed by the con-
solidation of Bolshevik power; i n Italy and G ermany
the workers are betrayed by u n ions and parties, by the
lie of democracy ; and in Spain it is again the march to
war (to the tune of anti-fascism) which seals the fate
of the whole cycle, trapping the proletarian revolution
between two bourgeois fronts.

Dauve doesn't address the later strugg les of the 60s

and 70s, but it is obvious that judgements from this
period, as to e.g. the nature of the workers' movement
as a whole, inform his assessment of what was " miss
ing" in this earlier defeated wave of struggles. I n their
critique of When Insurrections Die, TC attack what
they consider to be Dauve's "normative" perspective,
in which actual revolutions are counter-posed to what
they could and should have been - to a never-com
pletely-spelled-out formu l a o f a genui ne comm u n ist
revolution. TC broadly agree with Dauve's conception
of revolution (i.e. comm u n isation) but criticise Dauve
for ah istorically i m posing it on previous revol utionary
struggles as the measure of their success and fai l u re
(and thus of failing to account for the h i storical emer
gence of the comm u n isation thesis itself) . Accordi ng
to T C it fol lows that the onl y explanation that Dauve is
capable of giving for the fai l u re of past revolutions is
the u ltimately tautological one that they didn't go far
enough - "the proletarian revolutions failed because
the proletarians failed to m ake the revolution:' 19 I n
contrast they argue that their own theory is able to
give a robust account of the whole cycle of revolution,

Bring O u t Y o u r Dead
17
cou nter-revol ution and restruct u r i n g , i n which revo- 20 For a discussion of
l utions can be shown to have contained their own these issues, as well
counter-revolutions within them as the intrinsic l i mit of as the differin g as-
the cycles they emerge from and bring to term. s u m ption s at work in
this exchange, see the
In the subsequent th ree texts in the exchange (two Afterword at the end of
by Troploin and one by TC) a n um be r of controver- this issue.
sies are explored, including the role of " h u manism" in
Troploin's conception of comm u n isation, and the role
of "determ inism" i n that of TC.20 Yet for us the most
i nteresting aspect of this exchange, the reason we are
publishing it here, is that it constitutes the most frank
attempt we have come across to assess the legacy
of 2 0'h century revo l utionary movements in terms of
a conception of comm unism as neither an ideal or a
programme, but a movement immanent to the world of
capital, that which abolishes capitalist social relations
on the basis of premises currently i n existence. It is i n
order to interrogate these premises, to retu rn to the
present - o u r starting point - that we seek to analyse
their conditions of emergence in the foregoing cycles
of struggle and revolution.

Endnotes
18
19
WHEN INSURRECTIONS DIE
G i l l e s Dauve,
Ouand Meurent /es insurrections.
A D E L , Par i s , 1998.

T h i s vers i o n , trans lated by

Loren Goldner a n d revised by
the author, fi rst published by
A ntag o n i s m Press, 1999.

20
 "If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a 1 Marx & Engels, Preface
proletarian revol ution in the West, so that both com- to Russian Edition 1882,
plement each other, the present Russian common Communist Manifesto
ownership of land may serve as the starting point (MEcw 24), p. 426.
for a comm u n ist development." 1
2 An earl ier version of this
This perspective was not real ised . The Eu ropean prole article was published in
tariat m issed its rendezvous with a revitalised Russian 1 979 as a preface to the
peasant comm u ne.2 selection of articles from
Bi/an o n Spain 1936-39.
B R ESTLITOVS K : 1 9 1 7 A N D 1 93 9 Chapters of this preface
have been tran slated i n
Brest-Litovsk, Poland, December 1 9 1 7: the Bolsheviks E n g lish as Fascism and
proposed peace without annexations to a Germany An ti-Fascism by several
intent on taking over a large swath of the old Tsarist publis hers, for i n stance
empire, stretching from Finland to the Caucasus. But U n popu lar Books.
i n February 1 9 1 8, the German sold iers, " p roletarians
i n u n iform" though they were, obeyed their officers
and resumed the offensive against a soviet Russia as if
they were still facing the Tsarist army. No fraternisation
occurred , and the revolutionary war advocated by the
Bolshevik Left proved i m possible. In March , Trotsky
had to sign a peace treaty d i ctated by the Kaiser's
generals. "We're trad ing space for time", as Len i n put
it, and in fact, in N ovember, the German defeat turned
the treaty into a scrap of paper. Nevertheless, practical
proof of the i nternational l i n k-up of the exploited had
failed to materialise. A few months later, returning to
civilian life with the war's end, these same proletarians
confronted the all iance of the official workers' move
ment and the Freikorps. Defeat followed defeat : in Ber
l i n , Bavaria and H u ngary in 1 9 1 9 ; then the Red Army
of the Ruhr i n 1 9 2 0 ; the March Action i n 1 9 2 1 . . .

September 1 939. Hitler and Stalin have just carved up

Poland. At the border bridge of Brest-Litovsk, several
h u n d red members of the KPD, refugees i n the USSR
s u bseq u e ntly arrested as "cou nter-revolutionaries",

When Insurrections Die

21
are taken from Stal i nist prisons and handed over to
the Gestapo. Years later, one of them would explain
the scars on her back - "GPU did it" - and her torn
fingernails - "and that's the Gestapo". A fair account
of the first half of this century.

1 9 1 7-37 : twenty years that shook the world . The suc

cession of horrors represented by fascism, then World
War II and the su bseq uent upheavals, are the effect
of a g igantic social crisis opening with the mutinies of
1 9 1 7 and closed by the Spanish Civil War.

N OT " FASC I S M OR D E M O C RACY" - FAS C I S M AND D E M O C RACY

Accord ing to current left-wing wisdom, fascism is raw 3 For example, Daniel
state power and brutal capital unmasked , so the only G u erin, Fascism and
way to do away with fascism is to get rid of capitalism Big Business (New /n-
altogether. ternational vol. 4 no. 10,
1938)
So far, so good. U nfortunately, the analysis usually
turns rou n d on itself: since fascism is capitalism at its
worst, we ought to prevent it from actually producing
its worst, i.e. we ought to fight for a " normal", non-fas
cist capitalism, and even rally non-fascist capitalists.

Moreover, as fascism is capital i n its most reactionary

forms, such a vision means trying to promote capital
in its m ost modern, n o n -feudal, n o n - m i litarist, n o n
racist, non-repressive, non-reactionary forms, i . e . a
more l iberal capitalism, in other words a more capital
ist capitalism.

Wh i l e it goes on at length to explain how fascism

serves the i nterests of "big business"3, anti-fascism
maintains that fascism could h ave been averted i n
1 9 2 2 or 1 933 anyway, that is without destroying big
business, if the workers' movement and/or the demo
crats had mou nted enough pressu re to bar M u ssol i n i

Gilles Da u ve
22
and H itler from power. Anti-fascism is an e n d l ess
comedy of sorrows: if on ly, in 1 9 2 1 , the Italian Social
ist Party and the n ewly-founded Italian Comm u n ist
Party had allied with Republ ican forces to stop Mus
sol i n i . . . if o n ly, at the beg i n n i n g of the 1 93 0 ' s , the
KPD had not launched a fratricidal struggle against
the SPD, Europe would have been spared one of the
most ferocious dictatorships in history, a second world
war, a N azi empire of almost continental d imensions,
the concentration camps, and the extermi nation of the
J ews. Above and beyond its very true observations
about classes, the state, and the ties between fascism
and big industry, this vision fails to see that fascism
arose out of a two-fold fail u re : the fail u re of revolu
tionaries after World War I , crushed as they were by
social-democracy and parl iamentary d emocracy, and
then, i n the course of the 1 9 20's, the fai l u re of the
democrats and social-democrats i n managi ng capital.
Without a grasp of the preceding period as well as of
the earl ier phase of class struggle and its l i m its, the
comi n g to power, and sti l l more the nature of fascism,
remain incomprehensible.

What is the real thrust of fascism, if not the economic

and political u nification of capital, a tendency which
has become g e n e ral since 1 91 4? Fascism was a
particular way of bri n g i n g about that u n ity i n coun
tries - Italy and G e rmany - where, even though the
revolution had been snuffed out, the state was unable
to i m pose order, including order i n the ranks of the
bourgeoisie. M u ss o l i n i was n o Thiers, with a solid
base i n power, ordering regular forces to massacre
the Comm unards. An essential aspect of fascism is its
birth in the streets, its use of d isorder to impose order,
its mobilisation of the old middle classes crazed by
their own decline, and its regeneration, from without,
of a state u nable to deal with the crisis of capitalism.
Fascism was an effort of the bourgeoisie to forcibly

When Insurrections Die

23
tame its own contrad ictions, to t u rn working class
methods of mobil isation to its own advantage, and
to deploy all the resou rces of the modern state, first
against an internal enemy, then against an external one.

Th is was indeed a crisis of the state, d u ri n g the tran

sition to the total domination of capital over society.
First, workers' organisations had been necessary to
deal with the proletarian upsurge; then, fascism was
req u i red to put an end to the ensuing disorder. This
disorder was, of course, not revolutionary, but it was
paralysing, and stood in the way of solutions which,
as a result, could only be violent. This crisis was only
e rratically overcom e at t h e t i m e : t h e fascist state
was efficient only i n appearance, because it forcibly
i ntegrated the wage-labou r work force, and artificially
b u ried confl i cts by p roject i n g them i n to m i l itarist
adventu re. But the crisis was overcome, relatively, by
the m ulti-tentacled democratic state established in
1 945, which potentially appropriated all of fascism's
methods, and added some of its own, since it neu
tralises wage-worker organisations without destroying
them. Parl iaments have lost control over the execu
tive. With welfare or with workfare, b y modern tech
niques of surveillance or by state assistance extended
to m i l l ions of ind ividuals, i n short by a system which
makes everyone m o re and more dependent, social
u n ification goes beyond anything ach ieved by fascist
terror, but fascism as a specific movement has d isap
peared. It corresponded to the forced-march discipline
of the bourgeoisie, under the pressu re of the state, in
the particular context of newly c reated states hard
pressed to constitute themselves as nations.

The bourgeoisie even took the word "fascism" from work

ing class organ isations in Italy, which were often called
fasci. It is sign ificant that fascism first defined itself as
a form of organisation and not as a programme. The

Gilles Dauve
24
word referred both to a symbol of state power ( fasces,
o r b u ndles, borne before h i g h officials in Ancient
Rome) , and to a will to get people together in bundles
( groups ) . Fascism's only programme is to organ ise, to
forcibly make the components of society converge.

Dictatorship is not a weapon of capital ( as if capital

cou ld replace it with other, less brutal weapons) : d ic
tatorshi p is one of its tendencies, a tendency realised
whenever it is deemed necessary. A " return" to parlia
mentary democracy, as it occu rred i n Germany after
1 9 45, ind icates that d i ctatorsh i p is useless for inte
grating the masses into the state ( at least until the next
time) . The problem is therefore not that democracy
ensures a more pl iant domination than dictators h i p :
anyone would prefer b e i n g exploited i n the Swed ish
mode to being abducted by the henchmen of Pinoc
het. But does one have the choice? Even the gentle
democracy of Scandinavia would be turned into a dic
tatorship if circumstances demanded it. The state can
only have one function, which it fulfils democratically
or dictatorial ly. The fact that the former is less harsh
does not mean that it is possible to reorient the state
to dispense with the latter. Capitalism's forms depend
no more on the preferences of wage workers than they
do on the intentions of the bourgeoisie. Weimar capit
ulated to H itler with open arms. Leon B l u m ' s Popu lar
Front did not "avoid fascism", because in 1 936 France
requ i red neither an authoritarian u n ification of capital
nor a shrinking of its middle classes.

There is n o pol itical "choice" to which proletarians

c o u l d be enticed o r which c o u l d b e forc i b l y i m
posed . Democracy is n ot d i ctators h i p , b u t d e m oc
racy does prepare dictatorship, and prepares itself
for d i ctatorship.

When Insurrections Die

25
The essence of anti-fasci s m consists i n resist i n g
fasci s m by d efe n d i n g d e m o c racy : o n e n o l o n g e r
struggles against capital ism but seeks to pressu re
capita l i s m i nto ren o u n c i n g t h e totalitarian option.
Since socialism is identified with total democracy,
and capitalism with an accelerating tendency to fas
cism, the antagonisms between proletariat and capital,
comm u n is m and wage-labo u r, proletariat and state,
are rejected for a counter-position of democracy and
fascism presented as the q u intessential revol utionary
perspective. The official left and far left tell us that a
real change wou ld be the realisation, at last, of the
ideals of 1 789, endlessly betrayed by the bourgeoisie.
The new world? Why, it is already here, to some extent,
in embryos to be preserved, i n little buds to be tended :
already existing democratic rights must be pushed fur
ther and further with i n an infinitely perfectible society,
with ever-greater daily doses of democracy, until the
achievement of complete democracy, or socialism.

Thus reduced to anti-fascist resistance, social cri

tique is enl isted i n d ithyrambs to everything it once
denounced , and g ives u p nothing less than that shop
worn affai r, revolution, for g radua l i s m, a variant on
the " peaceful transition to socialism" once advocated
by the CPs, and derided, thirty years ago, by anyone
serious about changing the world. The retrogression
is palpable.

We won't i nvite ridicule by accusing the left and far left

of having d iscarded a comm u nist perspective which
they knew i n reality only when opposing it. It is all
too obvious that anti-fascism ren o u n ces revolution.
But anti-fascism fails exactly where its realism claims
to be effective : i n p reventi n g a possible d i ctatorial
m utation of society.

Gilles Dau ve
26
Bourgeois democracy is a phase in capital's seizure of
power, and its extension in the 2Q'h centu ry com pletes
capital's d o m i nation by intensifyi n g the isolation of
i n d ividuals. Proposed as a remedy for the separation
between man and com m u n ity, between h u man activ
ity and society, and between classes, democracy will
never be able to solve the problem of the most sepa
rated society in h istory. As a form forever i ncapable
of mod ifying its content, democracy is only a part of
the problem to which it claims to be the solution. Each
time it claims to strengthen the "social bond", democ
racy contributes to its d issolution. Each time it papers
over the contrad ictions of the commod ity, it does so
by tightening the hold of the net which the state has
placed over social relations.

Even in their own desperately resigned terms, the anti

fascists, to be credible, have to explain to us how local
democracy is compatible with the colon isation of the
commod ity which empties out public space, and fi lls
u p the shopping malls. They have to explain how an
o m n i present state to which people turn for protec
tion and help, this veritable mach i n e for prod ucing
social "good", will not commit "evil " when explosive
contradictions requ i re it to restore order. Fascism is
the adu lation of the statist monster, while anti-fascism
is its more subtle apology. The fight for a democratic
state is inevitably a fight to consolidate the state, and
far from crippling totalitarianism, such a fight increases
totalitarianism 's stranglehold on society.

ROM E : 1 91 9-1 922

Fascism triu mphed i n countries i n which the revolu

tionary assault after World War I matured i nto a series
of armed insurrections. In Italy, an important part of the
proletariat, using its own methods and goals, d i rectly
confronted fascism . There was not h i n g specifically

When Insurrections Die

27
anti-fascist about its stru g g l e : fighting capital com 4 Angelo Tasca, The Rise
pelled workers and the young CP ( created at Livorno, of Italian Fascism 1918-
January 1921 , and led by the " Bord ig ist" faction ) to 1922 (Gordon 1976). Phil
fight both the Black Shirts and the cops of parl iamen l i p Bourrinet, The Italian
tary democracy.4 Communist Left 1927-45
(ICC 1992).
Fascism is unique in giving counter-revolution a mass
base and in m i m icking revolution. Fascism turns the
call to "transform the i m perialist war into civil war"
against the workers' movement, and it appears as a
reaction of demobil ised veterans returning to civil ian
l ife, where they are n ot h i n g , o n l y held together by
collective violence, and bent on destroying everything
they imagine to be a cause of their d ispossession :
su bversives, enemies of the nation, etc. In J u ly 191 8 ,
Musso l i n i ' s paper, II Popolo d 'ltalia, added t o its title
"Veterans' and Prod ucers' Daily".

Thus from the outset fascism became an auxi liary of

the police in rural areas, putting down the agricultural
proletariat with bullets, but at the same time develop
ing a frenzied anti-capitalist demagogy. I n 1919, it
represented noth i n g : in Milan, in the N ovember gen
eral election, it got less than 5000 votes, while the
social ists got 1 70,000. Yet it demanded the abolition
of the monarchy, of the senate and all titles of nobil ity,
the vote for women, the confiscation of the property
of the clergy, and the expropriation of the big land
owners and industrialists. Fighting against the worker
in the name of the " producer", Musso l i n i exalted the
memory of the Red Week of 191 4 (which had seen a
wave a riots, particularly in Ancona and Naples) , and
hailed the positive role of u n ions i n l i n king the worker
to the nation. Fascism's goal was the authoritarian
restoration of the state, i n order to create a new state
structu re capable ( i n contrast to democracy, Musso
l i n i said ) of l i m iting big capital and of controlling the

Gilles Dauve
28
commod ity logic which was ero d i n g val ues, social
ties and work.

For d ecades, the b o u rgeoisie had d e n i e d the real

ity of social contrad ictions. Fascism, on the contrary,
proclaimed t h e m with violence, denying their exist
ence between classes and transposing them to the
struggle between nations, denouncing Italy's fate as
a " p roletarian nation". M u sso l i n i was archaic in so far
as he upheld trad itional val ues ruined by capital, and
modern i n so far as he claimed to defend the social
rights of the people.

Fascist repression was u n l eashed after a proletarian

fai l u re engineered mainly by democracy and its main
fal lback options: the parties and u n ions, which alone
can defeat the workers by employing d i rect and indi
rect methods i n tandem. Fascism's arrival in power
was not the c u l m ination of street battles. Italian and
G e rman proles had been crushed before, by both
ballots and bullets.

I n 1 9 1 9 , federating pre-existing elements with others

close to h i m , Musso l i n i founded his fasci. To cou nter
c lubs and revolvers, while Italy was exploding along
with the rest of Europe, democracy called for . . . a vote,
from which a moderate and socialist majority emerged.
Forty years after these events Bordiga com mented :

" Enthusiastic involvement in the 1 9 1 9 electoral eel

ebration was tantamount to removing all obstacles
on the path of fascism , which was shooti ng ahead
while the masses were put to sleep as they waited
for the big parl iamentary showdown . . . Victory, the
election of 1 50 socialist M Ps, was won at the cost
of the ebb of the insurrectionary movement and of
the general pol itical strike, and the rol lback of the
gains that had al ready been won!'

When Insurrections Die

29
At the time of the factory occupations of 1920, the
state, holding back from a head-on-assault, allowed
the proletariat to exhaust itself, with the support of the
CGL (a majority-socialist union), which wore down the
strikes when it did not break them openly. The institu
tionalisation of "workers' control" over the factories,
under state supervision, was approved by bosses and
u n ions alike.

As soon as the Fasci appeared, sacki ng the Case di

Popo/o, the police either t u rned a b l i n d eye or con
fiscated the workers' g u n s . The courts showed the
Fasci the g reatest indu lgence, and the army tolerated
their exactions when it d i d not actually assist them.
This open but unofficial support became q u asi-official
with the " Bonomi circular". After being expelled from
the social ist party i n 191 2 , with M u ssol i n i ' s agree
ment, for su pporting Italy's war against Libya, lvanoe
Bonomi held several m i n isterial posts, and was head
of govern ment i n 1921 - 2 2 . His October 20, 1921
circular provided 60,000 demobil ised officers to take
command of M usso l i n i ' s assau lt g roups.

Meanwh ile, what were the parties doing? Those lib

erals allied with the right d i d not hesitate to form a
" national bloc", incl u d i n g the fascists, for the elections
of May 1921 . In J une-J u ly of the same year, confronting
an adversary without the slightest scruple, the PSI con
cluded a meaningless "pacification pact" whose only
concrete effect was to fu rther d isorient the workers.

Faced with an obvious pol itical react i o n , the C G L

declared itself a-political. Sensing that M u ssoli n i had
power within his g rasp, the u n ion leaders d reamed of
a tacit agreement of mutual tolerance with the fascists,
and called on the proletariat to stay out of the face-off
between the CP and the N ational Fascist Party.

Gilles Dauve
30
U ntil August 1922, fascism rarely existed outside the
agrarian regions, mainly in the north, where it eradi
cated all traces of autonomous agrarian worker u n ion
ism. In 1919, fascists did burn the headquarters of the
socialist daily paper, but they held back from any role
as strike-breakers i n 1920, and even gave verbal sup
port to worker demands: M u ssol i n i took g reat pains
to stand behind the strikers and d issociate h imself
from tro u b l e m akers, i.e. c o m m u n ists. I n the u rban
areas, the fasci were rarely dominant. Thei r " March
on Raven na" (September 1921) was easily routed. I n
Rome in N ovember 1921 a general strike prevented a
fascist congress from taking place. In May 1922 the
fascists tried again , and were stopped again.

The scenario varied little. A localised fascist onslaught

would be met by a working-class counter-attack, which
would then relent (following calls for moderation from
the reformist workers' movement) as soon as reac
tionary pressure tapered off: the proletarians trusted
the democrats to d ismantle the armed bands. The
fascist th reat would pull back, regroup and go else
where, over time making itself credible to the same
state from which the masses were expecting a solu
tion. The proletarians were q uicker to recogn ise the
enemy i n the black shirt of the street thug than i n the
"normal" uniform of a cop or soldier, draped in a legality
sanctioned by habit, law and u niversal suffrage. The
workers were m i l itant, used g u ns, and turned many a
Labour Exchange or Casa di Popa/a into a fortress,
but stayed nearly always on the defensive, wagi ng a
trench war against an ever mobile opponent.

At the beginning of J u ly 1922, the CGL, by a two-thirds

majority (against the com m u n ist minority's one-thi rd) ,
declared its support for "any government guaranteeing
the restoration of basic freedoms". I n the same month,

When Insurrections Die

31
the fascists seriously stepped u p their attem pts to
penetrate the northern cities . . .

O n August 1 st, the All iance of Labour, which included

the rai lway workers' union, the C G L and the anarch ist
U S I , called a general strike. Despite broad success,
the Alliance officially called off the stri ke on the 3'd.
I n n umerous cities, however, it continued i n insu rrec
tionary form, which was finally contained o n ly by a
combined effort of the police and the m i l itary, sup
ported by naval cannon, and, of course, reinforced
by the fascists.

Who defeated this proletarian energy? The general

strike was broken by the state and the fasci, but it was
also smothered by democracy, and its fai l u re opened
the way to a fascist solution to the crisis.

What fol l owed was less a coup d'etat than a transfer

of power with the support of a whole array of forces.
The " March on Rome" of the Duce (who actually took
the train) was less a showdown than a bit of theatre :
the fascists went through the motions of assaulting the
state, the state went throug h the motions of defend
i n g itself, and M u sso l i n i took power. H is u ltimatum
of October 24 ("We Want To Become the State ! " )
was n o t a th reat o f civil war, but a signal to the ru ling
class that the N ational Fascist Party represented the
only force capable of restoring state authority, and of
assuring the political u n ity of the country. The army
cou ld sti l l have contained the fascist groups gathered
i n Rome, which were badly equipped and notoriously
i nferior on the m i l itary level, and the state could have
withstood the seditious pressu re. But the game was
not being played on the m i litary leve l . Under the infl u
ence o f Badoglio in particular (the commander-in-chief
in 1919- 21) legitimate authority caved i n . The king

Gilles Da u ve
32
refused to proclaim a state of emergency, and on the
3 01h he asked the Duce to form a new government.

The l i berals - th e same people anti-fasci s m cou nts

on to stop fascism - joined the government. With the
exception of the social ists and the comm u n i sts, all
parties sought a rapp rochement with the P N F and
voted for M ussol i n i : the parl iament, with only 35 fas
cist M Ps, supported Musso l i n i ' s i nvestiture 3 0 6 - 1 1 6.
G i o l i tti h imself, the g reat l iberal icon of the time, an
authoritarian reformer who had been head of state
many times before the war, and then again in 1 920-2 1 ,
whom fashionable thought still fancies in retrospect as
the sole politician capable of opposing M ussolini, sup
ported h i m u p to 1 9 24. Democracy not only surren
dered its powers to the dictator, but ratified them.

We might add that i n the fol l owing months, several

u n ions, i n c l u d i n g those of the rai lway workers and
the sailors, declared themselves "national", patriotic,
and therefore not hostile to the reg i m e : repression
did not spare them.

T U R I N : 1 943

If Italian democracy yielded to fascism without a fight,

the latter spawned democracy anew when it fou n d
itself no longer corresponding to t h e balance o f social
and pol itical forces.

The central q u estion after 1 9 4 3 , as i n 1 9 1 9, was

how to control the working-class. I n Italy more than
i n other cou ntries, the end of World War I I shows
the class d imension of i nternational conflict, which
can never be explained by m i l itary logic alone. A gen
eral strike erupted at FIAT i n October 1 94 2 . I n March
1 943, a strike wave rocked Turin and M ilan, including
attem pts at form i n g workers' councils. I n 1 9 43-45,

When Insurrections Die

33
worker g roups emerged , sometimes independent of
the CP, sometimes cal l i n g themselves " Bo rd i g ists",
often simultaneously antifascist, rossi, and armed. The
reg i m e could no longer maintain social e q u i l i b r i u m ,
j ust a s the German alliance was becoming u ntenable
against the rise of the Anglo-Americans, who were
seen i n every q u arter as the fut u re masters of West
ern E u rope. Chan g i n g sides meant allyin g with the
winners-to-be, but also meant rerouting worker revolts
and partisan g roups i nto a patriotic objective with a
social content. On J uly 1 0, 1 943, the Allies landed i n
Sicily. On t h e 241h, finding h i m self i n a 1 9- 1 7 m inor
ity on the G rand Fascist Council, Musso l i n i resigned.
Rarely has a dictator had to step aside for a majority
vote.

Marshal Badoglio, who had been a d i g n itary of the

regime ever since his support for the March on Rome,
and who wanted to prevent, i n his own words, "the
col lapse of the reg ime from swi n g i n g too far to the
left", formed a government which was sti l l fascist but
which n o longer i n c l u d ed the Duce, and t u rned to
the democratic opposition. The democrats refused to
participate, making the depart u re of the king a condi
tion. After a second transitional government, Badoglio
formed a third i n April 1 944, which included the leader
of the CP, Tog liatt i . U nder the pressu re of the Allies
and of the CP, the democrats agreed to accept the
king (the Republic would be proclaimed by referen
dum i n 1 94 6 ) . But Badog lio stirred u p too many bad
memories. I n J u ne, Bonomi, who 23 years earlier had
ordered the officers to join the fasci, formed the first
ministry to actually exclude the fascists. This is how
Bonomi, ex-social ist, ex-warmonger, ex- m i n ister, ex
" national bloc" (fascists included) M P, ex-government
leader from J u ly 1 9 2 1 to February 1 9 22, ex-everything,
took office for six months as an anti-fascist. Later the
situation was reoriented around the tri partite formula

Gilles Oa u ve
34
(Stal ini sts + Social ists + Ch ristian Democrats ) which
would dominate both Italy and France in the first years
after the war.

This game of musical chairs, often played by the self

same political class, was the t heatre prop b e h i n d
which democracy metamorphosed i nto dictatorship,
and vice-versa. The p h ases of e q u i l i b r i u m and dis
equilibri u m i n class confl icts brought about a succes
sion of political forms aimed at maintaining the same
state, u n derwrit i n g the same content. N o one was
more qualified to say it than the Spanish CP, when it
declared, out of cynicism or naivety, d u ring the transi
tion from Francoism to democratic monarchy i n the
mid-70 ' s :

"Spanish society wants everything t o b e transformed

so that the normal functioning of the state can be
assured, without detours or social convulsions. The
continu ity of the state requ i res the non-cont i n uity
of the reg i me:'

VO LKSG E M E I N S C HAFT VS . G E M E I NWES E N

Counter-revolution inevitably triumphs on t h e terrain of

revolution. Through its "people's community" National
Socialism would claim to have eliminated the parl ia
mentarism and bourgeois democracy against which
the proletariat revolted after 1 9 1 7. But the conserva
tive revolution also took over old anti-capitalist tenden
cies (the retu rn to nature, the fl ight from cities . . . ) that
the workers' parties, even the extre m ist ones, had
misestimated by their refusal to integrate the a-classist
and com m u n itarian d imension of the proletariat, and
their i n a b i l ity to t h i n k of the future as anyt h i n g but
an extension of heavy industry. I n the first half of the
1 gh century, these themes were at the centre of the
socialist movement's preoccupations, before Marxism

When Insurrections Die

35
aband oned them in the name of prog ress and science,
and they survived only in anarch ism and in sects.

Volksgemeinschaft vs. Gemein wesen, people's com

m u n ity or the h uman com m u n ity . . . 1 933 was not the
defeat, only the consummation of the defeat. Nazism
arose and triumphed to defuse, resolve and to close
a social crisis so deep that we still don't appreciate
its mag n itude. Germany, crad le of the largest Social
Democracy in the world, also gave rise to the strong
est radical, anti-parliamentary, anti-un ion movement,
one aspiring to a "workers"' world but also capable
of attracting to itself many other anti-bourgeois and
anti-capital ist revolts. The presence of avant-garde
artists i n the ran ks of the " German Left" is no acci
dent. It was symptomatic of an attack on capital as
"civil isation" in the way Fourier criticised it. The loss of
com m u n ity, individualism and g regariousness, sexual
poverty, the fam ily both undermined but affirmed as a
refuge, the estrangement from nature, industrialised
food, increasing artificiality, the prostheticisation of
man, reg i mentation of time, social relations increas
i n g ly med iated by m oney and tech n i q u e : all these
alienations passed throug h the fire of a diffuse and
m u lti-formed critiq u e . Only a s u perficial backward
g lance sees this ferment purely through the prism of
its inevitable recuperation.

The counter-revolution tri u m phed in the 1 9 20's only

by laying the fou n dations, i n G ermany and in the US,
of a consumer society and of Fordism, and by pulling
m i l lions of Germans, including workers, into i n d u s
trial, commod ified modern ity. Ten years o f fragile rule,
as the mad hyperi nflation of 1 9 23 shows. This was
followed in 1 9 29 by an earthquake in which not the
proletariat but capital ist practice itself repudiated the
ideology of prog ress and an ever-increasing consump
tion of objects and signs.

Gilles Dauve
36
Capitalist modernity was questioned twice in ten years,
fi rst by proletarians, then by capital. Nazi extremism
and its violence were adequate to the depth of the
revolutionary movement National-Social ism took over
and negated. Like the radicals of 1 9 1 9- 2 1 , Nazism
proposed a com m u n ity of wage-workers, but o n e
which was authoritarian, closed, national, and racial,
and for twelve years it succeeded in transform ing pro
letarians i nto wage-workers and into sold iers.

Fasci s m g rew o u t of capital, b u t o u t of a capital

which d e st royed o l d relat i o n s h i p s without prod uc
ing new stable ones brought about by consumerism.
Commod ities failed to g ive birth to modern capital ist
comm u n ity.

BERLI N : 1 9 1 9-33

Dictatorship always comes after the defeat of social

movements, once they have been chloroformed and
massacred by democracy, the leftist parties and the
u n ions. I n Italy, several months separated t h e final
proletarian fail u res from the appointment of Mussolini
as head of state. I n Germany, a gap of a d ozen years
broke t h e cont i n u ity and made J a n uary 3 0 , 1 93 3
appear a s a n essential ly political or ideolog ical phe
nomenon, not as the effect of an earlier social earth
q uake. The popular basis of National Socialism and
the m u rderous energy it u nl eashed remain mysteries
if one ignores the q u estion of the submission, revolt,
and control of labou r.

The German defeat of 1 9 1 B and the fal l of the empire

set in motion a proletarian assault strong enough to
shake the fou ndations of society, but i mpotent when
it came to revo l u t i o n i s i n g it, t h u s b ri n g i n g Social
Democracy and the u n io n s to centre stage as the
key to political equilibrium. Their leaders emerged as

When Insurrections Die

37
men of order, and had no scruples about cal l i n g i n s S e e Serge Bricianer,
the Freikorps, ful ly fascist g roupings with many future Anton Pannekoek and
Nazis in their ranks, to repress a radical worker m inor- the Workers ' Councils
ity in the name of the interests of the reformist majority. (Telos 1 978) and P h i l lip
First defeated by the rules of bourgeois democracy, Bou rr i n et, The German/
the com m u n ists were also defeated by working-class Dutch Left (NZW 2003).
democracy: the "works councils" placed their trust i n
t h e trad itional organ isations, n o t in the revolutionaries
easily denou nced as anti-democrats.

In this j u n ct u re, democracy and Social Democracy

were ind ispensable to German capitalism for killing
off the spi rit of revolt i n the poll i ng booth, winning a
series of reforms from the bosses, and d ispersing the
revol utionaries. 5

After 1 9 2 9 , on the other hand , capital ism needed to

eliminate part of the middle classes, and to d iscipline
the proletarians, and even the bourgeoisie. The work
ers' movement, defe n d i n g as it d i d pol itical p l u ra l
ism and i mmed iate worker interests, h a d become a n
obstacle. As mediators between capital and labo u r,
working-class organisations derive their function from
both, but also try to remain autonomous from both ,
a n d from t h e state. Social Democracy h a s mean ing
only as a force contending with the employers and the
state, not as an organ absorbed by them. Its vocation
is the management of an enormous political, municipal,
social, mutualist and cultural network. The KPD, moreo
ver, had quickly constituted its own empire, smaller but
vast nonetheless. But as capital becomes more and
more organised, it tends to pull together all its different
strands, bringing a statist element to the enterprise,
a bourgeois element to the trade-u n ion b u reaucracy,
and a social element to p u b l i c ad m i n i strat i o n . The
weight of working-class reformism, which u ltimately
pervaded the state, and its existence as a "cou nter
society" made it a factor of social conservation which

Gilles Da u ve
38
capital in crisis had to e l i m i nate. By their defence of
wage-labo u r as a component of capital, the SPD and
the u nions played an i n dispensable anti-commu nist
part in 1 9 1 8-2 1 , but this same function later led them
to put the interest of wage-labou r ahead of everything
else, to the detriment of the reorgan isation of capital
as a whole.

A stable bourgeois state would have tried to solve this

problem by anti-union legislation, by recapturing the
"worker fortress", and by pitting the middle classes, i n
the n a m e o f modernity, against the archaism o f t h e
proles, a s Thatcher's England did m u ch later. Such
an offensive assumes that capital is relatively u n ited
under the control of a few dominant factions. But the
German bourgeoisie of 1 93 0 was profoundly d ivided,
the middle classes had collapsed, and the nation-state
was in shambles.

By negotiation or by force, modern democracy rep

resents and reconciles antagon istic interests, to the
extent that this is poss i b l e . E n d l ess parl iamentary
crises and real or imagined plots (for which Germany
was the stage after the fal l of the last socialist chancel
lor i n 1 930) i n a democracy are the i nvariable sign of
long-term d isarray in ruling circles. At the beg i n n i n g
o f the 1 930's, the crisis whipsawed the bourgeoisie
between irreconcilable social and geopolitical strat
egies : either the increased integration or the e l i m i
nation o f t h e workers' movement ; i nternational trade
and pacifism , or autarchy layin g the fou ndations of a
m i l itary expansion. The solution d i d not necessarily
i mply a H itler, but it did presuppose a concentration
of force and violence i n the hands of central govern
ment. Once the centrist-reformist compromise had
exhausted itself, the only option left was statist, pro
tection ist and repressive.

When Insurrections Die

39
A programme of this kind requ i red the violent d isman
t l i n g of Social Democracy, which i n its d o mestica
tion of the workers had come to exercise excessive
i nfl uence, while sti l l being incapable of u n ifyi n g all
of Germany behind it. This u n ification was the task
of Nazism, which was able to appeal to all classes,
from the unemployed to the industrial tycoons, with a
demagogy that even surpassed that of the bourgeois
politicians, and an antisemitism intended to build co
hesion through exclusion.

How cou ld the worki ng-class parties have made them

selves into an obstacle to such xenophobic and racist
madness, after having so often been the fellow travel
lers o f nationalism? For the S P D , t h i s h a d been clear
since the turn of the century, obvious i n 1 9 1 4, and
signed i n blood i n the 1 9 1 9 pact with the Freikorps,
who were cast very much in the same warrior mould
as their contemporaries, the Fasci.

Besides, socialists had not been i m m u n e to anti

semitism. Abraham Berlau 's The German Social-Dem
ocratic Party 1 9 1 4 1 92 1 (Columbia 1 949) describes
how many SPD or u n ion leaders, and even the pres
tigious Neue Zeit, openly raved against "foreign" (i.e.
Polish and Russian) Jews. I n March 1 9 2 0 the Berl i n
pol ice ( u n d e r socialist supervision) raided the Jewish
district and sent about 1 000 people to a concentra
tion camp. All were freed later, but the labour move
ment did contribute to the spread of antisemitism .

The KPD, for its part, had not hesitated to ally with the
nationalists against the French occupation of the Ruhr
i n 1 923. No Comintern theoretician opposed Radek
when he stated that "only the working-class can save
the nation". The KPD leader Thalheimer made it clear
that the party should fight alongside the German bour
geoisie, which played "an objectively revolutionary role

Gilles Da u ve
40
 through its foreign pol icy". Later, around 1 93 0 , the
KPD demanded a " national and social l iberation" and
denounced fascism as a "traitor to the nation". Tal k of
" national revolution" was so common among German
Stal i n ists that it i n s p i red Trotsky's 1 93 1 pamph let
Against National- Communism.

I n January 1 933, the die was cast. No one can deny

that the Weimar Republic willingly gave itself to H itler.
Both the right and the centre had come rou n d to
seeing h i m as a viable solution to get the cou ntry out
of its impasse, or as a temporary lesser evil . "Big capi
tal", reticent about any uncontrollable upheaval, had
not, u p to that time, been any more generous with the
N S DAP than with the other national ist and right-wing
formations. Only i n November 1 93 2 did Schacht, an
intimate adviser of the bourgeoisie, convince b u s i
ness circles t o su pport H itler (who had, moreover, just
seen h i s electoral support slightly decline) because
he saw i n H itler a force capable of u n ifying the state
and society. The fact that industrial magnates d i d not
foresee what then ensued, leading to war and defeat,
is another q uestion, and in any event they were not
notable by their presence i n the clandestine resist
ance to the reg ime.

On January 30, 1 933 H itler was appointed chancellor

i n complete legal ity by Hindenburg , who h imself had
been constitutionally elected president a year earl ier
with the support of the social ists, who saw i n h i m a
ram part against . . . H itler. The N azis were a m i nority
i n the fi rst government formed by the leader of the
NSDAP.

In the following weeks, the masks were taken off:

working-class militants were hunted down, their offices
were sacked, and a reign of terror was launched. In the
elections of March 1 933, held against the backdrop

When Insurrections Die

41
of violence by both the storm-troopers and the police,
288 NSDAP M Ps were sent to the Reichstag (while the
KPD sti l l retained 8 0 and the SPD 1 20).

Naive people might express surprise at the docil ity

with which t h e repressive apparatu s goes over to
d ictators, but the state mach ine obeys the authority
command i n g it. D i d the new leaders n ot e njoy fu l l
legitimacy? D i d eminent j urists not write their decrees
in conformity with the hig her laws of the lan d ? In the
democratic state - and Weimar was one - if there is
conflict between the two components of the binomial,
it is not democracy which will w i n out. I n a " state
founded on law" - and Weimar was also one - if there
is a contradiction, it is law which m ust bend to serve
the state, and never the opposite.

During these few months, what did the democrats do?

Those on the right accepted the new d ispensation.
The Zentrum , the Catholic party of the centre, which
had even seen its support increase i n the March 1 933
elections, voted to g ive fou r years of ful l emergency
powers to H itler, powers which became the legal basis
of Nazi dictatorship.

The socialists, for their part, attem pted to avoid the

fate of the KPD, which had been outlawed on Febru
ary 28 i n the wake of the Reichstag fire. O n March
30, 1 933, they left the Second I nternational to prove
their national German character. On May 1 7 their par
l iamentary g roup voted i n support of H itler's foreign
policy.

On J u n e 2 2 , the SPD was d issolved as "an enemy

of the people and the state". A few weeks later, the
Zentrum was forced to d i ssolve itself.

Gilles Dauve
42
The unions followed in the footsteps of the Italian CG L,
and hoped to salvage what they could by insisting that
they were a-political. In 1 93 2 , the u n ion leaders had
proclaimed their i ndependence from all parties and
their ind ifference to the form of the state. This did not
stop them from seeki ng an accord with Schleicher,
who was chancellor from November 1 93 2 to Janu
ary 1 933, and who was looki ng for a base and some
cred ible pro-worker demagogy. Once the Nazis had
formed a g overn ment, the u n ion leaders convinced
themselves that if they recognised National Socialism,
the reg ime would leave them some smal l space. This
strategy c u l m i nated i n the farce of u n i o n mem bers
marching u nder the swastika on May Day 1 933, which
had been renamed " Festival of G e rman Labou r". It
was wasted effort. I n the following days, the Nazis
l i q u idated the u n ions and arrested the m i l itants.

Having been schooled to contain the masses and to

negotiate in their name or, that failing, to repress them,
the working-class bureaucracy was sti l l fighting the
previous war. The labour bureaucrats were not being
attacked for their lack of patriotism. What bothered
the bourgeoisie was not the bureaucrats' l ingering l i p
service t o t h e o l d pre- 1 9 1 4 internationalism, b u t rather
the existence of trade-unions, however servile, retain
ing a certain independence i n an era i n which even an
institution of class collaboration became superfluous
if the state did not completely control it.

BARC E LO N A : 1 93 6

I n Italy and in Germany, fascism took over the state by

legal means. Democracy capitulated to dictatorship,
or, worse sti l l , g reeted d ictatorship with open arms.
But what about Spai n ? Far from b e i n g the excep
tional case of a resolute action that was nonetheless,
and sad ly, defeated, Spain was the extreme case of

When Insurrections Die

43
armed confrontation between democracy and fascism 6 Ve rnon Ri chards, Les
i n which the natu re of the struggle sti l l remained the sons of the Spanish
same clash of two forms of capital ist development, Revolution 1936-1939
two pol itical forms of the capitalist state, two state (Freedom Press 1953).
structu res fighting for legitimacy in the same country. M ichael Seidman, Work
ers Against Work during
Objection ! ! - "So, in your opinion, Franco and a work the Popular Fron t (UCLA
ing-class m i litia are the same thing? The big landown 1993).
ers and i mpoverished peasants collectivising land are
in the same cam p ? ! "

First o f all, t h e confrontation happened o n l y because

the workers rose u p against fascism. All the contra
d ictions of the movement were man ifest in its first
weeks : an unden iable class war was transformed into
a capitalist civil war (though of cou rse there was no
assignment of roles in which the two bourgeois fac
tions orchestrated every act : history is not a play) .6

The dynam ic of a class-divided society is ultimately

shaped by the need to u nify those classes. When, as
happened i n Spain, a popular explosion combines
with the d isarray of the ru l i n g groups, a social crisis
becomes a crisis of the state. M ussol i n i and H itler
triumphed in cou ntries with weak, recently u n ified na
tion-states and powerful regional ist currents. I n Spai n ,
from the Renaissance until modern times, the state
was the colonial armed might of a commercial soci
ety it u l t i m ately r u i n e d , choking off one of the pre
conditions of industrial expansion : an ag rarian reform.
I n fact, Spanish industrialisation had to make its way
through monopolies, the misappropriation of public
funds, and parasitism.

Space is lacking here for a summary of the 19'h century

crazy quilt of countless reforms and l iberal i mpasses,
dynastic squabbles, the Carlist wars, the trag icomic
succession of reg i m es and parties after World War

Gilles Da u ve
44
I, and the cycle of insurrections and repressions that
followed the establishment of the Republic in 1 93 1 .
Beneath all these rumblings was the weakness of the
rising bourgeoisie, caught as it was between its rivalry
with the landed oligarchy and the absolute necessity
of contai ning peasant and worker revolts. In 1 93 6 , the
land question had not been resolved : u n l i ke France
after 1 789, the m i d - 1 91h century sell-off of the Spanish
clergy's lands wound u p strengthening a latifundist
bourgeoisie. Even in the years after 1 93 1 , the I n sti
tute for Agrarian Reform only used one-t h i rd of the
funds at its d isposal to buy u p large holdings. The
conflag ration of 1 936-39 wou ld never have reached
such political extremes, including the explosion of the
state into two factions fighting a three-year civil war,
without the tremors which had been rising from the
social depths for a century.

Spain had no large centre-left bourgeois party l i ke

the " Parti Rad ical" which was the centre of g ravity of
French pol itics for over sixty years. Before J u ly 1 93 6 ,
Span ish Social Democracy kept a m u c h more m i l itant
outlook in a country where land was often occupied by
wage-labourers, where strikes were ram pant, where
Madrid tram workers tried to manage the workplace,
and where crowds stormed jails to free some of the
3 0 ,000 political prisoners. As a socialist leader put it:
"The possibilities of stabilising a democratic republic
in our country are decreasing every day. Elections are
but a variant of civil war:' (One m i g ht add : a variant of
how to keep it at bay.)

In the summer of 1 93 6 , it was an open secret that

a m i l itary coup was coming. After g iving the rebels
every chance to prepare themselves, the Popular Front
elected in February was willing to negotiate and per
haps even to su rrender. The politicians would have
made their peace with the rebels, as they had done

When Insurrections Die

45
d uring the d ictatorship of Primo de Riveira ( 1 932-3 1 ) ,
which was supported b y eminent socialists (Caballero
had served it as a technical counsellor, before becom
ing M i n ister of Labo u r i n 1 93 1 , and then head of the
Republican government from September 1 93 6 to May
1 93 7 ) . Furthermore, the general who had obeyed Re
publ ican orders two years earl ier and crushed the As
turias insu rrection - Franco - couldn't be all that bad.

But the proletariat rose u p , blocked the putsch in half

of the cou ntry, and h u n g o n to its weapons. In so
d o i n g , the workers were obviously fighting fascism,
but they were not acting as anti-fascists, because their
actions were d i rected against Franco and against a
democratic state more u n settled by the masses' i nitia
tive than by the m i litary revolt. Three prime m i nisters
came and went i n 24 hours before the Fait accompli
of the arm i n g of the people was accepted.

Once again , the unfolding of the insurrection showed

that the problem of violence is not primarily a technical
one. Victory does not go to the side with the advantage
in weaponry (the m i l itary) or in n u m bers (the people) ,
but rather to who d ares to take the i n itiative. Where
workers trusted the state, the state remained pas
sive or promised the moon, as happened in Zaragoza.
Whe n their strug g l e was focused and sharp (as i n
Malaga) t h e workers won ; i f it was lacking i n vigour, i t
was d rowned i n blood (20,000 killed i n Seville) .

Thus the Spanish Civi l War began with a n authentic in

surrection, but such a characterisation is incomplete. It
holds true only for the open i n g moment: an effectively
proletarian uprising. After defeating the forces of reac
tion in a large n u m ber of cities, the workers had the
power. But what were they going to do with it? Should
they give it back to the republican state, or should they
use it to go further i n a comm u n ist d i rection?

Gilles Oa u ve
46
Created immediately after the insurrection, the Central
Comm ittee of Antifascist M i l itias included delegates
from the CNT, the FAI, the U GT ( social ist u n ion ) , the
POU M , the PSUC ( product of the recent fusion of the
C P and the socialists i n Catalonia) , and fou r repre
sentatives of the Generalitat, the Catalan regional
government. As a veritable bridge between the work
ers' movement and the state, and, moreover, tied if
not integrated i nto the Generalitat's Department of
Defence by the p resence in its m idst of the latter's
council of defence, the commissar of public order, etc.,
the Central Comm ittee of the M i l itias q uickly began
to u n ravel .

O f course i n giving u p their autonomy most proletar

ians believed that they were, in spite of everyt h i n g ,
hanging onto real power a n d giving t h e politicians only
the facade of authority, which they m i struste d , and
which they could control and orient i n a favou rable
d i rection. Were they not armed ?

This was a fatal error. The q uestion is not : who has the
g u ns? But rather: what do the people with the guns
d o ? 1 0 , 0 0 0 or 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 proletarians a rmed to the
teeth are nothing if they place their trust i n anything
beside their own power to change the worl d . Other
wise, the next day, the next month or the next year, the
power whose authority they recog nise will take away
the g uns which they fai led to use against it.

"In fact, the fight i n Spain between " legal" govern

m e n t and " rebel forces" i s in n o way a fig h t for
ideals, but a struggle between determined capitalist
g roups entrenched i n the bou rgeois Republic and
other capitalist g roups . . . The Spanish cabinet is
no d ifferent i n its principles from the bloody Leroux
reg i m e which massacred thousands of Spanish

When Insurrections Die

47
 proletarians in 1 93 4 . . . Span ish workers are now 7 Proletarier, p u b l i s hed by
being oppressed with guns i n their hands ! " 7 the cou ncilist group i n
T h e Hague, J u ly 27, 1936.
The insurgents did not take on the legal government,
i n other words the state as it then existed, and all their s Victor Al ba, Spanish
su bseq uent actions took place u n d e r its auspices. Marxism versus Soviet
"A revolution had beg u n but never consolidated", as Communism: a History
Orwell wrote. This is the main point which determined of the POUM (Tran sac-
the cou rse of an increasingly losing armed struggle t i o n Press, 1 988).
against Franco, as wel l as the exhaustion and destruc-
tion by both camps of the collectivisations and sociali -
sations. After the summer of 1 936, real power in Spain
was exercised by the state and not by organ isations,
u n ions, collectivities, committees, etc. Even though
Nin, the head of the POUM, was an adviser to t h e
Ministry o f Justice, "The POU M nowhere succeeded in
having any i nfluence over the police", as one defender
of that party adm itted.8 While the workers' m i l itias
were i ndeed the flower of the Republican army and
paid a heavy price i n combat, they carried no weight
i n the decisions of the high command, which steadily
i nteg rated them i nto reg u lar u n its ( a p rocess com-
pleted by the begi n n i n g of 1 93 7 ) , preferring to wear
them down rather than tolerating their autonomy. As
for the powerful CNT, it ceded g round to a CP which
had been very weak before J u ly 1 93 6 ( having 1 4 M Ps
in the Popular Front chamber in February, as opposed
to 85 socialists) , but which was able to insinuate itself
into part of the state apparatus and t u rn the state
i ncreasingly to its own advantage against the radicals,
and particularly against the m i l itants of the CNT. The
q uestion was : who mastered the situation? And the
answer was: the state makes subtle and brutal use of
its power when it has to.

If the Republ ican bourgeoisie and the Stalinists lost

precious time dismantling the peasant commu nes, dis
arming the POU M militias, and hunting down Trotskyist

Gilles Da uve
48
" saboteu rs " and oth e r " H itle r ag ents" at t h e very
moment when anti-fascism was supposed to be th row
ing everything in the struggle against Franco, they did
not do so from a su icidal impu lse. For the state and the
CP (wh ich was becoming the backbone of the state
through the m i litary and police) these operations were
not a waste of time. The head of the PSU C su ppos
edly sai d : "Before taking Zaragoza, we have to take
Barcelona:' Their main objective was never crushing
Franco, but retaining control of the masses, for this is
what states are for, and this is how Stalinism got its
power. Barcelona was taken away from the proletar
ians. Zaragoza remained in fascist hands.

BARCELO N A : MAY 1 937

On May 3, the police attem pted to occupy the Tel

ephone Exchange, which was under the control of
anarch ist (and socialist) workers. I n the Catalan me
tropo l i s , h eart and sym b o l of the revo l u t i o n , legal
authority stopped at noth i n g i n d isarm i n g whatever
remained alive, spontaneous and anti-bourgeois. The
local police, moreover, was i n the hands of the PSUC.
Confronted by an openly hostile power, the workers
finally understood that this power was not their own,
that they had g iven it the g ift of their insurrection ten
months earlier, and that their insurrection had been
turned against them. I n reaction to the power g rab by
the state, a general strike paralysed Barcelona. It was
too late. The workers sti l l had the capacity to rise u p
against t h e state (this t i m e in i t s democratic form) , but
they could no longer push their struggle to the point
of an open break.

As always, the "social" q u estion predominated over

the m i l itary one. Legal authority c o u l d not i m pose
itself by street battles. Within a few hours, instead of
u rban g uerrilla warfare, a war of position, a face-off of

When Insurrections Die

49
apartment building against apartment building set in. It
was a defensive stalemate in which no one could win
because no one was attacking. With its own offensive
bogged down, the police would not risk its forces i n
attacks on buildings h e l d b y the anarch ists. Broadly
speakin g , the CP and the state held the centre of the
city, while the CNT and the PO U M held the worki ng
class d istricts.

The status quo u ltimately won out by pol itical means.

The masses p laced t h e i r trust in the two organisa
tions under attack, while the latter, afraid of alienat
ing the state, got people to go back to work (though
not without d ifficu lty) and t hereby u n d e r m i n e d t h e
o n ly force capable of s aving t h e m pol itically and . . .
" physically". As soon as the strike was over, knowin g
that it henceforth controlled the situation, the govern
ment brought i n 6,000 Assault G u ards - the el ite of
the police. Because they accepted the mediation of
" representative organisations" and counsels of mod
eration from the PO U M and the CNT, the very same
masses who had defeated the fascist m i litary i n J u ly
1 93 6 su rrendered without a fight to the Republ ican
police in May 1 93 7.

At that point repression could begin. Only a few weeks

were necessary to outlaw the POU M , to arrest its lead
ers, to kill them legally or otherwise, and to d ispose of
N i n . A parallel police was established, organised by
the N KVD and the secret apparatus of the Com i ntern,
and answering o n ly to Moscow. Anyone showing the
slightest opposition to the Republ ican state and its
main ally, the USSR, could be denounced and h u nted
down as a "fascist", and all around the world an army
of well-meaning, gentle souls would repeat the slander,
some from i g norance, others from self-interest, but
every one of them convinced that no denunciation was
too excessive when fascism was on the march .

Gilles Dauve
50
The fury u n leashed agai nst the POU M was no aberra 9 Homage to Catalonia,
tion. By opposing the Moscow Trials, the PO U M con April 1938. In 1951, it h ad
demned itself to be destroyed by a Stali n ism locked sold less than 1 ,500 cop
in a merciless world struggle against its rivals for the ies. It was fi rst published
control of the masses. At the time, not just CP fel low i n the US i n 1952.
travellers, but many political parties, lawyers, reporters
and even the French Leag ue for the Rig hts of Man
came out i n endorsement of the guilt of the accused .
Sixty years later, mainstream ideology sees these trials
as a s i g n of the Kre m l i n ' s mad w i l l to power. As if
Stali nist crimes had nothing to do with anti-fascism !
Anti-fascist logic will always align itself with the most
moderate forces and always t u rn agai n st the most
rad ical ones.

On the purely political leve l , May 1 937 gave rise to

what, a few months before, wou l d have been unth i n k
able: a Socialist even farther to the right than Cabal
lero : Negrin, heading a government which came down
hard on the side of law and order, i n c l u d i n g open
repression against the workers. Orwell - who almost
lost his l ife in the events - real ised that the war "for
democracy" was obviously over: "that meant that the
general movement wou ld be in the d i rection of some
kind of fascism:' What remained was a com petition
between two fascisms, O rwe l l wrote, with the d if
ference that one was less i n h u man than its rival : he
therefore clung to the necessity of avoiding the "more
naked and developed fascism of H itler and Franco".9
From then on, the only issue was fig hting for a fascism
less bad than the opposing one . . .

WA R DEVO U RS T H E REVOLUTI O N

Power does n o t come any more from t h e barrel o f a

g u n than it comes from a bal lot box. No revolution is
peacefu l , but its " m i l itary" d imension is never central .
The question is not whether the proles finally decide

When Insurrections Die

51
to break i nto the armouries, but whether they u n leash
what they are : commod ified beings who n o longer
can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and
whose revolt explodes capitalist logic. Barricades and
mach i n e g u n s flow from this "weapon ". The g reater
the change i n social l ife, the less guns will be needed,
and the less casualties there will be. A comm u n ist
revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from
any nonviolent principle, but because revolution sub
verts more (soldiers incl uded) than it actually destroys.

To imag i n e a proletarian front facing off a bourgeois

front is to conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms,
on the model of a pol itical revolution or a war (seiz
ing someone's power, occu pyi ng their territory) . In
so doing, one rei ntrod uces everything that the insur
rectionary movement had overwhelmed : hierarchy, a
respect for special ists, for knowledge that Knows, and
for tech niques to solve problems - in short for every
thing that plays down the role of the common man. I n
Spai n , from the fal l o f 1 93 6 onward, the revolution
dissolved into the war effort and into a kind of combat
typical of states : a war of fronts. Soon the worki ng
class " m i l itia man" evolved i nto a "soldier".

Formed into "col u m ns", workers left Barcelona to de

feat the fascists in other cities, starting from Zaragoza.
Taki ng the revol ution beyond areas u nder Republ ican
control, however, would have meant completing the
revolution in the Republican areas as wel l . But even
D u rruti did not seem to real ise that the state was
everywhere sti l l i ntact. As his col u m n (70% of whose
members were anarch ists) advanced, it extended the
col lectivisations: the m i l itias helped the peasants and
spread revo l utionary ideas. Yet however m uch D u r
ruti declared that "these m i l itias will never d efend the
bourgeoisie" they did not attack it either. Two weeks

Gilles Dauve
52
before his death he del ivered a speech broadcast on
November 4, 1 93 6 :

"At the front and i n t h e trenches there is only one

idea and one aim - the destruction of fascism.
"We call on the Catalan people to stop all i nternal
confl i cts and intrigues, to forget all jeal o u sy and
pol itics and to think of the war on ly. The pol iticians
are only playing tricks to secure for themselves an
agreeable l ife. This d u bious art m u st be replaced
by the art to work. The people of Catalonia must be
worthy of their brothers fighting at the front. If the
workers of Catalonia have taken the su preme task
to fight at the d ifferent fronts, those living in towns
and cities will also have to be mobil ised to d o their
share. Our heroic militia, ready to lie down their l ives
on the battlefield want to be assu red whom they
have behind them. They feel that no one should be
deterred from their d uty because of lack of wage
increase or shorter hours of work. Today all toilers
and especially those of the CNT m u st be ready for
the utmost sacrifices. For in that way alone can we
hope to tri u m p h over fascism.
" I add ress myself to all organ isations, asking them
to bury their confl icts and g rudges . . .
"The m i l itarisation of the m i l itias has been decreed.
If this has been done to frighten us, to i m pose on
us an iron discipline, this is a m i staken policy. We
chal l e n g e those who have issued thi s decree to
come to the front and see for themselves our moral
and our discipline and compare it with the moral and
discipline in the rear. We will not accept d i ctated
discipline. We are doing our duty. Come to the front
to see our organ isation ! Later we shall come to Bar
celona to examine your discipline, your organisation
and you r contro l !
"There is n o chaos at the front, n o lack o f discipline.
We all have a strong sense of respo nsibil ity. We

When Insurrections Die

53
 know what you have entrusted us wit h . You can 10 Boletin de lnformaci6n,
sleep quietly. But remember we have left Barcelona CNT-A1T-FA1, Via Layetana,
in your hands. We demand responsibility and d is- 32 y 34, Barce lona, No-
cipline from you too. Let us prove our capacity to vember 11, 1936.
prevent the creation of new differences after our war
against fascism. Those who want their movement to 11 P. /. C., p u b l i s h e d by the
be the strongest are working in the wrong direction. G1c, Am sterdam, Octo-
Against tyranny there is only one front possible, one ber 1936
organisation and only one sort of discipline:"0

Listeners would think that a revol ution had actually

taken place, pol itically and social ly, and just needed
its m i l itary completion : smash i n g the fascists. D u rruti
and his comrades embodied an energy which had not
waited for 1 93 6 to storm the existing world . But all
the com bative will i n the world is not enough when
workers aim all their blows against one particular form
of the state, and not against the state as such. In mid-
1 93 6 , accepting a war of fronts meant leavin g social
and pol itical weapons in the hands of the bourgeoi
sie behind the l i nes, and moreover meant depriving
m i l itary action itself of the i n itial vigour it d rew from
another terrain , the only one where the proletariat has
the u pper hand . As the " Dutch Left" wrote:

"If the workers real ly want to build u p a d efence

front agai n st the Whites, they can o n ly d o so by
taki ng over pol itical powe r themselves, instead of
l eaving it in the hands of a Popu lar Front govern
ment. I n other words, defe n d i n g the revolution is
only possible through the d ictatorship of the prole
tariat, and not through the col laboration of all anti
fascist parties . . . Proletarian revolu ti on revolves
aro u n d the destruction of the old state machi n e ,
a n d t h e exercise o f the central functions o f power
by the workers themselves." 1 1

Gilles Da u ve
54
In the summer of 1 93 6 , far from having decisive m i l
itary s uperiority, the national ists held no major city.
Their main strength lay in the Foreign Legion and in
the Moroccan "Moors". In 1 9 1 2 , Morocco had been
split by France and Spain into two protectorates, but
had long since rebelled against the colonial d reams
of both countries. The Spanish royal army had been
badly defeated there in 1 9 2 1 , largely due to the de
fection of Moroccan troops. Despite Franco-Spanish
collaboration, the Rif war (in which a general named
Franco had d istin gu ished himself) ended o n ly when
Abd el-Krim surrendered i n 1 92 6 . Ten years later, the
annou ncement of immed iate and unconditional inde
pendence for Spanish Morocco wou l d , at m i n i m u m ,
have stirred u p trouble a m o n g the s h o c k troops of
reaction. The Republic obviously gave short shrift to
this solution, under a combined pressure from con
servative milieus and from the democracies of England
and France, which had l ittle enth usiasm for the pos
sible break- u p of their own empires. At the very time,
moreover, the French Popular Front not only refused
to g rant any reform worthy of any name to its colonial
s u bjects, but d issolved the Etoi l e N o rd-Africaine, a
proletarian movement in Algeria.

Everyone knows that the policy of "non-intervention" in

Spain was a farce. One week after the putsch London
annou nced its opposition to any arms shipment to
what was then the legal Spanish g overn ment, and
its neutral ity i n the event that France would become
drawn into a conflict. Democratic England thus put the
Republic and fascism on the same leve l . As a result,
the France of B l u m and Thorez sent a few planes,
while Italy and Germany sent whole divisions with their
suppl ies. As for the I nternational Brigades, controlled
by the Soviet U n ion and the CPs, their m i litary value
came at a heavy price, namely the elimination of any
opposition to Stalinism i n working-class ran ks. It was

When Insurrections Die

55
at the beginning of 1 937, after the first arms shipments,
that Catalonia removed N i n from his post as adviser
to the M i n i stry of J u stice.

Rarely has the narrow conception of history as a list

of battles, cannons and strategies been more i nept i n
explaining t h e course o f a directly "social" war, shaped
as it was by the internal dynam ic of anti-fascism. Revo
lutionary elan i n itially broke the elan of the national
ists. Then the workers accepted legal ity : the confl ict
was stalemated and then institutionalised. From late
1 936 onward , the m i l itia columns were bogged down
in the siege of Zaragoza. The state armed only the
m i l itary u n its it truste d , i. e. the ones which would
not confiscate property. By early 1 937, i n the poorly
equipped PO U M m i l itias fighting the Francoists with
old guns, a revolver was a luxury. I n the cities, m il itia
men rubbed shoulders with perfectly outfitted reg u
l a r soldiers. T h e fronts g o t stuck, l i ke the Barcelona
proletarians against the cops. The last burst of energy
was the Republ ican victory at Madrid. Soon hereafter,
the government ordered private individuals to hand in
their weapons. The decree had l ittle i m med iate effect,
but it showed an u nabashed will to d isarm the people.
D isappointment and suspicions undermined morale.
The war was increasingly i n the hands of special ists.
Final ly, the Repu blic increasingly lost ground as all
social content and revol utionary appearances faded
away in the anti-fascist camp.

Red u c i n g the revo l ution to war s i m p l ifies and falsi

fies t h e social q u estion into the alternative of w i n
ning or losin g , a n d i n b e i n g " t h e strongest". The issue
becomes one of having discipli ned soldiers, superior
log istics, com petent officers and the support of all ies
whose own pol itical nature gets as l ittle scrutiny as
possible. Curiously, all this means taking the confl ict
fu rther from daily l ife. It is a peculiar q ual ity of warfare

Gilles Da u ve
56
that, even for its enth usiasts, no one wants to lose 12 M arx, Revolutionary
but everyone wants it to end. I n contrast to revo l u Spain, 1854 (MECW 13),
tion, except i n t h e case o f defeat, war does not cross p. 422.
my doorstep. Transformed into a m i l itary confl ict, the
stru g g l e agai n st Franco ceased to be a personal
commitment, lost its immed iate reality, and became a
mobilisation from above, l i ke in any other war situation.
After January 1 93 7, volu ntary e n listments tapered off,
and t h e civil war, in both camps, came to depend
mainly on compulsory m i l itary service. As a result a
m i l itia man of J u ly 1 93 6 leaving his column a year later,
disgusted with Republican politics, could be arrested
and shot as a "deserter" !

I n d ifferent h i storical conditions, t h e m i l itary evo l u

t i o n from insu rrection to m i litias a n d t h e n t o a reg ular
army is rem i n i scent of the anti- Napoleonic "guerri l la"
warfare (the term was borrowed from Spanish at the
time) described by Marx :

" By comparing t h e three periods o f guerrilla warfare

with the political h i story of Spain, it is fou n d that
they represent the respective degrees i nto which
the counter-revolutionary spirit of the Government
had succeeded i n cooling the spirit of the people.
Beg i n n i n g with the rise of whole populations, the
partisan war was next carried on by guerril l a bands,
of which whole d istricts formed the reserve, and
terminated i n corps francs continually on the point
of dwi n d l i n g into banditti, or sinking down to the
level of standing reg i ments: 1 2

For 1 9 3 6 , a s for 1 8 0 8 , the evo l ution o f t h e m i l itary

situation cannot be explained exc l usively o r even
mai n ly by the art of war, but flows from the balance
of pol itical and social forces and its mod ification in an
anti-revolutionary d i rection. The compromise evoked
by D u rruti, the necessity of u n ity at any cost, cou ld

When Insurrections Die

57
o n ly hand victory first to the Repu b lican state (over
the proletariat) and then to the Francoist state (over
the Republ ic) .

There was the beginning of a revolution in Spai n , but it

turned i nto its opposite as the proletarians, convinced
that they had effective power, placed their trust i n the
state to fight against Franco. On that basis, the m u lti
pl icity of subversive i n itiatives and measures taken in
production and in daily l ife were doomed by the simple
and terrible fact that they took place i n the shadow of
an intact state structure, which had i n itially been put
on hold, and then reinvigorated by the necessities of
the war agai n st Franco, a paradox which remained
opaque to most revol utionary g roups at the time. In
order to be consol idated and extended, the transfor
mations without which revol ution becomes an empty
word had to pose themselves as antag o n istic to a
state clearly designed as the adversary.

The trouble was, after J u ly 1 93 6 , dual power existed

i n appearance only. N ot only did the instruments of
proletarian power w h i c h e m e rged from t h e i n s u r
rection, and those which subsequently oversaw the
social isations, tolerate the state, but they accorded
the state a primacy i n the anti-Franco struggle, as if
it were tactically necessary to pass through the state
in order to d efeat Franco. In terms of " realism", the
recourse to trad itional m i l itary methods accepted by
the far l eft (including the PO U M and the C NT) i n the
name of effectiveness almost invariably proved inef
fective. Sixty years later, people stil l deplore the fact.
But the democratic state is as l ittle su ited for armed
struggle against fascism as it is for stopping its peace
ful accession to power. States are normally loath to
deal with social war, and normally fear rather than
enco u rage fraternisation. When, i n G uadalajara, the
anti-fascists addressed themselves as workers to the

Gilles Dauve
58
Italian soldiers sent by M ussoli n i , a group of Italians 13 Cle, 2nd issue.
defected. Such an episode remained the exception.

From the battl e for Madrid (March ' 3 7 ) to the final

fal l of Catalonia ( February ' 3 9 ) , the cadaver of the
aborted revol ution decomposed o n the battlefi e l d .
One c a n speak o f war i n Spai n , n o t o f revolution. This
war wound u p having as its first function the resolu
tion of a capital ist problem : the constitution i n Spain
of a legitimate state which succeeded i n developing
its national capital while keeping the popu lar masses
i n check. In February 1 93 9 , the Surreal ist and (then)
Trotskyist Benjamin Peret analysed the consummation
of the defeat as fol lows :

"The working class . . . having lost sight of its own

goals, no longer sees any urgent reason to be killed
defending the bourgeois democratic clan against
t h e fascist c l a n , i . e . i n t h e last analysis, for t h e
defence o f Anglo-French capital against ltalo-Ger
man i mperial ism. The civil war increasingly became
an i mperial ist war:' 1 3

That same year, Bruno Rizzi made a similar comment i n

h i s essay on "collective b u reaucratism" i n t h e USSR:

"The old democracies play the game of anti-fascist

pol itics in order to let the sleeping dog l i e . O n e
m u st k e e p t h e proletarians q u i et . . . a t any t i m e ,
the old democracies feed the working class with
anti-fascism . . . Spain had turned into a slaughter
of proletarians of all nationalities, in order to calm
down u n ruly revolutionary workers, and to sel l off
the prod ucts of heavy i ndustry."

The two camps unden iably had q u ite d ifferent socio

log ical compositions. If the bourgeoisie was present
on both sides, the immense majority of workers and

When Insurrections Die

59
poor peasants supported the Republic, whereas the
archaic and reactionary strata (landed property, small
holders, clergy) l ined u p behind Franco. This class
polarisation gave a progressive aura to the Republ ican
state, but it d i d not disclose the historical mean ing of
the confli ct, any more than the large worki ng-class
members h i p of social ist or Stal i n ist parties told us
all about their nature. Such facts were real, but sec
ondary to the social function of these parties: in fact,
because they were grass-roots bodies, they were able
to control or oppose any proletarian upsurge. Likewise
the Republ ican army had a large n um ber of workers,
but for what, with w h o m and u n d e r whose orders
were they fightin g ? To ask the question is to answer
it, u nless one it considers possible to fight the bour
geoisie in an all iance with the bourgeoisie.

"Civil war is the supreme expression of the class strug

gle", Trotsky wrote i n Their Morals and Ours ( 1 938) .
Qu ite . . . a s long a s one adds that, from the "Wars of
Rel igion" to the I rish or Lebanese convu lsions of our
own time, civil war is also, and indeed most often, the
form of an i m possible or failed social struggle: when
class contradictions cannot assert themselves as such,
they erupt as ideological or ethnic blocs, sti l l further
delaying any h u man emancipation.

ANARCH I STS I N T H E GOVE R N M E N T

Social Democracy did not "capitulate" in August 1 9 1 4,

l i ke a fighter t h rowing in the towe l : it fol lowed the
normal trajectory of a powerful movement which was
i nternationalist in rhetoric and which, in reality, had
become profoundly national long before. The SPD may
wel l have been the lead ing electoral force in Germany
in 1 9 1 2 , but it was powerfu l only for the purpose of
reform , within the framework of capitalism and accord
ing to its laws, which incl uded for example accepting

Gilles Da u ve
60
colonialism, and also war when the latter became the 14 P./. C., German edition,
sole solution to social and pol itical contrad ictions. December 1931.

In the same way, the i ntegration of Spanish anarch ism

i n the state i n 1 93 6 is only surprising if one forgets
its nat u re : the CNT was a u n i o n , an original u n i o n
u n d o u btedly b u t a u n ion all t h e same, a n d there i s
no such t h i n g a s an anti-union u n ion. Function trans
forms the organ. Whatever its origi nal ideals, every
permanent organ ism for defe n d i n g wage labou rers
as such becomes a mediator, and then a conciliator.
Even when it is in the hands of rad icals, even when it
is repressed, the institution is bound to escape con
trol of the base and to turn into a moderating instru
ment. Anarch ist u n ion though it may have been, the
CNT was a u n i o n before it was anarch i st. A world
separated the ran k-and-file from the leader seated at
the bosses' table, but the CNT as a whole was l ittle
d ifferent from the U GT. Both of them worked to mod
ernise and rationally manage the economy: i n a word ,
to socialise capital ism. A single th read connects the
socialist vote for war credits i n August 1 9 1 4 to the
participation in the govern ment of the anarchist lead
ers, first i n Catalonia ( September ' 3 6) and then i n the
Spanish Republic ( November '36). As early as 1 9 1 4,
Malatesta had called those of his comrades ( includ
i n g Kropotkin ) who had accepted national defence
"government anarchists".

The CNT had long been both institutional ised and sub
versive. The contrad iction ended in the 1 931 general
elect i o n , when the CNT gave up its anti-parl iamen
tary stand , asking the masses to vote for Republican
cand i d ates. The anarchist organ i s at i o n was t u r n
ing i n t o "a u n ion aspiring to the conquest o f power",
that woul d " i n evitably lead to a d ictatorship over the
proletariat". 1 4

When Insurrections Die

61
From one compromise to the next, the CNT wound 15 Rate-Korrespondenz,
up renouncing the anti-statism which was its raison J u n e 1 937.
d 'e tre, even after the Repu b l i c and its Russian ally
or master had shown their real faces i n May '37, not
to mention everything that fol l owed , in the jails and
secrets cellars. Like the POU M, the CNT was effective
in d isarm ing proletarians, call i n g on them to g ive u p
their struggle against t h e official a n d Stali n ist police
bent on finishing them off. As the G I C put it,

'' . . . the CNT was among those chiefly responsible

for the crushing of the insu rrection. It demoralised
the proletariat at a time when the latter was moving
against democratic reactionaries:' 1 5

Some radicals even had the bitter surprise o f being

locked u p i n a prison adm i nistered by an old anarchist
comrade, stripped of any real power over what went
on i n his jail. Add i n g insult to i nj u ry, a CNT delegation
which had gone to the Soviet U n ion req uesting mate
rial aid did not even raise the issue of the Moscow
Trials.

Everything for the anti-fascist stru g g l e !

Everything for cannons a n d g u n s !

B u t even s o , s o m e people m i g ht obj ect, anarchists

by their very natu re are vaccinated against the statist
virus. Isn't anarchism the arch-enemy of the state?
Yes, but. . .

Some Marxists can recite whole pages of The Civil

War in France on the destruction of the state mach ine,
and q u ote the passage from Sta te and Re volution
where Len i n says that one day cooks will adm i n ister
society instead of politicians. But these same Marx
ists can practice the most servile state idolatry, once
they come to see the state as the agent of progress

Gilles Dauve
62
or h i storical n ecessity. Because t h ey i m ag i n e the
future as a capital ist socialisation without capitalists,
as a world stil l based on wage labo u r but egal itarian ,
democratised and planned, everything prepares them
to accept a state (transitional, to be sure) and to go off
to war for a capitalist state they see as bad , against
another they see as worse.

Anarchism overestimates state power by regard i n g

authority as the main enemy, and a t the s a m e t i m e
underestimates the state's force o f inertia.

The state is the guarantor, but not the creator, of social

relationships. It represents and u n ifies capital, it is
neither capital's motor nor its centrepiece. From the
unden iable fact that the Spanish masses were armed
after J u ly 1 93 6 , anarchism deduced that the state
was losing its substance. But the substance of the
state resides not i n institutional forms, but i n its u n ify
ing function. The state ensures the tie which h u man
beings cannot and dare not create among themselves,
and creates a web of services which are both parasitic
and real.

I n the summer of 1 936, the state apparatus may have

seemed derelict in Republican Spain, because it o n ly
subsisted as a potential framework capable of picking
u p the pieces of capitalist society and re-arranging
them one day. I n the meantime, it continued to l ive, i n
social h ibernation. T h e n it gained n e w strength when
the relations opened u p by subversion were loosened
or torn apart. It revived its organs, and, the occasion
permitting, assumed control over those bodies which
su bversion had caused to emerge. What had been
seen as an empty shell showed itself capable not only
of revival, but of actually e m ptyi n g out the parallel
forms of power i n which the revolution thought it had
best embodied itself.

When Insurrections Die

63
The CNT's u ltimate justification of its role comes down 16 Solidaridad Obrera, No-
to the idea that the government no longer really had ve mber 1936.
power, because the workers' movement had taken
power d e facto.

" . . . the government has ceased to be a force op

pressing the working-class, i n the same way that
the state is no longer the organ ism dividing society
into classes. And if CNT mem bers work within the
state and govern ment, the people will be less and
less oppressed:' 1 6

N o less than Marxism, anarch ism fetishizes the state

and imagines it as being incarnated in a place. Blanqui
had already thrown his little armed flock into attacks on
city halls or on barracks, but he at least never claimed
to base his actions on the proletarian movement, only
on a minority that wou ld awaken the people. A cen
tury later, the CNT declared the Spanish state to be a
phantom relative to the tangible reality of the "social
organ isations" (i.e. m i l itias, u n ions) . But the existence
of the state, its raison d 'etre, is to paper over the
shortcomings of "civil" society by a system of relations,
of l i n ks, of a concentration of forces, an adm i n istra
tive, police, jud icial, and m i litary network which goes
"on hold" as a backup i n times of crisis, awaiting the
moment when a police investigator can go sniffing into
the files of the social worker. The revolution has no
Bastille, police station or governor's mansion to "take " :
i t s t a s k is to render harmless or destroy everyth ing
from which such places d raw their substance.

THE RISE AND DECLI N E O F THE CO LLECTIVISAT I O N S

The depth and breadth of the industrial and agrarian

socialisations after July 1 93 6 was no historical flu ke.
Marx noted the Spanish tradition of popular auton
omy, and the gap between the people and the state

Gilles Dauve
64
which made itself man ifest in the anti-Napoleonic war, 17 M arx, cited by Marie
and then i n the revolutions of the 1 Qth century, which Laffran que, 'M arx et
renewed age-old com m u nal resistance to the power l ' Es pagne' ( Cahiers de
of the dynasty. The absolute monarchy, he observed, !'!SEA, s e r i e S. n1 5).
did not shake up various strata to forge a modern state,
but rather left the living forces of the cou ntry i ntact.
Napoleon could see Spain as a "cadaver,

. . . but if the Span ish state was i ndeed dead , Span

ish society was full of l ife" and "what we call the
state i n the modern sense of the word is material
ised, i n real ity, only in the army, in keeping with the
exclusive "provi ncial" l ife of the people:' 1 7

I n the Spain o f 1 93 6 , the bourgeois revolution had

been made, and it was vain to dream of scenarios such
as 1 9 1 7, not to mention 1 84 8 or 1 789. But if the bour
geoisie dominated politically, and capital dominated
economically, they were nowhere near the creation of
a unified internal market and a modern state apparatus,
the subj ugation of society as a whole, and the domi
nation of local l ife and its particu larism . For Marx in
1 8 5 4 a "despotic" government coexisted with a lack
of u n ity that extended to the point of d ifferent cu rren
cies and d ifferent systems of taxation : his observation
sti l l had some validity eighty years later. The state was
neither able to stimulate industry nor carry out agrarian
reform ; it could neither extract from agriculture the
profits necessary for capital accumu lation, nor u n ify
the provinces, nor less keep down the proletarians of
the cities and the countryside.

It was thus almost naturally that the shock of J u ly ' 3 6

gave rise, o n t h e margins o f political power, t o a social
movement whose real expressions, while contain i n g
com m u n ist potential, were later reabsorbed by t h e
state they allowed to remain intact. T h e first months
of a revolution already ebbing, but whose extent sti l l

When Insurrections Die

65
 concealed its fai l u re , looked l i ke a s p l i nteri n g proc- 18 Among others: O rwell,
ess : each reg i o n , c o m m u n e , enterprise, c o l lective and Low & B rea, Red
and m unicipality escaped the central authority with Spanish Notebook, (City
out actually attacking it, and set out to l ive d ifferently. Lig hts, 1979).
Anarch i sm, and even the reg ionalism of the PO U M ,
express t h i s S panish o r i g i n a l ity, wh ich i s w ro n g l y
g rasped if o n e s e e s only the negative side of t h i s
" late" capital ist development. Even t h e ebb o f 1 93 7
did n o t eradicate t h e e l a n o f h u n d reds o f thousands
of workers and peasants who took over land, factories,
neighbourhoods, villages, seizing property and social
ising production with an autonomy and a solidarity i n
daily l ife that struck both observers a n d participants. 1 8
Comm u n ism is also t h e re-appropriation o f the cond i
tions of existence.

Sad to say, if these cou ntless acts and deeds, some

times extending over several years, bear witness ( as
do, in their own way, the Russian and German experi
ence ) to a comm u n ist movement remaking all of soci
ety, and to its formidable subversive capacities when
it emerges on a large scale, it is equally true that its
fate was sealed from the s u m m e r of 1 93 6 onward .
The S pan ish Civil War p roved both the revo l u t i o n
ary v i g o u r o f comm u n itarian b o n d s and forms which
have been penetrated by capital but which are not yet
daily reproduced by capital, and also their i mpotence,
taken by themselves, i n bringing off a revolution. The
absence of an assault against the state condemned
the establishment of d ifferent relationships to a frag
mentary self-management preserving the content and
often the forms of capital ism, notably money and the
division of activities by individual enterprises. Any per
sistence of wage-labour perpetuates the h ierarchy of
functions and incomes.

Comm u n ist meas u res c o u l d h ave u n derm i n e d the

social bases of the two states ( R e p u b l ican a n d

Gilles Dau ve
66
 Nationalist) , if only by solving the agrarian q uestion : 19 Gerald Brenan, The
in the 1 930's, more than half of the popu lation went Spanish Labyrinth (Cam
h u n g ry. A subversive force erupted, bringing to the bridge, 1990).
fore the most oppressed strata, those farthest from
"political l ife" (e.g. women ) , but it could not go all the
way and erad icate the system root and branch.

At the time, the workers' movement i n the major indus

trial countries corresponded to those regions of the
world which had been socialised by a total domination
of capital over society, where com m u n ism was both
closer at hand as a result of this social isation, and at
the same time farther away because of the dissolution
of all relations into commodity form. The new worl d , in
these cou ntries, was most commonly conceived as a
worker's world, even as an industrial one.

The Spanish proletariat, on the contrary, conti nued

to be shaped by a capital ist penetration of society
that was more q uantitative than qualitative. From this
reality it d rew both its strength and its weakness, as
attested by the trad ition and demands for autonomy
represented by anarch ism.

"In the last h u n d red years, there has not been a

single uprising in Andalusia which has not resulted
in the creation of com m u nes, the shari n g out of
land, the abolition of money and a declaration of
independence . . . the anarch ism of the workers is
not very d ifferent. They too demand, first of all, the
possibil ity of managing their industrial com m u n ity
or their u n ion themselves, and then the red uction
of worki n g h o u rs and of the effort req u i red from
everyone . . . " 1 9

One of the main weaknesses was the attitude towards

money. The "d isappearance of money" is mean ingful
only if it entails m o re than the replacement of one

When Insurrections Die

67
i n strument for meas u r i n g val u e with another o n e 20 Franz Borkenau, The
(such a s labou r cou pons) . Like most rad ical groups, Spanish Cockpit (Faber
whether they called themselves Marxist or anarchist, & Faber, 1937).
Span ish proletarians did not see money as the ex
pression and abstraction of real relationships, but as
a tool of measurement, an acco u nt i n g device, and
they red uced socialism to a d ifferent management of
the same categories and fundamental components
of capital ism.

The fail u re of the measu res taken against commodity

relations was not due to the power of the U GT (which
was opposed to the collectivisations) over the banks.
The closing of private banks and of the central bank
puts an end to mercantile relations only if production
and l ife are organised in a way no longer mediated
by the commod ity, and if such a commu nal prod uc
tion and l ife g radually come to d o m i nate t h e total
ity of social relationships. Money is not the "evil" to
be removed from an otherwise "good" prod u ction,
but the man ifestation (today beco m i n g i ncreasingly
immaterial) of the commod ity character of all aspects
of l ife . It can not be destroyed by e l i m i nati n g s i g n s ,
but o n ly when exchange withers away as a social
relationship.

I n fact, o n l y agrarian c o l lectives managed to do

without money, and they often d i d so with the help
of local cu rrencies, with coupons often being used
as " i nternal money". Sometimes money was handed
over to the collective. Sometimes workers were g iven
vouchers accord ing to the size of their fami l ies, not to
the amou nt of work done ("to each accord ing to their
need"). Sometimes money played no part : goods were
shared. An egal itarian spirit prevailed, as wel l as a
rejection of " l uxury".20 However, u nable to extend non
commod ity production beyond d ifferent autonomous
zones with no scope for g lobal action, the soviets,

Gilles Oauve
68
collectives and l i berated vil lages were transformed
into precarious communities, and sooner or later were
either destroyed from within or violently suppressed
by the fascists . . . or the Republ icans. In Aragon, the
col u m n of the Stal inist Lister made this a special ity.
Entering the vil lage of Calanda, h i s fi rst act was to
write on a wal l : "Collectivisations are theft:'

COLLECTI V I S E OR CO M M U N I S E ?

Ever since t h e First I nternational , anarch ism has coun

terposed the collective appropriation of the means of
prod uction to Social Democratic statism. Both visions,
nonetheless, have the same starting point: the need
for collective management. The problem is: manage
ment of what? Of course, what Social Democracy
carried out from above, bu reaucratical ly, the Spanish
proletarians practised at the base, armed, with each
individual responsible to everyone, thereby taki ng the
land and the factories away from a minority specialised
in the organ ising and exploitation of others. The oppo
site, in short, of the co-management of the Coal Board
by social ist or Stal i n ist union officials. Nevertheless,
the fact that a collectivity, rather than the state or a
b u reaucracy, takes the production of its material l ife
into its own hands does not, by itself, do away with
the capital ist character of that l ife.

Wag e l a b o u r means t h e passage of an act ivity,

whatever it might be, ploughing a field or printing a
newspaper, through the form of money. This money,
while it makes the activity possible, is expanded by
it. Equal ising wages, decid ing everything collectively,
and replacing cu rrency by coupons has never been
enough to do away with wage labour. What money
brings together can not be free, and sooner or later
money becomes its master.

When Insurrections Die

69
Su bstituting association for competition on a local
basis was a g uaranteed recipe for disaster. Because if
the collective did abolish private property within itself,
it also set itself up as a distinct entity and as a par
ticular element among others i n the global economy,
and therefore as a private col lective, compelled to
buy and sell , to trade with the outside world , thereby
becoming in its turn an enterprise which l i ke it or not,
had to play its part in reg ional, national and world
com petition or else d isappear.

O n e can only rejoice i n t h e fact that half of Spain

imploded : what mainstream opinion calls "anarchy" is
a necessary condition for revolution, as Marx wrote
in h i s own t i m e . But these m ovements made their
su bversive i mpact on the basis of a centrifugal force.
Rejuvenated commun itarian ties also locked everyone
into their village and their barrio , as if the point were
to d iscover a lost world and a degraded h uman ity, to
counterpose the worki ng-class neighbourhood to the
metropolis, the self-managed com m u ne to the vast
capitalist domain, the countryside of the common fol k
t o t h e commercial ized city, i n a word t h e poor to the
rich, the small to the large and the local to the i nter
national, all the while forgetting that a co-operative is
often the longest road to capitalism.

There is no revol ution without the destruction of the

state. But how? Beating off armed bands, getting rid
of state structu res and habits, setting u p new modes
of debate and decision - a l l these tasks are i m pos
sible if they do no go hand i n hand with comm u n isa
tion. We don't want " power", we want the power to
change all of l ife. As an h i storical process extending
over generations, can one imagine over such a time
frame continuing to pay wages for food and lod g i n g ?
If the revolution is su pposed to be pol itical fi rst and
social later, it would create an apparatus whose sole

Gilles Da u ve
70
function would be the struggle against the supporters
of the old world , i.e. a negative function of repression,
a system of control resting on no other content than
its " programme" and its will to realise comm unism the
d ay that conditions finally allow for it. This is how a
revolution ideologises itself and legitimises the birth of
a specialised stratu m assigned to oversee the matura
tion and the expectation of the ever-radiant day after
tomorrow. The very stuff of politics is not being able,
and not wanting, to change anything: it brings together
what is separated without going any further. Power is
there, it manages, it adm i n i sters, it oversees, it calms,
it represses : it is.

Pol itical d o m i nati o n (in w h i c h a w h o l e school of

thought sees problem number one) flows from the
incapacity of h uman beings to take charge of them
selves, and to organise their l ives and their activity.
This domination persists only through the radical d is
possession which characterises the proletarian. When
everyone participates in the production of their exist
ence, the capacity for pressu re and oppression now
in the hands of the state will cease to be operative.
It is because wage-labour society deprives us of our
means of living, producing and commun icating, not
stopping short of the i nvasion of once-private space
and of our emotional l ives, that the state is all-powerful.
The best guarantee against the reappearance of a new
structure of power over us is the deepest possible
appropriation of the conditions of existence, at every
level . For example, even if we don't want everyone
generating their own e l ectricity i n their basements,
the domination of the Leviathan also comes from the
fact that energy (a sign ificant term, another word for
which is power) makes us dependent on i n d ustrial
complexes which, n uclear o r not, i n evitably remain
external to us and escape any control.

When Insurrections Die

71
To conceive the destruction of the state as an armed
struggle agai nst the police and the armed forces is
to mistake the part for the whole. Com m u nism is fi rst
of all activity. A mode of l ife in which men and women
produce their social existence paralyses or reabsorbs
the emergence of separate powers.

The alternative upheld by Bordiga: "Shall we take over

the factory, or take over power?" (// Soviet, February
20, 1 9 20) can and must be superseded. We don't say:
it does not matter who manages production , whether
an executive or a council, because what counts is to
have production without value. We say: as long as pro
d u ction for value continues, as long as it is separated
from the rest of l ife, as long as h umankind does not
collectively produce its ways and means of existence,
as long as there is an "economy", any council is bound
to lose its power to an executive. This is where we
d iffer both from "council ists" and " Bord i g ists", and
why we are likely to be called Bordigists by the former,
and councilists by the latter.

LEAV I N G T H E 2 orH C E NTU RY?

The Spanish fai l u re of 1 93 6-37 is symmetrical to the

Russian failure of 1 9 1 7- 2 1 . The Russian workers were
able to seize power, not to use it for a com m u n ist
transformation. Backwardness, econo m i c ruin and
international isolation by themselves do not explain
the involution. The perspective set out by Marx, and
perhaps appl icable i n a different way after 1 9 1 7, of a
renaissance in a new form of communal ag rarian struc
tures, was at the time not even thinkable. Leaving aside
Lenin's eulogy for Taylorism, and Trotsky's justification
of m i litary labour, for almost all the Bolsheviks and the
overwhelming majority of the Third International, includ
ing the Communist Left, socialism meant a capitalist so
cialisation plus soviets, and the agriculture of the future

Gilles Da u ve
72
was conceived as democratically managed large land
holdings. (The d ifference - and it is a major one! - be
tween the German- Dutch left and the Comi ntern was
that the Left took soviets and worker democracy seri
ously, whereas the Russian comm u n ists, as their prac
tice proved, saw in them nothing but tactical formu las.)

The Bolsheviks are the best illustration of what happens

to a power which is only a power, and which has to
hold on without changing real conditions very much.

What distinguishes reform from revolution is not that

revol ution is violent, but that it l i n ks insu rrection and
communisation. The Russian civil war was won in 1 9 1 9,
but sealed the fate of the revolution, as the victory
over the Whites was ach ieved without comm u n ising
society, and ended in a new state power. I n his 1 93 9
Brown Fascism, Red Fascism, Otto R u h l e pointed
out how the French Revolution had g iven birth to a
m i l itary structu re and strategy adequate to its social
content. It u n ified the b o u rgeoisie with the people,
while the Russian revolution failed to create an army
based on proletarian principles. The Red Army that
Poland defeated in 1 9 20 hardly kept any revolutionary
significance. As early as mid- 1 9 1 8 , Trotsky summed it
up in three word s : "work, discipline, order".

Very logically and, at least in the beginning, in perfectly

good faith, the soviet state perpetuated itself at any
cost, fi rst in the perspective of world revolution, then
for itself, with the absolute priority being to preserve
the u n ity of a society com ing apart at the seams. This
explains, on one hand, the concessions to smal l peas
ant property, followed by requ isitions, both of which
resu lted in a further u n rave l l i n g of any communal l ife
or production. On the other hand, it also explains the
repression against workers and against any opposition
within the party.

When Insurrections Die

73
 In January 1 9 2 1 , the wheel had come full circle. The
1 9 1 7 revolution ary wave set i n motion by mutinies
and basic democratic demands ended i n the same
way - except this time proles were being repressed by
a "proletarian" state. A power which gets to the point
of massacring the Kronstadt mutineers i n the name
of a socialism it cou l d not realise, and which goes
on to j ustify its action with lies and cal u mny, is o n ly
demonstrating that it no longer has any comm u n ist
character. Len i n d ied his physical death i n 1 92 4 , but
the revolutionary Len i n had d ied as head of state in
1 9 2 1 , if not earlier. Bolshevism was left with no option
but to become the manager of capitalism.

As the hypertrophy of a p o l itical perspective h e l l

bent on e l i m i nating t h e obstacles which i t could not
su bvert, the October Revolution dissolved i n a self
can n i balising civil war. Its pathos was that of a power
which, u nable to transform society, degenerated into
a counter-revolutionary force.

I n the Span ish tragedy, the proletarians, because they

had left their own terrain , wound u p prisoners of a con
flict in which the bourgeoisie and its state were present
behind the front l ines on both sides. In 1 93 6-37, the
proletarians of Spain were not fighting against Franco
alone, but also against the fascist countries, against the
democracies and the farce of "non-intervention", against
their own state, against the Soviet U n io n , against . . .

The " Italian " and " German-Dutch " comm u n ist Left
(inclu d i n g M attick in t h e US) were among t h e very
few who defined the post- 1 933 period as utterly anti
revolutionary, whereas many g roups (Trotskyists, for
example) were prompt to foresee subversive poten
tials i n France, in S p a i n , in America, etc.

1 937 closed the historical moment opened by 1 9 1 7.

Gilles Da u ve
74
From then on, capital would not accept any other com- 21 Marx & Engels, The Ger-
m u n ity but its own, which meant there could no longer man Ideology (MECW 5),
be permanent rad ical proletarian groups of any sign ifi p. 52.
cant size. The dem ise of the POU M was tantamount to
the end of the former workers' movement.

I n a future revol utionary period , the most subtle and

most dangerous defenders of capital ism will not be
the people shouting pro-capital ist and pro-statist slo
gans, but those who have understood the possible
point of a total rupture. Far from eulogising TV com
mercials and social submission, they will propose to
change l ife . . . but, to that end, call for building a true
democratic power first. If they succeed in dominating
the situation, the creation of this new political form will
use up people's energy, fritter away radical aspirations
and, with the means becoming the end, will once again
t u rn revol ution into an ideology. Against them, and of
cou rse against overtly capitalist reaction, the proletar
ians' only path to success will be the m u ltiplication
of concrete comm u n ist i nitiatives, which will naturally
often be denounced as anti-democratic or even as . . .
"fascist". The struggle to establish places and moments
for d eli beration and decision, making poss i b l e the
autonomy of the movement, w i l l prove i nseparable
from practical measures aimed at changing l ife.

" . . . in all past revolutions, the mode of activity has

always remained intact and the only issue has been
a different distribution of this activity and a redistribu
tion of work among d ifferent person s ; whereas the
comm u n ist revolution is d i rected against the mode
of activity as it has existed u p till now and abolishes
work and the domination of all classes by abol ishing
classes themselves, because it is carried out by the
class which no longer cou nts as a class in society,
which is not recognised as a class, and is in itself
the expression of the d issolution of all classes, na
tionalities, etc. with i n present society . " 2 1
. .

75
NORMATIVE HISTORY
AN D THE COM MUNIST Theorie C o m m u n 1ste,

ESSENCE OF THE ' H i stoi re n o r m ative et essence

com m u n i ste d u proletariat'
PROLETARIAT Theorie Communiste no. 1 6 , 2000

A critique of Gilles Dauve's

When Insurrections Die

Tra n s l ated by Endnotes.

76
 I n When Insurrections Die we find the normative con- 1 G i l les Dauve, When in-
ception of the history of class struggle in its pu rity. On surrections Die, p. 27 (all
the fi rst page Dauve puts in place the vocabu lary of page references are to
this problematic: a vocabulary of "missed" chances and the text in t h i s vol u m e
"fai led" material isations. Throug hout the text fascism u n less otherwise n oted)
and N azism are described as the result of the l i m its of
the class strugg les of the preceding period , but these
l i m its are defined i n relation to Comm u n ism (with a
big 'C') rather than in relation to the strugg les of that
period. Meanwh ile the history of capital is referred to
a contrad iction which overreaches it, a general con-
trad iction of h i story : the separation between man and
com m u n ity, between h u man activity and society:

" Democracy will never be able to solve the problem

of the most separated society i n histori' 1

But this was never its intention. O n ly the society i n

w h i c h the relations between people a r e the strong
est and most developed produces the fiction of the
isolated individual. The question is never to know how
individuals, determ ined by a mode of prod uction, are
l i n ked together by a political form, but why these
social bonds take the form of politics. A certain type
of i n d ividual corresponds to a certain type of com
m u n ity ; i n d ividuals form c o m m u n ities as l i m ited as
themselves. Democracy (the state i n general) is the
form of this com m u n ity at the pol itical level ; it does
not respond to a general separation - such a separa
tion does not exist. To say that democracy responds
" badly" to separation is to say that this general separa
tion is the general dynam ic of history (an idea broad ly
developed i n La Banquise) .

We are told that the workers were defeated by democ

racy (with the aid of the parties and u n ions) ; but the
objectives - the content - of these workers' struggles
(in Italy, Spai n , Germany) always remains u nspoken.

Normative History a n d t h e Communis t Essence of t h e Proletariat

77
 We are thus plunged i nto the problematic of " betrayal" 2 p. 2 9
by the parties and u nions.2 That the workers obeyed
reformist movements - it is precisely this that ought to 3 p. 31
have been explaine d- and on the basis of the nature
of those struggles themselves, rather than letting the 4 p. 27
nebulous shadows of manipu lation and trickery pass
for explanation. " Proletarians trusted the democrats"3, 5 p. 32
the very same proletariat which fought capital "using
its own methods and goals " ; methods and goals 6 p. 3 3
which are never defined. Dauve goes so far as to ask
the question, "Who defeated this proletarian energy?"5 1 p. 37
but noth ing is ever said of the content, the forms and
the l i m its proper to this energy. It is proletarian energy
and that is a l l . For Dauve the central q uestion was
"how to control the working class?"6 but before aski ng
this question we need to ask another one: "What does
the working class do?" This always seems self-evident
i n the text, j u st a matter of " p roletarian energy". Why
then did the "control" succeed i n ' 2 1 and i n '43 (in
Italy) ? These are the q uestions to which the text only
responds anecdotally; or else i n the profound manner
we' l l see later on: the workers failed and were beaten
because they didn't make the revol ution - a col lapse
i nto tautology.

We find this same indeterminate " revolutionary energy"

i n the analysis of the working class defeat and su bse
quent victory of N azism i n Germany:

"The German defeat of 1 91 8 and the fal l of the em

pire set in motion a proletarian assault [we m ust be
deali n g with a man ifestation of 'proletarian energy']
strong enough to shake the fou ndations of society,
but i mpotent to revolutionize it, thus bringing Social
Democracy and the u nions to centre stage as the
key to pol itical eq u i l i briu m ". 7

Theorie Communiste
78
We are not told anything else about this "proletarian a p. 36. Our e m p hasis
assault". Why is it not powerful enough to revolutionise
society? That's the q uestion, however, and the only 9 p. 35
one we need answer. Things seem so obvious to the
author, it's enough to say "proletariat" and " revolution".
At one moment he fleetingly gives us an indicatio n : the
German radical movement is described as "aspiring to
a workers ' world''. 8 But this comment of fundamental
i mport isn't developed ; here it serves only as a sort of
detail which does not resolve the question of defeat,
and it is immed iately downplayed by the generality of
the " proletarian assault".

The key to the problematic is g iven to us in an inci

dental remark:

" B ut the conservative revol ution also took over old

anti-capitalist tendencies (the retu rn to nature, the
fl ight to cities . . . ) that the workers' parties, even the
extremist ones, had misestimated by their refusal to
integrate the a-classist and comm u n itarian d i men
sion of the proletariat, and their inability to think of
the fut u re as anyt h i n g but an extension of heavy
industry:'9

We' l l leave aside t h e struggles of the N azi reg i m e

against heavy i n d u stry ; i t ' s the " p roletarian e nergy"
which interests us. This energy resides i n this "a-clas
sist and comm u n itarian d i mension". If this is so, once
this d imension is proclaimed, everyt h i n g else - that
is the real h i story of class struggles - can be noth
ing m o re than a succession of forms m o re or less
adequate to it. The general pattern of the argu ment
is then as fol lows : man and society are separate and
this is the fou n d ation of all h i story ; all the h i storic
forms of human society are built on this separation and
try to resolve them but only through alienated forms.
Capital is the society i n which the contrad iction is

Normative History and the Communist Essence of the Proletariat

79
 pushed to its l i m its, but simu ltaneously (Hegel to the
rescue!) it is the society which gives birth to a class
with this communal dimension, an a-classist class. As
for capital, it is forced to respond to the same question
of separation (wh ich, let's not forget, is just a form of
social bond) , with the state, democracy, politics. We
have arrived at the simple opposition of two answers
to the same q uestion. It is no longer proletariat and
capital which are the terms of the contrad iction with in
the capitalist mode of prod u ction , but the h u man
com m u n ity carried by the proletariat and pol itics (the
state) which confront each other, the only con nection
between them being that they are opposing solutions
to the trans-historical problem of the separation of man
and society, individual and commun ity. We can find
this problematic i n developed form i n La Banquise's
'The Story of Our Origins' (LB no. 2) . This whole prob
lematic ignores the basic axiom of material ism : that
a certain type of individual corresponds to a certain
type of com m u n ity.

The proletariat does not have an a-classist or com

m u nitarian d imension : it has, i n its contrad iction with
capital, the ability to abolish capital and class society
and to produce com m u n ity (the social immed iacy of
the individual). This is not a d imension that it carries
within itself - neither as a natu re that comes to it from
its situation in the capitalist mode of prod uction, nor
as the finally discovered s u bject of the general ten
dency of history towards com m u n ity.

U nable, in such a p ro b l e m atic, to consider class

stru g g l e as the real h i story of its i m m e d iate forms
and to understand that its particular historical content
exhausts the total ity of what transpires i n the strug
gle (and not as a historical form of something e lse) ,
Dauve never tel ls us why the revolution failed, or why
it is that every time the state, the parties, the u n ions

Theorie Comm uniste

80
 want to destroy the revol utionary movement, it works. 10 p. 35
" Cou nter-revolution inevitably triumphs on the terrain
of revolution " 1 0 - exactly, but we never find out why 11 p. 38. Translator's note
the cou nter-revolution wins out in relation to the his (TN): In the Fre nch ver-
torical characteristics of t h e revolution. The author sion of the text to which
describes how it happens, but leaves it at that. G iven Theorie Communiste
the general problematic, the only explanation has to be refer, democracy and
tautological : the revolution failed because it d i d n 't go Social Democracy were
further. I n saying this we've said nothing on the actu also i n d i s pensable for
al ly existing fai l u re of the actually existing revolution. contai n i ng/i ntegrating
"In this j uncture, democracy and Social Democracy (encadrer) workers. This
were ind ispensable to German capital ism for kil l i n g p h rase i s om itted from
off the spirit o f revolt i n the p o l l i n g booth, w i n n i n g a the E n g l i s h version.
series of reforms from the bosses, and d ispersing the
revol utionaries: 1 1 But the relation of this activity of the 12 p. 46
capitalist class and social democracy to the historical
content of the revolution itself, which alone wou ld tell
us why "it works", has not been explained ; herein l ies
the necessary blind spot of this problematic.

The chapter on Spain takes the i mpasses of this prob

lematic to an extreme. Dauve describes precisely the
counter-revol ution (we have no disagreement on this) ,
but he only talks about the revol ution on the basis of
what it d i d n 't d o , i n relation to what it should have
done and as a succession of "fatal errors" :

"After d efeating the forces of reaction i n a large

n um ber of cities, the workers had the powe r. But
what were they going to do with it? Should they give
it back to the republ ican state, or should they use it
to go further in a com m u n ist d i rection?" 1 2

We know t h e answer, a n d Dauve explains t o u s i n

g reat detail t h e "fatal error" o f t h e Spanish revolution
aries who failed to take on the legal govern ment, the
State. But why did they make this error, was this error
not bound up with the very natu re of the "proletarian

Normative History and the Comm unist Essence of the Proletariat

81
 assau lt"? (It was certainly fatal , but whether we can 13 p. 49
tal k of an error is less su re) . These are the real q ues-
tions which this problematic cannot add ress. "In May 14 p. 50
'37, workers still had the capacity to rise up against the
state (this time i n its democratic form) , but they could
no longer push their struggle to the point of an open
break" 1 3 - so this capacity did exist i n J u ly 1 936. For
Dauve the masses are "deceived" by the CNT and the
POU M who are afraid of al ienating the State :

" B ecause they accepted the mediation of ' repre

sentative organisations' and counsels of moderation
from the POU M and the CNT, the very same masses
who had defeated the fascist m i litary i n J u ly 1 9 3 6
surrendered without a fight t o t h e Republican police
i n May 1 937." 1 4

I f w e fol low this interpretation, Spanish proletarians

are id iots. It is extraord i nary to write such expressions
as : "the masses placed their trust", "fatal error", "the
proletarians, convinced that they had effective power",
" because they accepted the mediation . . . ," without a
single moment of doubt, or a q u estion such as : but
why does it work? Why did they give their trust? Why
did this error happe n ? Why this conviction? If these
questions don't even momentarily occur, we should
nonetheless ask ourselves why not.

The point is that i n the text the proletariat is by nature

revolutionary, and, even better, communist. It is a given
that h istory is the history of the separation of man and
society ; as for proletarians, they are "commod ified
beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist
as commodities, and whose revolt explodes capitalist
logic". Proletarians are, in themselves, contradictory
beings, and as such they carry the com m u n ity - com
m u n ism - with i n themselves. It follows that when they
fai l to make the revolution, it's that they are wro n g ,

Theorie Comm uniste

82
or have been deceived . Th us it is that which failed
to happen which becomes the explanation for what
actually happened.

The formula "commodified beings, etc:' leaves shrouded

in darkness theoretical questions which cou ld not be
more arduous or decisive. The proletarians are here the
crux of an internal contrad iction, one of whose terms
is left u nsaid and is taken as give n : on the one hand
they are commodities, but in the name of what, on the
other, do they no longer want to be this? Elementary :
they are m e n . The social defi n ition o f t h e proletariat i n
a specific m o d e o f prod uction g ives way t o a hybrid
defi n ition : commod ity and man. But who then is this
man who is not the ensemble of his social relations
through which he is merely a commod ity?

From the moment that the revol utionary nature of the

proletariat is constructed as this contrad ictory hybridi
sation of man and commod ity, the history of the class
strugg le - and more precisely of revol ution and com
m unism - disappears. Comm u n ism is inscribed once
and for all i n the n ature of the proletariat. That the
proletariat can't and doesn't want to remain what it
is, is not a contradiction internal to its nature, intrinsic
to its being, but rather the actual ity of its contrad ic
tory relation to capital i n a historically specific mode
of produ ction. It is the relation to capital of that par
ticular commod ity which is labour power, as a rela
tion of exploitation, which is the revol utionary relation.
Posed in this way, it is necessarily a history: that of this
contradiction. The class struggle in Barcelona in May
'37 was not the movement of comm u n ism in general
( even i n these particular conditions ) which fel l short
for reasons which can never be g iven ; it was rather
the revolution as it really existed , that is to say, as
affirmation of the proletariat d rawing its force and the
content of its autonomy from its very condition inside

Normative History a n d the Communist Essence of the Proletariat

83
the capital ist mode of production. " Errors" now appear 15 p. 52
as what they are, i n herent l i m its, to the extent that
the revolution impl ies its own cou nter- revolution. The
affirma tion of the autonomy of the proletariat implies
the affirma tion of wha t it is in capital; tha t is where
it finds its power and the raison d ' etre for its action,
at the same time as the essential link between this
action and the coun ter-re volution is produced.

The affirmation of an "a-classist", "comm u n itarian" d i

mension o f the proletariat merely derives from a poor
understanding of an era of the class struggle (up to
the 1 84 0s) and not from the revol utionary natu re of
the proletariat. H owever, this allows the proletariat to
be constructed as fig u re of h u manity, as representa
tion of a pre-exist i n g contrad iction. Com m u n i s m is
presupposed as tension, as tendency, which opposes
itself to capital from the outset of the capital ist mode
of prod uction and aims to explode it. This is d ifferent
from affirming that communism is the movement which
abolishes existing conditions, that is to say the move
ment of the in ternal contrad iction of these conditions.
Moreover, if the proletariat is invested with this dimen
sion, the h istorical process of the class struggle is no
longer really necessary i n relation to the revolution :
it is merely a process of realisation. This causes the
sli ppage in the analysis whereby the contrad iction be
tween com m u n ism and capital comes to replace the
contrad iction between the proletariat and capital .

If we come back to the course of the Spanish civil war

as described in the text, what is stri king is the use of
the subjunctive and the conditional : "Taking the revolu
tion beyo nd areas u nder republ ican control, however,
would have meant completing the revol ution in the
republ ican areas as wel l ". 1 5 What failed to happen is
always the explanation for what actually happened :
" but even Durruti did not seem to realize that the state

Theorie Comm uniste

84
was everywhere sti l l i ntact:' Everything happens as 16 p. 54
if there were a huge thermometer with a scale up to
Com m u n ist Revolution (human com m u n ity) : you stick 17 T N : "elan" - a play on
it i nto a sensitive point of events and see how far the Dauve's "revol ution-
mercury rises, then you explain that the mercury only ary elan" (pp. 56, 66)
rose that far because it failed to rise any further. which in othe r texts
by Dauve is trans-
H owever " D u rruti and his c omrades embodied an lated as "revolution ary
energy which had not waited for 1 93 6 to storm the wave" " . . . s u rge 11 or 11

exist i ng worl d ". 1 6 " Proletarian e ne rgy" plays a star momentum''. Here it
ring role in this vision of history : it is what makes the corresponds to one of
mercury rise in the thermometer. It is, l i ke i n the old the i n effable forces of
physics, one of those ineffable forces destined to wrap a defu n ct physics.
up all tautolog ies. We note in passing that "energy"
is embodied, j ust l i ke "momentum". 1 7 U ltimately, with- 1a p. 55
out explai ning why the Spanish revolution fails to go
fu rther and what its essential relation to the cou nter-
revolution is, Dauve accumu lates all the perfectly per
tinent " hows", but without ever provid i n g us with the
beg i n n i n g s of an explanation ; u nless it is i n the con
d itional, with the condition being what should have
been done:

"the announcement of immed iate and uncond itional

independence for Spanish Morocco wou l d , at min
i m u m , have stirred u p tro u b l e a m o n g t h e shock
troops of reaction:' 1 8
" I n order to be c o n s o l i d ated a n d exte n d e d , t h e
transformations without which revolution becomes
an empty word had to pose themselves as antago
n istic to a state clearly designed as the adversary.
The trouble was, after J u ly 1 93 6 , dual power existed
in appearance on ly. Not only did the instruments of
proletarian power which emerged from the insur
rection, and those which subseq uently oversaw the
socialisations, tolerate the state, but they accorded
the state a primacy i n the anti- Franco struggle, as

Normative History and the Comm unis t Essence of the Proletariat

85
 if it were tactically necessary to pass through the 19 p. 58
state i n order to defeat Franco." 1 9
" C o m m u n i st m e as u res c o u l d h ave u nd e r m i n e d 20 p. 67
the social bases of the two states (republ ican and
nationalist) , if o n ly by solving the agrarian q uestion : 21 pp. 56, 65, 59
in the 1 930's, more than half of the population went respectively
h u n g ry. A subversive force erupted, bringing to the
fore the most oppressed strata, those farthest from 22 p. 66
' political l ife' (e.g. women), but it cou ld not go all the
way and eradicate the system root and branch:'20

Why? To answer that q uestion the revo l ution m u st

be defi ned other than as " revol utionary elan", "com
m u n ist potential " or "aborted revolution". 2 1 The con
trad iction between the proletariat and capital m u st be
considered as a relation of reciprocal implication, and
revolution and communism as h istorical products - not
as the result of the natu re of the revolutionary class
defined as such once and for all.

For Dauve the G e rman revolution, l i ke the Russian

and Span ish ones, testifies to "a c o m m u n ist m ove
ment remaki ng al l of society".22 But it is precisely the
nature of this comm u n ist movement, at this particular
jun cture i n the history of the contrad iction between
the proletariat and capital, that m u st be defined if we
want to understand its l i m its and its relation to the
counter-revolution without red ucing it to what it should
have done and what it wasn't. Nevertheless the author
furnishes us with an explanation of the l i m its of the
revolution, albeit without seem ing to attribute much
importance to it:

"The Spanish Civil War proved both t h e revo l u

tionary vigour o f com m u n itarian bonds a n d forms
which have been penetrated by capital but which
are not yet daily reproduced by capital, and also
their i m potence, taken by themselves, i n bri n g i n g

Theorie Comm uniste

86
 off a revolution. The absence of an assau lt against 23 p. 66
the state condemned the establishment of d iffer-
ent relationships to a fragmentary self-management
preserving the content and often the forms of capi-
talism, notably money and the d ivision of activities
by ind ividual enterprises:'23

And what if it was precisely these bonds and these

forms which prevented the "assault"? And what if this
were j u st a particular form of the affirmation of the
proletariat? Dauve does not ask h imself this type of
q uestion, because for him the particular conditions
are always merely the conditions i n relation to what
the revolution m ust do, and not the very form of the
revolution at a g iven moment. In this brief but very
interesting passage he does not escape a problematic
of objective conditions I revolutionary nature. These
particu lar conditions which he calls to our attention
should have been those which nonetheless should
have produced an assault against the state. I n con
sequence this explanation of the l i m its is g iven but
doesn't intervene i n the general reasoning. If it had
i ntervened, Dauve wou l d have been forced to histori
cally specify the " revolutionary vigour", the " revolution
ary elan", and could no longer have spoken of "aborted
revolution" or "comm u n ist potentialities". He would
no longer have been able to explain what had hap
pened by what had n 't, and all the "would-have-beens"
wou l d have had no sense. As it is h e is content to
juxtapose an ahistorical vision of the revolution and
of comm unism with the conditions which will g ive it
form, which will model it. The history of class struggle
is here always doubl e : on the one hand the communist
principle, the elan or revolutionary energy which ani
mates the proletariat, a transcendent h istory, and on
the other, the l i m ited manifestation of this energy, an
anecdotal history. Between these two aspects there
exists a hierarchy. Transcendent history is "real" history,

Normative History and the Communis t Essence of the Proletariat

87
and real history with all its l i m its is only the acciden
tal form of the former, so much so that the former is
constantly the judgment of the latter.

One can hardly question Dauve's remark on the condi

tion of social relations in 1 930's Spai n , but either it
was possible to do what he says it wou ld have been
necessary to do, and thus the conditions could have
been overcome, or it was not possible and in that case
the conditionals of Dauve lose all rational signification.
Such a situation would have been overcome if the
revol utionary elan was that which he presupposes i n
his analysis. B u t i f i t was a matter o f a programmatic
struggle, such a situation (commu nal bonds) is a mate
rial that it reworks accord ing to its own nature.

One could consider that the whole of this h istorical

text is a work of reflection on what the revolution must
and can be today. But the problem with Dauve is that
he presents this in an eternal, atemporal, fashion ; so
m u c h so that if we fi n i s h more knowledgeable we
have nonetheless made no advance on the essential
question : question : why cou ld the revolution be today
what it wasn't in the past?

We should make it clear: we are absolutely in ag ree

ment with the sequence of facts that Dauve presents,
as much for Germany as for Spain (with some reser
vations i n regard to Russia) . H is conception of the
com m u n ist revolution is entirely our own as far as its
content and comm u n ist measures are concerned, its
comprehension as comm u n isation and not as prior to
this communisation. Where we d iffer profoundly is on
the comprehension of the course of class struggle as
the j uxtaposition of a g iven , known, com m u n ist prin
ciple within the being of the proletariat, and a history
which contents itself with expressing this principle in a
partial, confused or aborted fashion. Its not a question

Theorie Comm uniste

88
of the method of historical analysis; this isn't a q uarrel 24 For an explanation of
between phi losophers of history. As always, what is at TC's concept of "pro
stake is the comprehension of the cu rrent period. Dau g rammatism" see below
ve's method renders impossible the comprehension of pp. 1 55-161 and After
the overcom ing of prog rammatism, of the revolution word p. 213.
as affirmation of the proletariat.24 The commun ist revo
l ution as we can curren tly conceive it, as it presents
itself i n this cycle of struggle, is for him al ready there
(limited, aborted, with errors and i l l usions, etc.) in the
Russian, German and Span ish revol utions. Thus even
when we say that we are in agreement with the con
ception of the revolution that he presents at the end
of his brochure, this is because he does not see that
this revolution is not - is no longer - that of Russia etc.
They were revolutions of the cycle of struggle in which
the proletariat was affirmed ; this is no longer the case
today. The confusion is not without consequences
for any theory based on the cu rrent situation of the
relation between the proletariat and capital, on the
comprehension of cu rrent struggles and on the re volu
tion as produced overcoming of this cycle of struggle.
That is to say, on the way one takes these struggles as
really productive of their overcoming (practically and
theoretically) and not as to be judged in relation to this
overcoming already posed as a norm. The history of
class struggle is production and not realisation.

Normative History and the Communis t Essence of the Proletariat

89
HUM A N , A L L TOO HUM A N ?
G i l l e s Dauve,
' H u m a i n , Tra p H u m ai n ? '
A p p e n d i x t o Ouand Meurent
Les Insurrections (La Sociale,
M o ntreal 2000), p p . 69-77.

A reply to ' N o r m ative H i story

a n d t h e C o m m u n i s t E s s e n ce
of t h e Proletariat'.

Tra n s l ated by Endnotes.

90
It is for the reader to judge whether, as Theorie Com t Pau l M attick, 'Otto R u h l e
m u n iste think, When Insurrections Die explains what and the G e r m a n Labo u r
happened by what d i d n ' t happen. We bel ieve that Movement', 1935, i n Anti
in that article we set out first what proletarians actu Bolshevik C o m m u n i s m
ally d i d , and then what t h ey weren't able o r d i d n 't (Merl i n Press, 1978).
want to do. "Yet no lessons but negative ones can be
drawn from all these undertakings [the struggles of the 2 Marx, Preface, A Contri
German proletariat from 1 91 9 to 1 9 23] . . . The lesson bution to the Critique of
learned was how not to proceed:1 1 To j u m p back and Political Economy, 1859
forth between yesterday and tomorrow has its dangers, (MECW 29), p. 263.
but is more illuminating than the explanation according
to which every social movement ineluctably ends up
where it is d riven by its epoch .

"Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks

as it is able to solve, since closer examination will
always show that the problem itself arises only when
the material conditions for its solution are al ready
present or at least in the course of formation." 2

So be it. It remains for us to determine these conditions,

and which goal they correspond to. Otherwise we limit
ourselves to demonstrating how what had to happen
happened. To reconstruct two hundred years of class
struggles from the knowledge which we now have of
them is not without interest. But what privilege permits
the observer in the year 2000 to know that his stand
point is ultimately the right one? Nothing can guarantee
that in 2 0 5 0 , after 50 m ore years of capitalism, an
even more broad-ranging overview won't establish for
x + y reasons the ways in which the proletarians of the
year 2000 (and with them TC along with G . Dauve)
remained h istorically constrained by the l i m its of their
times, and thus that comm u n ism wasn't actually in the
offing in the year 2000 any more than it was in 1 970 or
1 9 1 9, but that now a new period is ushering itself i n ,
allowing us to genuinely g rasp the past from the new,
proper viewpoint. N othing guarantees it, except the

Human, A ll Too Human ?

91
certai nty of the opening of a total ly d ifferent historical 3 TN: U/timatism - the
epoch towards the end of the 20'h century. To be sure, confidence that one is
the conviction of TC is wel l buttressed and argued. i n a position t o g rasp
Despite everything, however, it is not a caricature to the ultimate truth.
read a new version of the "final crisis" in this vision of a
phase in which proletariat and capital are supposedly 4 Marx, 18th Brumaire
from now on face to face, enabling proletarians to cal l (MEcw 11), p. 103.
into question their own existence as class, thus posing
the question of com m u n ism in all its nakedness.

More than a mere theoretical position, it is this way of

situating oneself in relation to the world , this ultima
tism, which is questionable.3

Capitalism will only be non-reproducible the day when

proletarians cease prod ucing it. There is no objec
tive l i m it to a social system . Proletarians only g ive
themselves tasks that they are able to and wan t to
resolve.

Theorie Communiste steers clear of the conditional

and subjunctive modes. H owever, just as one of the
traits of language is projection i nto the future, man is
also characterised by his capacity to think what could
be, to reinterpret the past on the basis of the collective
choices made by social g roups, and thus to consider
what could have been. H istory is a conju nction of pos
sibil ities and wills. Freedom consists not in being able
to d o anyth ing one wants, but i n wanting what one
can do. Which is another way of saying "Men make
their own history . . . but u nder circumstances d i rectly
encou ntered, g iven and transm itted from the past"4,
circumstances which they don't i nvent, but which it
is within their power to modify.

" Wi l l ", "freedom", " M an " : these are all words whi ch
disturb the theoretical rigour of TC. U nfortu nately, to
refuse all concepts which are exterior to capitalism is

Gilles Dauve
92
to condemn oneself to t h i n ki n g not h i n g but capital- 5 'Sous Le Travai l :
ism. T h e fate o f capital ism is not i ntel l i g i b l e on t h e l'Activite', La Banquise
basis of capital ism alone. To reject all concepts which no. 4, 1986.
refer to an outside of the capital/wage-labour struc-
ture amou nts to b u i l d i n g a model that is i rrefutable
because it refers o n ly to itself. What would be the
use in a proletarian structuralism?

We don't postulate an irreducible, ahistorical h uman

natu re which ends u p b u rsting the capital ist fetter.

" U nderneath labou r lies activity", stated an article i n

L a Banquise.5 Ideal ism? Everything depends on t h e
underneath. It is false to conceive o f capitalism as a
prison from which, one g lorious dawn, wi ll emerge a
virtuality which today is enclosed. That wou l d presup
pose an always al ready existing positivity, constrained
by capital and waiting to escape.

What exists, on the contrary, neither anterior nor exte

rior to capital, but consu bstantial with it, and as ind is
pensable condition of its functioning, is the u n iversal
scope of living labour, from which it feeds every day.

Not in the sense in which labour is presumed as the es

sential characteristic of Man defined as homo faber.

More simply, proletarians are not bovines. A man is not

put to work l i ke an animal is. The most manual occupa
tion demands more than mere expenditure of muscle:
a grasp, an antici pation of the gesture, a sa voir-faire
not eliminated by Taylorism, an acquired skill which the
worker can then transmit. This facu lty includes the rep
resentation of what other workers d o and are, includ
ing if they l ive 1 O,OOOkm away. The horse can refuse
the work demanded of it, kill its master, escape and
finish its days free, but it cannot i n itiate another form
of l ife which reorgan ises the l ife of the former master

Human, A ll Too Human ?

93
as wel l . Capital is only capital because it exploits not
only the product of labour but that which is h u m a n :
a power to work, an energy w h i c h is always col lec
tive, which capital manages but can never completely
dominate, which it depends on and which can put it
into crisis - or even a revolution.

Proletarian isation is not the loss of some prior existing

thing, but the exploitation of a h uman capacity. A liena
tion is only transhistorical to the extent that capital
ism recapitu lates a m u lti-millenarian past. Something
becomes o ther: t h i s is certainly one of the charac
teristics of wage-labo u r. The latter effects a dispos
session, not of an u ndefinable humanity, but of time
constrained, energy used, acts forced by capital which
is thereby valorised. What the proletarian loses every
day is not a strip of some eternal nature, but a force of
l ife, a social capacity which the beast of burden does
not have at its d isposal, and which is thus a real ity
i nternal to the wage relation. It's not a q u estion of
i ntrod ucing a h uman d imension into the analysis, but
of seeing that it is to be fou n d there.

A fundamental contribution of the German-Dutch Left,

and its descendents, is to have emphasised this.

"If the worker is, even from the economic point of

view, more than a mach i n e , it is because h e pro
d uces for the capitalist more than h e costs h i m ,
a n d above a l l because i n t h e cou rse o f h i s labour
he man ifests the creativity, the capacity to produce
ever more and ever better, than any productive class
of previous periods ever possessed. When the capi
talist treats the proletariat as livestock, he learns
q uickly to his expense that livestock cannot fulfil the
function of the worker, because the productivity of
over-exploited workers decreases rap i dly. Th is is
the deep root of the contradictions of the modern

Gilles Oa u ve
94
 system of exploitation and the h istorical reason of & Socialisme ou Barbarie
its fai l u re, of its i ncapacity to stabi l ise itself. "6 no. 1 , 1949.

Socialisme ou Barbaria, l i ke councilism, reduced the

generic character which is the fou ndation of wage
labour to the d i mension of its management. This fact,
however, cannot blind us to that which these currents,
which reflect the struggles for self-activity and auton
omy against the bosses, bureaucracy and the State,
brought to light: it is the proletariat which capitalism
places i n a situation of u n iversal ity.

The important thing is not that proletarians produce

riches (which for the most part impoverish us) , but that
they themselves are the ever more totalising but nev
er total commod ification of activity and l ife. Since the
proletarian is the commodity which produces all the
others, he contains them all, holds the key to his own
exploitation, and i n negating h imself as commod ified
being, can revolutionise the world of the commodity. No
previous exploited class l ived a s i m i lar potential ity.

In fact, even if they d ied from overwork, the slave, the

serf, the peasant under the yoke of the corvee and tax,
the artisan and the worker before the industrial revolu
tion, were only ferociously exploited in one part of their
existence, a large portion of which remained outside
the control of the dominant class. The serf's vegetable
garden wasn't of interest to the lord. Modern proletar
ians produce the totality of material l ife, they lose it,
then they receive it back i n the form of the commod
ity and the spectacle, and this takes the form of the
g l o bal c i rc u l ation of goods and labour. It's for this
reason that capital ism was theorised a hundred and
fifty years ago as the real isation, if not the completion,
of a double tendency of the u n iversalisation of h uman
ity and its alienation.

Human, A ll Too Human ?

95
Between 1 830 and 1 848, a minority perceived society 7 M arx & Engels, The
at a limit-point: proletarians can only reappropriate the German Ideology

totality of the conditions of l ife, "not only to ach ieve (MECW 5), p. 87.
self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very
existence:'1 The announced revolution will use produc- a ibid. p. 88
tive forces, but won't be a revolution of the producers.
Technology is only valid as a flowering of individuals, 9 ibid p. 80
with the supersession of professional capacities : "now
the isolation of individuals and each person's particular 10 ibid p. 87
way of gaining his liveli hood have themselves become
accidental:'0

"Thus, while the fug itive serfs only wished to have

full scope to develop and assert those conditions
of existence which were al ready there, and hence,
i n the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletar
ians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals,
have to abolish hitherto prevai ling condition of their
existence (which has, moreover, been that of all
society u p to then) , namely, labour. Thus they find
themselves d i rectly opposed to the form in which,
h itherto, the individuals, of which society consists,
have given themselves collective expression, that is,
the state; i n order, therefore, to assert themselves
as individuals, they must overthrow the State:'9

Beyond the g laring contrad iction between an i ncreas

ing production of wealth which i mpoverishes its pro
ducers, the more rad ical perceived a h istoric opening,
through the contrad iction of labour, "which is now
the o n ly possible but, as we see, negative form of
self-activity." 1 0

From t h e clash between artisans a new fig u re could

emerg e beyon d the creator-artist and the proletar
ian-servant of the mach ine. Thanks to commodified
labour, which was unattached and i n different to its
content, but collective, it became possible to envisage

Gilles Oa uve
96
association, and the su persession of the wage form 11 Amadeo Bordiga, 'Tra
( sti l l too recent to appear "natural" ) . jecto i re et catastrophe
de la forme capitaliste
The " Proletariat" is thus conceived as that which will dans la classique et
compose another society. It already config u res a kind monolithique con struc
of society, since classes d issolve themselves i n it. It tion marxiste', Reunion
sucks i n artisans and peasants, attracts a proportion de Piombino, September
of " i ntellectuals", and doesn't form a bloc or entity, but 1957. (Fre nch translation
expresses a social decomposition ( o r a recom posi of the article which ap
tion as revolutionaries hope ) . Proletarians experience peared i n II Programma
unemployment, poverty, u p rooting, the breakdown of Communista i n 1957).
the fami ly, of customs, of identities, of values, and at
the same time act col lectively ( as seen i n i ns u rrec
tions, chartism, trade-unions, Tristan 's Union Ouvriere,
L u d d i s m too, of which t h e l ater trade u n io n s g ave
the falsified image of a brute force, spontaneous but
l i m ited ) . The proletariat of before 1 84 8 is an ensem
ble d isaggregated enough to criticise itself, but sti l l
communitarian enough t o want t o struggle, a n d b y the
breaking-down of barriers between worker/non-worker,
artisan/labou rer, manual/i ntel lectual . . . acced e to a
free association. The organised workers' movement
subsequently both took on and denied this heritage,
and the commun ist horizon has been fixed on sociol
ogy for more than a century.

Under the weight of the epoch, Marx himself, although

aiming for "a description of the characteristics of com
m u n ist society" 1 1 considered it i ncreas i n g ly on the
basis of capitalism, and by d i nt of criticising politi
cal economy became enclosed withi n it. What is the
interest i n scientifically "proving" exploitation, instead
of exposing how exploitation exploits that which can
produce communism?

It's not a case of opting for the "young" Marx against

the "old" Marx, but of u n derstanding that the "you ng"
Marx contains t h e "old" M arx a lot m o re than t h e

Human, A ll To o Human ?
97
" o l d " M arx contai n s the "yo u n g " Marx . Thus t h e i n - 12 cf. Alain M a i l l ard, La
tellectual involution echoes a h istorical stabil isation. Communaute des Egaux
The perspective is i mpoverished in the I nternational ( E d. Kime, 1999).
Workin g m e n ' s Association o r the Com m u ne when
compared to that of the middle of the century, which 13 M arx, The German /de-
the author of the 1 84 4 Manuscripts synthesised the ology (MEcw 5), p. 53.
best, but which others had also expressed . 1 2

The revolution d i d n 't occur around 1 848, and i t woul d

b e vain t o expect that computerisation w i l l finally render
"historically necessary" in the year 2000 that which large
scale mechanised industry was supposed to achieve
before 1 9 1 4 or nascent automation after 1 9 6 0 .

What is t r u e is that every profound reorganisation o f

the prod u ctive system m aterially i m poverishes t h e
workers, but also d i s possesses t h e m of a relative
mastery over their work, and unleashes resistance and
revolts, often conservative, but revol utionary perhaps.
The call i n g into q u estion by capital ism of the forms
of wage-labo u r opens u p a path of rupture with the
wage condition. Each time, nothing g uarantees that
a comm u nist movement will be able or want to take
advantage of it, but t h e poss i b i l ity is the re , w h i c h
makes o f the proletariat the " overthrowing class". 1 3

A hypothes i s : w e are living i n a new charnel-epoch

in which capitalism is able to create poles of p rofit
for itself, techn ically innovate and m ultiply consumer
goods, create employment and/or income, calm riots,
but not u n ify the global society of general ised labo u r
a t t h e very m o m e n t i n w h i c h the latter becomes ines
sential . From the fetid cellars of Lille or Manchester
in 1 840 to the living-rooms of council tower-blocks
where the VCR has pride of place, the problem remains:
how to put wage-earners to work if they are p rofit
able, and what to do with them when they are not? At
one extreme, in China, 1 00 m i l l i o n u p rooted ex-ru ral s

Gilles Da uve
98
which the capitalist city won't be able to integrate .
A t t h e other end o f t h e chai n , i n Seine-Sai nt- Denis
(TN : Parisian suburb ) : school until 2 2 years old ; train
ing schemes; insignificant, precarious jobs ; benefits.
Between the two, the U nited States. For Emmanuel
Todd (L'illusion economique) , "the biggest success of
the American system of production is anti-economic".
The q uestion isn't whether there is no way out of the
situation for capital , but whether it reopens a way out
for the proletariat as a class not of workers, but of the
critique of work.

The l imit of capital is that it is unable to do without

labour, which it i ndeed generalises, making m i llions
of beings enter into wage labour, at the same time as
it red uces labour to a negligible role. To remedy this,
thinkers such as Andre Gorz propose the delinking of
money from labou r, in order to accord to everybody a
share in consumption, whether they have participated
in production or not. Such a society is i m possi b l e :
even i f it were t e n t i m e s more automated , our world
would stil l rest u pon labour. Proletarians will remain
the necessary evi l of capital ism.

A q uestio n : is it possible to pass from the moment

where capital refuses many proletarians (in particu lar
young ones) to the refusal of this world and its labour
by proletarians (particularly lots of young ones) ? What
will be done by these "masses resulting from the dras
tic d issolution of society, mainly of the middle estate,
that form the proletariat . . . "

" . . . By proclai m i n g the d issolution of the h e reto

existing world order, the proletariat merely proclaims
the secret of its own existence, for it is in fact the
d issolution of that world order. By demanding the
negation of private property, the proletariat merely
raises to the ran k of a p ri n c i p l e of society w h at

Human, A ll Too Human ?

99
 society has made the principle of the proletariat, 14 Marx, I ntroduction, A
what without its own co-operation, is al ready incor- Con tribution to the Cri-
porated in it as the negative result of society. " 1 4 tique o f Hegel's Philoso-
phy of Right, 1843 (MECw
On the basis of what he had in front of his eyes - i.e. 3), p. 187-
nascent industrialisation, Marx theorised a period (to
come) of d islocation of classes, which was s i m u lta- 15 Marx, The German lde-
neously the effect of a profound social crisis and the ology (ME cw 5), p. 88.
conscious action of proletarians. For h i m , the prole-
tariat of 1 844, but also one h u n d red or two h u n d red 1& ibid. p. 87.
years later, is the ensemble of categories havi ng i n
common that they l ive only from t h e sale o f their labour-
power, whether they are in work or without it, partially
employed , precarious or protected by a statute but
susceptible (if not, a brother, or a daughter . . . ) to falling
into a frag ile category. The proletariat exists as dis-
solution of classes in the sense that it is and effects
this d issolution. It is both the product and the process
of this d issolution, by a revolution " i n which, further,
the proletariat rids itself of everything that stil l clings
to it from its previous position i n societY:' 1 5 It is not
a question of it form ing a bloc l i ke an army against
another, but that it puts i nto practice the negation
which it is already, going beyond individualism as wel l
a s massification.

" . . . standing over against these productive forces,

we have the majority of the ind ividuals from whom
these forces have been wrested away, and who,
robbed thus of all real l ife-content, have become
abstract individuals, but who are, however, only by
this fact put into a position to enter into relation with
one another as ind ividuals:' 1 6
" . . . the communal relationship into which the individ
uals of a class entered, and which was determ ined
by their common interests over against a third party,
was always a commu n ity to which these individuals
belonged only as average individuals, only i nsofar

Gilles Da u ve
100
 as they l ived within the conditions of existence of 11 ibid. p. So.
their class - a relationship in which they participated
not as individuals but as members of a class. With 18 Theorie Communiste
the com m u n ity of revolutionary proletarians, on the no. 14, 1 997 p. 19.
other hand, who take their conditions of existence
and those of all m e m bers of society u nd e r their
control, it is just the reverse ; it is as i ndividuals that
the individuals participate in it. It is just this combi-
nation of individuals (assuming the advanced stage
of modern productive forces, of cou rse) which puts
the conditions of the free development and move-
ment of individuals under their control - conditions
which were previously abandoned to chance and
had won an independent existence over against the
separate individuals just because of their separation
as individuals, and because of the necessity of their
combination:' 1 7

Accord ing t o Theorie Communiste, "the proletarian

of the you n g Marx is the personal ind ividual for whom
the previous social determ inations have become a
matter of contingency, and it is this situation in itself
which is posed as revolutionary:' 1 8 H owever this pro
letarian evoked by Marx is more than an i ndividual, as
he shares (in his head and his actions) his fate with
m i l lions of others. Is he so i n d ividual, this i ndividual
who is weighed down by a h istorical constraint, this
being who is endlessly "excluded" from prod uction
then coercively re-included, and by the same token
who, because his condition doesn't enclose h i m i n a
factory, an occupation or a particular place, is able to
do what the CGT metalworker proved h imself to be
incapable of: to pass from one category to another, not
to t h i n k of h i mself one-sided ly as "worker" or "out of
work", to man ifest a certain fl uid ity, a freedom . . .

Proletarians can fight exploitation, either to m e rely

impose some l i m its upon it, or to bring an end to it by

Human, A ll Too Huma n ?

101
prod ucing com m u n ist social relations. H ow does the
link between the two operate? Even the most resolved
and most autonomous movement will only challenge
society if it man ifests the practical demand for another
l ife, in a word if its acts contain or acq u i re a u n iversal
d i mension. The comm u nist revolution is precisely the
moment of fusion between the struggle against exploi
tation and the struggle against alienation. No historical
d ialectic can del iver the key to this i n advance.

Gilles Da u ve
1{]
103
LOVE OF LABOUR?
LOVE OF LABOUR LOST. . . G i l l e s Dauve & Karl N e s i c ,
' Proletai re et travai l :
u n e h i sto i re d'am o u r ? '
Lettre d e Troploin no. 2, 2002

This vers i o n , translated by

t h e authors, fi rst p u b l i s h e d
as 'To W o r k o r n ot to Work?
I s that the Q u e sti o n ? '
( Troploin Newsletter no. 3 ,
2002). S o m e passages
from t h e o r i g i n a l w h i c h
were removed h ave b e e n
re i n s e rted f o r t h e s a k e of
cont i n u ity with t h e text that
fo l l ows.

104
A historical fai lure: 1 5 4 years after Marx's and Engels' 1 "Ne travaillez jamais" :
Manifesto, that could be a b l u nt but n ot too u nfai r writing on a Paris wal l,
summary of the comm u n ist movement. photog raphed i n the IS
no. 8, 1g63. That same
One interpretation of such a m iscarriage centres on issue defi ned "the cen-
the importance or prevalence g iven to work. From the tre of the revolution ary
1 9 6 0s onwards, a more and more visible resistance p roj ect" as "noth i n g less
to work, sometimes to the point of open rebel lion, has than the s u ppression of
led q u ite a few revol utionaries to revisit the past from work i n the u s u al sense
the point of view of the acceptance or rejection of (as well as the s u pp res-
work. Former social movements are said to have failed sion of the p roletariat)
because the labourers tried to have labour ru le soci and of all j u stifications of
ety, i.e. tried to l iberate themselves by using the very old style work".
med i u m of their enslavement : work. In contrast, true
emancipation wou l d be based on the refusal of work, 2 "Autonomy" is a m i s-
seen as the only effective s u bversion of bourgeois lead i n g term, because
and bureaucratic domination alike. Only work refusal it mixes activities and
wou ld have a u n iversal d imension able to transcend theories that vastly d if-
quantitative claims, and to put forward a qual itative fered, though they we re
demand for an altogether d ifferent l ife. often present with i n the
same groups. A large
The Situationists were among the most articu late pro part of the "autono
ponents of this view : " N ever work ! " 1 Later, i n Italy mous" movement was
particularly, a n u m ber of formal and informal g roups, involved i n g rass roots
often cal led autonomous, attempted to develop and anti-work action. O n the
systematise spontaneous anti-work activities. 2 other hand, Operaismo
was u s i n g the critique
The refusal of work has become the u nderlying theme of work as a u n ify i n g
of many a theory on past and present strugg les. De theme o n which s o m e
feats are explained by the acceptance of work, partial organ isation (sometimes
successes by active shop-floor insubordination, and a g e n u i nely democratic,
revolution to come is equated with a complete rejec sometimes s i m i lar to a
tion of work. Accord ing to this analysis, i n the past, party) could be b u i lt. Op
workers shared the cult of prod uction . Now they can eraismo fou n d the com-
free themselves of the delusion of work, because capi m o n element to all cat
talism is depriving it of interest or human content, while egories of proletarians i n
maki ng h u n d reds of m i l l ions of people jobless. the fact that they were

Love of L a b o u r ? Love of L a b o u r Lost. . .

105
I n Germany, Krisis recently gave an excellent i l l u stra all at work, whether for
tion of the transformation of the anti-work stand into mal or u n official, waged
the philosopher's stone of revolution.3 o r u n -waged, perma
nent or cas ual. So, even
But since the 70s, mainly i n France, the role of work when it did promote
has also been reinterpreted i n a d ifferent l i g ht : u p to s hop-floor rebe l l i o n ,
now the labo u ri n g classes have only tried to assert Operaismo's p u rpose
themselves as the class of labo u r and to socialise was to h ave everyone's
work, not to do away with it, because u p to now capi work acknowledged,
talist development p revented commu n ist prospects through the s u p posedly
from emerg i n g . Whatever the proletarians ( or radical u n ifyi n g s l ogan of the
m inorities ) may have thought, they were fig hting for a "pol itical wage". I n stead
capital ism without capitalists, for a worker led capi of contri buting to a dis
talism. A real critique of work was i m possible i n the solution of work into the
6 0s-70s, and the '68 period is analysed as the last whole of h u man activity,
possible effort of labour to pose itself as the domi it wanted everyon e to
nant pole within the capital/wage labour couple. N ow be treated as a worker
t h i n g s are c o m pletely d ifferent, because a restruc (wo m e n , the jobless, im
tured capital no longer leaves any scope for a workers' m i g rants, students, etc.).
capitalism. Theorie Communiste has been the main The critique of work was
exponent of this perspective.4 used as a tool to claim
the generalisation of
We' re not lumping together people as d ifferent from paid productive activity,
each other as the SI and Theorie Communiste. We' re i.e. of . . . wage-labo u r.
o n ly deal i n g with o n e i m po rtant point they have i n Operaismo was fighti ng
common : t h e belief that asserting t h e importance of for the recog n ition of the
labo u r was a major obstacle to revolution, and that central ity of labour, that
this obstacle has been removed more by capital ist is for somet h i n g which
development than by the proletarians themselves. It is the opposite of the
seems to u s that these views are false i n regard to abolition of work. See for
the facts, and even more so in regard to the method, exam ple Zerowork no. 1 ,
the attitude i n relation to the world to be transformed . 1975. This contradic-
However, their defenders clearly uphold revolution as tion was expressed in
commun isation, destruction of the State and abolition Potere Operaio's slogan:
of classes. So this essay will be less of a refutation " From the fight for the
than an attempt to think twice about work. wage to the abolition of

Gilles Oa u ve & Karl Nesic

106
BEFORE 1 9 1 4 wage-labou r". Lack of
space prevents us from
A p rofus i o n of data s h ows t h at f o r centuries t h e going i nto details. Cf.
workers used t h e i r professional abil ity a n d d i g n ity as the two very i nfo rmative
justifications for what they regarded as their due. They collections of articles
acted as if their right to a fai r wage (and to fai r prices, and documents by Red
i n the "moral economy" described by E.P. Thompson) Notes i n the 7o's : Italy
derived from their toil and competence. 1977-78. Living with an
Earthquake, and Work
But, if they claimed and rebelled in the name of work, ing Class Autonomy and
were they fighting for a world where they would take the Crisis. J u st to show
their masters' place? Answering the question impl ies that the critiq u e of work
d istinguishing between workers' practice and work exceeds the borders of
ers' ideology. so-called rich countries:
A Ballad Against Work,
Old time social movements are depicted as endeav A Publication for Col
o u rs to achieve a utopia where labo u r wou l d be kin g . lectivities, 1 997, M ajdoor
T h i s certainly was o n e o f t h e i r d imensions, b u t n o t t h e Library, Auto p i n J h u g g i ,
o n l y one, nor the one that gave coherence to all t h e N IT, Faridabad 1 21001,
others. Otherwise, how do w e account for t h e frequent I n d ia.
d e m a n d to work less? In 1 5 3 9 , in Lyon s , printing
workers went on a fou r months strike for shorter hours 3 Krisis, Manifesto Against
and longer public holidays. In the 1 8'h century, French Work (1999), now trans
paper-makers used to take " i llegal" holidays. Marx men lated i nto French and
tions how English bourgeois were shocked by workers English.
who, chose to work (and earn) less, by only coming to
the factory fou r days a week instead of six. 4 Theorie Communiste, B P
17, 84300. Les Vign eres.
"To l ive as a worker, or die as a fighter:' The famous Also the two books by
Lyons silk-workers' motto of the 1 830s of course sig Roland Simon p u b l i s hed
n ifies a claim for work, but less for work as a positive by Senonevero.
real ity than as a means of resisting deteriorating pay.
The 1 834 sil k-workers' insurrection was not prompted
by mach ines that woul d have deprived them of their
jobs - th e mach ines were already there. The work
ers actually fought the power of the merchants who
allocated work at their own discretion and paid very

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

107
l ittl e. When the sil k-worker spoke highly of the qual ity
of his si lk, he was not talking l i ke a med ieval master
craftsman - his life was the subject-matter.

In June 1 848, it is true that the closure of the National

Workshops by the government led to the Paris insur
rection. But these workshops were no social model,
only a means to keep the jobless busy. The actual work
done was socially unprofitable, and of no i nterest to
the reci pients. The insurgents rose to survive, not to
defend a g uaranteed nationalised or socialised form
of work that they wou ld have regarded as an embryo
of social ism.

At the time, many strikes and riots took place against

mechan izat i o n . They expressed the resistance of
craftsmen anxious to save the (real and i m ag i n ed)
rich h uman content of their ski l l s , but equally they
tried to curb further exploitation. When Rouen textile
workers managed to prevent more efficient mach inery
being installed, they were not fighting for a trade, they
were putting a (temporary) stop to worsening living
conditions. Meanwh ile, other Normandy textile hands
were asking for a 1 0-hour day, and construction work
ers for the end of overtime, which they regarded as a
cause of accidents and unemployment.

As for the Paris Com m u ne, when it took over a few

firms, i mposed a wage rate or forced owners to re
open the plants, its main purpose was to provide these
wage-earners with an income. Taking charge of pro
d u ction was no priority for the Communards.

Th is short survey of the 1 9'h century poi nts to a juxta

position of struggles. Some could be labelled modern.
In that they aimed at higher wages and sometimes re
jected work (in a nutshel l , less working hours and more
pay) . Others aimed through prod ucer and consumer

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

108
cooperatives at a worki n g class take over of i n d us
trialisation by which the worki ng classes wou ld put
an end to capital and become a sort of total capital.
Association was then a keyword that summed u p the
am bigu ity of the time: it conveyed the ideas both of
mercantile l i n ks and of fraternal u n ity. Many workers
hoped that co-ops wou ld be more com petitive than
private business, would e l i m i nate capital ists from the
market and from their social function, and maybe force
them to join the associated workers. U n ited labour
wou ld have beaten the bourgeois at their own game.

1 8 4 8 tol led the death knell of the utopia of a wage

labour capital, of a worki ng class that wou l d become
the ruling class and then the unique or universal class
through the absorption of capital in associated labour.
From then on, via a growing union movement, the work
ers will only be concerned with their share of the wage
system, they won't try to compete with the monopoly
of capital owned by the bourgeoisie, but to constitute
themselves as a monopoly of labour power. The pro
gramme of a popular capital ism was on the wane. At
the same time, the ruling classes gave up any attempt
at the "d ifferent" capital ism imagined and sometimes
practised by i n n ovative and generous i n d u strialists
l i ke Owen. At both ends of the wage system, capital
and labour knew their place.

Th is explains the paradox of a social movement that

was so keen on separating labour from capital, but
which fi nally created so few prod ucers' cooperatives.
The ones that existed were born out of the will of en
l i g htened bourgeois, or, if they had a worker ori g i n ,
soon t u rned into business a s usual.

The Albi Workers' G lassworks i n the south of France

i l l u strates this tendency. The highly skilled glass work
ers, sti l l organised on a pre- 1 789 g u i l d model, had

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

109
kept their control over apprenticeship. It took 1 5 years 5 Stephen Smith, Red
to be a fully-fledged g lass-blower. Those labour aris- Petrograd: Revolution
tocrats were paid twice as much as m iners. In 1 89 1 , in the Factories 1917-18
a strike of several months against the introduction of (Cam bridge U P, 1 983)
new technology only resulted in the creation of a union,
which the management then tried to smash, thereby
provoking another strike. The bosses locked-out and
refused to reinteg rate the most m i l itant strikers. Out
of this deadlock rose the idea of a co-op. This came
i nto existence i n 1 8 9 2 , after a national subscription
with some bourgeois help, and the labour force con-
tributing by investing 5 0% of their wages (and 5%
more in 1 9 1 2) . To be profitable, a cooperative had
to com bine high skills and income, popular support
and outside financing. Self-management soon lost any
real ity. The plant went through a series of industrial
disputes directly against the CGT, which stood i n the
dual position of the single u n ion and the boss (it was
the biggest shareholder) : a several months' strike i n
1 9 1 2 , 4 months i n 1 9 2 1 , stoppages f o r 7 months i n
1 9 24, and so on. T h e co-op still existed i n 1 9 6 8 .

Since the mid-1 9'h century, cooperatives have lost their

social i mpetus and all ambition for historical change.
When today the Welsh m iners of Towers Colliery buy
out a workplace that the owners wanted to get rid
of, and then manage it collectively, even those who
support and praise them d o not consider their mar
ket and human success as a solution that could be
general ised.

R U S S I A : 1 9 1 7- 2 1

Between February and October 1 9 1 7, "workers' con

tro l " did l ittle to restart prod u ct i o n . 5 Later, t h o u g h
they were sti m u lated b y a political power that owed
to them its existence and strength, the proletarians
hardly manifested any productive enthusiasm. They

Gilles Dauve & Karl Nesic

110
often lacked respect for what was su pposed to be
theirs: Victor Serge recall s how Petrograd workers
would take machines apart and cut the belts to make
slippers or soles that they sold on the market.

Lenin's party did not get to (and stay in) power through
bureaucratic intrigues. It was built on proletarian strug
gles. But, for lack of social change, the Bolsheviks
who'd become the new State remained at its head
l i ke any power does, promising a lot, promoting some
and repressing others. The mass of the workers, who
initially had not been able or willing to run the factories
i n their own interests, were faced with new bosses
who told them they now worked for themselves and for
world socialism. They reacted as they usually do, by
individual and collective resistance, active and passive.
Even before 1 9 2 1 and Kronstadt, some strikes, at the
famous workers' bastion of the huge Putilov plant for
instance, were suppressed in a bloodbath (as docu
mented i n the now available Cheka archives) .

The i nversion we are describing did not take place i n

a month or a year. A contradictory process, it allowed
for the coexistence (often in the same person) of a
revolutionary dynamic and a crystalisation of power
looking to maintain itself at any price. The h istorical
tragedy was that one part of the working class, organ
ised in a party and in State power, forced the other part
to work for a revolution . . . that by this very situation
ceased to exist. That contradiction was perceived at
once by the anarchists, soon by the German-Dutch
Com m u nist Left, and much later - if ever - by the Ital
ian Left. I n any case, it surely closed the door on any
workers' capitalism.

The recurrent opposition to the Bolshevik majority - the

Left Comm u n ists, the Makh novch ina (which included
i n dustrial collectives) , the Workers' Opposition, the

Love of Labour? Love of Labour L o s t. . .

111
Workers' Group - was an expression of that im pos
sibil ity. It's no accident the debate on who should run
the factories reached its climax i n 1 9 20, at the back
ward surge of the revolutionary wave. Then everything
had been said and done, and the split between the
masses and the party was complete : but it was only a
negative split, as the proletarians didn't come up with
an alternative to Bolshevik policy. If M iasni kov's Work
ers' G roup was a small but genuine emanation of the
ran k and file, Kollontai 's Workers' Opposition was the
u n ions' voice - one bureaucracy against another.

But the party had the merit of coherence. As early as

1 9 1 7, Lozovsky stated : "The workers must not fig u re
the factories belong to them: Stil l , at that time, the
decree on workers' control expressed a balance of
power - s h o p-floor m i l itancy maintained some col
lective ran k and file management, d i rectly or through
union chan nels. But the leaders had made no secret of
their objectives. Trotsky's Terrorism and Communism
defined man as a "lazy animal" that must be forced to
work. For the Bolsheviks, workers' control only served
to curb bourgeois power, help wage-earners to disci
pline themselves, and teach management to a handfu l
of future executives.

The oppositions' platforms (even the radical one by the

Miasnikov group) might appear as an attempt to assert
the value of work and socialise it, but after 1 920 with a
world balance of power that was unfavourable to wage
labour such an attempt was even less feasible. Those
proletarian expropriations and re-organisations of pro
d u ction that took place were emergency measu res.
It would have been impossible to turn these partial
spontaneous efforts into something systematic, and
the proletarians did not bother to. Labou r kept away
from the prog rammes that wished to make it ( and not
the Bolshevik party) the real ruler.

Gilles Dauve & Karl Nesic

112
I n 1 9 2 1 , the t o i l i n g masses stood outside such a
debate. The Workers' O p posit i o n ' s proposals, l i ke
those of Len in's and Trotsky's, dealt with the best way
to put people to work in a society the workers had lost
control of. The Russian proletarians weren't keen to
discuss the ways and means of their own exploitation.
The debate that ensued did not oppose socialisation
of labour unbound, to labour under constraint, it was
about a rearrangement of power at the top.

The Russian revol utionary crisis shows that as long

as capital reigns, labour can 't be l iberated and m u st
be i mposed u pon the wage-earners, and that its per
sistence i n one form or another is an u n m istakable
sign of a fai led revolution. I n 1 9 1 7- 2 1 , the alternative
was between abolishing wage labour or perpetuating
exploitation, with no possible third option.

Russia was to experience the charms of material in

centives, el ite workers, hard and forced labour camps,
and "com m u n ist Sundays". But let's not turn h istory
u pside down. The Russian proles did not fail because
of a misgu ided bel ief i n the myth of l i beration throug h
work: i t ' s t h e i r fai l u re that gave a free rei n to an u n
precedented glorification o f work. W h o t r u l y believed
i n a "comm u n ist S u n d ay", except those who could
expect some sym bolic or material reward out of it?
Stakhanovism was to be the ultimate arg ument i n that
debate, and caused q u ite a few reactions, including
the m u rder of some el ite workers by their mates. As
for Alexei Stakhanov, he died more add icted to vod ka
than to coal.

ITALY: 1 92 0

Reading G ramsci and the Ordine Nuovo on the Italian

workers that took over the factories in 1 9 2 0 is l i ke
going through the impressive yet contrad ictory saga

Love of Lab o u r? Love of L ab o u r Lost. . .

113
 of a movement that was both form idable and tame.
Violent means ( i n c l u d i n g the use of guns to g u ard
the plants) m ixed with a defi n ite moderation in the
actual demands. The Fiat proletarian is described thus:
" i ntel l i gent, h u man, proud of h i s professional d i g n ity" ;
"he doesn't bow before the boss " ; " H e is the social ist
worker, the p rotagonist of a new mankind . . . " ; "The
Italian workers . . . have never opposed the innovations
that bring about lower costs, work rationalisation and
the introduction of a more sophisticated automatism".
( G ramsci, Notes on Machia velli)

At the metalworkers' u n i o n conference ( N ovember,

1 9 1 9) , Tasca, o n e of the ed itors of Ordine Nuovo,
called for the shop stewards to study, the bourgeois
system of production and work processes to achieve
the maximum technical capacities necessary to man
age the factory in a communist society. One last quote
from Ordine Nuovo in September 1 9 2 0 : "The workers
wish . . . to prove that they can do without the boss.
Today the workin g class is moving forward with dis
cipline and obeyin g its organisation. Tomorrow, i n a
system that it will have created itself, it will ach ieve
everything:'

Reality proved different. The workers showed no desire

to increase t h e q u antity or q ual ity of work. The ab
sence of significant production d u ring the occupation
movement reveals the weakness of the ideology of a
producer proud of his labour, and the i m possibility of
l iberated and socialised work. Suozzi , general secre
tary of the Metalworkers' union, admitted it: " Everyone
knew that the workers i nterrupted work on the most
futile pretext:' I n a week, between August 2 1 st and 28'h,
1 9 20, the 1 5,000 workers of Fiat-Centre decreased
production by 60%.

Gilles Oa u ve & Karl Nesic

114
 At Fiat-Rome, a banner proclaimed : "The man who will 6 "'Labour' by its very na
not work shall not eat" ( a statement borrowed from ture is u nfree, u n h u m an,
Saint-Paul ) . Other banners at Fiat-Centre repeated : u n social activity, deter
"Work elevates man". Yet the succession of stoppages m i n e d by private prop
at Fiat-Brevetti led the workers' council to force the erty and creating private
personnel back to work, and to create a "workers' property. Hence the abo
prison" to deal with theft and laziness. Because of "the l ition of private property
extravagant n u m ber of people taking days off", Fiat's w i l l become a reality o n ly
central council threatened to fire all those who'd been when it is conceived as
away for more than two days. the abolition of 'labou r'c'
M arx, Notes on Fred
Caught u p between the desire of u n ion and party ac erich List, 1845 (MECW 4),
tivists to reorganise work in a social ist manner, and p. 279.
their own rel u ctance to work, the workers had not
hesitated long.

N O R I G HT TO B E LAZY

Let's rewind the course of history a l ittle. We'd be mis

taken to think no-one cared about a theoretical critique
of work before the 1 9 60s. In the 1 840s, Marx and oth
ers ( Stimer for example) defined comm u n ism as the
abolition of classes, of the State and of work.6

Later, in his Right to be Lazy ( 1 8 8 0 ) , Lafarg ue was

thinking ahead of his time when he attacked the 1 84 8
"Right t o Work" : work degrades, he says, a n d industrial
civil isation is inferior to so-called primitive societies. A
"strange folly " pushed the modern masses into a l ife of
work. But Marx's son-in-law also belonged to his time
because he partook of the myth of technical l iberation :
"the mach ine is the redeemer of mankind". He did not
advocate the suppression of work, but its reduction
to 3 h o u rs daily. Tho u g h pressing a few buttons is
usually less destructive than sweating from morning
t i l l n i g ht, it does not put an e n d to t h e separa tion
between the productive act and the rest of life. ( It's
this separation which defi nes work. It was u n known

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

115
in prim itive com m u n ities, uncommon or incomplete in
the pre-ind ustrial world, and it took centuries to turn it
i nto a habit and norm in Western Europe.) Lafargue's
provocative insight was a critique of work with in work.
I nteresting ly, this pamphlet (with the Manifesto) long
remained among t h e m ost popular c l assics of the
SFIO, the old French socialist party. The Right to be
Lazy helped present work as a boon and an evi l , as a
blessing and a curse, but in any case as an inescap
able real ity, as u navoidable as the economy.

The labour movement wished (in opposing ways, of

course, accord ing to its organisations being reform
ist or revolutionary) the workers to prove their abil ity
to manage the economy and the whole society. But
there's a discrepancy between these sets of ideas
and the behaviour of wage-earners who did their best
to get away from the " i m placable im position of work"
(point 8 of the KAPD program me) . That ph rase isn't
trivial. It's sign ificant it should come from the KAPD, a
party whose programme included the general isation of
grassroots workers' democracy, but came up against
the reality of work and its role in a socialist society. The
KAPD did not deny the alienation inherent to work, yet
wanted it im posed on everyone for a transition period
to develop the bases of comm u nism to come. That
contrad iction cal ls for an explanation.

W O R K E RS' MANAG E M ENT AS A UTO PIA O F S K I LLED LABO U R

The aspiration t o set up the workers as the ruling class

and to build a workers' world was at its highest in the
heyday of the labour movement, when the Second
and Th ird Internationals were more than big parties
and unions: they were a way of l ife, a cou nter-society.
That aspiration was carried by Marxism as well as by
anarchism (particu larly in its revolutionary synd ical
ist form ) . It coincided with the g rowth of large scale

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

116
industry ( as opposed to manufactu re earl ier, and Sci 7 Th o u g h M arx does not
entific Management later) . 7 s peak of "syste ms of
production", the concept
" Let the m i ners ru n the mine, the workers run the fac 1s clearly i n his writi ngs.
tory . . . " - t h i s o n ly m akes sense w h e n t h e people cf. M arx, Capital vol. 1
i nvolved can ident ify with what they d o , and when (M ECW 35), pp. 341 -509.
t h ey collectively p ro d u ce w h at they are. Althou g h
railwaymen d o not manufactu re train engines, they are
entitled to say : We run the rai lway li nes, we are the
railway system. This was not the case of the craftsmen
pushed together in the manufacture : they could dream
of an industrialisation that wou ld turn its back on the
big factory and retu rn to the small workshop, and to
a private i ndependent property freed of money fetters
(for exam ple, thanks to free cred it a la Proudhon, or
to Louis Blanc's People's Bank) .

I n contrast, for the skilled electricity or metal worker,

for t h e m i n er, rai l wayman or d ocker, t h e re was n o
going back. H i s Golden A g e was not to b e fou n d i n
the past, but i n a futu re based on g iant factories . . .
without bosses. H is experience in a relatively autono
mous work team made it logical for him to t h i n k he
could collectively manage the factory, and on the same
model the whole society, which was conceived of as
an i nter-con nection of firms that had to be democrati
cally re - u n ified to d o away with bourgeois anarchy.
The workers perform tasks that the boss merely organ
ises - so the boss could be d ispensed with. Workers'
or "i nd ustrial" democracy was an extension of a com
m u nity ( both myth and reality) that existed in the union
meeti ng, in the strike, in the workers' d istrict, in the
pub or the cafe, i n a specific language, and i n a pow
erfu l network of institutions that shaped worki ng class
life from the aftermath of the Paris Com m u ne to the
1 950s or 60s.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour L o s t. . .

117
This was no longer the case for the industrial or service
sector unskilled worker. One can not envisage man
ag ing a labour process that has been as fragmented
inside the plant as between geographically separate
prod uction u nits. When a car or a toothbrush com
prises components from two or three continents, no
collective worker is able to regard it as his own . Totality
is split. Work loses its u n ity. Workers are no longer
u n ified by the content of tasks, nor by the g lobal ity of
prod uction. One can only wish to (self-) manage what
one masters.

Taylorised workers ( l i ke those in the US i n the 1 93 0s)

did not form councils. The collective organ of struggle
was not at the same time a potential collective man
agement organ. The strike and occupation comm ittee
was only an agg regate i nstrument of solidarity, and
provided the leaders h i p of that specific movement :
it was not a body that would represent or i ncarnate
labour for other tasks (particu larly the running of the
fi rm). The Taylorised workplace leaves l ittle room for
managerial aspirations.

It's i nteresting to observe that after 1 9 4 5 , workers'

councils re-emerged in State capitalist countries that
remained mainly in the large scale mechan ised indus
try stage, and were hardly penetrated by Scientific
Management : East Germany, 1 95 3 ; Poland, 1 955 and
1 97 1 ; H u ngary, 1 95 6 ; Czechoslovakia, 1 9 6 8 .

"The fut u re world m ust b e a workers' world", a s a Chi

nese comm u n ist put it aro u n d 1 9 2 0 . This was the
d reamland of skilled l a b o u r. H owever, after 1 9 1 4-
1 8, even where in E u rope the movement was at its
most rad ical, i n Germany, where a sizeable m i nority
attacked u n ions and parl iamentary democracy, and
where g roups l i ke the KAPD would i mplement a work
ers' programme, there were hardly any attempts to take

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

118
over production in order to manage it. Whatever plans 8 O n France and Spain,
they may have n u rt u red, i n practice neither the Essen see M icheal Seidman's
and Berli n workers nor those in Turin put work at the well-researched Work
centre of society, even of a socialist one. Factories ers Against Work during
were used as strongholds i n which the proletarians the Popular Front ( U C LA,
wou l d entrench themselves, not as levers of social re 1991).
organisation. Even in Italy, the plant was not a bastion
to be defended at all costs. Many Turin workers would
occupy their workplace in the daytime, leave at night
and come back in the morning. (Such behaviour will
re-occu r i n Italy's Hot Autum n , 1 9 69.) This is no sign
of extre m e rad ical ity. Those proletarians abstained
from changing the world as m uch as from promoting
work, and "only" snatched from capital what they could
get. That u nform u l ated refusal of work contrasted
with thousands of pro-work posters and speeches.
It just showed that these proletarians weren't totally
caught i n the framework where they'd been trapped,
and where they'd trapped themselves.

F R A N C E : J U N E 1 93 6 8

Much has been written about the transformation of fac

tories into closed-in workers' fortresses. But the J u n e
'36 sit-downs never aimed t o re-start production. Their
objective was less to protect the machinery (which no
saboteur threatened) than to use it to put pressure
on the boss and to have a good time. The conscious
festive d i m ension was far m o re i m portant than an
alleged will to prove productive abilities su perior to
those of the bourgeois. Very few even contemplated
worker management of the occupied plants. A harsh
and alienating place was turned into liberated space,
if only for a few weeks. It certainly was no revolution,
nor its dawning, but a transgression, a place and time
to enjoy a somewhat i llegal yet fully legitimate holiday,
w h i l e w i n n i n g su bstantial reforms. The striker was
proud to show his family rou n d the premises, but his

Love o f Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

119
long collective meals, his dancing and singing signalled 9 Pivert was the leader of
his joy not to be at work. As i n the U S a l ittle later, a left opposition i n the
the sit-down was a re-appropriation of the present, a socialist party (which
(short) captu re of time for oneself. later formed the PSOP in
1938).
The vast majority of the strikers u n derstood the situ
ation better than Trotsky ("The French revolution has
beg u n " ) or Marceau Pivert (" Everyt h i n g ' s poss i b l e
now") .9 They realised that 1 93 6 did n o t herald social
upheaval, and they were neither ready nor willing to
make it happen. They grabbed what they could, espe
cially in terms of labour time: the 40-hour week and
paid holiday stand as sym bols of that period. They also
preserved the possibility of selling their labour power
to capital as it existed, not to a col lective capitalism
that would have been run by the labo u r movement.
The CGT kept a low profile on a possible new society
based on socialised work. June '36 had a more humble
and m ore real i stic p u rpose - to enable the worker
to sell himself without being treated as an animated
thing. This was also the period when recreational and
educational activities organised for and sometimes by
the masses became popular: culture brought to the
factories, " q u a l ity" theatre for the common people,
youth hoste ls, etc.

Resistance to work went on for a long while after the

sit-downs, i n a more and more hostile environment.
Bosses and Popu lar Front spokesmen kept insisting
on a " pause" i n demands, and on the n ecessity to
rearm France. But the proletarians took advantage of
the slackening of the m i l itary style factory discipline
that had been enforced since the 1 9 2 9 crash. I n the
Spring of 1 936, they'd got into the habit of coming
i n late, leaving early, not com ing at all, slowing down
work and d isobey i n g o rd e rs. Some would walk in
d ru n k. Many refused piece rates. At Renault, stop
pages and go-slows resulted in a productivity that was

Gilles Da uve & Ka rl Nesic

120
lower in 1 93 8 than two years before. I n the aircraft to See note 8 above.
industry, piece rates were virtually abandoned. That
trend did not prevail only in big factories, but also in 11 S i m i lar experiences took
construction work and plumbing. It's after the fai l u re place i n other cou ntries
of the N ovember ' 3 8 general strike (wh ich aimed to and conti n e nts. I n 1945,
defend the 40 hour week) , and after the govern ment i n the north of Vietnam,
had called in the pol ice and army to intim idate and 30,000 m i n ers e lected
beat u p stri kers (Paris lived i n an u ndeclared state councils, ran the m i n e s
of siege for 24 h o u rs) that discipline was restored f o r a whi le, controlled
and working hours g reatly extended, with a resulting the p u b l i c services, the
increase i n production and productivity. The centre rai lways, the post office,
right leader Daladier (formerly one of the leaders of i m posed equal pay for
the Pop u l ar Front) rightly boasted he was " p utting all, and tau ght people to
France back to work". read, u ntil the Vietm i n h
p u t i t s foot down. A s a
S PAI N : 1 93 6 1 0 Vietnamese revolution-
ary recal led later, they
Apart from farm ing estates, many companies were col wished to l ive "without
lectivised and production re-started by the person nel. bosses, without cops".
This was often because the boss had fled, but some Pro moting work was far
times to "punish" one who'd stayed but sabotaged from being their prime
prod uction to harm the Pop u l ar Front. That period motive or concern.
gave birth to a m u ltitude of meaningful experiences,
l i ke waiters refusing tips on the basis that they weren't
servants. Other endeavou rs tried to suppress money
circulation and develop non-mercantile relationships
between production and between people.

Another future was in search of itself, and it carried

with it the su persed ing of work as a separate activity.
The main objective was to organise social l ife without
the ru l i n g classes, or "outside" t h e m . The Spanish
proletarians, in the factories as well as in the fields,
did not aim at developing production, but at living free.
They weren't liberating prod uction from bourgeois fet
ters, they were more plainly doing their best to li berate
themselves from bourgeois dominatio n . "

Love o f Labour? Love o f Labour Lost. . .

121
In practice, the democratic management of the com
pany usually meant its u n ion management by CNT and
U GT (the social ist u n ion) activists or officials. It's they
who described self-governance of prod uction as the
road to socialism, but it does not seem that the rank
and file identified itself with such a prospect.

Loat h i n g work had lo ng been a permanent feat u re

of Span ish working class l ife. It continued under the
Popu lar Front. This resistance was i n contradiction
with the p rog ramm e (particularly u p h e l d by the an
archo-syndicalists) cal l i n g the proles to get fully i n
volved i n the ru nning o f the workplace. T h e workers
showed l ittle i nterest in factory meetings which d is
cussed the organ ising of production. Some collectiv
ised companies had to change the meeting day from
S u nday (when nobody cared to turn u p) to Thursday.
Workers also rejected piece rates, neglected workin g
schedules, or deserted the place. W h e n piecework
was legally abolished, prod u ctivity fel l . In February
1 937, the CNT metalworkers' u n ion regretted that too
many workers took advantage of i n d u strial injuries.
I n November, some railwaymen refused to come on
Saturday afternoon.

U n ion officials, trying to bridge the gap between gov

ernment and shop-floor, retaliated by reintroducing
piece rates and kee p i n g a careful eye o n worki n g
hours, i n order t o fight absenteeism a n d theft. Some
went as far as forbidding singing at work. Unauthorized
leaving of one's work station could lead to a 3-day
d ismissal, with a 3 to 5 day wage cut. To get rid of
the immorality adverse to maximum efficiency, the CNT
suggested closing bars, concert and dance halls at 1 0
p.m. There was talk of putting prostitutes back on the
straight and narrow path thanks to the therapy of work.
Laziness was stigmatised as individual istic, bourgeois
and (needless to say) fascist. In January 1 938, the CNT

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

122
daily, So/idaridad Obrera, publ ished an article - 'We
I mpose Strict Discipline in the Workplace' - that was
to be reprod uced several times in the CNT and U GT
press, pressing the workers not to behave as they used
to, i.e. not to sabotage production, and not to work as
l ittle as possible. " Now everything (was) completely
different" because industry was laying "the foundations
of a commun ist society".

With the exception of the anarch ist ran k and file (and
dissidents l i ke the Friends of Du rruti) and the PO U M ,
t h e parties a n d u n ions w h o stood for a reign o f labour
were the same who did everyt h i n g to p revent that
ideology from becom ing a reality, and to make work
remain nothing but work. In 1 937, the debate was over,
and the contrad iction soon brought to a close - by
force.

FRAN C E : 1 945

As early as 1 944, a number of French companies went

under u n ion control, sometimes under u n ion manage
ment, as in the Berliet heavy vehicle plant. Throughout
the country, several h u n d red factories were su per
vised by workers' comm ittees. With assistance from
the administrative staff, they took care of production,
pay, canteens and some social benefits, and asked for
a say over hiring and firing. As a CGT official declared
in 1 944: "The workers are human beings, they want to
know who they're working for . . . The worker m ust feel
at home in the factory . . . and through the u n ion get
i nvolved in the management of the economy".

But the haze of self-management assertions could not

cloud a capitalist functioning that soon reappeared in
its down-to-earth banality. Let's just take the example
of the m iner. Much has been made of his pride and
his eagerness to mine coal. We've seen newsreels of

Love of Labour? Love of L a b o u r Lost. . .

123
Thorez (the CP leader) exhorting thousands of miners 12 Constant Malva, Ma nuit
in their work clothes to do what he called their class au jour le jour (Labou r,
and national d uty - to produce . . . and produce more 2001). At the same time,
and more. Belg i u m had to i m port
thousands of Ital ians
There's no point i n denying the mi ner's pride, but we because the local work
have to assess its scope and l imits. Every social group ers were rel u ctant to go
develops an image of itself and feels proud of what down the m i n e .
it does and of what it t h i n ks it is. The colliers' self
esteem was socially conditioned. The official M i ner's
Status (which dates back to that period ) granted qu ite
a few advantages, l i ke free medical care and heating,
but also put the mining areas under a paternalistic
su pervision. The CGT controlled labour and daily l ife.
Being regarded as a loafer was close to being treated
as a saboteu r, or even as a pro-N azi. It was up to the
foreman to decide how much coal was to be mined.
Piecework ruled . To put it m i l d ly, what prod u ctive
eagerness there was lacked spontaneity.

Real miners' pride had more to do with the commun ity

of labour (festivals, rituals, solidarity . . . ) than with the
content of work, and even less with its alleged p u r
pose (to produce for the renaissance of France) . In the
30s and 40s, the diary of a rad ical miner like Constant
Malva never mentions the beauty or the g reatness of
his craft. To h i m , work was work and nothing else. 1 2

Productivist practices and speeches also filled a gap .

Everyone, including t h e common m a n , claimed t o b e a
patriot and accused the bourgeoisie as a whole of col
laboration with the Germans. Coal was also the prime
energy source, and a precious one i n a devastated
economy. Let's add a direct political cause to this near
fusion between patriotism and productivism : it helped
people forget the support g iven to the H itler-Stal i n
pact b y the French C P , i t s denu nciation o f t h e war i n

Gilles Oa uve & Karl Nesic

124
1 939-4 1 as " i m perial ist", and its late i nvolvement in
the anti-German Resistance.

Putting the proletarians back to work meant reintegrat

ing them into the national com m u n ity, and p u n ishing
those bosses who'd been overtly collaboration ist. This
is why Renault was national ised in 1 9 45.

Branding the bourgeoisie as anti-labour and un-French

was one and the same thing, and it went along with
self-managerial appearances. B u t t h i s was all t h e
more possible because in France the CP did n o t real ly
aspire to power. Wherever it did (in Eastern Europe
for instance) , it did not bother with such slogans. In
fact, the average French (or Italian, or American . . . )
Stalin ist was convinced that social ist cou ntries d i d
t h e i r best for the welfare o f the masses, but certainly
not that the Russian or Polish workers ran the facto
ries - everything for the people's good, nothing by the
people themselves . . .

The whole post-war story looks l i ke a shadow theatre.

No more than the bosses, d i d u n ions and workers'
parties ever try to promote labou r as a class, or de
velop a wage-earners' democracy (even a superficial
one) inside the firms. After the troubled 1 9 2 0s, af
ter the persistent rejection of work of the 1 930s, the
prime objective was now to force the proletarians
i nto reconstructing the economy. The workers were
too preoccupied with bread and butter demands to
put t h e i r m i n d s and energy i nto a " re i g n of labour"
nobody really cared for, nor sought to establish. The
1 947-48 strikes offer an excellent i l l u stration of this:
they p roved the abil ity of the French CP (and of its
Italian neighbour) to recuperate and streaml i n e the
class struggle potentials it had been repressing since
the end of the war.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

125
ITALY: 1 945

As early as 1 94 2 , Italy was shaken by a strike wave

that culminated in the April 2 5 , 1 943 insurrection that
drove the Germans out of Turin after five days of street
fighting. A national union of all parties was set up, dom
inated by the Stalinists (at Fiat-Mirafiori, 7,000 workers
out of 1 7,000 belonged to the CP) . Economic recovery
was g iven top priority. I n September 1 94 5 , the Met
alworkers' u n ion stated that "the toiling masses are
willing to accept more sacrifices [lower wages, trans
fers, firing of those who have other incomes, partial
redundancy) so that Italy can be born again . . . We
must increase production and develop labour: there
l ies the u n i q u e road to salvation."

I n December, t h e National Liberati o n C o m m ittees

tu rned i nto Company Management Com m ittees, or
rather they took over those bodies created under Mus
solini's corporatism. The main role of every CMC was to
help put people back to work and en hance hierarchy.
Its method was a m ixtu re of Taylorism and Stakhano
vism : youth brigades, volu nteers' g ro u ps , m aterial
i ncentives, bonuses for cleani n g and maintain i n g ma
chines . . . The idea was to arouse "the enthusiasm of
the working classes for the productive effort".

Real ity stood in stark contrast to propaganda. The

struggle for better work conditions remained strong,
and enthusiasm for production q u ite low. A CMC of
ficial adm itted that the party had to resort to much
persuasion because people took a nap i n the after
noon. According to a Mirafiori shop steward , the u n ion
activists were labelled "fascists" when they tried to
convince the workers that it was their d uty as com
rades to work: "they i nterpreted freedom as the right
to do nothing". The workers wou l d come i n at 8 . 3 0
i n the m o r n i n g and h ave breakfast. A n ex-partisan

Gilles Dauve & Karl Nesic

126
then employed at M i rafiori sadly told how the work
ers misused their own freedom, how they loitered in
the toilets. They weren't suitable material for building
social ism, h e regretted, they went on strike to play
games - "we were more serious". The personnel kept
resisting anything that came close to a control over
time, to the reintroduction of material i ncentives. On
factory walls, writings l i ke " Down with timing" were a
rejection of the pro-Taylor q u otes by Len i n which the
Stal i n i sts were most fond of.

If the CMCs eventually proved relatively efficient i n

restoring discipline a n d hierarchy, they fai led t o raise
productivity: i n 1 94 6 , it only increased by 1 0%, which
wasn't much, owing to its low level at the end of the
war. Above all, they fai led to create a "new" proletar
ian - the one that wou l d manage his own exploitation.
The CMCs composed only of workers never got off
the ground. The proles had more trust in their d i rect
delegates, the shop-floor commissars, who were more
inclined to go on strike than to produce.

This m ultiform u n rest went on until 1 94 8 , which was

the last outburst against a worsening repression and
deteriorating living conditions. A partial wage freeze
was imposed in April 1 94 7, and maintained until 1 954.
For about 1 5 years, the Fiat workers underwent u n re
strained exploitation and were nearly deprived of u n ion
protection. In other words, i n 1 944-47, the Italian pro
letarians were not defeated because they had tried
to establish a domination of labou r over capital while
remaining within capital. They got crushed by the bour
geoisie in a more conventional way - with the help of
union and party bureaucracies.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

127
F R A N C E AN D E L S EW H E R E : 1 968

This time, the festive element that characterised the 13 Rich ard G regoire &
June 3 6 sit-downs was fairly absent in France, but quite Freddy Perl man, Worker
widespread in Italy. In many French factories domi Student Action Commit
nated by the CGT, the place was practically locked up, tees (Black & Red, 1969).
for fear restless workers and "outsiders" would u pset Also Francois M arti n,
the orderly running of the strike by the union. ' 6 8 was 'Th e C lass Strug g l e and
in many respects harsher than ' 3 6 , as a small but de Its Most C haracteris
termined proletarian minority challenged the hegemony tics Aspects i n Recent
of the Stal i nists over the industrial workers. Years . . . ' i n Eclipse and
Re-Emergence . . . (An
The festive d i mension moved from the factory to the tag o n i s m Press, 19g8).
street, which ind icated that demands were breaking
the workplace barrier and that the heart of the matter
was encompassing the whole of daily l ife. In France,
the most rad ical wage-earners would often leave the
factory. There was no Chinese Wal l between "work
ers" and "students" (a lot of whom were not students
at all) . Many workers, often you ng ones, would share
their time between their work mates inside the factory,
and d iscussion (and sometimes action) g ro u ps out
side, where they met with m inority workers from other
factories . 1 3 Moreover, d u ring the Italian H ot Aut u m n
of 6 9 , it was q uite common f or workers to occupy t he
premises i n the daytime, leave a t n i g ht a nd be back
the fol lowing morning, even after they'd been violently
fighting the police and company g uards to occ u py
t h e plant. They felt that t h e essential was not hap
pening just within the confines of the workplace. As
passive reaction (absenteeism) turned active (collec
tive sabotage, permanent meeting and wild partying
on the assembly line, etc.), it burst outside the factory
walls.

The aftermath of ' 6 8 brought forth an experience that

set itself u p (and t h at many people accepted) as
exemplary, but which remained on the fringe of the

Gilles Dau ve & Karl Nesic

128
movement : in 1 973, LIP, a watchmaker com pany that 14 P h i l M a i l e r, Portugal: The
went bankrupt, was taken over by the personnel and Impossible Revolution
became a sym bol of self-managed capitalism. But its (Sol idarity, 1977). A l ively
principles ("We prod uce, we sel l , we pay ourselves") account and thoro u g h
were l ittle more than an ingenious yet desperate at- analysis.
tempt to avoid unemployment and to continue to get
an income. LIP's wage-earners self-managed d istribu-
tion more than production (they sold a lot of watches
and man ufactu red few) , until they had to close down.
I n the mid- 1 970s, rad icals were perfectly justified to
analyse the LIP adventure as an experiment in self-ex-
ploitation, but q u ite wrong to interpret it as a feasible
form of cou nter-revolution. Clearly, this was neither
a viable option for the capital ists, nor a popular one
among workers.

Similar attem pts with a partial restarting of manufac

turing and some sel ling of stock were to fol low, par
ticularly in the engineering industry, However, these
were more a way to react to a prog rammed closure,
than a b l ueprint for t h e fut u re . Whatever t heories
may have been elaborated by leftists, these self-man
agement embryos were grounded on noth i n g solid,
nothing able to mobil ise the workers. Such practices
appeared at the crossroads of an endemic critique
of work that led to nothing else, and the beg i n n i n g of
a capitalist restructuring about to d ispose of excess
labour.

P O RTUGAL : 1 974 1 4

The " Revolution of the Carnations" set in motion fac

tory sit-ins and self-management p ractices. These
occurred generally in small or med ium size firms, mostly
in poor ind ustries, employing simple technology and
unskilled labour such as textiles, furniture-making and
agro-industry.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost . . .

129
These occu pations were usually in response to ( real or
fraudu lent) bankruptcy, or to a closu re of the plant by
the owner. Sometimes, they got rid of a boss who had
been too visibly supporting the Salazar regime. One
of the objectives was to counter economic sabotage
by the opponents of the Revolution of the Carnations.
It was also a means to impose specific demands such
as the rei ntegration of fired m i l itant workers, to apply
government decisions regarding wages and work con
d itions, or to prevent planned red u ndancies.

This social s u rge (elan) n ever q u estioned the circu

lation of m o n ey, n o r t h e existence a n d function of
the State. Self-managers wou ld turn to the State for
capital, and more often than not Stal in ist - influenced
agencies would log ically reserve i nvestment funds
for their political friends or al l ies. They also asked the
State to i m pose exchanges between self-managed
firms and those that weren't. Wages were sti l l being
paid, often with a narrowed wage d ifferential, or none.
H ierarchy was fre q uently d ismantled, and the ran k
and file had a democratic say i n most decisions. Sti l l ,
the m ovement d i d n o t g o beyon d workers' control
over prod uction , wage scales, and h i ri n g and fi ring.
It was a kind of LI P extended to an entire relatively
poor capital ist country. The Portuguese experience
was a replay of all the dead-ends revived by the 6 0s-
70s era : pop u l i s m , syndical ism , Len i n i s m , Stal i n i s m ,
self-management . . .

C R ITIQU E O F W O R K I C R IT I QU E O F CAPITA L

Short as it is, our h istorical scan casts the shadow of

doubt on the thesis that the ( unden iable ) self-identi
fication of the proletarian as producer has been the
decisive cause of o u r defeats. When d i d the workers
really try to shoulder economic growth? When did they
com pete with old time bourgeois owners or modern

Gilles Oa u ve & Karl Nesic

130
d i rectors for the management of the companies? I n
that matter a t least, there's no coincidence between
political platforms and proletarian practices. Workers'
movements don't boil down to an affirmation of labour.
The attempts to resume production were often enough
a makesh ift solution, an effort to fil l a gap caused by
the absence o r incom petence of the boss. I n t h at
case, occupying the premises and restarting the work
process did not mean an affirmation of the workers as
workers - as in other circumstances when a bankrupt
com pany is bought out of by its person n e l , it was
a means of s u rvival . When , i n Argentina at the end
of 200 1 , the workers took over the Bruckman textile
factory which was th reatened with closure, and kept
it going, they did so with no prospect of transform ing
capital ism into socialism, even within the l i m its of a
single firm. This then became the case with dozens of
Argentinian companies. Such behaviour occurs when
proletarians think they have no chance of changing
the world.

An essential point here is how far we are determined

by history. If the "being" of the proletariat theorised
by Marx is not j u st a metaphysics, its content is inde
pendent of the forms taken by capitalist domination.
The tension betwee n t h e s u b m ission to work and
the critique of work has been active since the dawn
of capital i s m . Of course the realisation of c o m m u
nism depends on t h e historical moment, b u t i t s deep
content remains invariant i n 1 79 6 and i n 2002. Oth
erwise, we would not understand how, as early as the
1 840's, some people were able to define comm unism
as the abolition of wage-labou r, classes, the State
and work. If everything is determined by a h istorical
necessity that was log ically i mmature i n 1 845, how
could we explain the genesis of commu n ist theory at
that time?

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

131
I n the 20'h century it was th e failure of the rich post- 15 On how both Stal1 n i s m
1 9 1 7 revolutionary process that gave fu ll scope to the and Nazism g l orified
social-democratic and Stal inist cult of the productive work and social egal itari
forces. 1 s To afterwards interpret that process as the a n i s m , see Communism,
cause of the cult, is tantamount to analysing some I C G , no. 13, 2002, 'On the
thing from its contrary. Marx and Stal in both talked Praise of Work'.
of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but Stal i n does
not explain Marx. To say that the KPD prog ramme in
1 930 (or the SPD programme in 1 945) would reveal
the true nature of the KAPD programme in 1 9 20, is to
turn h istory u pside down.

Once the counter-revolution was there to stay, work

(in the U S as i n the USSR) could only exist under con
strai nt: the workers weren't put to work as a pseudo
ru ling class, but as a really ruled one, and accord ing
to proven capitalist methods. The ideology of workers'
management was flatly denied by u n ions and labour
parties of all kinds. Now they had a share i n power
(in corporate boardrooms as in ministries) they could
only promote the economy by resorting to the good
old devices that had been beneficial to the bourgeois
for centuries.

I n the most acute social crises, whatever they may

have thought or said, the proletarians did not try to
assert themselves through asserting the value of work.
Since the origins of the class struggle, they have kept
fighting for less worki ng hours and more pay. Let's
also bear i n m i n d the stuff daily workshop or office
l ife is made of: absenteeism, petty thefts, go-slows,
non-genuine i l l ness or faked inju ries, even sabotage
or assau lt on supervisors, all of which only decrease
in tim es of severe un em ployment. If freebie stri kes
(for instance, when transportation workers permit free
rides, or postal e m ployees allow free postage and
phone calls) are so rare, it's a sign that strikes offer a
pleasant opportun ity to dodge work.

Gilles Oa uve & Karl Nesic

132
We' re not suggesting that proletarian reality is a per- 1& La Banqu ise 'Sous le
manent underg round rebellion. The contrad ictory role travai l : l'activite' (La Ban-
of the wage-earner in the prod uctive process entails quise no. 4, 1986)
a contrad ictory attitude to work. The proletarian puts
a lot into work, among other reasons because no-one
can stand a job for hours and years without a minimum
of interest, and because work both stultifies our abil-
ity and know-how and al lows us to at least partially
express them - the anthropological dimension of work
has been sufficiently exposed elsewhere that we don't
have to go into it here . 1 6

I n periods o f social turmoil, either the workers show

a deep ind ifference to work (sometimes running away
from it) ; or work is re-imposed on them. D u ring such
periods, proletarians in itiate a critique of their condi
tion, because refusing work is a fi rst move toward
negating oneself as a proletarian .

It's true, however, that so far they have not gone past that
critique, or its early steps. There lies the problem.

It's not the critique of work that's been lacking, l i ke an

essential d imension u p to now neglected. How many
men and women are happy to wear themselves out
for the sake of churning out alarm clocks or pencils,
or of processing fi les for the N HS? The worker is well
aware that work stands as his enemy and, as far as
he can , he does his best to get away from it. What
is more d ifficult for h i m to imagi ne (and even more to
put into deeds) is that he could do away with both
work and capital . Isn't it the critique of capital that's
been lackin g , and sti l l is? People are prone to lay the
blame on the reign of money, and they also denounce
the alienation of work: what is much less common is
the u n derstanding of the u n ity that binds the two, the
crit i q u e of sel l i n g one's activity i n exchange for an
income, i.e. the critique of wage-labour, of capital .

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

133
The fail u re of the proletarian m ovement u p to now 17 On formal and real domi-
is to be related to its own activity, not to its specific n ation see: M arx, Results
formatting by capital at specific h istorical moments. of the Immediate Process
Formatting provides the conditions: it does not g ive of Production (MEcw 34),
nor ever will g ive the means to use them. And we' l l p p. 355, 471 .
only have a true answer once the transformation of
the world is ach ieved.

I n any case, a revolutionary period weakens (rather

than strengthens) the ideology of emancipating labour
through labour. Then the ebb of the radical wave brings
about self-managerial practices that leave bourgeois
power i ntact, and which this power sooner o r later
will sweep away.

The ideal of a wage-labour capitalism, and the attempt

to real ise it, are not remains from the past that a real
domination of capital (or some form of it more real
than previously) would at last be able to underm i ne. 1 7
The adhesion t o work is neither (as Situationists tend
to think) a delusion which the proles should or now
can grow out of, nor (as Theorie Communiste tends
to think) a historical phase formerly i nevitable but now
gone. It is neither an ideology nor a stage in h i story
(though both aspects play their part) . Wage-labo u r
is n o t a phenomenon i mposed from outside, b u t t h e
social relationship that structures o u r society: practi
cal and collective adherence to work is built into the
framework of that relationship.

WHAT'S N EW A B O U T CAPITA L I S M

Some have interpreted contemporary capital ism as

a production of value without work, of a value so d if
fused that its productive agents and moments would
be scattered throughout the whole social fabric.

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

134
 N e it h e r t h e o ry ( M arx' s Grundrisse, i n part i c u lar1 8 ) 18 Also the beg i n n i n g o f
nor hard facts val idate this thesis. It's true that today Capital vol. 1, chap.16
valorisation depends m u ch less on the d i rect inter ( MECW 35), p. 509ff.
vention of every single producer than on a collective
effort. It is a lot more difficult to isolate each produc
tive wage-earner's contribution to value than i n 1 8 67.
Nevertheless, it is not an undifferentiated social whole
that valorises capital. The assembler, the lorry-d river,
the computer expert, the firm researcher . . . do not add
value to the company to the same extent. The "social
factory" theory is relevant as far as it takes into account
u n paid productive labour ( e.g., that of housewives ) . It
gets irrelevant when it regards value as the result of
a u n iform total ity. Managers know their Marx better
than Toni N e g ri - they keep tracing and measuring
productive places and moments to try and rationalise
them more and more. They even locate and develop
" p rofit centres" with i n the company. Work is not d if
fuse, it is separated from the rest. If manual labour is
evidently not the u n i q u e or main source of value , if
immaterial labo u r is on the increase, work remai ns
vital to our societies. It is strange to speak of an "end
of work" when temp agencies are among the largest
employers i n the US.

I n a cou ntry l i ke France, though sociologists and stat

isticians tel l us that there are more office than factory
workers ( now red uced to 1/4 of the working popu la
tion ) , the latter - 80% of whom are male - are often
married to the former. As a consequence, 40% of kids
are living in a household where one of their parents
is a "blue col lar" worker, often employed in the serv
ice sector. I n stead of walking through factory gates
every morning, he is in charge of maintenance, d rives
a heavy veh icle, moves goods in a warehouse, etc.
Half of French workers aren't " i n d u strial" any more.
Sti l l , thus defined, workers are the most n u m e rous
g roups. Whether they're old style factory operatives,

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

135
service sector manual wage-earners, Taylorised clerks,
cash iers, etc. , underling wage-earners com pose over
half of the French worki ng popu lation. (It would be
interesting to have the exact fig u res for a would-be
city of the future l i ke Los Angeles.) These facts do
not change anything in the val id ity or van ity of a com
m u n ist perspective, their only merit is precisely to
show that nothing fu ndamental has changed since
the 1 9'h century. Accord ing to Marx's own fig ures i n
Capital vol u m e I , there were more servants t h a n i n
dustrial workers in mid-Victorian England. S h o u l d t h e
theory o f the proletariat b e wrong, it was already so in
1 8 67, and it isn't wrong in 2002 because there aren't
enough workers left.

Capital ism is the fi rst u n iversal exploitation system .

S u rplus-labour is no longer extorted from someone
who organises and therefore controls his prod uction
to a large extent, as was the case of the peasant under
Asiatic despotism, the serf pressurized by his lord and
by the taxman , or the craftsman dominated by the mer
chant. These weren't exploited within their work: part
of the fruit of their labour was taken away from them
from outside and after it had been prod uced. Buying
and selling labour power i ntrod uces exploitation, not
on the edge of h uman activity, but in its heart.

But, because of that very process - because the wage

earner sells his labour power - he makes capital as
much as he is made by it, he l ives inside capital to a
far higher degree than the peasant depended on his
master and the craftsman on the merchant. Because
he l ives (and resists, and fig hts) inside capital , he
produces and shares its essentials, i n c l u d i n g con
s u m ption and democracy. Because s e l l i n g h i s l ife
force is necessary to h i m , he can only despise and
reject h i s work, in real ity and in his m i n d , by reject
ing what makes him exist as a wage-earner, i.e. by

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

136
rejecting capital . I n other words, if it's got to be more
than everyday resistance, refusal of work is only pos
sible through an acute social crisis.

I n pre-industrial times, the Peasants' wars in the 1 5 th

and 1 6'h centuries, the Tai-Ping in 1 9'h century China,
and many others, managed to build u p self-sufficient
l i berated areas that sometimes survived for over ten
years. I n the West Ind ies, Black slaves cou ld take to
the h i l l s and l ive on their own outside "civil isation".
The ind ustrial world leaves no such space for an al
ternative. If the 1 9 1 9 Petrog rad worker fled to the
cou ntryside, capital ism caught up with him within a
few years. The Span ish collectivities of 1 936-38 never
" l i berated" large areas. More recently, Bol ivian m i ners
self-managed their vil lages, with armed m i l itia, radio
stations, co-ops, etc. But it stopped when the m ines
were closed down. Their social dynam ism depended
on the function that international capital gave them.
O n ly peasant com m u n ities, i n so much as they stood
outside the world economy, could go on living on their
own for a long while. Modern workers have been un
able to set u p any reorganised social l ife that wou l d
rival normal or purely capitalist capitalism for a durable
length of time. N o room for a Th ird Way any more.

T H E CONTRAD I CTI O N MAY N OT B E W H E R E W E TH I N K

Every reader of Marx knows that h e never completed

what he regarded as his master work, and that he
rewrote the beg i n n i n g several times. Why does Marx
l i nger on the commodity, why does he start with the
way capital ism presents itself, i n stead of g iving its
defin ition right away? If he i nsists fi rst on representa
tion and not on capital's nature, it may well be that he
thinks its nature is related to its representation, wh ich
is no psycholog ical process, but has to do with social
representation at its deepest.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

137
The author of Oas Kapital keeps talking about a mys 19 At the time, various peo
tery, a secret to penetrate. Which one? It is hard to ple h ad the i ntuition of
believe Marx is only concerned with provi ng to the the origin of s u rplus
worker that he is exploited . . . It's more log ical Marx val ue, and some came
wou l d be circling the various facets of capital to fo close to form u l ating it,
cus on a contradiction more crucial to the com m u nist for exam ple Flora Tristan
movement than the mechanics of surplus-val u e . 1 9 He i n 1843.
is targeting the amazing dynamics of a social system
t h at is based m o re than any other on those it e n
slaves a n d provides t h e m with weapons to d ismantle
it, but - because of that - manages to i ntegrate them
into its triumphant and destructive march , and (at least
until now) uses social crises to regenerate itself. The
contrad iction of the proletarian is to be the bearer of
a commod ity that contains the possibil ity of all others,
and can transform everything, while having to sell this
commodity, and therefore to act and picture himself
as a valorizer. The potential gravedigger of the system
is the same one who feeds it.

Only with commod ity exchange do relationships be

tween h u mans appear as relations between things.
The 1 9'h century worker tended to see i n capital only
t h e capitalist. The 2 1 "' century wage-earne r often
perceives capital as just. . . capital, and not h i s own
activity that (re) produces it. Fetishism sti l l rules, albeit
depersonalised, but it still veils the social relations pro
ducing capital . The denu nciation of exploitation usually
misses what economy is - the domination of everything
and everyone by production for value. Actually, what's
at stake from a comm u n ist point of view is not what
capital hides and what most proletarians have the
intuition of: the extraction of surplus-value. What's at
stake is what capitalism i mposes daily in real l ife and
impresses on our m i n d s : the economy as someth ing
obvious and inevitable, the necessity of exchang i n g
commodities, o f buying a n d sell i n g labour, if w e wish
to avoid want, misery and dictatorship.

Gilles Oau ve & Karl Nesic

138
True, contemporary work does not socialise well be
cause it tends to become a pure means of earn ing a
living. Sti l l , that socialisation does not van ish. (The
emergence of rad ical reformism has to do with its per
sistence.) As a Moul inex laid-off worker said in 200 1 :
"The hardest thing now is to be alone:' The ideology
of labour power is the necessary ideology of the pro
letarian with in capital. That commod ity is the prime
reality of bill ions of men and women. The proletarian
is never red uced to what capital turns him into, yet he
feels a need to be recognised and socially enhanced,
and that need is based on his only asset : work. He
has to have this positive image of himself, if only to
be able to sell himself on good terms. I n an interview,
the job seeker will not devalue h imself. If he d i d , he
wou ld submit to the common prejud ice that debases
the competence of a simple order-taker.

O n t h e other hand, non-adherence to work is n ot

enough to g u arantee the possibil ity of revolution, let
alone its success. A proletarian who regards h imself
as nothing will never question anything. The u nskilled
worker of 1 970 was convinced he was doing a stu
pid job, not that he was stupid h imself: his critique
addressed precisely the emptiness of an activity un
worthy of what he claimed to be. A purely negative
vision of the world and of oneself is synonymous with
resignation or acceptance of anything. The proletar
ian only starts acting as a revol utionary when he goes
beyond the negative of his condition and begins to
create something positive out of it, i.e. something that
su bverts the existing order. It's not for lack of a cri
tique of work that the proletarians have not made the
revolution, but because they stayed within a negative
critique of work.

The affirmation of labour has not been the principal fac

tor of counter-revolution, o n ly (and this is important !)

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

139
one of its main expressions. But un ions conveyed this
ideology through what remai ns their essential function :
the bargaining of labour power. Organisations like the
Knights of Labour at the end of the 1 gh century played
a minor part, and withered with the general isation of
large scale industry.

If the promotion of labour was as central as we're

sometimes told, Ford ism wou l d have taken it up. But
Scientific Management did not defeat the skilled work
ers by bestowi ng more professional d i g n ity on the
shop-floor, but by deskilling and breaking down trades.
Generous schemes for job enrichment and re-empow
erment are only implemented to disrupt the autonomy
of the work team - then these reforms grad ually fade
away because the ran k and file does not really care.

The ideas that rule are those of the ruling class. The
ideology of work, whatever form it takes, is the capital
ist ideology of work. There can 't be any other. When
the social consensus is shattered , that representation
goes down with the others. It would be paradoxical that
a severe crisis, instead of shaking it, should develop
it even further.

REVO LUTI O N IS NO EXACT SC I E N C E

The fi rst part of this essay was mainly h i storical . What

follows could be called methodological. Our critique
of determ inism focuses on a general tendency among
revolutionaries to treat capitalist civilisation as if it
were a one-way street to revolution.

From the omnipresence of capital, one can conclude

with the possibil ity - or even necessity - of revolution.
One could also deduct from it the impossi bility of a
revolution. That type of reasoning may be repeated
i n d efin itely, and sti l l be used in a h u n d red years if

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

140
capitalism is sti l l here. A theoretical model explains 20 Any good biography of
noth ing but itself. Yesterday and tomorrow, as many M arx descri bes h i s politi-
reasons point to the cont i n u ity of capitalism as to cal activity, for i n stance
its abolition. (As we wrote earl ier, only when accom- Franz M e h ring's and
pl ished will the destruction of the old world throw a more recently Fran cis
fu l l light on past fai l u res.) Wheen's. I n h i s i ntrod uc
tion to Capital vol u m e I,
Some comrades postulate the coming of an ultimate M arx paid tribute to h i s
stage when the i n n e r working of the system won't t i m e when h e com pared
j u st u pset it, but destroy it. They believe that what h i mself to a scientist
ever has happened before that final stage has been who d i scovers "natu ral"
necessary, because u p to now the workers have only laws. Fort u n ate ly, and
been able to reform capital ism. Now there comes a in contrad iction to En
threshold when reform becomes utterly pointless, a gels's funeral s peech on
threshold that leaves no other option except revolution. h i s friend's g rave, M arx
Past radical proletarian activity has only contributed to was n ot the Darw i n of
bring about the h istorical moment that makes revolu the proletariat. Nor d i d
tion poss i b l e - or necessary, rather. U nt i l then, the h e th i n k h i story was
class struggle has provided the requ i red sequence foretold. To h i m , o n ly a
of phases preparing the final phase. teleolog ical m i n d would
h ave the cou rse of hu
By the way, this would j ustify what has been called man h i story move to a
Marx's and Engels' re volutionary reformism u rgi ng - p re-ordained end. There
the bourgeoisie to develop capital ism and create t he was n o single l i n e of
conditions of comm u n is m . A mong other t hi ngs , Marx evolution, as shown by
supported the German national bourgeoisie, praised the "late" M arx. See note
Lincoln, sided with q u ite a few reform ist parties and 22 below.
un ions while relentlessly targeting anarchists . . 20 Shall
.

we also have to agree with Len i n (because he acted

l i ke a new re volutionary bourgeois) against Gorter
and Bordiga? And was Roosevelt a better (tho u g h
unconscious) contributor t o human emancipation than
Rosa Luxemburg ?

Anyway, from now o n , a l l ambigu ity is said to have

been cleared u p . We s h o u l d be entering the final
stage in the history of wage-labour: work is said to be
now less and less available, more and more deskilled,

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

141
devoid of any other meaning but to provide an income,
thereby preventing the wage-earner from adhering to
capital, and to the plan of a capitalism without capital
ists. Reaching this threshold has made it impossible
once and for all for labo u r to assert itself as labour
within capital.

The underlying logic to this approach is to search for

an un-med iated class relationsh i p that wou l d l eave
no other solution for the proletariat but a d i rect (class
against class) confrontation with capital.

Determi n ism revisits h istory to locate the obstacle to

revolution, and d iscovers it in the form of the social
space that the workers supposedly wished to occupy
inside capitalism. Then that option is said to be now
closed - such a social space does not exist any more
because i n fully real domination capitalism is every
where. The reasons for past fai l u res g ive the reasons
for tomorrow's success, and provide the inevitabi lity of
comm unist revolution, as the obstacle is cleared away
by the completion of what is described as capital 's
q u asi natural l ife cycle.

I n other words, the revolutionary crisis is no longer

perceived as a breaking u p and supersed ing of the
social conditions that create it. It is only conceived of
as the conclusion of a pre-ordained evolution.

The methodological flaw is to believe i n a privileged

vantage point that enables the observer to g rasp the
totality (and the whole mean ing) of past, present and
near futu re h uman h istory.

In short, the causes of our previous shortcomings are

not sought in the practical deeds of the proletarians.
I n stead of a labou r-power overcom i n g its condition
and rising to its h i storic task of freeing itself from its

Gilles Dauve & Karl Nesic

142
chains, and thus freei n g h u man ity, the dynam ic ele
ment is no longer proletarian action, but the movement
of capital. The mutual involvement of capital and labour
is red uced to a one-way relation of cause and effect.
History gets frozen .

We w o u l d prefer to say that there is no other l i m it t o

the l ife-span o f capital t h a n the conscious activity of
the proletarians. Otherwise, no crisis, however deep
it might be, will be enough to produce such a result.
And any deep crisis (a crisis of the system, not just
in it) could be the last if the proletarians took advan
tage of it. But there'll never be a day of reckoning, a
final u n - m e d iated s h owdown, as if at long last the
proletarians were d i rectly facing capital and therefore
attacking it.

"The self-emancipation of the proletariat is the break

down of capital ism", as Pan nekoek wrote in the last
sentence of his essay on The Theory of the Break
down of Capitalism ( 1 934) . It is significant this should
come as the conclusion of a d iscussion on capital 's
cycles and reproduction models (Marx's, Luxemburg's
and Henrik G rossmann 's) . The comm u n ist movement
cannot be understood through models similar to those
of the reproduction of capital - u nless we regard com
m u n is m as the last log ical ( = as i n evitable as any
previous crisis) step i n the course of capital . If this
were the case, the comm u n ist revol ution would be as
"natural" as the growing up and ageing of living beings,
the succession of seasons and the gravitation of plan
ets, and just l i ke them scientifically pred ictable.

1 789 might have happened forty years later or sooner,

without a Robespierre and a Bonaparte, but a bour
geois revolution was bound to happen in France in
the 1 B'h or 1 gh century.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost . . .

143
Who could argue that com m u n ism is bound to hap- 21 Rosa Luxe m b u rg The
pen? The comm u n ist revo l ut i on is not the ultimate Mass Strike, the Political
stage of capital ism. Party and the Trade Un
ions (1906)
"With the psychology of a trade unionist who will not
stay off his work on May Day unless he is assured in 22 The reader w i l l u n d e r-
advance of a definite amount of support in the event stand that we're not
of his being victim ised, neither revolution nor mass p reach i n g i ndeterm i n i s m .
strike can be made. But i n the storm of the revolu- B y and large, the 1 91"
tionary period even the proletarian is transformed century was the epic of
from a provident pater familas demanding support, a conquering b o u rgeoi-
into a 'revolutionary romanticist', for whom even the sie with a faith i n the
h i ghest good, l ife itself, to say nothing of material i ron logic of progress
well-being, possesses but little i n com parison with that left n o alternative
the ideals of the struggle:21 but f i n a l abundance a n d
peace. 1 9 1 4 o p e n e d a n
Final ly, whoever believes that 1 84 8 , 1 9 1 7, 1 9 6 8 . . . era of d o u bt and anti-de
were compelled to end u p as they ended up, should term i n ism, as is evident
b e req uested to p r o p hesy the fut u re - for o n c e . i n the popular appeal of
N o-one h a d foreseen M ay ' 6 8 . Those who explain the " u n certai nty princi
that its fail u re was inevitable only knew this afterwards. p l e". There i s n o need for
Determ i n ism would gain cred ibil ity if it gave us usefu l us to swap the scientific
forecasts. 22 fas h i o n of one age for
another.
N EV E R ASK T H E O RY FOR WHAT IT CAN 'T G IVE

Revo l u t i o n is not a pro b l e m , and n o theory is t h e

solution o f that problem. (Two centu ries o f modern
revolutionary movement d e m o n strate that com m u
n i s t theory does n o t antici pate t h e d o i n g s o f t h e
proletarians.)

History does not prove any direct causal l i n k between

a degree of capitalist development, and specific pro
l etarian behav i o u r. It is i m p rovable that at a g iven
h i storical m o m e n t the essential contrad iction of a
whole system wou l d bear upon the reproduction of
its fundamental classes and therefore of the system

Gilles Oauve & Karl Nesic

144
itself. The error does not lie in the answer but in the
q uestion. Looki ng for what would force the proletar
ian, in his confrontation with capital, to attack his own
existence as a wage-earner, is tantamount to trying
to solve i n advance and t h ro u g h theory a problem
which can o n ly be solved - if it ever is - i n practice.
We cannot excl ude the possibil ity of a new project of
social reorganisation s i m i lar to that which had work
ers' identity as its core. The rai l-worker of 2002 can't
l ive l i ke his predecessor of 1 95 0 . This is not enough
for us to conclude that he would only be left with the
alternative of resig nation or revolution.

When the proletariat seems absent from the scene,

it is q u ite logical to wonder about its real ity and its
abil ity to change the worl d . Each cou nter-revolution
ary period has the dual singularity of d ragging along
while never looking like the previous ones. That causes
either a renu nciation of critical activity, or the rejection
of a revolutionary "subject", or its replacement by other
solutions, or a theoretical elaboration s u p posed to
account for past defeats in order to guarantee future
success. This is asking for unobtainable certainties,
which only serve to reassure. On the basis of historical
experience, it seems more to the point to state that
the proletariat remains the o n ly s u bject of a revol u
t i o n (otherwise there won 't b e any) , that comm u n ist
revolution is a possibil ity but not a certai nty, and that
noth ing ensures its coming and success but proletar
ian activity.

The fundamental contrad iction of o u r society (prole

tariat-capital) is only potentially deadly to capitalism
if the worker confronts his work, and therefore takes
on not just the capitalist, but what capital makes of
him, i.e. if he takes on what he does and is. It's no use
hoping for a time when capital, l i ke a worn out mecha
nism, would fi nd it im possible to fu nction, because of

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

1 45
decl i n i n g profits, market satu ration, exclusion of too
many proletarians from work, or the inabil ity of the
class structure to reprod uce itself.

A c u rrent su btext runs t h r oug h m u c h of revolution

ary t h i n ki n g : the more capital ism we have, the nearer
we get to com m u nism. To which people l i ke Jacques
Camatte retort : no, the more capitalism we ha ve, the
more capitalist we become. At the risk of shocki ng
some readers, we'd say that the evolution of capital
does not take us closer to or farther from communism.
From a comm u n ist point of view, noth ing is positive
in itself in the march of capital, as is shown by the
fate of classism.

T H E R I S E A N D FAL L O F C LASS I S M

In practice, "classism" was the forward d rive of the

worki n g class as a c l ass within capitalist society,
where its organisat i o n s came to occupy as m u ch
social space as possi ble. Labo u r set u p collective
bod ies that rivalled with those of the bourgeoisie, and
conquered positions inside the State. That took - and
sti l l takes - many forms ( social-democracy, CPs, the
AFL-CIO . . . ) , and also existed i n South America, in Asia
and parts of Africa.

I n theory, classism is the vind ication of class d iffer

ence ( and opposition ) as an end i n itself, as if class
war was the same as the emancipation of the workers
and of mankind. So it's based exactly on what has
to be criticised, as classes are basic constituents of
capitalist society. Whether it's peacefu l or violent, the
mere opposition of one class to the other leaves both
facing each other. Naturally any ru l i n g class den ies
the existence of class antagonisms. Sti l l , i n the early
1 9'h cent u ry, the fi rst to emphasise class confronta
tion were n ' t socialists, but b o u rgeois h i storians of

Gilles Dauve & Karl Nesic

146
the French revolution. What is revolutionary is not to
uphold class struggle, but to affi rm that such a strug
gle can end through a com m u nist revolution.

N owadays, the decay of classism and of the labo u r

movement is visible a n d documented enough for us not
to dwell upon it. Some revolutionaries have rejoiced
over the demise of worker's identity and of the glorifi
cation of the working class as the class of labour, and
they've interpreted that demise as the elim ination of a
major obstacle to revolution - wh ich the labour institu
tions and that ideology no doubt were. But what has
the critique of the world really gained by their withering
away? We'd be tempted to say - not much, because of
the rise of even softer practices and ideas. J u st being
freed of their workers' role and hopes d idn't turn wage
earners into radical proletarians. So far, the crisis of
the working class and of classism has not favou red
subversion. The past twenty years have brought about
neo- l i beral, neo-social-democratic, neo-reactionary,
neo-everything ideologies, the emergence of which
has coincided with the symbolic an n i h ilation of the
worki ng class. This wiping out is a product of capital
class recomposition (unemployment, de-industrialisa
tion, proletarianisation of office work, casualisation,
etc. ) . It also resu lts from the rejection by the wage
earners themselves of the most rigid forms of worker
identity. But this rejection remains mai n ly negative.
The proletarians have shattered the control of parties
and u n ions over labour. (In 1 960, anyone handing out
an anti-u n ion leaflet at a French factory gate risked
being beaten u p by the Stal inists.) But they haven't
gone m u ch further. The decline of workerism was
accom panied by the loss of a point of view allowing
a perspective on the whole of this society, gauging
and judging it from the outside i n order to conceive
and propose another. Proletarian autonomy has not
taken advantage of bu reaucratic decl ine.

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

147
We are experiencing a d islocation of class struggle. 23 Marx's progressivi sm i s
I n the 6 0s-70s, the u n s ki l l ed workers stood at the both real a n d contrad ic
centre of the reprod uction of the whole system, and to ry. H e certai n ly worked
other categories recogn ised themselves i n the " mass out a l i n ear sequence:
worker". No social sym bol ical fig u re plays such a piv prim itive com m u n ity
otal role - yet. slavery - feudal i s m -
capital i s m - com m u n ism,
WO R K AS A FAL L E N I DO L with the side option of
the "As i atic mode of pro
1 9'h century a n d early 20'h century com m u n ists often d u ction''. But his deep,
shared the progressivism of their time, and believed longstan d i n g i nterest i n
that a new i n d u stry and a new labour wou l d eman the Russian mir a n d i n
cipate humankind.23 A h u n d red years later, we'd be so-cal led prim itive socie
naive to espouse the exact opposite views j ust be ties (cf. his notebooks
cause they happen to be fash ionable. I n fifty years, the p u b l ished i n 1972) prove
praise of toil and sacrifice has become as outdated that he thought it possi
as the bel ief i n the l i berat ing Horn of Plenty of the ble for some (vast) areas
economy. 24 Th is evolution is as much the result of the to avoi d the capital ist
rad ical critique of the 1 9 60s-70s, as of a deepening of phase. If M arx h ad been
capital - making labour prod uctive today is achieved the h e rald of i n d us
more through the work process itself than by outright trialisation h e i s often
discipline. The computer screen is now the immed iate depicted as, he would
su pervisor of m i l l ions of industrial and service sector have completed the six
wage-earners. I n its most advanced sectors, capital vo l u m e s he'd planned
has already gone beyond authoritarian hierarchy and for Das Kapital, i n stead
work as a c u rse. "Autonomy" and " bottom - u p " are of acc u m u lating n otes
the i n words. The macho, m u scle-boun d , national ( = on Russia, the East, etc.
wh ite) worker image is g iving way to a m o re open, See 'Karl M arx & the I ro
m u lti-ethnic, male and female fig u re. quois', Arsenal/Surrealist
Subversion, no. 4 (Black
I n 1 9 00, you had to produce before cons u m i n g , and Swan Press 1989) and
labou r parties told the worker he had to develop the o u r Re- Visiting the East
productive forces first, i n order to enjoy the fruits of and Popping in a t Marx's
socialism later. Instead of a single Redeemer dying on Grave, avai lable on the
a cross, m i l l ions of sufferers ("the salt of the earth") Troploin site.
wou l d c reate the conditions of a better worl d . The
consumer and credit society has done away with that :
painfu l self-exertion is no longer said t o come before

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

148
pleasu re. True, this goes together with the m u ltipl ica 24 S i m i l arly, i n 1 900, it was
tion of sweatshops, of forced, unpaid or ill-paid labour, "obvious" to ask for more
and of a renaissance of slavery. Such forms comple technology. A h u n d red
ment but d o not contrad ict the general trend toward years later, it's the op
a de-consecration of work. (In 1 9 6 5 , u nskilled mass posite that goes without
workers weren't the majority of wage-earners either.) say i n g : we "obvious ly"
need less . . .
Work is an idol, albeit a fal len one. Its im position is
n o longer of a moral o r religious kind ("You shall gain 25 The cover of the 41h issue
your bread by the sweat of your brow") , but profane of La Revolution Surrea/-
and down-to-earth. In some Asian countries, labour iste (1925) procl aimed:
is now being disciplined better by the pressu re of "AND WAR oN woRK'. See
consumerism than by an appeal to Confucianism. I n also B reto n's article
Tai-Peh as in Berl i n , public concern is about creating "The Last Strike" i n no. 2
and getting jobs, not suffering to enter some earthly (1925), and Aragon's Ga-
ar heaven ly parad ise. So work now cal ls for a critique hier Noir (1926).
d ifferent from the time when an aura of self-i nfl icted
pain surrounded it. Mobility and self-empowerment are
the present slogans of capital. We cannot be content
with anti-work statements such as the ones that the
su rreal ists were rightly making eig hty years ago.25

In 2002, work rules, but the work ethic is no longer

sacrificial : it calls upon us to real ise o u r potentials as
h u man beings. Nowadays, we don't work for a tran
scendent goal (our salvation, a sacred d uty, progress,
a better future, etc.) . The consecration of work was
two-sided : any o bject of wors h i p is a taboo to be
broken. But o u r age is one of u n iversal de-consecra
tion. Transcendence is out. The prag matic pursuit of
happiness is today's motive : we are Americans.

This, however, does not l ead to a g rowi n g s u bter

ranean rejection of work. A de-Ch ristian ized society
su bstitutes the desire to feel good for the fear of s i n.
Rel i g i o n g ives way to a body and he a l t h c u l t : t h e
"me generation" is more concerned w i t h keeping fit
than saving souls. So work is no longer worsh ipped

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

149
because it d oes not need to b e : it's e n o u g h for it 26 Results of the Immediate
to s i mply be there. It's m o re an overwh e l m i n g real- Process of Production
ity than an ideology. Its p ressu re is more d i rect and (MEcw 34), pp. 419-424 . . . .
open, close to what Marx described as the American See also the General In-
attitude: "total ind ifference to the specific content of troduction to the Critique
work and easily moving from one job to another".26 In a of Political Economy,
modern and "purer" capital ism, de-consecrated work 1 857 (M Ecw 28}, p. 41.
stil l structu res our l ives and minds. And the cu rrent
moral backlash i n the U S is proof of how reactionary
attitudes complement permissiveness.

N ot much revol utionary clarification has g rown out

of these changes, because not everyt h i n g has the
same value i n capital ist evolution. The critical poten
tial completely d iffers if it's the workers that attack
worker identity and the worship of work, or if capital is
sweeping them aside. For the last thirty years, as work
identification was being d isrupted, the possibil ity of
an utterly d ifferent world has also van ished from indi
vidual and collective thinking. I n the past, Stalin ist and
bu reaucratic shackles did not prevent such a utopia,
and m i norities debated the content of com m u n i s m .
If a working class entangled in i t s identification with
work did not make a revo l ution, not h i n g yet p roves
that the proletarians now l i berated from it wi ll act in
a revolutionary way.

"WE A R E N OT OF T H I S W O R L D " ( BA B E U F, 1 79 5 )

We fi nd it hard to share the optimism of those who

see the present period as entirely d issimilar from the
6 0s-70s or from any previous period, with a capital
ism that wou l d systematically d owngrade the living
conditions of wage-earners, thereby creat i n g a sit
uation that wou l d soon enough be intolerable and
lead to a revol utionary crisis. The l i m its of proletarian
upsurges from Algeria to Argentina, and the rise of
radical reformism in Europe and the US, rather suggest

Gilles Da u ve & Karl Nesic

150
that it's reform - not revolution - that is becoming topi- 27 On the d ifficu lty for capi-
cal again . 27 tal to fu l ly ach ieve a new
(post-Fordist) system of
The eagerness to celebrate the twilight of worker iden production, and the con
tity has led some comrades to forget that this identity sequences of this s itua
also expressed an u nderstanding of the irreconcilable tion for the proletarians,
antagonism between labour and capital . The proletar see o u r 2nd Newsletter
ians had at least grasped that they l ived in a world that in English, Whither the
was not theirs and could never be. We' re not calling World?, 2002.
for a retu rn to a Golden Age. We' re saying that the
d isappearance of this identification owes as much to
counter-revol ution as to rad ical critique. Revolution
will o n ly be possible when the proletarians act as if
they were strangers to this world , its outsiders, and
will relate to a u niversal dimension, that of a classless
society, of a h uman comm u nity.

This i m p lies the social s u bjectivity ind ispensable to

any real critique. We are well aware of the interroga
tions raised by the word subjectivity, and we surely
do not wish to invent a new magical recipe. For the
moment, let us j u st say that we're not bestowing any
privilege on subjectivity against objective conditions
which wou ld then be secondary or negligible.

We've often emphasised that there's no point in trying

to arouse a consciousness prior to action : but any real
breakthrough implies some minimal belief in the ability
of the people i nvolved to change the world . This is a
big difference with the 60s-70s. Thirty years ago, many
proletarians were not just dissatisfied with this society:
they t h o u g ht of themselves as agents of h i storical
change, and acted accord ingly, or at least tried to.

The subject/object couple is one of those philosophical

expressions that a h u man com m u n ity would su per
sede. The declared defi n it ive opposition between
individual and society, soul and body, spirit and matter,

Love of Labour? Love of Labour Lost. . .

151
 theory and praxis, art and economy, ideals and reality, 28 Rigorous M arxists of-
morals and pol itics . . . all relate to the d issolution of ten d i s m i s s notions l i ke
com m u n ities into classes through the combined ac "subjectivity", "mankind",
tion of property, money and State power. Though not "freedom", "aspi rati on" . . .
synonymous with perfect harmony, communism would because of their asso
try and live beyond such tragic splits in h uman l ife.28 ciati on with idealism and
"Subject" and "object" don't exist separate from each psychology. Strangely
other. A crisis is not something exterior to us, that hap e n o u g h , the same rigor
pens and forces us to react. Historical situations (and does not apply to set of
opport u n ities) are also made of beliefs and i n itiatives, concepts borrowed from
of our actions - or inaction. econom ics, p h i losophy
or sociology. (Pri m itivi sts
Vaneigem's "radical subjectivity"29 had its qualities (and would prefer anthropol
its pu rpose at the time) and one major weakness: it ogy.) All those vocabu l ar
appealed to the free will, to the self-awareness of an ies (and the visions of
individual rising against his social role and condition ing. the world they convey)
Th is is clearly not what we suggest. Capitalism is not belong to speciali sed
based on necessity, and communism (or a commun ist fields of knowledge, all
revolution) on liberty. The abolition of their condition by of them i n adequate for
the proletarians cannot be separated from concrete h u man emanci pation,
struggles agai nst capital. And capital exists through so and therefore to be su
cial groups and institutions. Objective realities, notably perseded. Until then, we
the succession of "systems of production" rooted i n h ave to compose a " u n i
a n d dependent on t h e class struggle, are t h e inevitable tary'' criti q u e f r o m t h e m
framework of the com m u nist movement. What we do a n d ag ainst t h e m .
and will do with it remains to be seen.
29 The Revolution of Every
day Life (1967).

Gilles Oa uve & Karl Nesic

152
153
M UCH A DO A BOUT NOTHING

T h e o r i e C o m m u n iste

Critical c o m m e nts o n
' Love of L a b o u r ?
Love of Labo u r L o s t . . . '

Tran s l ated by Endnotes.

154
 The s u bject which Dauve and Nesic seek to reflect 1 G i l les Dauve & Karl Nesic,
upon i n this text is noth i n g less than the " h i storical ' Love of Labo u r? Love of
fai l u re " of the com m u n ist m ovement over the 1 5 4 Labour Lost . . . ' p. 105 (al l
years following the p u b l i cation of Marx and Engels' p a g e refe rences a r e to
Manifesto . 1 They approach this s u bject by way of a Dauve and Nesic's texts i n
critique of the concept of programmatism developed this vol u m e u n less oth er-
primarily by the journal Theorie Communiste. However, wise noted).
prog ram matism could only serve as an explanation of
the "failure of the communist movement" if we imagine, 2 p. 1 3 1
as Dauve and Nesic do, that com m u n ism is a norm, a
substance, something invariable in " its deep content".2
For without this assumption programmatism is only the
explanation of its own fail u re. We will thus beg i n by
explicating the theory of prog rammatism which Dauve
and Nesic have so misunderstood. But it should be
noted that what is actually at stake here is the defi ni-
tion of the present period and, even more, the fact that
a "present period" may even exist. That is ultimately
to say, someth ing cal led h istory.

1 T H E T H E O RY OF PROGRAM MAT I S M

The e m a n c i pation o f l a b o u r a n d i t s fa i l u re

Generally speaking we could say that programmatism

is defined as a theory and practice of class struggle
i n which the proletariat finds, i n its d rive toward lib
eration, the fundamental elements of a futu re social
organ isation which become the programme to be
realised. This revolution is thus the affi rmation of the
proletariat, whether as a dictatorship of the proletariat,
workers' cou ncils, the liberation of work, a period of
transition, the withering of the state, generalised self
management, or a "society of associated prod ucers".
Program mat ism is not s i mply a theory - it is above
all the practice of the proletariat, in which the ris
ing strength of the class (in u n ions and parl iaments,
organ isationally, i n terms of the relations of social
forces or of a certain level of consciousness regard
ing "the lessons of h istory") is positively conceived

Much Ado About Nothing

155
of as a stepping -ston e toward revolution and com
m u n ism. Programmatism is intrinsically l i n ked to the
contrad iction between the proletariat and capital as
it is constituted by the formal subsumption of labour
u nder capital .

At this point capital , in its relation to labour, poses

itself as an external force. For the proletariat, to l i ber
ate itself from capitalist domination is to turn labou r
i nto the basis of social relations between all i ndividu
als, to l i berate productive labou r, take up the means of
prod uction, and abolish the anarchy of capital ism and
p rivate property. The proletariat's l i beration is to be
founded in a mode of production based upon abstract
labour, i.e. u pon val ue.

The revolutionary process of t h e affi rmation of t h e

class is two-fol d . It is on the one h a n d conceived of
as the rising strength of the proletariat in the capital
ist mode of p rod uction and, o n the other hand , its
affi rmation as a particu lar class and thus the pres
ervation of its autonomy. I n the necessity of its own
med iations (parties, u n ions, cooperatives, societies,
parl iaments) , the revolution as autonomous affi rmation
of the class (as a particular existence for itself in rela
tion to capital) loses its way, not so much in relation to
revolution per se, but in relation to this very affirmation.
The proletariat's rising strength is confused with the
development of capital , and comes to contrad ict that
which was nevertheless its own specific pu rpose : its
autonomous affi rmation.

In the revolutionary period after World War I , of which

the Com m u n ist Lefts in their practice and theory are
the su bstantial expression, the proletariat finds itself
a m b ushed by a n ovel situation : in its autonom ou s
affi rmation it confronts what it is i n capital , what i t
has become, its own strength a s a class in so far a s
i t is a class of the capitalist mode of production. The
revolution as affirmation of the class confronts its own

Theorie Comm uniste

156
failure, because the cou nter-revolution is intrinsically
l i n ked to this affirmation in its very motivations (and
not because there was any "error", or because it was
impossible in terms of some ahistorical defi nition of
the revolution). From this point on, the workers' parties
become the content of the counter-revolution closest
to the revolution.

With the transition of capital to a period of real sub

sumption of labour (at the end of the 1 9'h, and beg in
n i n g of the 2Q'h centu ry) , the rising strength of the
class, i n which labour presents itself as the essence
of capital, is confused with the development of capi
tal itself. All the organisations which formalise this
rising strength, are able from the First World War
onwards, to present themselves as the managers of
capital - they become as such the most acute form
of the cou nter-revolution.

In the years after 1 9 1 7 revo l ution is sti l l an affi rma

tion of the class, and the proletariat seeks to l i berate
against capital its social strength which exists in capi
tal - a social strength on which it bases its organisation
and founds its revolutionary practice. The very situa
tion which gave it the capacity to engage in the broad
affirmation u nderlying the " revolutionary elan" of the
post-war period became its l i m it. The specificity of
this period i n relation to c l assical program mati s m ,
represented b y pre- 1 9 1 4 social democracy, resides
i n the fact that the auto n o m o u s affi rmat i on of t h e
class against capital entered i nto contradiction with
its rising strength within capital. At the same time, this
affi rmation fou n d its raison d 'etre and its fou ndation
in this integration. Wha t the class is in the capital
ist mode of production is the negation of its o wn
autonomy, whilst at the same time being the reason
and power behind its drive for autonomous affirmation.
The counter-revolutions are adm i n istered by the work
ers' organisations. The impetuous history between the

Much Ado About Nothing

157
wars, from the Russian revolution to the Spanish civil
war, is that of the l i q u idation of this q uestion.

The concept of programmatism historicises the terms

of class struggle, revolution and commu nism. This ena
bles us to understand class struggle and revolution in
their real historical characteristics and not in relation
to a norm ; to overcome the opposition which is made
between revolution, com m u nism, and its conditions
(those famous conditions which are never ripe) ; to
abandon the d ichotomy between a proletariat always
revolutionary in its substance (revolutionary, in fact, as
the su bseq uent period understands the term) and a
revolution which it never produces ; to construct the
d iverse elements of an epoch as a total ity prod ucing
its own internal con nections at the same time as its
d iversities and confl icts (between Marx and Baku n i n ,
Luxembourg a n d Bernstei n , etc.) ; a n d finally, t o avoid
ending u p with a " revol utionary being" of the prole
tariat, whose every "man ifestation" results in a restruc
turing of capital .

One can always search out evidence to the contrary

in isolated actions and events which appear at fi rst
sight to oppose themselves to the general movement,
and seek to detach such moments from the movement
and consider them i n isolation. I n this way Dauve and
Nesic only show how the incom parably larger part of
the movement contrad icts their affi rmations. By failing
to integrate these moments i nto a totality they l i m it
themselves to opposing isolated activities to each
other without grasping their u n ity.

With the real s u b s u m pt ion of labour u n d e r capital,

the defining characteristic of which is the extraction
of relative surplus val u e , t h at which d isappears is
everyt h i n g which allowed the proletarian condition
to be tu rned against capital - this is the decomposi
tion of program matism. From the 20s to the end of
the 70s, this decomposition is not an exhaustion of

Theorie Comm uniste

158
the previous period, but a new struct u re and a new
cycle of struggle. The basis of the decomposition of
programmatism as an historical period is the existence
of a workers' identity stabilised in the aftermath of the
second world war: a workers' identity confirmed in the
reproduction of capital - labour legitim ised as the rival
of capital within the capitalist mode of production. This
workers' identity is founded on all the characteristics
of the i mmed iate process of production (i.e. assem
bly-line work, cooperation, the collective worker, the
continu ity of the p rocess of p roduction, su b-contract
i ng, the segmentation of labour power) and all those
of reproduction (work, unemployment, trai n i n g and
welfare) . As such it is an identity founded on all the ele
ments which make of the class a determination of the
reprod uction of capital itself (i.e. public services, the
national delimitation of accum ulation, creeping i nfla
tion and "the sharing of productivity gains") ; all these
elements which positioned the proletariat, socially
and political ly, as a national i nterlocutor formed a
workers' identity which chal lenged the hegemonic
control and management of the whole of society. This
workers' identity which constituted the workers ' move
ment and structu red class struggle, even integrating
" really existing socialism" withi n the global d ivision of
accumu lation, rested on the con tradiction between,
on the one hand, the creation and de velopment of
labour power put to work by capital in an increas
ingly collective and social manner, and on the other,
the (increasingly) limited forms of appropriation by
capital of this labour power in the immediate process
of production and reproduction.

This is the confl ictual situation which developed as

workers' identity - an identity which found its d istinc
tion and its i mmed iate modalities of recog n ition (its
confirmation) in the " large factory", i n the d ichotomy
between employment and unemployment, work and
trai n i n g , i n the submission of the labour process to
the collectivity of workers, in the l i n k between wages,

Much Ado About Nothing

159
growth and prod uctivity on a national level , in the insti 3 T N : Transcroissance -

tutional representations that all this implied, as much Trotsky used this term to
i n the factory as at the level of the state, and, last but describe the "grow i n g
not least, in the social and cultural legitimacy and pride over" f r o m the bourgeois
i n being a worker. There was a self-presupposition to the proletarian revo lu
of capital , i n accordance with the concept of capi tion. TC em ploy the term
tal, but the contrad iction between the proletariat and more generally, u s i n g it
capital cou ldn't situate itself at this level, in so far as to s i g n ify the bel ief that
within this self-presupposition there was a prod uction class struggle is not a
and confirmation of a workers' identity throug h which part of capital ism but a
the class stru g g l e structu red itself as the workers' stag e in the progressive
movement. l i be ration of the class; in
particular the idea that
The decomposition of prog ram matism contains the struggles over the wage
increasingly obvious i m possibil ity of conceiving the m ay becom e revol u
revolution as a "growi ng-over"3 of that which the pro tion ary t h r o u g h b e i n g
letariat is in capitalist society, of its rising power as generalised.
a workers' movement. The process of revolution is
practically and theoretically posed i n terms of class
a utonomy, as so many ruptures with its integration,
and of the defence of its reprod uction. Self-organisa
tion and autonomy become the revolution, to such an
extent that the form suffices for the content.

Self-organisation, stro n g u n i o n s and the workers'

movement, all appeared in the same world of the revo
l ution as affirmation of the class. The affi rmation of the
truly revol utionary being of the class which man ifests
itself in autonomy cou ld not have the slig htest basis
in reality if it weren't for the good de-alienated side of
this world which was experienced as a strong work
ers' movement "framing" the class. Self-organ isation
entails the self-organ isat i on of stru g g l e , thus the
self-organ isation of producers. I n a word - l i berated
labour; in another word - value. This cycle of struggle
culmi nated between the end of the 60s and the fi rst
half of the 70s. Practically and theoretical ly, autonomy
was u n l eashed in every possible manner, from self
organised unions to insu rrectionary autonomy. This
world is now obsolete.

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160
 There is no restruct u r i n g of the capital ist mode of
prod uction without a workers d efeat. This d efeat
was that of workers' identity, of com m u n ist parties,
of u n ionism ; of self-management, self-organisation
and autonomy. The restructuring is essentially cou nter
revolution. Through the defeat of a particular cycle of
struggle - the one which opened in the aftermath of
World War I - it is the whole programmatic cycle which
reached its conclusion.

ii T h e overco m i n g o f progra m matism i s n ot a critiq u e o f work

We have j u st briefly outli ned the "thesis of prog ram- 4 p. 106

matism:' For Dauve and Nesic this thesis is "false in
regard to the facts, and even more so i n regard to s p. 105
the method, the attitude in relation to the world to be
transformed:' Nevertheless, Dauve and Nesic have 6 p. 106
understood it neither i n regard to the facts nor the
"method:' And as for the "attitude" . . .

The starting point for their refutation of the "thesis of

programmatism" is a misu nderstan d i n g :

" From t h e 1 9 6 0 s o n wa rd s , a m o r e a n d m o re
v i s i b l e res i s t a n c e to work, s o m e t i m e s to t h e
point o f open rebe l l i o n , has l e d q u ite a few rev
olutionaries to revisit t h e past from t h e point of
view of t h e acceptance or rejection of work." 5
"A real critique of work was impossible in the 60s
. . . Now things are completely d ifferent:'6

This observation is h istorically correct, but the m is

understanding resides in the fact that to understand
the breakdown of programmatism as a crisis of work
and its overcom ing formulated as a "critique of work"
is to remain within prog rammatism.

G iven that the proletariat presented itself as a revolu

tionary class in the critique of all that which "articulates"
it as a class of the capitalist mode of production, i n

Much Ado About Nothing

161
the c o u n c i l i st and self-organisational ist vision the
worm was al ready in the fru it. It popped its head out
at the beginning of the 70s, with the ideology of self
negation of the proletariat and the critique of work. It
was only by opposing itself to that which could define
it as a class of the capitalist mode of production that
the proletariat could be revolutionary. The " refusal of
work", the riots, lootings and strikes without demands,
naturally became the supreme activity on the basis
of which self-negation could take place. All that was
needed was to self-organise, set up The Cou n c i l s
whilst no longer remaining " labourers" a n d "workers " :
i.e. to square the circle.

Theoretical humanism allowed that which appeared as

negation and refusal to be seen as overcoming. Dauve
and Nesic are examples of theoreticians blocked at
this stage of theoretical production, not only because
they understand neither the restructuring nor the new
cycle of struggle, but most i mportantly because they
are waiting for such things to resurface - the resurrec
tion of a schema which was al ready in its own day an
ideology of the fail u re of a cycle of struggle coming to
an end. Just as the relation between the rising strength
of the class and its autonomous affirmation expresses,
i n its own terms, the fai l u re of programmatism, this
same relat i o n , i n t h e form of t h e relat i on between
self-organisation and self-negat i o n , expresses the
impossibil ity of the revolution, i n its own terms, i n the
cycle of the decom position of programmatism. Com
munism is not principally the abolition of work, it is only
such within a theoretical system founded on the analy
sis of labour, that is to say on the relation between man
and nature as the starting point of com m u n ist theory.
What matters in reality are the social relations which
determine h uman activity as labou r - the point is thus
the abolition of these relations and not the abolition
of work. The "critique of work" is not able to positively
add ress the restructuring as a transformation of the
contrad ictory relation between classes. It can o n ly

Theorie Comm uniste

162
 address it negatively in terms of the " l i q u idation" or
de-essentialisation of work.

iii B eyond progra m matism

For Dauve and Nesic we are free of the "old work 7 TN: Luttes revendica
ers' movement" based on the "consecration of work" tives - from ' revi ndicate':
and "workers' identity" etc. , but this has resu lted in to demand. Luttes rev-
n o " revo l utionary clarification" - i n short we are no endicatives is a common
further down the road . It is obvious that "proletarian French term mean i n g
autonomy has not taken advantage of bu reaucratic struggles over wag es and
decline;' for they both belong to the same world of conditions, or struggles
workers' identity. Dauve and Nesic attribute this liq over i m med iate demands
u idation exclusively to capital, as if the "strugg les of (as opposed to i n s u rrec
' 6 8 " had no role to play. Trapped in their normative tionary o r pol itical strug
problematic of the revolution (in fact an ideolog ical g l es). We use the archaic
result of the fail u re of the previous cycle) they see only 'rev i n d icat1ve' because
the d isappearance of the old and not the appearance there is no simple equ iva
of the new. lent in E n g l i s h .

Today, the overcoming of revindicative strugg les7 as

revol ut i o nary stru g g l e - i . e . as c o m m u n i sati o n - i s
presaged whenever, in these strugg les, i t is i t s own
existence as a class that the proletariat confronts. This
confrontation takes place within revindicative struggles
and is first and foremost only a means of waging these
struggles further, but this means of waging them further
impl icitly contains a confl ict with that which defines
the proletariat. This is the whole originality of this new
cycle of struggle. Revi ndicative struggles have today
a characteristic that would have been inconceivable
thirty years ago.

The proletariat is confronted by its own determ ination

as a class which becomes autonomous i n relation to
it, becomes alien to it. The objectifications in capital
of the u n ity of the class have become palpable in
the m u ltipl ication of col lectives and the recu rrence of
d iscontinuous strikes (the stri kes of spring 2003 in
France, the strike of the English postmen). When it

Much Ado About Nothing

163
appears that autonomy and self-organisation are no 8 The struggle ag ainst
longer the perspective of anyt h i n g , as with the trans capital, accord i n g to
port strike in Italy or that of the workers at FIAT Melfi , the advocates of self
i t is precisely there that t h e dynam ic o f t h i s cycle i s organisat1on, becomes
constituted and t h e overcom ing o f revindicative strug "suicidal", yet this never
gles is presaged through a tension within revi ndicative led them to question
struggles themselves. the "preservation of the
tools of labour" which
To put u n e m ployment and precarity at the heart of the proletariat was
the wage relation today ; to defi ne clandestinity (TN : s u pposed to take over.
u n d o c u mented, black-market work) as the g e neral They don't see what this
situation of labour power ; to pose - as in the d i rect s u icide contai n s for the
action movement - the social immed iacy of individuals proletariat i n its con
as the al ready existing foundation of the opposition trad iction with capital:
to capital, even if this opposition describes the whole the evidence of its own
l i m it of this movement; to lead su icidal strugg les l i ke d i sappearance.
those of Cellatex and others of Spring and Summer
of 2000;8 to refer class u n ity back to an objectivity
constituted by capital , as in all the collectives and dis
conti nuous stri kes ; to target all that defines us, all that
we are, as in the riots in the French suburbs of 2005 ;
to find in the extension of revindicative struggles the
questioning of revind ication itself, as in the struggles
against the CPE; are contents, for all of these particular
struggles, which determine the dynamic of this cycle
within and through these strugg les. The revol utionary
dynam ic of this cycle of struggle, which consists i n
t h e class prod ucing a n d confronting in capital its own
existence, that is to say putting itself in question as a
class, appears in the majority of strugg les today. Th is
dynamic has its intrinsic limit i n that which defi nes it
as a dynam i c : action as a class.

I n Argenti na, i n the prod uctive activities which were

developed, principally within the Piquetero movement,
something occu rred which was at first glance d iscon
certing : autonomy appeared clearly for what it is - the
management and reproduction by the worki ng class of
its situation in capital. The defenders of " revolutionary"
autonomy would say that this is due to the fact that it

Theorie Comm uniste

164
didn 't tri u m p h , although its triumph is precisely there. 9 ecart - could also be
But at the moment with i n prod uctive activity when tran s l ated a s "swerve" or
autonomy appeared as it is, everything on which auton- "gap". See n ote 4 to the
omy and self-organ isation are founded was u pset : the Afterword for an explana-
proletariat cannot fi n d i n itself the capacity to ere- tion of this concept.
ate other i nter-individual relations (we deliberately do
not speak of social relations) without overturning and
negating what it is in this society, that is to say with-
out enteri ng into contrad iction with autonomy and its
dynam ic. I n the way that these prod uctive activities
were put into place - in the effective modalities of their
real isation, i n the confl icts between self-organ ised
sectors - the determ inations of the p roletariat as a
class of this society (property, exchange, d ivision of
labour) were effectively u pset. Self-organisation was
not su perseded in Argentina, but the social struggles
pointed beyond themselves to such a su persession ; it
is in this way that the revolution becomes credible as
com m u n isation. The general isation of the movement
was suspended, its conti nuation conditioned upon the
abil ity of every fraction of the proletariat to overcome
its own situation, that is to say the self-organ isation
of its situation.

To act as a class today means, on the one hand, to no

longer have as a horizon anything other than capital
and the categories of its repro d u ction, and o n the
other, for the same reason , to be in contradiction with
one's own reprod uction as a class, to put it into q ues
tion. These are two faces of the same action as a
class. This confl ict, this d ivergence9 in the action of
the class (to reprod uce itself as a class of this mode
of prod uction I to put itself into question) exists in the
cou rse of the majority of confl icts. To act as a class
is the limit of the action of the proletariat as a class.
This contrad iction will be a practical q u estion i n need
of resolution, a.question much more difficult, risky and
confl ict laden than the l i m its of prog ram matism.

Much Ado About Nothing

165
 Revolutionary activity is the rupture and overcom i n g 10 p . 144
that Dauve and Nesic are looking for, but a produced
rupture and overcom i n g - it has not h i n g to do with 11 p. 131
the immediate and above all presu ppositionless trans
formation of the "pater familias" into a " revolutionary 12 p. 107
romanticist:' 1 0

The all iance between t h e autonomy o f t h e proletariat

and the negation of classes, t h e worker and ma n,
which is a n emergent ideology from a particular h istori
cal situation (that of May ' 6 8 and its fail u re) has been
presented by Dauve and Nesic as the i nvariant sub
stance of a "tension" with i n the proletariat " between
the submission to work and the criti q u e of work:' 1 1
Thei r essentialist and invariant problematic of the pro
letariat and com m u n ism prevents them from having a
historical conception of revo l ution and comm u nism.
The concept of prog rammatism is the basis of such
a conception - a conception that they declare "false
i n regard to the facts, and even more so i n regard to
the method".

2 " FALSE I N REGARD TO T H E FACTS"

Dauve and Nesic make seven objections to the con

cept of program matism :

The workers d i d not s u p port "a uto p i a w h e re l a b o u r w o u l d be k i n g " for

"otherwise, how d o we acco u nt for the freq u e n t d e m a n d to work less ? " 1 2

The workers coul d n 't have had the liberation of labour

as their perspective because they didn't want to work
more for the boss. The argu ment is simply d u m bfound
ing. Dauve and Nesic don't understand the "affirmation
of labour" as the " l i beration of labou r", that is to say
the abol ition of its situation of su bord i nation. The " l i b
eration of labour" is precisely the reverse of wanti n g
t o work more (for l e s s money) for the boss. It is pre
cisely not to consider wage labou r as a positive reality,
but as that which is to be abolished. This objection

Theorie Comm uniste

166
 woul d n 't be worth citing if we d id n't find it repeated
in i nverted form i n the ideology of the "social bond" or
"adhesion" which is su pposed to be one of the terms
of the "tension" within the being of the proletariat.

ii The " l i berat i o n of l a b o u r" i s t h e prod u ct of the o rg a n i sations of the workers'

m ovem e n t and n ot of the workers themselves

This is passi n g a l ittle rapidly over the fact that the 13 J e a n Barrot (G illes Dauve)
workers themselves had fou nded these organisations Fascism/An ti-fascism
and adhered to them in sometimes massive n u m bers. (Black C at Press 1 982).
Besides, it was i ndeed the workers who, even if to This text i s a partial trans-
defend their existence as workers (but how else could l ation of Dauve's p reface
it be when one sets up workers ' cou ncils?) , created to Bi/an: Cantre-revolution
councils, soviets, occasionally experimented with self- en Espagne 1936 -1939
management, took control of factories, participated i n (10118 1 979), which was
factory committees, set up cooperatives and fou nded also the basis for When
organisations, parties and u nions which had the d icta- Insurrections Die.
torship of the proletariat and the l iberation of labour as
their programme. If we say that the l iberation of labour 14 M arx. The Civil War in
is the theory of the organisations and not the working France. (MEcw 22), p. 504.
class, first it is false, but even if it were true it woul d
be necessary to explain t h e relation between the two.

The h i story of the Com m u n e is su pposed to show

that all of the aforementioned rigmarole didn't actually
i nterest the workers. I n h i s preface to Bi/an, Dauve
s ays that d u ri n g the Com m u n e the com m u n ists,
"being few i n n u mber," were "cautious". 1 3 But it is the
content of their programme that explains these "cau
tions" : the presentation of the affirmation of labour as
"the final end of the movement" which m u st integrate
"a long h istorical process" 1 4 ; the fact that in their own
programme the comm u nists recognised the historical
necessity of those (the bou rgeois republicans) who
were about to e l i m inate them. There was a lot to be
"cautious" about.

The re-appropriation of production by the workers was

in reality such a small priority for the Commune that its

Much Ado About Nothing

167
central committee announced as early as 2 1 st of March 15 Cited by M arx in D raft
1 87 1 (between the 1 S'h and the 26'h, thus before the of The Civil War in
re-appropriation by the republ icans) i n its Journal offi- France (MEcw 22),
cial: "The workmen, who produce everything and enjoy p. 500.
noth ing, who suffer from misery in the m idst of their
accum ulated products, the fruit of their work and their 16 ibid. p. 501
sweat . . . shall they n e ver be allowed to work for their
emancipation?" 1 5 Commenting on this citation Marx 17 ibid. p. 505-
writes : "it is proclaimed as a war of labo u r upon the
monopolists of the means of labo u r, upon capital ; " 1 6 18 ibid. p. 499.
and a l ittle bit further, "what the Commune wants is
the social property which makes property the attribute 19 ibid.
of labour:1 1 7
20 ibid. p. 335.
Leaving aside these overt calls for re-appropriation,
the n u m ber of enterprises and workshops taken over
by the workers is far from being insign ificant, nor was
the system the Commune employed of handing out
contracts to the most "socially progressive" bid. In the
end it is the nature of the struggle for the l iberation of
work that explains the small n u mber of measures of
the kind Dauve and Nesic are looking for. This struggle
of the working class is moulded by all the historical
med iations of capitalist development. Marx attacks
the " patro n iz i n g friends of the workin g class" who
congratulate themselves that "after all, workmen are
rational men and whenever in power always resol utely
turn their back upon socialist enterprises ! They d o in
fact neither try to establish i n Paris a pha/anstere nor
an /carie". 1 8 In a word , those who seek the immedi
ate realisation of the l iberation of labour which is, for
Marx, merely "a tendency" in the measures taken by
the Com m u ne, remain at the stage of utopian social
ism and have not u n derstood that these objectives
have now become real thro u g h their submission to
the " h istorical conditions of the movement:1 1 9

Although "the working class d i d not expect m i racles

from the Commune;'20 this working class knew that to
"work out their own emancipation" they wou l d have

Theorie Comm uniste

168
 to " pass through long struggles," a "series of historic 21 ibid. p 336
. .

processes;' i n order for them to be recog n ised as

"the o n ly class capable of social i n itiative " 2 1 - and 22 Jean Barrot I G i lles
recog nised as such by the middle class, which was Dauve, Notes pour une
su pposed to line u p , with the Com m u ne, on the side analyse de la revolution
of the workers. russe - 1967 - i n Com
munisme et question russe
The "hesitant" and timid character of these measu res (Tete de fe u i l les, 1 972)
has also another root. Toward the end of March, with in p p-47-48. Em phasis added.
the Com m u ne, the workers were beaten in their own
camp. If Marx doesn't speak of the social sign ificance
of the transformation of the Com m u ne's organs of
management, and if he pretends that the Comm une
is exc l usively a workers' g overn m e n t ("the fi nally
ach ieved form of the dictatorship of the proletariat")
it is because, for h i m , the revolution is not where we,
today, look for it - that is to say i n the independence
of proletarian action and in its capacity to abolish itself
in abol ishing the capitalist mode of production - but in
the capacity of the proletariat to represent the whole
of society and its future. Looked at closely, this other
reason for "hesitancy" is not that different than the first.
The historical development of working class practice
impl ies its defeat as an autonomous class.

As with the Commune, the Russian Revolution of 1 9 1 7

is supposed to confirm that "the proletarians hardly
manifested any productive enthusiasm:' And neverthe
less in an earl ier text by Dauve we find :

" . . . the movement of factory and workshop Comm it

tees saw a remarkable surge between February and
October. These comm ittees were most often cre
ated with the aim of obtaining the eight-hour day and
wage increases. In April the provisional government
recogn ized their right to represent the workers in
their negotiations with bosses and the government,
but little by little the committees tried to influence
the direction of the factories which they took over
in several cases: 22

Much Ado About Nothing

169
 " During this time [after October 1 9 1 7, the Bolshevik 23 ibid. p. 51
leadership havi ng inaugurated and structu red work-
ers' control in Russia ' i n the interests of a planned
d i rection for the national economy'] the R u ssian
workers continued to animate the Committees which
often tried to seize factories. As the January 1 91 8
n umber of the Voice of the Metal Workers states :
'the working class, from its nature, m ust occupy the
central place in production and especially its organ i-
sation . . . ' But these efforts often lead to fail u re :'23

Of course one can change one's opinion, but that's

not on the issue here - rather than the opinion about
them, it is the h i storical facts themselves that have
changed : that which existed exists no more.

One can equally refer to more "classical" h i storians :

"The natural conseq uence o f the [February 1 9 1 7]

revolution was to exacerbate the economic strug
gles. I n this context the factory committees became
the veritable protagon ists of the confrontation be
twe e n Capital and Lab o u r. They reg u l ated t h e
u n ions from behind . . . . Moreover, t h e i r leaders [the
u nions] , mostly Mensheviks, took care to avoid in
terve n i n g d i rectly i n the domain of p rod ucti o n . It
was thus the factory committees which immediately
took this up, without a thought to the limits to which
they were assigned by law. The workers of many
factories had started to interrogate the q uestions
of adm i n istration and tech n i cal d i rection, even to
the point of chasing bosses and engineers out of
the factory. When the employer decided to leave
the key under the door it was common to the find
the factory committee taking over the management
of the establ ishment. . . . By launching the slogan of
'workers' control', which constituted an essential as
pect of their programme, the Bolsheviks fanned the
flames of the spontaneous movement which gre w
from the radicalisation of the working masses. They

Theorie Comm uniste

170
 t h u s encouraged - for tactical reasons which we 24 Os kar Anwe i l e r, The
will return to later - the l i bertarian and anarcho-syn Russian Soviets. Trans
dicalist tendencies which appeared i n the factory l ated from the French:
comm ittees and which sought to establish a work Les Soviets en Russie,
ers' power in each separate enterprise, without (Gal l i m ard 1972), pp.1 57-
making use of a central ised d i rection or taking i nto 1 58. Em phasis added.
accou nt the whole economic reality, thus a singu
larly confused prog ramme. Wh ile the Mensheviks 25 E. H . Carr, The Bolshe
and the u n i o n lead e rs foresaw a state control of vik Revolution. Translat
production, conform ing to the general ly accepted ed from the Fren c h : La
socialist principles, the factory committees generally Revolution bolchevique,
stood u p for the direct seizure of the enterprise and vol.I I (Ed. de M i n uit
the self-management of the factories:'24 1 969), p.66.

"Workers' comm ittees rapidly formed i n the facto

ries and a decree for the provisional government
of the 22"d April 1 9 1 7 gave them a legal existence
in recognising their right to represent the workers
in relation to the e m ployers and the government.
Thei r first demands were for the 8 hour day and a
wage rise. But these demands d i d n 't delay i n arriv
ing at more or less organised attempts on the part
of workers, at first sporad ic, but soon m o re and
more frequent, to intervene i n the management and
to take possession themselves of the factories . . .
N onetheless, that which no one foresaw, was that
the seizure of the factories by the workers would
be i n the long term even less compatible with the
establishment of a socialist order than the seizure
of land by the peasants:25

The last ph rase by Carr contains the solution to the

next q uestion.

iii D u r i n g the rare occa s i o n s where a s e i z u re of production took pl ace u n d e r

workers' control, the leaders o f "workers'" org a n i sations h a d a v e r y h a rd t i m e
i m po s i n g d i sci p l i n e on workers who showed l ittle prod uctive e n t h u s i a s m .

The first thing wou l d be to explain why such "occa

sions" existed. But let's let this pass and come to the

Much Ado A b o u t Nothing

171
objection itself. The emanci pation of labour is here 26 p. 1 1 0
conce ived as t h e measurement of val ue by labo u r
t i m e , the prese rvation o f the notion o f the prod uct, 27 p. 111
a n d t h e framework o f t h e enterprise a n d exchange. At
those rare moments when an autonomous affi rmation 2a ibid.
of the proletariat as l i beration of labour arrives at its
real isation (necessarily under the control of organ isa-
tions of the workers' movement) , as in Russia, Italy
and Spai n, it im med iately inverts itself into the o n ly
thing it can become: a new form of the mobil isation of
labour under the constraint of val ue and thus of "maxi-
m u m output" (as the CNT demanded of the workers
of Barcelona in 1 93 6) provoki n g ipso facto, though
margi nal ly, all the reactions of disengagement or work-
ers' resistance (cf. S e i d m a n , M . , Workers Against
Work in Barcelona and Paris) .

Accord ing to Dauve the Russian Revol ution of 1 9 1 7

showed two fundamentally related things: firstly the
workers "did l ittle to restart prod uction"26 and lacked
prod u ctive enthusiasm, and secon d ly these work
ers fou n d themselves "faced with new bosses;' and
responded "as they usually do, by ind ividual and col
lective resistance, active and passive:'2' We have dealt
with the fi rst point, let's pass to the second. Why were
the workers confronted with new bosses? Why was
the revol ution a fail u re? What is this " revolutionary
dynam ic" which, coexisting with the "crystall ization
of power" wo u l d defi n e the Russian Revo l ution as
a "contradictory process" which went through an
involution ?28 I n all the texts of Dauve and Nesic there
is never a response to these q uestions. To respond
to them they would have to qual ify their "revolutionary
dynamic", specify it historical ly, along with its cou nter
revolution. Yet it is here that we discover the forbidden
d i me n s i o n of t h e i r theory. For it pres u p poses that
though the development of capital can be historically
specified, the revolution, just l i ke the counter-revol u
t i o n , must be a s it is in itself f o r al l etern ity. T h i s hiatus
prevents them from arriving at any synthesis.

Theorie Comm uniste

1 72
 Dauve and Nesic don't want to see the self-manage 29 "que vaudrait une revo-
ment and the seizu re of the factories in the ascendant lution oil nous serions
phase of the Russian Revolution (February to October pousses quasi malgre
1 9 1 7 ) . They don't completely deny the facts, but class nous?" G i l l ies Dauve
them in the range of activities subject to necessity (i.e. & Karl Nesic, II va fa/-
poverty) . I n their concept i o n , g iven that the revol u lair a ttendre ( Troploin
tion m ust - by defi n ition - be free, that w h i c h arises Newsletter no. 2 2002),
from necessity cannot be revolutionary. Thus there PA TN: this passage
was never any revolutionary emancipation of labour was rem oved from
because everything that could be seen as close to the E n g l i s h version of
it in fact depends on the sord id activity of necessity. this text - Whither the
"What would be the worth of a revolution into which we World?
were pushed against our wills?" ask Dauve and Nesic
in an earl ier text. 2 9 There is a " revolutionary elan"30, a 30 see n ote 17 to p. 85
" revolutionary dynam ic", but these m u st remain u n de- above.
fined : everything else is "necessity". To defi ne them
wou l d be to see the essential relation between the
revolution and t h e B o lshevik cou nter-revo l u t i o n , it
wou l d be to defi ne the fai l u re of revolution in terms of
its very natu re as l iberation of labour, in terms of the
seizing of prod uction by the "associated prod ucers".
In effect it wou ld mean havi ng to deal with that which
is described by Anweiler, Carr or Vol i n e ; and even
Dauve and Nesic themselves . . .

These latter two report all the trouble that the Bolshe
viks had in returning the factories to a state of order.
I n this way they contrad ict their previous assertion
about the i nfreq u e n cy of workers seizi n g factories
and taking over the management of production. The
Bolshevik cou nter-revolution finds its source and flows
natural ly (which doesn't mean without confrontation)
from the course of the workers' revo l u t i o n . It is as
Trotsky said "the seizure of power by the whole of
the proletariat", and s i m u ltaneously "workers' control
i n itiated i n the interests of a planned reg u l ation of
the national economy" (Decree on Workers ' Control
of 1 4- 2 7 November 1 9 1 7) . If revolution is the control
and management of the factories, the organisation
of their relations, the circu lation and exchange of the

Much Ado A b o u t Nothing

173
prod ucts of labo u r, it has nothing to oppose to the
state, to val u e , to the plan and a renewed capital
ist management, other than its ran k and fi l e soviet
democracy - that is to say noth i n g , a p u re form - or
else resistance to the re-imposition of work.

Yet this is not without importance. The proletariat does

not simply find itself once more in an ordinary capitalist
enterprise. Its refusal of work is situated at the heart
of programmatism. In its man ifestation of what, on its
own terms, is an internal contrad iction and i m pos
sibility of the programmatic revolution, the refusal of
re-im posed work antici pates that which will spell the
death of programmatism at the end of the 1 9 6 0s.

I n the most general sense, i n its i nternal contrad ic

tion and the practical process of its own i m possibil ity,
program matism produces the terms of its overcoming.
It is t h ro u g h all that which, p ractically and theoreti
cal ly, exists for us today as this impossibil ity that we
can relate ou rselves to the history of past struggles
and to the conti n u ity of theoretical prod u ction. We
don't attribute to these strugg les and theoretical pro
d uctions the consciousness or the possibil ity to see
another perspective, because we can only relate to
them throug h the med iation of a restructuring of the
capitalist mode of prod uction which was their defeat.
We don't relate to these elements genealogical ly, but
reprod uce them in a problematic constituting a new
paradigm of the contrad iction between proletariat and
capital.

It is true, there was never any "scope for a workers'

capital i s m ", but that s i m ply means t h at t here was
scope for a capitalist cou nter-revolution articulated
wit h i n a workers' revol u t i o n based u p o n the seiz
i n g of factories, l i berat i n g labo u r, and erect i n g the
proletariat as ruling class ; a cou nter-revolution that
was able to turn the latter's content back against it. If
"the proletarians d i d n 't come up with an alternative to

Theorie Comm uniste

174
Bolshevik policy;'31 it is because Bolshevik policy was 31 p. 1 1 2
the accomplishment against them of their revolution.
32 p. 113
Just as in Spain against the CNT, the UGT or the PO UM,
the workers have nothing to oppose to the manage- 33 ibid.
ment of enterprises by their organisations, because
the programme that they apply is their own . The revolu-
tion as affirmation of the class implacably transforms
into the management of capital , smoothly reverts into
the counter-revolution to which it provides its own con-
tent. Faced with this ineluctable reversal of their own
movement, overseen by their own organisations, the
workers are thrown back to resisting work. The revolu-
tion as affirmation of the class finds itself confronted
by a cou nter-revolution which has for its content that
which justified the revolution itself: the rising power
of the class i n the capital ist mode of production, its
recog n ition and integration i n the reproduction of the
capitalist mode of production. We could even call it
the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

We can only agree with Dauve and Nesic when they

write that "the Russian revol utionary crisis shows that
as long as capital reigns, labour can't be l iberated and
m ust be imposed upon the wage-earners}'32 And yet
the social and h istorical mechanism of this dynam ic
m ust be made clear: the liberation of labo u r is i mpos
sible because it calls forth its own cou nter-revolution
as capitalist organisation of work. Dauve and Nesic
dispel the problem sayi n g : n o revolution ever p re
sented itself as such (except i n the programm e of
the organisations) . We have very briefly seen that this
is false. Being u nable to explain by what mechan ism
this impossibility imposes itself, they prefer to say that
things didn't happen. Anyone can proclaim that " i n
1 9 1 7-2 1 , t h e alternative was between abolishing wage
labour or perpetuating exploitation, with no possible
t h i rd option "33 - it's a nice phrase, but it expresses
absolutely noth ing ; says noth ing about the period of
" revol utionary crisis". In the sense that nobody - not a

Much Ado About Nothing

175
single social movement - posed such an opposition 34 C ited in Pier Carlo M as
other than as the liberation of labour and the open i n i , Anarchistes et Com
ing of a period of transition ; the radical alternative, as munistes dans le mou
Dauve and Nesic present it, simply didn't exist. vement des Conseils
a Turin, (N auti l u s 1 983),
In Italy, as i n Russia, being u nable to explain what p. 63.
happened, Dauve and Nesic decide that nothing hap
pened. For the whole period one m u st start from two
principal facts: ( 1 ) there was a powerful organised
workers' movement, which (2) had as a programme
the affi rmation/emancipation of labour (the workers'
creating factory councils, etc.) . These two major ele
ments defi n e the period' s content. Faced with the
reversal that they suffer, the workers are d isarmed i n
the sense that that which is taken over b y the organ i
sations is i n fact the perspective, now turned against
them, that they themselves advance from their own
ranks.

It is d ifficult to regard the articles and reports of Malat

esta on t h e situation in Italy as m e rely a series of
m i l itant l ies. On the 2 8'h of J une 1 9 2 2 , i n l 'Umanita
Nova, Malatesta writes: "The metal workers started the
movement over the q uestion of wages. It turned out to
be a strike of a new kind. Instead of abandoning the
factories, they stayed i n them without working, g u ard
ing them n i g ht and day against any lockout. But we
were in 1 9 20. All of proletarian Italy was trembling with
revolutionary fever, and the movement rapidly changed
character. The workers thought it was the moment to
defin itively take over the means of production . They
armed themselves for defence, t ransformed n umer
ous factories into veritable fort resses, and began to
organise prod uction for themselves." 34

I n Italy once more it is the revolutionary perspective of

emancipation, of "seizing the factories", which allowed
the state and the bourgeoisie to retake control of the
situation (with the violent i ntervention of the fascists) .
The n u m be r of occupations decl i n e after the 2 5'h

Theorie Comm uniste

176
of September 1 9 2 0 with the s i g n i n g of the accord 35 Errico Malatesta, Uman
between Aragonna, chief of the CG L, and the govern ita Nova 23 September
,

ment of Giol itti : 1920. Em phasis added.

"the famous decree on the control of the factories 36 i n Errico Malatesta, Ar

is a joke, because it g ives birth to a new band of ticles poiitiques (10118
b u reaucrats who, although they come from your 1979), p.274.
ranks, will not defend you r i nterests, but o n ly their
position, because they seek to com bine you r inter
ests with those of the bourgeoisie, which is to try
to set a wolf to tend a goat." 35

I n l 'Umanita Nova of the 1 oh September 1 920, under

the title To the Metal Workers, Malatesta writes :

" E nter into relations between factories and with the

rai lway workers for the provision of raw materials;
come to agreements with cooperatives and with the
people. Sell and exchange you r prod ucts without
deal ing with ex-bosses:'36

"Sell and exchange your products" : i n the very injunc

tion of Malatesta to pursue and deepen revolutionary
com bat resides its fai l u re and reversal into cou nter
revo l u t i o n . The same worker who wou l d a p p l a u d
Malatesta w i l l t h e very n ext d ay press for s l o w i n g
d o w n the work rate in " t h e enterprise i n the h a n d s of
the workers". To take over the factories, emancipate
productive labour, to make labour-time the measure
of exchange, is val ue, is capital . As long as the revo
lution will have no other object than to l i berate that
which necessarily makes the proletariat a class of the
capital ist mode of production, workers' organ isations
which are the expression of this necessity will employ
themselves to make it respected. B e i n g unable to
hold onto the articu lation of these elements, Dauve
and Nesic have decided, against all the evidence, that
the workers' never had the perspective or practice of
the emancipation of labou r. What is more, although
for Dauve and Nesic it was i ndeed the case that all

Much Ado About Nothing

1 77
 of that was true of the organisations - to deny this 37 p . 108
wou ld be very d ifficult - it is sti l l necessary to explain
who could have put such ideas into the heads of the
organisations. The facts which were sti l l visible in
When Insurrections Die, and even more in the Preface
to Bi/an, have here d isappeared . Noth ing happened,
move on, there is noth ing to see.

Dauve and N esic see the problem without being able

to con nect the terms. In t h e i r arg u m entat i on t h ey
ceaselessly confuse the effective i m possibility of the
l iberation of labour with its non -existence, just as they
confuse the " l iberation of labour" with "the li berating
power of labour:'

iv The workers d i d n't stru g g l e to " m a ke l a b o u r k i n g " but to

"curb further exploitat i o n "

It is contentious to try to separate revindicat ive strug

gles in a given period from revolution and com m u n ism
as they are defined i n that same period. It is hardly
cred ible to say that in 1 84 8 the workers only strug
gled against the worsening of their conditions, that the
insurgents o n ly " rose to survive"37, and that the strug
gles betrayed no perspective of the reorganisation of
society aro u n d the "organ isation of labour" and its
generalisation, that is to say l iberation, by the work
ing class. Such incred ibil ity is amply demonstrated by
a glance at the political expressions of the Parisian
working class i n that year:

" M arche , a worker, d i ctated the decree [decree

on the right to work, 25 February 1 8 4 8] by which
the newly formed Provisional Government pledged
itself to guarantee the workers a livelihood by means
of labou r, to provide work for all citizens, etc. And
when a few d ays later it forgot its promises and
seemed to h ave lost sight of t h e proletariat, a
mass of 20,000 workers marched on the Hotel de

Theorie Comm uniste

178
 Ville with the cry : Organise labour! Form a special 38 Marx, The Class Strug-
Ministry of Labour.''.36 gles in France (MEcw 10),
p. 55.
To " rise up in order to s u rvive" is an expression as
lacki n g in mean i n g in 1 8 4 8 as it is in 2 0 0 7. Every 39 ibid. p. 78
insu rrection and even every strike, however "modest",
always exists in a certain period of the contrad iction
between the proletariat and capital. To this degree, the
defence of physical survival has no more existence in
itself, is no more an ahistorical i nvariant, than is com-
munism "in its deep content".

In the form of the National Workshops the "defence of

survival" becomes a question of social reg i me : "The
right to work is, i n the bourgeois sense, an absurd ity,
a m iserable, pious wish. But behind the right to work
stands the power over capital ; behind the power over
capital , the appropriation of the means of prod uction,
their subjection to the associated worki ng class, and
therefore the abolition of wage labour, of capital, and
of their m utual relations. Behind the "right to work"
stood the June insu rrection." 39 The Parisian workers
" rose up to survive" and this insu rrection for survival
contained : "the organisation of labour;' and the "sub
m ission of the means of production to the associated
worki n g class". A precise study of the i n s u rrection
of J u n e shows that it was su bstantially supported by
the u nemployed workers of the N ational Workshops.
Yet one fi nds in far greater n u m ber those who were
not d i rectly touched by the closure of the N ational
Workshops: the local workers and the professions
who had also been the most virulent d u ring the q uasi
general strike which hit Paris i n 1 840.

On this connection between immed iate struggles, po

l itical reform and social revolution, the most important
movement of the period is without d o u bt Chartism.
About this Dauve and Nesic say not a word. For doing
so would make it d ifficult to suggest that the aspira
tion to re-appropriate the means of production by the

Much Ado A b o u t Nothing

179
 associated workers was only an ideology wh ich had 40 p. 109
no correspondence i n the practice or mobil isation of
the workers, and that the resistance to the worse n-
i n g of exploitation is a neutral and pu rely quantitative
activity.

v The turn of 1 848

For Dauve and Nesic 1 848 marks a turning point in

the history of workers' struggles:

" 1 848 tolled the knell of the utopia of a wage-labour

capital , of a worki ng class that would become the
ruling class and then the u n i q u e or universal class
t h ro u g h the absorption of capital in associ ated
labour. From then o n , via a g rowing union move
m e n t , the workers w i l l o n ly b e concerned with
their share of the wage system , they won't try to
com pete with the monopoly of capital owned by
the bourgeoisie, but to constitute themselves as
a monopoly of labou r power. The prog ramme of a
popular capital ism was on the wane:'40

Thus that wh ich never existed n o n etheless had an

existence prior to 1 84 8 . The peculiarity of eclecticism
is to fai l to perce ive that the elements which one j uxta
poses may contrad ict each other. Th is consideration
of the pre- 1 848 period is all the more surprising g iven
that this period of "wage-labour capital" is for them,
i n another respect, essentially that of the expression
of com m u n ism in " its deep content" : the proletariat
of the hu man commun ity, not yet bogged down in the
defence of the wage ( see below ) .

Thus the proletariat no longer attempted , after 1 8 4 8 ,

to b e c o m e a ru l i n g class. W i t h a wave o f the theo
retical wand, Dauve and Nesic manage to make the
Comm u n e van ish ; they i m ply that all the post- 1 8 4 8
texts o f Marx are apocryphal ; they convince us that
revolutionary synd icalism never existed. Even German

Theorie Comm uniste

180
 Social Democracy, with its rising power of the class 41 ibid.
and the theory of the spontaneous social ization of
capital leading to socialism, fails to fit with the need
of Dauve and Nesic to flatten class struggle i n the
extreme for fear of recognizing the infamous prog ram
matis m ; even Bernstein and H i lferding d isappear. The
project of "a working class take over of industrial iza-
tion" is over in 1 84 8 , j u st as that of "a working class
that wou l d become the ru l i n g class:'41 Of course ! If it
didn't come from such good authors one wou ld sus-
pect simply ignorance, here one must also suspect the
theoretical im passe of a d isco u rse which after being
tempted by an indeterminate " revolutionary elan" has
to silence itself from fear of allowi n g it to be d eter-
mined. Once again : move on, there is nothing to see !

If we can consider that 1 84 8 is a break, it is only i n

t h e measu re that that which was a n alterna tive project,
that is to say, able to coexist with bourgeois society
(cooperatives etc.), became after '48 a political project
presu pposing the reversal of bourgeois society. Far
from "tolling the knell" of workers' emancipation and
the l iberation of labour (articulated, of course, with the
revindicative strugg les of the worki ng class) , 1 84 8
marked t h e generalisation o f this project in a struggle
of class against class.

v i Even at its a pogee, the a s p i rati o n to m a ke labour k i n g was o n l y half- h e a rted

And once again we find an epoch where that which

never existed attained its apogee. Dauve and N esic
concede that there might have been a period of the
workers' composition of a world of free labour:

"the aspiration to set u p the workers as the ru l i n g

class a n d to build a workers' world was a t i t s h i g h
est in t h e heyday o f t h e labour movement, when the
Second and Third Internationals were more than big
parties and unions: they were a way of l ife, a coun
ter-society . . . Workers' or 'industrial' democracy was
an extension of a comm u n ity (both myth and real ity)
Much Ado About Nothing
181
 . . . that shaped worki n g class l ife from the after- 42 p. 117
math of the Paris Commune to the 1 950s or 6 0s:'42
43 p. 1 1 6

H e re i s a remarkable concess i o n , b u t o n e which 44 p. 119

doesn't recogn ize that this organised workers' move-
ment was also a counter-revolutionary force. Dauve and
Nesic want to i nsist that this "workers' world " which
shaped the life of the working class was j ust a " utopia
of skilled labour".43 Yet even in Germany between 1 9 1 9
and 1 9 2 1 , where for Dauve and Nesic this movement
of ski ll ed workers had gone the furthest, "there were
hardly any attempts to take over production i n order
to manage it. Whatever plans they may have n u rt u red,
i n practice neither the Essen and Berl i n workers nor
those i n Tu rin put work at the centre of society, even
of a social ist one:'44

We've already seen in the case of Italy and Russia that

if we shou l d n 't confuse the activity of workers with
the activity of organ isations and their prog rammes, it
is completely insufficient to satisfy oneself with the
d istinction. When the principle factory organisations
are grouped i nto two unions (AAU D and AAU D E) that
together cou nted several h u n d red thousand m e m
bers (not counting those adhering t o t h e revolutionary
unions) the programme of the KAPD is not an invention
of the t h eo reticians of the KAPD. It is the o n ly per
spective that the struggle itself allows. In the period
about which Dauve and Nesic speak (in fact since
1 84 8 ) , t h e stru g g l e for t h e emancipation of labour
passes by a pol itical stru g g l e ; that is, the abolition of
existing society (whatever form this takes, seizure of
power or abolition of the state) and establishment of
the proletariat as a ru ling class (which cannot fail to
turn back on itself in the very course of its success as
cou nter-revolution). The workers of Essen, Berl i n and
Tu rin "put work at the centre of society" by their very
uprising. What else is the power of the councils where
it momentarily establ ishes itself other than the power

Theorie Comm uniste

182
 of workers as workers? Are we supposed to believe
that the workers sought power for its own sake?

The seizure of state power, the political victory, is the

necessary preamble, even the first act, of the eman
cipation of labour, the proletariat becoming a ruling
class. I n Germany between 1 9 1 8 and 1 9 23, i n Italy
i n 1 9 20, the pol itical struggles for the power of the
working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat, had
for their content the affirmation of the proletariat as a
ruling class and through this the generalization of its
condition. Under the p retext that they see no (or very
few) self-managed factories, Dauve and Nesic deny
that the political struggle had the affirmation of the
proletariat as a ruling class for its object, that is to
say, the emancipation of labour.

We can't h e l p but note that i n these pages on the

" utopia of skilled labou r", Dauve and Nesic, for the
second time, and contrary to their official rel igion, link
a certain practice of the proletariat to a certain level
of development of capital, that which they condemn
i n the theoretical conclusion of their text. This link is
made several times i n their text, with the artisan, the
man ufacturing worker, the skilled worker, the mass
worker. That which Dauve and Nesic refuse to attribute
to the contrad iction between the proletariat and capi
tal and its overcoming - to be a history - they accord to
the action of h istorically existing workers. I n a kind of
i mpoverished Operaismo, they confer to "class com
position" that which they can't allow for revolution
and communism.

v i i Desertion o f t h e enterprise, "refusal o f work"

The seventh objection is not exactly of the same nature

as the others. It applies to the struggles at the end of
the 1 9 60s and the beg inning of the 1 970s. That is
to say, to the period when programmatism is at the
end of its course, the period in which we are ready to

Much Ado About Nothing

183
recognise that the affi rmation of the p roletariat and
the l iberation of labour are no longer the content and
perspective of the class struggle. As a conseq uence,
we could, to an extent, agree with the comments on
these struggles, and at a push this objection would not
be one at all. Yet only to an extent . . . and for two rea
sons. Firstly, Dauve and Nesic recognise no historical
break, for history is the looming absence i n their whole
normative horizo n ; the examples o n ly succeed one
another i n a chronological order by the simple habit of
thought and presentation - they could be presented in
any other order without having the slightest influence
on the "demonstration". Secondly, i n accordance with
their permanent denial of the reality of anything which
could be seen as affirmation of labour, they fail to see
that the overcom i n g of programmatism, very real i n
the struggles o f this perio d , sti l l takes place within
programmatism.

The turn at the end of the sixties and the beg i n n i n g

of the seventies w a s simply the b reakdown of p ro
g rammatism. " May '68" was the l i q u idation of all the
old forms of the workers' movement. The revolution
was no longer a question of the establishment of the
proletariat as a ruling class which generalises its situ
ation, u n iversalises labour as a social relation, and
the economy as the objectivity of a society founded
on val u e . But t h e " M ay ' 6 8 " period doesn't s i mply
remain i n this impossibility of being a programmatic
revolution.

On the one hand we had a strong workers' movement

with solid roots, the confirmation by capital of a work
ers' identity, a recog nised strength of the class but a
radical i m possibility to transform this strength into an
autonomous force and into a revol utionary affirmation
of the class of labour. On the other, this i m possibil
ity was positively the extension of a revolt against
all social reproduction, a revolt t h ro u g h which "the
proletariat negated itself".

Theorie Comm uniste

184
The revol ution could only be the negation of the work
er's condition, but it was necessary to seek it, not in
the relation between proletariat and capital , but in the
u niversality of alienation. Universal, and to this extent
human, alienation. Through real subsumption capital
had subjected all social reproduction, all aspects of
l ife. I n encom passing the whole of everyday l ife, the
revolution was the negation of the proletarian con
d it i o n . Thro u g h the u n iversal ity of its negation the
revolt became autonomised from its real conditions,
it appeared to no longer flow directly from the situation
of the worki ng class, but from the u n iversal alienation
of whi ch this situation was the consumm ation, the
condensation.

The revolt against the condition of the working class,

revolt again st every aspect of l ife, was cau g h t i n a
d ivergence. It could only express itself, only become
effective, i n turning against its own fou ndations, the
workers' conditions, but not in order to suppress them,
for it didn't fi nd in itself the relation to capital which
could have been that s u ppress i o n , but i n order to
separate itself from them. " M ay '68" t h u s remained
on the level of a revolt.

The workers fled the factories occupied by the u n ions,

the you ngest among them joined the student strug
gle, May ' 6 8 was the critique i n acts and often "with
the feet" of the revolution as the rising strength and
affirmation of the c l ass. The workers only entered
the factories at the moment of the retu r n to work,
often to oppose themselves violently to it. Here we
are i n agreement with the few remarks of Dauve and
Nesic on May ' 6 8 . Where we d iverge is i n the fact
that for them such a thing is not a h istorical product,
but merely fits into the long list of examples that they
evoke. It is su pposed to have always been this way,
from the simple fact of what the proletariat is and what
the revolution must be.

Much Ado About Nothing

185
For Dauve and Nesic the end of the sixties is prosper
ity and the critique of p rosperity ( consumer society,
everyday l ife, alienation ) , it is the workers' movement
and the "critique of work" - the enigma is solved. The
revolution m ust be both a workers' revolution and a
h u man revolution, but o n ly "workers"' because in the
worker it is the h uman that is negated. As a worker the
proletarian has the possibility to smash this society, as
a h u man, to construct the new one. To remain at this
position i s to remain with i n an ideology born of the
fai lure of '68. During that whole period , i n Italy, France
and elsewhere, class struggles expressed but failed
to overcome the l i m its and i mpasses of the previous
cycle, that of workers' identity, of autonomy, of self
organisat i o n , that which formed t h e very d efi n ition
of the revolutionary dynamic, whilst today they form
its l im it.

This contradiction i nternal to class struggle appeared

in Italy, from the mid-sixties, i n a very concrete manner,
in the extension of struggles beyond the factories. On
the o n e hand the central fig u re of t h e Italian work
ing class, that through which all class strugg l e was
structured, is that of the industrial triangle M i lan-Turin
Genoa, and, i n this triangle, principally the productive
workers of the big man ufactu rers. On the other hand,
such a concentration impl ies, and only exists through,
the socialisation and massificat i on of t h e worki n g
class beyond t h e i m mediate process o f production.
The workers' struggle is also the town, transport, hous
ing, all of social l ife. By encompassing all of everyday
l ife, class struggle becomes a refusal of the worker's
condition, but it only encompasses all social l ife from
the basis of the factory, the very extension only exists
under the leadership, the tutorship, of the worker of
the large factory : Turin is FIAT. This movement con
tains a contradiction between , on the one hand, the
central fig u re of workers' identity, sti l l dominating and
structuring class struggle, on the basis of wh ich this
movement exists, and, on the other hand, the struggle

Theorie Communiste
186
over the entirety of reproduction which can thus not
g ive everything that it contains, cannot put into ques
tion the condition of the worker itself. The struggle
over the wage is the place of this contrad iction, the
place it becomes concrete. That which the workerists,
in a programmatic perspective, theorised as "political
wage" or "self-valorisation of the working class" was,
as a practice, as a particular struggle, the contrad ic
tion i n which, on the basis of the very situation of the
worker and within this, the reproduction of the worker
as such was put into q uestion. The slogan of workers'
power in the factories coexisted with the refusal to l ive
outside as a worker and to be employed as a worker in
that very factory. The class struggle developed withi n
that highly contradictory a n d unstable configuration in
which it is labour which refuses to function, i n capital
ism, as labour power.

A u tonomy can only be programmatic, because it is

by its very nat u re workers ' autonomy. The movement
of ' 6 9 is sti l l a movement of the affirmation of t h e
proletariat and the emancipation of labour, it is its
dominant characteristic. It is o n ly on the basis of this
dominant characteristic that one can u n derstand that
it contains withi n it that which subsequently puts it
into q uestion, renders it impossible. It was the same
workers who committed sabotage and organised the
marches i n the factories who reg rouped i n the CU B
as in Pire l l i , or who foun d themselves in the student
worker assembl ies in Turin. It is in this situation that
all the originality and i mportance, as m u ch historical
as theoretical , of this period lay.

Today every revi ndicative strug g l e of whatever size

or i ntensity is self-organised and autonomous ; self
organ isation and autonomy can be opposed to the
u n ions, but always remain merely a moment of u n ion
ism. We have passed from one cycle of struggle to
another.

Much Ado About Nothing

187
 But for Dauve and Nesic it is not enough to say that 45 Dating this concep-
nothing happened , it is necessary to add that those for tion of the i nvariance
whom what happened was the revolution, as defi ned of com m u n i s m to the
h i storically in its strength and its fai l u re in its own e mergence of capital ism
terms, commit a methodolog ical error: determ inism. is to g ive a charitable
Any historical critique which fai ls to acknowledge the i nterpretation, becau se
invariant substance and says that revolution and com for Nesic (in Ca// of the
m u n ism are h istorical is branded with the i nfamous Void) it seemed to go
epithet. back m uch f u rther, and
for Dauve i n La Ban
3 " FALSE I N R E G A R D TO T H E M ET H O D " quise it seemed i n herent
to the (unfort u n ately
The " m ethodolog ical error" of Theorie Communiste m i s g u ided) com m u nal
( not named ) is supposed to consist in believing that nature of h u m a n ity.
there is a "situation" or a "period" in the history of the
capitalist mode of productio n , and therefore of class
struggle ( but this "therefore" is, as we shall see, for
Dauve and Nesic another methodolog ical error) , which
will assu re the victory of the commu nist revolution. We
finally confront the famous determ in ist devil.

Dauve a n d N esic d o n ot see t h at the " e rror" they

denounce is o n ly an "error" if we accept all their pre
su ppositions. Only if we suppose that the commun ist
revolution is a g iven and known substance since the
beg i n n i n g of the class struggle with in capital ism.45 If
we accept that the p roletariat would have been able
to do in 1 968 what it did in 1 848, in the Paris of 1 830
what it did in Bologna in 1 97 7, that the insurgents of
the Com mune failed because they d i d n 't do what the
SI had said nonetheless had to be done, it is obvious
that TC is wro n g .

The principle "error" is necessarily accompanied b y an

accessory error. We are supposed to have looked to
capital and its development to resolve our problems
i n our place. This is to assume that it is capital alone
which suppressed workers' identity, the "old workers'
movement", and, as a consequence, that which we
call prog ram matism. As if the strug g l e s at the end

Theorie Comm uniste

188
of the sixties and the begi n n i n g of the seventies had 46 p. 131
noth ing to d o with it; as if the re-appropriation of the
themes of workers' identity i n the rad ical democratic
movement and the practical crit i q u e of this rad ical
democratism by the direct action movement are all for
noth ing. Even if we accepted that capital suppressed
workers' identity, it cou ld only be as a cou nter-revolu-
tion, that is to say against the preced ing revolution and
not as an objective tendency which wou ld "give" us
ready-made new "conditions", without us participating
i n their emergence.

We will develop all these q u estions around the three

synthetic themes that Dauve and Nesic expose: there
is no d i rect l i n k between proletarian action and the
degree of the development of capital ; the "being" of
the proletariat ; and the " reasons for past fai l u res".

There is no d i rect l i n k betwee n proleta r i a n act i o n a n d t h e d e g ree of t h e

deve l o p m ent of capital

"If the 'being' of the proletariat theorized by Marx is

not just a metaphysics, its content is independent
of the forms taken by capitalist d o m i n at i o n . The
tension between the subm ission to work and the
critique of work has been active since the dawn of
capitalism. Of course the realization of communism
depends o n t h e h i storical moment, but its deep
content remains invariant i n 1 796 and in 2002." 46

If there is a " b e i n g " of the proletariat, and m o reo

ver a being on which the " realization of communism"
depends, the revolution is inevitable. N o amount of
theoretical t i n kering aro u n d the " h i storical moment"
as the conj u nct u ral condition of the becoming actual
of this "being" will change anything. The "being" will
always find its way through contingency and circum
stance. Comm u n ism " i n its deep content" will remain
invariant in 1 796 and 2002. All that remains is to name
that "deep content", and, i n passing, ind icate a little

Much Ado About Nothing

189
contingent d ross d u e to the " h istorical moment" of 47 Dauve, ' H u man,
1 7 9 6 o r 2 0 0 2 . But how d o we separate the d ross A l l Too H u man?'
from the " invariant"? p. 98 above.

Contrary to what Dauve and Nesic say, if this "being" 48 p. 144

is " not j ust a metaphysics" then it is not " i ndepend-
ent of the forms taken by capital ist domination". How
could its "being" be independent when the proletariat
is only a class of the capitalist mode of productio n ?
T h e " b e i n g " is held to be independent o f the forms
taken by capitalist evolution, but apparently the " reali-
zation of com m u n is m " is "of course" dependent on
the " h i storical moment". H ere we are knee-deep i n
t h e metaphysical relation par excellence : that o f the
essence and its conditions, of the tendency and its
real isat i o n . Dauve a n d Nesic are carefu l to avoi d
explai n i n g t h e relation between t h i s " being" a n d the
"historical moment". It goes without saying, just like the
spontaneous idealism with which we t h i n k unawares.
It is a case of the ideology of the launch window. They
bel ieve themselves to have overcom e determi n i s m
because, a s Dauve writes i n Human, a ll too Human :
"nothing g uarantees that a com m u nist movement will
be able or want to take advantage of it, but the pos-
sibility is there." 47 A " possibil ity" which may or may not
be actual ised . . . i n other word s : objective conditions.

" H i story does not prove any d i rect causal l i nk between

a degree of capitalist development, and specific pro
letarian behavi o u r:'48 The " M etropolitan I n d ians" of
Bologna could have taken the Winter Palace, and the
unemployed of the National Workshops could have set
up workers' councils. Dauve and Nesic have conserved
the entire theoretical structu re of determ i n i s m , but
the key element has become i m possible to maintain :
the identification of the "development o f capital" with
"revolutionary activity", that is, the rising strength of the
class i n the capitalist mode of production. As a result,
they find themselves with a class activity which floats
in the void , condemned to self-determination, that is

Theorie Comm uniste

190
to say indetermination. Such a conclusion cannot be 49 p. 142
expressed as such ; one thus needs determination, but
not too much, " invariance" and the "historical moment".
And above all lots of "freedom", because the develop-
ment of capitalism has been paradoxically maintained
i n its objective density.

The development of capitalism is nothing more than

the contradiction between the proletariat and capital ;
there is no " l i nk", neither rigid, nor flu i d , nor d i rect. I n
t h e e n d Dauve a n d Nesic tinker between determinism
and liberty, necessity and possibility, i nvariance and
contingency, freedom with a l ittle determ inacy and
determinism with a l ittle freedom. One m u st allow the
proletariat the "freedom" to rise to its "historic task".49
What a strange freedom, and a strange critique of
determi nism, which can speak of an " h i storic task". I n
t h e e n d it is their own determinism that Dauve and
Nesic are seeking to exorcize.

To look for the cause of revolutions and their fai l u res

i n the relation between the proletariat and capital as
they existed, is that to do anything other than to look
for them i n the practice of proletarians? What would
this practice be if not the relation to capital? What
would this development of capital be if not this rela
tion? To demand that we search for the causes of
"our fail ures" only i n the " activity of proletarians" is to
see the development of capital as a frame to which
we attribute more or less effectivity, but always as a
s u m of conditions. Dauve and Nesic have conserved
all the fundamental separations of o bjectivism and
determinism, their only "originality" is to have refused
the causal link which unites the elements. This renders
their production incoherent and eclectic, and their
writi n g full of hesitation and oscillation (yes/but, it is
such and such/but of cou rse we know that nonethe
less . . . ). And yet it is we, for whom the "solution" is
neither a presu pposition nor ineffable, but a real h is
torical production, and of the o n ly history that exists,

Much Ado About Nothing

191
t h at of the capitalist mode of prod u ction, who are
supposed to be "determinis ts ".

When we defi n e exploitat i on as t h e contrad iction

between the proletariat and capital, we defi ne that
contrad iction as a history. The stage of the cycle of
accumulation is not an external condition of victories
or defeats, a conj uncture. Accumulation is part of the
defi n ition of the proletariat and its contrad iction with
capital. The proletariat is defined i n the total ity of the
moments of exploitation, i n the sense that it impl ies
its reprod uction and produces the conditions of the
latter. To define the proletariat in the three moments of
exploitation (the coming together of labour power and
capital and the buying and sell i ng of labour power, the
absorption of l iving labour by objectified labour i n the
immediate process of production where surplus value
is formed, the transformation of surplus value into ad
d itional capital) is to understand that the development
of capital is not the real isation or the condition of the
class contradiction which opposes the proletariat to
capital , it is the real history of this contrad iction. The
contrad iction does not d ress itself i n d ifferent forms,
because it is nothing other than these forms. Those
who would take umbrage at that, assuming it means
capital wou ld be doing the work in our (the revolution
ary proletarians') place, have u nderstood nothing of
what a social relation means. All this also implies the
historicity of the content of com m u n ism. Com m u n ism
is historical i n that it is i n relation with the immediate
cou rse of each cycle of struggle. When we say that
the revolution and communism can only be immediate
communisa tion, that doesn 't mean that communism
has finally presented itself today as it always really
was or as it always should have been.

To all those who say that 1848, 1 9 1 7, 1 968 etc. ended

up in a way that cou ld have been averted, we have
a right to demand that just for once they tell us what
made them end up where they did other than by saying

Theorie Communiste
192
that they ended up where they did because they didn't
end u p where they cou ld have. Cou l d anything else
have happened? We don't know and we don't care.
The question is mean ingless. That which didn't happen
leaves the domain of thought to enter the domain of
faith and madness. The ideology of the possible looks
to the past and says "this could have been o r n ot
been", it consists in considering as contingent, on
the basis of the su bseq uent period, that which was
essential to the previous period. From this su bstitution
is born the belief i n the invariant as the su bstantial
core which resu lts from the movement.

If the restructuring of the contrad iction between the

proletariat and capital resolves to a large extent the
contradictions and limits of prog rammatism (not with
out the participation of workers' struggles) , it neither
gets us closer to a pu rity of this contrad iction, nor a
pu rity of capital. What creates this i l l u sion is the fact
that the capitalist mode of production always restruc
tures itself accord ing to what it is, and overcomes the
l i m its which had been its own (its own conditions of
valorisation and reproduction in a given moment) . The
restructuring is a supersession which, though u nfore
seeable (constituted along the tempestuous flow of
struggles) , cannot i nfringe upon the nature of capital.
Once the restructuring is accomplished, the previous
characteristics of capital appear for the next period as
contingent, non-ind ispensable i n relation to the nature
of capital, but they were certainly not contingent for
the previous period. It is i n this way that the becom
ing appears predetermi ned as a march towards purity.
This is the trap i nto which fal l all the ideologues who,
not being able to conceive of history beyond teleology,
choose to suppress it.

What is more, the question as to the " u ltimate" char

acter of this cycle of strug g l e has n o solution, for
strictly speaking it cannot be posed theoretically (and
it never has bee n , for any cycle of stru g g l e) . Does

Much A do A b o u t Nothing
193
that mean that the revolution and com m u nisation are
now the only future? Again this is a q u estion without
meani ng, without real ity. The only inevitabi l ity is the
class struggle though which we can only conceive of
the revolution of this cycle of struggle, and not as a
collapse of capital leaving a space open, but as an
h istorically specific practice of the proletariat i n the
crisis of this period of capital. It is thus this practice
which renders the capitalist mode of production i rre
producible. The outcome of the struggle is never g iven
beforehand. It is self-evident that revolution cannot be
reduced to a sum of its conditions, because it is an
overcom ing and not a fulfilment. It is com m u nisation
which renders the contradiction betwee n the prole
tariat and capital irreproducible.

I n the last resort, the i ndependence of comm unism

" i n its deep content" i n relation to the development of
the contradiction between the proletariat and capital
has its ontological argument: that of the philosophical
comm unism of 1 843-46 .

Philosophical communism, which invokes Man and

Species, characterises the q uasi totality of theoretical
production i n the first half of the 1 840s. For the " Ger
mans" its point of depart u re is the critique of rel igion.
This critique, as Marx h i mself applied it, is the matrix
of the critique of all alienations (as Marx affirms i n the
first sentence of the Introduction of 1 843) . It fol lows
that man's red iscovery of his essence in the critique
and abolition/overcoming of religion is, accord i n g to
him, the matrix of all abolitions (money, work etc.) : the
return of the s u bject to itself as Comm u n ity, Species
Being, Man. Stimer was right to s ay that Man had
replaced God and that it is the worst of all religions.

Man externalises his own powers, he objectifies them.

It was thus necessary to red iscover the anthropologi
cal natu re of rel i g ion i n order to abolish it. Of course
what was found there was the mechanism of every

Theorie Comm uniste

194
alienation, abolition, and overcoming for philosophical 50 M arx, 1844 Manuscnpts
communism, including the abolition of labour which, (MECW 3), p. 333.
i n beco m i n g " self-man ifestation", was intended to
reconcile the essence of the proletariat as a person
with his immed iate being. The abolition of money, of
the state, fol l owed the same log ical mechan ism. The
Feuerbachian critical apparatus was generalised. The
result of the abolition/overcoming is merely the true
form of the essence of man. There is o n ly a historical
development and contradiction as an inverted form of
the true com m u nity, which is already the truth of this
inverted form. Alienation is merely its own becoming
for itself.

" Labour is man's coming to be for h imself withi n aliena

tion o r as an alienated m a n :'50 Alienated labour or
alienation of the essence of man are thus only moments
of the identity in- itself of labour and its o bjects, of
man and h i s external ised forces, in the process of
becoming an identity for-itself. The loss is only a form
of the identity, its necessary becom i n g in order to
rediscover itself (here lies all the l i m its of the concept
of alienation) . Against all the analysis of Capital or the
Grundrisse in which we rediscover these expressions
of the alienation of labour or its product, here the point
of departure is not a social relation, but a subject (man)
which d ivides itself in its identity with itself. It's i n this
sense that labour is destined to be abolished, because
labour exists here only to produce its abolition.

I n The German Ideology the abolition of labour is

deduced from two themes : the virtual u niversality of
the proletariat in relation to the history of the d ivision
of labour as u n iversal isation of prod u ctive life ; the
contrad iction in the l ife of the i ndividual between its
existence as a person and its existence as a member
of a class. This second theme can be seen as derived
from the first. Potentially universal, labour can no longer
be a " m eans".

Much Ado About Nothing

195
Those who think that Marx and Engels, between 1 843 51 Marx, The German Idea/-
and 1 8 4 6 , with the abolition of labour and the other ogy (MEcw 5), p. n
abolitions, g rasped what we are now able to con-
ceive of com m u n ist revolution don't real ise that it is 52 The text to which TC
the very fact of conceiving the revolution as abolition refe r, Engels' Principles
of labour which d isti n g u ished their vision from ours. of Communism, an early
The abolition of labour, for Marx and many others, was d raft of the Commu-
the emancipation of the proletariat not, of cou rse, as nist Manifesto, h as in its
an affi rmation of labo u r, but as a movement of the E n g l i s h tran slation the
affirmation of a class which, because i n the old world " l i beration of the proletar-
it is "rid of the old world"51 , represents the movement iat" rather than "labo u r"
wh ich abolishes existing conditions: comm u n ism. But (MECW 6), p. 341.
since simu ltaneously, as action, comm u n ism exists as
the defin ition of a class of this society, it fol lows that
it is its i ndependent organisation, its reinforcement
and its p u rs u it of its own ends, the d efence of its
i nterests in this society which becomes identified with
communism itself. Less than a year after The German
Ideology, the abolition of labour explicitly becomes
the " l i beration of labour"52, because the "abol ition of
labour" was the emancipation of the proletariat and
the emancipation of the proletariat was its actual exist-
ence as action in the present society. At the moment
when the old theory became coherent and concrete
it flies into pieces.

The years 46-47 do not mark the passage between two

theories of communism or revolution : a "radical" theory
which, from the moment of its entry on the h istorical
stage, is supposed to have announced, thanks to a
particular situation of the proletariat, the quintessence
of Communism, and a theory of the proletariat as class
of the capitalist mode of production destined to defend
its interests with i n it, a theory of the defence of the
wage. It marks a passage from a philosophy of the
proletariat, the revolution and communism, to a theory
of the proletariat, the revolution and communism. This
latter is not our own , but the former still less so. I n this
philosophical communism, under the same words, the
concepts are absolutely d ifferent from our own, are

Theorie Comm uniste

196
i nscribed in a completely d ifferent problematic. It is
i l l u sory to try to use some form ulas as if they could be
applied to class struggle as it exists today.

The revolutionary humanism of the "young" Marx, which

h e shares with all the theoreticians of the epoch,
amou nts, i n the period which comes to a close i n
1 84 8 , t o t h e bel ief that capital ism a n d t h e domination
of the bourgeoisie is only an ephemeral state ( Marx
broke from this position before ' 4 8 ) . The proletariat
is only a class of transition, an u n stable social form
resu lting from the decomposition of society.

From the moment the contrad iction was posed, its

overcom i n g was s u p posed to be i m m inent. What
escaped Marx and Engels at that early point was that
capital cou ld be the development of the contradictions
which give rise to it, that they could be its raison d'etre,
that which nourishes it, that they could be the principle
of its accumu lation. They d i d n 't see development as
part of the contrad iction, it was only anecdotal i n rela
tion to it, and could well not be from the moment that
The Contrad iction is. But it is thus the contrad iction
itself which is purely formal because its development
is unnecessary.

We could treat the history of capital as u n i m portant

because in 1 845 ( or 1 8 67) and in 2007 it is identical in
itself, and conclude that what was said of commu nism
at its beginning is fixed in stone. But those who believe
that the history of capital is without i mportance in the
sense that, from the beginning, it is as it is in itself, have
not yet managed to become Hegelian. Parmenides
suffices. They leave the development alongside being
as something which doesn't form part of it, something
accidental. Contrary to the Marx of 1 843-4 6 , if we
can and m u st speak of revolution today as the aboli
tion of work ( and all the rest) we do it on the basis
of the i nternal contrad ictions of the capitalist mode
of production, of exploitation, of the situation of the

Much A do A b o u t Nothing
197
 proletariat, without any reference to the " person " of 53 p. 133
the proletariat, to a " h uman essence", to " man as com-
m u nity". We are i n contradiction with capital on the
basis of what we are, that is to say of what capital
is, and not from what we could be, a potential which
wou ld somehow already exist as suffering. It is the
breakdown of p rogrammatism which, at the end of
the sixties and beg i n n i n g of the seventies, momentar-
ily resu rrected the very conditions of its emergence
as if they could also be those of its overcoming. We
momentarily all became Feuerbachians again , . . . some
of us remained so. They have thus made of an ideology
born of the fai l u re of ' 6 8 , the eternal form ula of the
comm u nist revolution.

ii The " b e i n g " o f the proletariat

The q u estion of the " b e i n g " of the proletariat was

raised and criticised at the beg i n n i n g of the previous
section. Here we consider more closely the central
role g iven to labou r in the "tension" within this "being".

"The tension between t h e s u b m ission to work a n d

the critique o f work h a s been active s i nce the dawn
of capital ism". There we have it : the "being" of the
proletariat. O n the o n e side: t h e "adherence" and
" investment" which come with the wage relation, yet
also the famous "anthropological dimension" of work53;
but the first wou ldn't be able to function without the
second, the other side: the desire for "evasion" and
"crit i q u e " of work. But can o n e o p pose an "anthro
pological d imension"? No. I n the "tension" d efined
by Dauve and Nesic the "anthropological d i mension"
effectively possesses the status of a mediation. It is
that which permits the "adherence" of the worker to
his work, but simu ltaneously, combined this time with
the " rejection" of this work, that which o pens other
social horizons.

Theorie Comm uniste

198
As always, if we h ave a " revolutionary b e i n g " t h i s 54 p . 138
means that something i n this being is the seed of its
overcoming. I n the revolution, the evasion and critique 55 ibid.
of work m ust be combined with adherence in so far
as the former is a/so anthropological. 56 ibid.

Dauve and Nesic have u ncovered the "secret" and

the " mystery" over which Marx slaved away all h i s
l ife : the " integration" o f the proletariat w i t h the "tri
u mphant and destructive m arch of capital".54 Such
"enslavement" and " integration" i s s u p posed to be
fou nded on the anthropological nature of work which
is p revented from reject i ng its enslavement by the
fetishism of commod ities which "veils the social rela
tions producing capital".55 For Dauve and Nesic capital
is not a relation or production which defines us, but
something which makes us adhere. The social relation
explains why we enter it, but then the whole problem
is there : we no more enter a social relation than we
adhere to it. Fetishism and its veil are necessary to a
problematic for which the social defi n ition of c lasses,
or more trivially i n dividuals, is a matter of adherence.
However, it isn't as exchangers that proletarians and
capitalists confront each other, but as poles of a social
relation, as classes.

It is the relation of exploitation and its reproduction,

the capital relation, which includes exchange, and not
the other way around. It is because it is a relation of
exploitation that, if we want to put it l i ke that, "capi
talism i mposes daily i n real l ife and impresses on our
minds: the economy as something obvious and inevi
table, the necessity of exchang i n g commodities, of
buying and selling labou r!'56 But then it's not a kind of
blackmail , an imposition we must obey " . . . if we wish to
avoid want, m isery and dictatorship;' that i ntergrates
us i nto the "destructive march of capital!' We are not
i ntergrated by the fetishism of commodities (wh ich is
d ifferent to that of capital, i.e. the autonomisation of
the elements of production in their relation to profit)

Much Ado About Nothing

199
but by the very structu re of the social relation which 57 The term "social bond" o r
is our own , exploitation - a relation which has turned "social l i n k" (lien socia,
exchange into an immanent moment of the domination is e m ployed by Dauve
of living labour by objectified labo u r. The possibility alongside othe rs such
of teari n g away the " mystifying appearance of t h e as "ad hesion" "cohe
transaction" is situated with i n the contradictions of sion" and "i ntegration"
exploitation, the abol ition of exploitation is not depend to describe the means
ent on the tearing of the vei l . If we read Dauve and by which capital com
Nesic closely it seems that the "social bond" is for mands the allegiance of
them what authorises the reprod uction of capital .57 those it exploits. See e.g.
Everything is i nverted and appears as if the actors of G i lles Dauve & Karl Ne
capital ist society imagine their belong ing to society sic. Whither The World
as an environment. The "social system" is based on ( Troploin Newsletter no. 2
those it enslaves because the fetishism of commodity 2002) p. 13 and 28.
exchange veils the social relation productive of capital.
The point is to overcome "the economy as something
obvious and inevitable:'

The "social bond" is always the reprod uction of the

capitalist social relation, always the self-presupposi
tion as result of the contradiction between the classes
in the sense that capital is always the dominant pole,
assuring and constraining reproduction. I n reality cap
ital i s m is only " based on t h ose it enslaves" to the
extent that "those it enslaves" exist o n ly i n the "en
slavement" which defines them. They won't get out
of t h i s slavery by teari n g away a "ve i l ", but only by
abolishing this slavery, by abol ishing themselves. This
is only possible due to the contrad ictory process of
this enslavement for capital itself. The contrad iction
between the proletariat and capital is a contradic
tion for the very thing for which it is the dynam ic: the
capitalist mode of production. It's i n this sense that it
is a contradiction which can lead to its own abolition.
Capital ism is not only " based on those it enslaves",
but it is also in the very nat u re of this enslavement
that the capacity for the latter to become revolution
ary resides. It is the object as totality - the capital ist
mode of prod uction - that is in con tradiction with it
self in the con tradiction of its elements, because this

Theorie Comm uniste

200
contrad iction with the other is for every element, to 58 p. 1 3 9
the extent that is its other, a contrad iction with itself.
The overcoming of the contrad iction of exploitation is 59 p. 143
provided by its non-symmetrical aspect (su bsumption
of labour under capital) . The situation of the proletariat
is the self-contrad iction of the reproduction of capital.
When we say that exploitation is a contradiction for
itself we define the situation and revolutionary activ-
ity of the proletariat.

Dauve and Nesic expressly say :

"The proletarian only starts acting a s a revolutionary

when he goes beyond the negative of his condition
and begins to create something positive out of it,
i.e. something that su bverts the existing order. It's
not for lack of a critique of work that the proletarians
have not ' m ade the revol ution', but because they
stayed with i n a negative critique of work:'58

We are sti l l waiting for them to define "a positive cri

tique of work:' They avoid doing this because it would
requ i re them also to defi ne this anthropological work
which capital imperfectly subsumes to itself and which,
i n relation to the refusal of this subsumption, g ives
us the revolution. Dauve and Nesic want the l i bera
tion of true labour. S uch " l iving labour with u niversal
grasp" only exists as such, that is, as abstraction, to
the extent that capital nou rishes it ; it is nothing more
that its relation to capital.

" Labour power overcoming its condition and rising to

its historic task of freeing itself from its chains, and
thus freeing humanitY:'59 What an unfortunate and truly
determ in ist formula. Doubly u nfortunate, for not only
does it take u p that dominical determ i n ism of the "old
days" soapbox discourse, it ind icates all the hidden
discourse of Dauve and Nesic - that of the l i beration
of labo u r. Labour power "freeing itself from its chains"
is a contrad iction i n terms. It's true that it has already

Much Ado About Nothing

201
"overcome its condition", but this j ust renders every- 60 p. 1 47
thing more confused . If it "overcomes its condition" it
is no longer labou r-power, there is nothing l eft which 61 p. 151
can be called by that name.

The conclusion of Dauve and Nesic's text is g iven the

authoritative stamp of a q u ote from Babeuf: "we are
not of this world!' Sylvain Marechal took the hospice
as the model of comm u n ist organisation, Babeuf took
the army. To call proletarians at the turn of the 1 gh
century "men from nowhere" is to cast around phrases
without consideration. We woul d recommend, on this
s u bject, the reading of E.P. Thompson's The Making
of the English Working Class, of which G i l les Dauve
was one of the translators, to understand all the his
torical , cultural and geographical rooted ness which
formed this class and on the basis of which it formed
itself. Dauve and Nesic do not conceive of the over
com ing of the capitalist mode of production on the
basis of the contemporary situation and practice of
the working class i n this mode of production, within it,
as its contradictory process ; they write : "the decline
of workerism was accompanied by the loss of a point
of view allowing a perspective on the whole of this
society, gauging and j u d g i n g it from the outside in
order to conceive and propose another".60

After regretting not being able to "judge" and "gauge"

society "from the outside" i n order to propose another,
they wait for the proletarians to act as if they were
outside : " Revolution will only be possible when the
proletarians act as if they were strangers to this world,
its outsiders, and will relate to a u niversal d i mension,
that of a classless society, of a h uman comm u nity!'61
What does it mean to act as if one was outside? N ote
the circumlocutions of the form ula. Already how to
act "outside" is hardly obvious, but to act "as if' one
was outside . . . The outside connects to the u niversal
d imension : we are in total conceptual phantasmago
ria. One of the most d ifficult things to understand is

Theorie Communiste
202
the nature of contrad ictio n : that the capitalist social
relation can be on the one hand totally ours and we
can only be it, and, on the other, that we could in that
very respect abolish it.

The abolition of the proletarian condition is the self

transformation of proletarians into immed iately social
i n d ividuals, it is the struggle against capital which
will make us such, because this struggle is a relation
that impl ies us with it. The production of communism
is effectuated by a class which finds the content of
communism in its own class situation, without having
to attach itself to any " u n iversal d i mension". Comm u
n isation is carried o u t i n the struggle o f t h e proletariat
against capital. Abol ishing exchange, the division of
labo u r, the structure of the corporation, the state . . . ,
are measu res which are necessarily taken u p in the
course of struggle, with their retreats and their sudden
stops they are just as much tactical measu res through
which communisation is constructed as the strategy of
the revolution. It is thus, through the struggle of a class
against capital, that the i mmediately social individual
is produced. It is produced by the proletariat i n the
abolition of capital (the final relation between capital
and the proletariat) , and not by proletarians who will
no longer be completely proletarians acting "as if they
were outside". But then, protest the delicate souls, "we
wou l d be forced . . . "

Proletarian activity does not determ ine itself because

it has no " direct l i n k with capital ," it determines itself
because it is its relation to capital and nothing more
and this relation is a contradiction. That can o n ly be
seen as determ inism if one wants to define a subject
prior to its relations in which alone it exists, which
d efi n e it, and i n which it acts. If we separate the
subject and its action from its "frame" we can only
conceive of their relation in the alternative of determin
ism and freedom.

Much Ado A b o u t Nothing

203
i i i "The cause of o u r fa i l u res" 62 p. 150

Why the fai l u re ? In a certain way Dauve and Nesic

give an answer: the revolution fai led because the pro
letariat failed to make the revolution. They never get
beyond that tautology and they cannot. It is inevitable
because to get beyond that tautology would be to
determ ine the historical action of proletarians, it would
be to establish a link between the d evelopment of
capital and proletarian activity. The tautology is struc
tu ral to their thought. If you mess with the tautology
you mess with freedom.

Dauve and Nesic can only accuse TC of "determinism"

by supposing that TC shares their own fixed, normative
and invariant conception of the revolution. It is obvi
ous that in such a problematic the revolution cannot
" result from a particular stage", for it is " i nvariant in its
deep content".

For us, the revolution of which we speak today is, if

you wi l l , the product of the current situation ; it is not
The Revol ution rendered at last possible by the current
situation. In the problematic of Dauve and Nesic TC
is determ in ist, what Dauve and Nesic haven't noticed
is that TC abandoned that problematic t h i rty years
ago. They critique TC as if TC was just g iving another
response to the same problematic.

After 1 8 pages intended to show that it never (and

could never have) existed, Dauve and Nesic allow
the su pposition that the worki n g class was " e ntan
gled i n its identification with work".62 We wou l d n 't
say the class was ever "entangled", we would rather
say strengthened by its iden tification with work. We
don't share Dauve and N esic's normative view of the
revolution. U ntil a recent period there was no revolu
tion without t h i s " identification with work" (or else
there has never been a revolutionary movement) . If the
proletariat is defined through accumulation and acts

Th eorie Comm uniste

204
accord ing ly, its fai l u re is not interior to its practice ; it
l ies in its relation to the cou nter-revolution. This prac
tice is a determ inant practice and not a comm u n ist
practice inherently propelled towards an i nternal im
possibil ity. Th is practice is d i rected at the com m u n ity
of labour, and it has really been rendered i m possi
ble i n the class stru g g l e t h ro u g h its relation to the
counter-revol ution.

If we s ay today t h at the revol ut i o n s were beaten

on the basis of what they were, that their intimate
relat i o n s h i p to the c o u nter revo l ut i o n was fou n d
wit h i n the m (as certain left com m u n ist tendencies
perceived) , if we d o not rep l ay h i story s u p po s i n g
that the revol utions c o u l d have b e e n anything else,
we nonetheless don't say that they lacked anything,
we don't attribute to them the consciousness which
resu lts precisely from their fai l u res and cou nter-revo
lutions. The Russian proletarians of 1 9 1 7, German of
1 9 1 9 , or S panish of 1 93 6 , acted as such, they car
ried out the revol utionary movement which was theirs
i n all consciousness and all contrad iction. The l i m
its o f their movement were i mposed on t h e m b y the
counter-revo l ution that they had to fight. What we
can say now of these movements, we say now, and if
we say why they failed we owe it to the com bats as
they were waged. Our analysis is a result; the result
doesn 't pre -exist the thing. Anyone is free to explain
what was on the basis of what ought to have been,
and to imagine the latter; that isn't o u r method .

" What privi lege permits the observer i n the year

2000 to know that his standpoint is ultimately the
right one? Nothing can guarantee that in 2050, after
50 more years of capital ism, a even more broad
ranging overview won't establish for x + y reasons
the ways in which the proletarians of the year 2000
. . . remained h istorically constrained by the l i m its of
their times, and thus that com munism wasn't actu
ally i n the offi ng in the year 2000 any more than it

Much A do About Nothing

205
 was in 1 970 or 1 9 1 9, but that now a new period is &3 Dauve, ' H u man, All To o
ushering itself i n , allowing us to genuinely g rasp the H u m an ?' p. 91 above.
past from the new, proper viewpoint!'63

The point of view is a good one because, today, it's the

only one we have, because it is ours. We don't aspire
to an eternal g rasp of com m u nism because such a
thing doesn't exist. Of course we may be "constrai ned
by our l i m its", but for as long as the com bat contin
ues these l i m its are what we are, o u r force which will
perhaps become o u r undoing. We know that if, i n the
cu rrent cycle, the l i m it of the class activity of the pro
letariat is to act as a class, then noth ing is determined
i n advance, and overcom i n g this contrad iction w i l l
be arduous. But w e a l s o know that for us, now, com
munism is the abolition of all classes and that it is the
overcoming of all previous l i m its of class struggle.

We don't bel ieve i n the unchanging being of the prole

tariat or i n the invariant need of the h uman comm u n ity
since time immemorial. We think the situation in which
we fi nd o u rselves : our cycle of struggle carries such
a content and such a structu re of the confrontation
between capital and the proletariat, and for us it is
the com m u n ist revolution, because for u s it is rigor
ously i m possible to envisage other forms and other
contents.

Theorie Comm uniste

206
207
A FTERWORD

208
The debate between Theorie Comm uniste (TC) and
Troploin (Dauve & Nesic) that we have reprod u ced
revolves around the fundamental question of how to
theorise the h i story and actual ity of class stru g g l e
and revolution i n the capitalist epoch . As we have
stressed in our introd uction, both sides of the d ebate
were products of the same political m ilieu i n France
in the aftermath of the events of 1 9 6 8 ; both g roups
share, to this day, an u n derstandi ng of the movement
which abolishes capital ist social relations as a move
ment of c o m m u n i s at i o n . Accord i n g to t h i s shared
view, the transition to communism is not something
that happens after the revolution. Rather, the revo
lution as com m u n isation is itself the d issolution of
capitalist social relations through commun ist measures
taken by the proletariat, abolishing the enterprise form,
the commod ity form, exchange, money, wage labour
and val ue, and destroying the state. Com m u n i sation,
then, is the i mmed iate prod uction of communism : the
self-abolition of the proletariat throug h its abolition of
capital and state.

What sharply d ifferentiates TC's position from that of

Troploin, however, is the way i n which the two g roups
theorise the prod uction, or the historical production,
of this movement of comm u n isation. Neither g rounds
the poss i b i l ity of s u ccessfu l com m u n i st revol u t i on
on an "objective" decadence of capital ism ; however,
Troploin's conception of the history of class struggle,
i n common with much of the wider ultra-left, is of a
fluctuating antagonism between classes, an ebb and
flow of class struggle, accord ing to the contingencies
of each historical conjuncture. In this wider conception,
the revolutionary struggle of the p roletariat appears
to be or is submerged at some points in history, only
to re-emerge at other "high points" (e.g. 1 84 8 , 1 87 1 ,
1 9 1 7-2 1 , 1 93 6 , 1 9 68-9) . On this view, we are c u r
rently experiencing a prolonged downturn in class

Afterword

209
struggle (at least in the advanced capitalist countries), 1 Marx, 18"' Brumaire
and it is a case of waiting for the next re-emergence (MEcw 11), p.105.
of the communist movement, or for the revolutionary
proletariat to carry out its subversive work: "Well bur-
rowed, old Mole!"1

Thus for Troploin, communism as communisation is

an ever-present (if at times submerged) possibility,
one which, even if there is no guarantee that it will
be realised, is an invariant in the capitalist epoch. By
contrast, for TC communisation is the specific form
which the communist revolution must take in the cur
rent cycle of struggle. In distinction from Trop/oin, then,
TC are able to self-reflexively ground their conception
of communisation in an understanding of capitalist
history as cycles of struggle.

CYCLES OF STRUGGLE AND PHASES OF ACCUMULATION

TC historicise the contradictory relation between capi

tal and proletariat on the basis of a periodisation of the
subsumption of labour under capital; this periodisation
distinguishes cycles of struggle corresponding to the
qualitative shifts in the relation of exploitation. This
history for TC comprises three broadly identifiable peri
ods: ( 1) formal subsumption - ending around 1900;
(2) the first phase of real subsumption - from 1900
to the 1970s; (3) the second phase of real subsump
tion - from the 1970s to the present.

Importantly for TC, the subsumption of labour under

capital is not merely a question of the technical organi
sation of labour in the immediate production process,
in which formal subsumption would be paired with
the extraction of absolute surplus value (through the
lengthening of the working day) and real subsumption
with the extraction of relative surplus value (through
increasing productivity by the introduction of new

Endnotes
210
production techniques, allowing workers to reproduce 2 We will explore these is
the value of their wages in less time thus perform sues further in the next
ing more surplus labour in a working day of a given issue of Endnotes.
length ) . In TC's conception, the character and extent
or degree of subsumption of labour under capital is
also, and perhaps fundamentally, determined by the
way in which the two poles of the capital-labour rela
tion, i.e. capital and proletariat, relate to each other as
classes of capitalist society. Thus for TC, the key to the
history of capital is the changing mode of reproduction
of capitalist social relations as a whole according to
the dialectical development of the relation between
classes. Of course this development is itself intrinsi
cally bound up with the exigencies of surplus-value
extraction. In short, for TC the subsumption of labour
under capital mediates, and is mediated by the specific
historical character of the class relation at the level of
society as a whole.

There is something problematic both in the way TC use

the concept of subsumption to periodise capitalism,
and in the way this usage partially obscures one of
the most significant aspects of the development of the
class relation which their theory otherwise brings into
focus. Strictly speaking, formal and real subsumption
of labour under capital only apply to the immediate
process of production. In what sense, for example, can
anything beyond the labour-process ever be said to
be actually subsumed by capital rather than merely
dominated or transformed by it?2 TC, however, attempt
to theorise under the rubric of these categories of
subsumption the character of the capitalist class rela
tion per se rather than simply the mode in which the
labour-process actually becomes the valorisation
process of capital. Yet it is through their questionable
theoretical deployment of the categories of subsump
tion that TC are able to advance a new conception of
the historical development of the class relation. Within

Afterword
211
this periodisa tion th e degree of in tegra tion of the 3 By "self-pres u pposition
circuits of reproduction of capital and labour-po wer of capital" TC mean the
is of decisive importance. The key to the historical sense i n which capital
periodisation of the class relation is the extent to which estab l i s h es itself both
the reprod uction of labou r-power, and hence of the as condition and result
proletariat as class, is i ntegrated with the circuit of of its own process.
self-presu pposition of capital.3 This is expressed in
TC's use (fo l l owing the
TC's " period of formal subsumption" is characterised Fre nch edition of Capi
by an u n-med iated, external relation between capital taD of the term double
and proletariat : the reproduction of the working-class moulinet, s i g n ifying two
is not fully integrated into the cycle of valorisation of i ntersecti ng cycles:
capital . In this period, the proletariat constitutes a
positive pole of the relation, and is able to assert its
autonomy vis-a-vis capital at the same time as it fi nds
itself empowered by capitalist development. However
the rising power of the class with i n capitalist society
and its autonomous affi rmation steadily come into con
trad iction with each other. I n the crush ing of workers'
autonomy in the revolutions and counter-revolutions
at the end of the Fi rst World War this contrad iction is
resolved in an empowerment of the class which reveals i . capitalist process of
production
itself as n ot h i n g more than capitalist development
itself. This q ual itative shift i n the class relation marks The double moulinet
t h e e n d of t h e transition from t h e period of formal
subsumption to the first phase of real subsumption.
From this point on the reproduction of labou r-power
becomes fully integrated, albeit i n a heavily mediated
fashion, i nto the capitalist economy, and the process
of production is transformed i n accordance with the
req u i rements of the valorisation of capital. The rela
tion between capital and proletariat i n this phase of
subsumption is one which is becoming internal, but
mediated throu g h the state, the d ivision of the world
economy into national areas and Eastern or Western
zones of acc u m u lation (each with their accompany
ing models of "third world" development) , collective
bargaining within the framework of the national labour-

Endnotes

212
market and the Ford ist deals l inking prod uctivity and
wage increases

The positivity of the proletarian pole withi n the class

relation d u ring the phase of formal subsumption and
the first phase of real subsumption is expressed in what
TC term the "programmatism" of the workers' move
ment, whose organisations, parties and trade u n ions
( whether social democratic or comm u n ist, anarchist
or syn d ical ist ) represented the rising power of the
proletariat and upheld the programme of the l iberation
of labour and the self-affi rmation of the working class.
The character of the class relation i n the period of the
prog rammatic workers' movement thus determ ines the
commun ist revolution in this cycl e of struggle as the
self-affi rmation of one pole withi n the capital-labour
relation. As such the communist revolution does not do
away with the relation itself, but merely alters its terms,
and hence carries within it the counter-revolution in the
shape of workers' management of the economy and
the conti nued accumu lation of capital . Decentralised
management of production through factory councils
on the one hand and central-plan n i n g by the workers'
state on the other are two sides of the same coin, two
forms of the same content: workers' power as both
revolution and cou nter-revolution.

For TC this cycle of stru ggle is brought to a close by

the movements of 1 9 6 8-73, which mark the obso
lescence of the prog ramme of the l i beration of labou r
and the self-affirmation of the proletariat ; the capitalist
restructuring in the aftermath of these struggles and
the crisis in the relation between capital and proletariat
sweeps away or hollows out the institutions of the old
workers' movement. The confl icts of 1 9 6 8-73 thus
usher i n a new cycle of acc u m u lation and struggle,
which T C term the second phase of real s u b s u m p
tion, characterised by the capitalist restructuring or

Afterword

213
counter-revolution from 1 974-95 which fundamentally
alters the character of the relation between capital
and proletariat. Gone now are all the constraints to
acc u m u lation - all i m pe d i m e nts to the fl u i d ity a n d
i nternational m o b i l ity of capital - represented by r i
g i d it i e s of n at i o n a l l a b o u r - markets, welfare, t h e
division o f t h e world economy into Cold War blocs and
the protected national development these allowed on
the " periphery" of the world economy.

The crisis of the social compact based on the Fordist

p rodu ctive model and the Keynesian Welfare State
issues in financialisation, the d ismantling and reloca
tion of industrial prod uction, the breaking of workers'
power, de-regu lation, the ending of collective bargain
i ng, privatisation, the move to temporary, flexib i lised
labo u r and the prol iferation of new service industries.
The global capitalist restructuring - the formation of an
increasingly u n ified g lobal labo u r market, the i mple
mentation of neo-liberal policies, the l iberalisation of
m arkets, and international downward pres s u re on
wages and conditions - represents a cou nter-revo
l ution whose result is that capital and the proletariat
now confront each other d i rectly on a g lobal scale.
The c i rc u its of reproduction of capital and labour
power - circuits through which the class relation itself
is reproduced - are now fully i ntegrated : these circuits
are now immediately internally related. The contradic
tion between capital and proletariat is now displaced
to the level of their reproduction as classes ; from this
moment on, what is at stake is the reproduction of the
class relation itself.

With the restructu ri n g of capital (wh ich i s the d is

solution of all the med iations i n t h e class relation)
arises the i m possibility of the proletariat to relate to
itself positively again st capital : t h e i m poss i b i lity of
proletarian autonomy. From being a positive pole of

Endnotes

214
the relation as i nterlocutor with, or antagonist to, the 4 This fundamental nega
capitalist class, the proletariat is transformed i nto a tivity in the proletariat's
negative pole. Its very being qua proletariat, whose self-relation vis-a-vis
reproduction is fully i ntegrated with i n the c i rcuit of capital is expressed by
capital, becomes external to itself. What defines the TC's use of the term
cu rrent cycle of struggle i n contrad istinction to the ecart, which may be
previous one is the character of the proletariat's self trans lated as "d iver-
relation which is now immediately its relation to capital. gence", swerve" or "gap".
As TC put it, in the cu rrent cycle the proletariat's own For TC this concept ex
class belonging is obj ectified against it as exterior presses the idea that the
constraint, as capital.4 proletariat's action as a
class is the l i m i t of this
This fundamental transformation i n the character of cycle of struggle; for its
the class relation, which produces this inversion in struggles have n o other
the proletariat's self-relation as pole of the relation of horizon apart from its
exploitation, alters the character of class struggles, own reprod uctio n as a
and causes the proletariat to call i nto question its own class, yet it is i ncapable
existence as class of the capitalist mode of produc of affi rming this as such.
tion. Thus for TC the revolution as commu n isation is
an historically specific production : it is the horizon of s For a d i scussion of this
this cycle of struggle.5 problematic i n relation to
concrete struggles, see
A P R O D U C E D OVERCO M I N G TC's 'Self-organisation is
the fi rst act of the revo
For TC, t h e relation between capital a n d proletariat lution; it then becomes
is not one between two separate subjects, but one an obstacle which the
of reciprocal implication i n which both poles of the revolution has to over
relation are constituted as moments of a self-d iffer come: Avai lable on l i b-
entiating total ity. It is this totality itself - this moving com.org
contradiction - wh ich produces its own supersession
i n the revol utionary action of the proletariat against
its own class-bein g , against capital. This immanent,
d ialectical conception of the historical cou rse of the
capitalist class relation supersedes the related dual
isms of objectivism/ subjectivism and spontaneism/
voluntarism which characterised most Marxist theory
in the 2Q'h Centu ry and i ndeed u p to the present. The
dynam ism and changing character of this relation is

Afterword

215
thus grasped as a u n ified process and not simply in 6 W e w i l l explore these is-
terms of waves of proletarian offensive and capitalist sues further i n the n ext
counter-offensive. issue of Endnotes.

Accord ing to TC, it is the qualitative transformations

withi n the capitalist class relation that determine the
revolutionary horizon of the cu rrent cycle of struggle
as comm u n isation. For us, it is also true at a more
g e n e ral level of abstraction that t h e contrad i ctory
relation between capital and proletariat has always
poi nted beyon d itself, to the extent that - from its
very origins - it has prod uced its own overcom i n g
as t h e i m manent horizon o f actual stru g g l e s . T h i s
horizon , h owever, is i n extricable from the real, hi s
torical forms that the moving contrad iction takes. It
is thus only in this qualified sense that we can tal k
of com m unism transhistorically ( i.e. throughout the
history of the capitalist mode of prod uction ) . As we
see it, the commu n ist movement, understood not as
a particu larisation of the totality- neither as a move

ment of comm u n i sts nor of the class - but rather as

the total ity itself, is both transhistorical and variant
accord ing to the historically specific configu rations
of the capitalist class relation. What determ ines the
comm un ist movement- the communist revolution - to
take the specific form of com m u n isation i n the cur
rent cycle is the very d ialectic of integration of the
circu its of reprod uction of capital and labou r-power.6
It is this which produces the rad ical negativity of the
proletariat's self-relation vis-a-vis capital. In this period,
in throwing off its "radical chains" the proletariat does
not generalise its condition to the whole of society,
but dissolves its own being immediately through the
abolition of capital ist social relations.

Endnotes

216
endnotes
clo 56a infoshop
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