The Joy of Revolution
Chapter 1: Some Facts of Life
Utopia or bust
Stalinist
communism and reformist socialism are merely variants of
capitalism
Representative
democracy versus delegate democracy
Irrationalities of capitalism
Some exemplary modern revolts
Some common objections
Increasing dominance of the
spectacle
Chapter 1: Some Facts of Life
We can comprehend this world only by contesting it as a
whole. . . . The root of the prevailing lack of imagination cannot
be grasped unless one is able to imagine what is lacking, that is, what is
missing, hidden, forbidden, and yet possible, in modern life.
Situationist International(1)
Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could
be and what actually exists.
Its hardly necessary to go into all the problems in the world today most
of them are widely known, and to dwell on them usually does little more than dull us to
their reality. But even if we are stoic enough to endure the misfortunes of
others, the present social deterioration ultimately impinges on us all. Those who
dont face direct physical repression still have to face the mental repressions
imposed by an increasingly mean, stressful, ignorant and ugly world. Those who escape
economic poverty cannot escape the general impoverishment of life.
And even life at this pitiful level cannot continue for long. The ravaging of the
planet by the global development of capitalism has brought us to the point where humanity
may become extinct within a few decades.
Yet this same development has made it possible to abolish the system of hierarchy and
exploitation that was previously based on material scarcity and to inaugurate a new,
genuinely liberated form of society.
Plunging from one disaster to another on its way to mass insanity and ecological
apocalypse, this system has developed a momentum that is out of control, even by its
supposed masters. As we approach a world in which we wont be able to leave our
fortified ghettoes without armed guards, or even go outdoors without applying sunscreen
lest we get skin cancer, its hard to take seriously those who advise us to beg for a
few reforms.
What is needed, I believe, is a worldwide participatory-democracy revolution that would
abolish both capitalism and the state. This is admittedly a big order, but Im afraid
that nothing less can get to the root of our problems. It may seem absurd to talk about
revolution; but all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which
is even more absurd.
Before going into what this revolution would involve and responding to
some typical objections, it should be stressed that it has nothing to do with the
repugnant stereotypes that are usually evoked by the word (terrorism, revenge, political
coups, manipulative leaders preaching self-sacrifice, zombie followers chanting
politically correct slogans). In particular, it should not be confused with the two
principal failures of modern social change, Stalinist communism and reformist
socialism.
After decades in power, first in Russia and later in many other countries, it has
become obvious that Stalinism is the total opposite of a liberated society. The origin of
this grotesque phenomenon is less obvious. Trotskyists and others have tried to
distinguish Stalinism from the earlier Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky. There are
differences, but they are more of degree than of kind. Lenins The State and
Revolution, for example, presents a more coherent critique of the state than can be
found in most anarchist writings; the problem is that the radical aspects of Lenins
thought merely ended up camouflaging the Bolsheviks actual authoritarian practice.
Placing itself above the masses it claimed to represent, and with a corresponding internal
hierarchy between party militants and their leaders, the Bolshevik Party was already well
on its way toward creating the conditions for the development of Stalinism while Lenin and
Trotsky were still firmly in control.(2)
But we have to be clear about what failed if we are ever going to do any better. If
socialism means peoples full participation in the social decisions that affect their
own lives, it has existed neither in the Stalinist regimes of the East nor in the welfare
states of the West. The recent collapse of Stalinism is neither a vindication of
capitalism nor proof of the failure of Marxist communism. Anyone who has ever
bothered to read Marx (most of his glib critics obviously have not) is aware that Leninism
represents a severe distortion of Marxs thought and that Stalinism is a total parody
of it. Nor does government ownership have anything to do with communism in its authentic
sense of common, communal ownership; it is merely a different type of capitalism in which
state-bureaucratic ownership replaces (or merges with) private-corporate ownership.
The long spectacle of opposition between these two varieties of capitalism hid their
mutual reinforcement. Serious conflicts were confined to proxy battles in the Third World
(Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan, etc.). Neither side ever made any real attempt to overthrow
the enemy in its own heartland. (The French Communist Party sabotaged the May 1968 revolt;
the Western powers, which intervened massively in countries where they were not wanted,
refused to send so much as the few antitank weapons desperately needed by the 1956
Hungarian insurgents.) Guy Debord noted in 1967 that Stalinist state-capitalism had
already revealed itself as merely a poor cousin of classical Western
capitalism, and that its decline was beginning to deprive Western rulers of the
pseudo-opposition that reinforced them by seeming to represent the sole alternative to
their system. The bourgeoisie is in the process of losing the adversary that
objectively supported it by providing an illusory unification of all opposition to the
existing order (The Society of the Spectacle, §§110-111).
Although Western leaders pretended to welcome the recent Stalinist collapse as a
natural victory for their own system, none of them had seen it coming and they now
obviously have no idea what to do about all the problems it poses except to cash in on the
situation before it totally falls apart. The monopolistic multinational corporations that
proclaim free enterprise as a panacea are quite aware that free-market
capitalism would long ago have exploded from its own contradictions had it not been saved
despite itself by a few New Deal-style pseudosocialist reforms.
Those reforms (public services, social insurance, the eight-hour day, etc.) may have
ameliorated some of the more glaring defects of the system, but in no way have they led
beyond it. In recent years they have not even kept up with its accelerating crises. The
most significant improvements were in any case won only by long and often violent popular
struggles that eventually forced the hands of the bureaucrats: the leftist parties and
labor unions that pretended to lead those struggles have functioned primarily as safety
valves, coopting radical tendencies and greasing the wheels of the social machine.
As the situationists have shown, the bureaucratization of radical movements, which has
degraded people into followers constantly betrayed by their leaders, is linked
to the increasing spectacularization of modern capitalist society, which has
degraded people into spectators of a world over which they have no control a
development that has become increasingly glaring, though it is usually only superficially
understood.
Taken together, all these considerations point to the conclusion that a liberated
society can be created only by the active participation of the people as a whole, not by
hierarchical organizations supposedly acting on their behalf. The point is not to choose
more honest or responsive leaders, but to avoid granting independent power to
any leaders whatsoever. Individuals or groups may initiate radical actions, but a
substantial and rapidly expanding portion of the population must take part if a movement
is to lead to a new society and not simply to a coup installing new rulers.
I wont repeat all the classic socialist and anarchist critiques of
capitalism and the state; they are already widely known, or at least widely accessible.
But in order to cut through some of the confusions of traditional political rhetoric, it
may be helpful to summarize the basic types of social organization. For the sake of
clarity, I will start out by examining the political and economic
aspects separately, though they are obviously interlinked. It is as futile to try to
equalize peoples economic conditions through a state bureaucracy as it is to try to
democratize society while the power of money enables the wealthy few to control the
institutions that determine peoples awareness of social realities. Since the system
functions as a whole it can be fundamentally changed only as a whole.
To begin with the political aspect, roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of
government:
(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
____ a) consensus
____ b) majority rule
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship
The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule
and covert minority rule camouflaged by a façade of token democracy. A liberated society
would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3).
Ill discuss the two types of (2) later on. But the crucial distinction is between
(3) and (4).
In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The
candidates stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they
are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues
apart from the feeble threat of changing ones vote, a few years later, to
some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy
for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass
media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and
powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by
unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be
overthrown, but the real rulers in democratic regimes, the tiny minority who
own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people
dont even know who they are.
In delegate democracy, delegates are elected for specific purposes with very specific
limitations. They may be strictly mandated (ordered to vote in a certain way on a certain
issue) or the mandate may be left open (delegates being free to vote as they think best)
with the people who have elected them reserving the right to confirm or reject any
decision thus taken. Delegates are generally elected for very short periods and are
subject to recall at any time.
In the context of radical struggles, delegate assemblies have usually been termed
councils. The council form was invented by striking workers during the 1905
Russian revolution (soviet is the Russian word for council). When soviets
reappeared in 1917, they were successively supported, manipulated, dominated and coopted
by the Bolsheviks, who soon succeeded in transforming them into parodies of themselves:
rubber stamps of the Soviet State (the last surviving independent soviet, that
of the Kronstadt sailors, was crushed in 1921). Councils have nevertheless continued to
reappear spontaneously at the most radical moments in subsequent history, in Germany,
Italy, Spain, Hungary and elsewhere, because they represent the obvious solution to the
need for a practical form of nonhierarchical popular self-organization. And they continue
to be opposed by all hierarchical organizations, because they threaten the rule of
specialized elites by pointing to the possibility of a society of generalized
self-management: not self-management of a few details of the present setup, but
self-management extended to all regions of the globe and all aspects of life.
But as noted above, the question of democratic forms cannot be separated from their
economic context.
Economic organization can be looked at from the angle of work:
(1) Totally voluntary
(2) Cooperative (collective self-management)
(3) Forced and exploitive
____ a) overt (slave labor)
____ b) disguised (wage labor)
And from the angle of distribution:
(1) True communism (totally free accessibility)
(2) True socialism (collective ownership and regulation)
(3) Capitalism (private and/or state ownership)
Though its possible for goods or services produced by wage labor to be given
away, or for those produced by volunteer or cooperative labor to be turned into
commodities for sale, for the most part these levels of work and distribution tend to
correspond with each other. The present society is predominately (3): the forced
production and consumption of commodities. A liberated society would eliminate (3) and as
far as possible reduce (2) in favor of (1).
Capitalism is based on commodity production (production of goods for profit) and wage
labor (labor power itself bought and sold as a commodity). As Marx pointed out, there is
less difference between the slave and the free worker than appears. Slaves,
though they seem to be paid nothing, are provided with the means of their survival and
reproduction, for which workers (who become temporary slaves during their hours of labor)
are compelled to pay most of their wages. The fact that some jobs are less unpleasant than
others, and that individual workers have the nominal right to switch jobs, start their own
business, buy stocks or win a lottery, disguises the fact that the vast majority of people
are collectively enslaved.
How did we get in this absurd position? If we go back far enough, we find that at some
point people were forcibly dispossessed: driven off the land and otherwise deprived of the
means for producing the goods necessary for life. (The famous chapters on primitive
accumulation in Capital vividly describe this process in England.) As long
as people accept this dispossession as legitimate, they are forced into unequal bargains
with the owners (those who have robbed them, or who have subsequently obtained
titles of ownership from the original robbers) in which they exchange their
labor for a fraction of what it actually produces, the surplus being retained by the
owners. This surplus (capital) can then be reinvested in order to generate continually
greater surpluses in the same way.
As for distribution, a public water fountain is a simple example of true communism
(unlimited accessibility). A public library is an example of true socialism (free but
regulated accessibility).
In a rational society, accessibility would depend on abundance. During a drought, water
might have to be rationed. Conversely, once libraries are put entirely online they could
become totally communistic: anyone could have free instant access to any number of texts
with no more need to bother with checking out and returning, security against theft, etc.
But this rational relation is impeded by the persistence of separate economic
interests. To take the latter example, it will soon be technically possible to create a
global library in which every book ever written, every film ever made and
every musical performance ever recorded could be put online, potentially enabling anyone
to freely tap in and obtain a copy (no more need for stores, sales, advertising,
packaging, shipping, etc.). But since this would also eliminate the profits from
present-day publishing, recording and film businesses, far more energy is spent concocting
complicated methods to prevent or charge for copying (while others devote corresponding
energy devising ways to get around such methods) than on developing a technology that
could potentially benefit everyone.
One of Marxs merits was to have cut through the hollowness of political
discourses based on abstract philosophical or ethical principles (human nature
is such and such, all people have a natural right to this or that) by showing
how social possibilities and social awareness are to a great degree limited and shaped by
material conditions. Freedom in the abstract means little if almost everybody has to work
all the time simply to assure their survival. Its unrealistic to expect people to be
generous and cooperative when there is barely enough to go around (leaving aside the
drastically different conditions under which primitive communism flourished).
But a sufficiently large surplus opens up wider possibilities. The hope of Marx and other
revolutionaries of his time was based on the fact that the technological potentials
developed by the Industrial Revolution had finally provided an adequate material basis for
a classless society. It was no longer a matter of declaring that things should
be different, but of pointing out that they could be different; that class
domination was not only unjust, it was now unnecessary.
Was it ever really necessary? Was Marx right in seeing the development of capitalism
and the state as inevitable stages, or might a liberated society have been possible
without this painful detour? Fortunately, we no longer have to worry about this question.
Whatever possibilities there may or may not have been in the past, present material
conditions are more than sufficient to sustain a global classless society.
The most serious drawback of capitalism is not its quantitative unfairness the
mere fact that wealth is unequally distributed, that workers are not paid the full
value of their labor. The problem is that this margin of exploitation (even if
relatively small) makes possible the private accumulation of capital, which eventually
reorients everything to its own ends, dominating and warping all aspects of life.
The more alienation the system produces, the more social energy must be diverted just
to keep it going more advertising to sell superfluous commodities, more ideologies
to keep people bamboozled, more spectacles to keep them pacified, more police and more
prisons to repress crime and rebellion, more arms to compete with rival states all
of which produces more frustrations and antagonisms, which must be repressed by more
spectacles, more prisons, etc. As this vicious circle continues, real human needs are
fulfilled only incidentally, if at all, while virtually all labor is channeled into
absurd, redundant or destructive projects that serve no purpose except to maintain the
system.
If this system were abolished and modern technological potentials were appropriately
transformed and redirected, the labor necessary to meet real human needs would be reduced
to such a trivial level that it could easily be taken care of voluntarily and
cooperatively, without requiring economic incentives or state enforcement.
Its not too hard to grasp the idea of superseding overt hierarchical power.
Self-management can be seen as the fulfillment of the freedom and democracy that are the
official values of Western societies. Despite peoples submissive conditioning,
everyone has had moments when they rejected domination and began speaking or acting for
themselves.
Its much harder to grasp the idea of superseding the economic system. The
domination of capital is more subtle and self-regulating. Questions of work, production,
goods, services, exchange and coordination in the modern world seem so complicated that
most people take for granted the necessity of money as a universal mediation, finding it
difficult to imagine any change beyond apportioning money in some more equitable way.
For this reason I will postpone more extensive discussion of the economic aspects till
later in this text, when it will be possible to go into more detail.
Is such a revolution likely? The odds are probably against it. The main problem is that
there is not much time. In previous eras it was possible to imagine that, despite all
humanitys follies and disasters, we would somehow muddle through and perhaps
eventually learn from past mistakes. But now that social policies and technological
developments have irrevocable global ecological ramifications, blundering trial and error
is not enough. We have only a few decades to turn things around. And as time passes, the
task becomes more difficult: the fact that basic social problems are scarcely even faced,
much less resolved, encourages increasingly desperate and delirious tendencies toward war,
fascism, ethnic antagonism, religious fanaticism and other forms of mass irrationality,
deflecting those who might potentially work toward a new society into merely defensive and
ultimately futile holding actions.
But most revolutions have been preceded by periods when everyone scoffed at the idea
that things could ever change. Despite the many discouraging trends in the world, there
are also some encouraging signs, not least of which is the widespread disillusionment with
previous false alternatives. Many popular revolts in this century have already moved
spontaneously in the right direction. I am not referring to the successful
revolutions, which are without exception frauds, but to less known, more radical efforts.
Some of the most notable examples are Russia 1905, Germany 1918-19, Italy 1920, Asturias
1934, Spain 1936-37, Hungary 1956, France 1968, Czechoslovakia 1968, Portugal 1974-75
and Poland 1980-81; many other movements, from the Mexican revolution of 1910 to the
recent anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, have also contained exemplary moments of
popular experimentation before they were brought under bureaucratic control.
No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has not carefully
examined these movements. To ignore them because of their failure is missing
the point.(3) Modern revolution is all or
nothing: individual revolts are bound to fail until an international chain reaction is
triggered that spreads faster than repression can close in. Its hardly surprising
that these revolts did not go farther; what is inspiring is that they went as far as they
did. A new revolutionary movement will undoubtedly take new and unpredictable forms; but
these earlier efforts remain full of examples of what can be done, as well as of what must
be avoided.
Its often said that a stateless society might work if everyone were angels, but
due to the perversity of human nature some hierarchy is necessary to keep people in line.
It would be truer to say that if everyone were angels the present system might
work tolerably well (bureaucrats would function honestly, capitalists would refrain from
socially harmful ventures even if they were profitable). It is precisely because people
are not angels that its necessary to eliminate the setup that enables some of them
to become very efficient devils. Lock a hundred people in a small room with only one air
hole and they will claw each other to death to get to it. Let them out and they may
manifest a rather different nature. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, Man is
neither Rousseaus noble savage nor the Churchs depraved sinner. He is violent
when oppressed, gentle when free.
Others contend that, whatever the ultimate causes may be, people are now so screwed up
that they need to be psychologically or spiritually healed before they can even conceive
of creating a liberated society. In his later years Wilhelm Reich came to feel that an
emotional plague was so firmly embedded in the population that it would take
generations of healthily raised children before people would become capable of a
libertarian social transformation; and that meanwhile one should avoid confronting the
system head-on since this would stir up a hornets nest of ignorant popular reaction.
Irrational popular tendencies do sometimes call for discretion. But powerful though
they may be, they are not irresistible forces. They contain their own contradictions.
Clinging to some absolute authority is not necessarily a sign of faith in authority; it
may be a desperate attempt to overcome ones increasing doubts (the convulsive
tightening of a slipping grip). People who join gangs or reactionary groups, or who get
caught up in religious cults or patriotic hysteria, are also seeking a sense of
liberation, connection, purpose, participation, empowerment. As Reich himself showed,
fascism gives a particularly vigorous and dramatic expression to these basic aspirations,
which is why it often has a deeper appeal than the vacillations, compromises and
hypocrisies of liberalism and leftism.
In the long run the only way to defeat reaction is to present more forthright
expressions of these aspirations, and more authentic opportunities to fulfill them. When
basic issues are forced into the open, irrationalities that flourished under the cover of
psychological repression tend to be weakened, like disease germs exposed to sunlight and
fresh air. In any case, even if we dont prevail, there is at least some satisfaction
in fighting for what we really believe, rather than being defeated in a posture of
hesitancy and hypocrisy.
There are limits on how far one can liberate oneself (or raise liberated children)
within a sick society. But if Reich was right to note that psychologically repressed
people are less capable of envisioning social liberation, he failed to realize how much
the process of social revolt can be psychologically liberating. (French psychiatrists are
said to have complained about a significant drop in the number of their customers in the
aftermath of May 1968!)
The notion of total democracy raises the specter of a tyranny of the
majority. Majorities can be ignorant and bigoted, theres no getting
around it. The only real solution is to confront and attempt to overcome that ignorance
and bigotry. Keeping the masses in the dark (relying on liberal judges to protect civil
liberties or liberal legislators to sneak through progressive reforms) only leads to
popular backlashes when sensitive issues eventually do come to the surface.
Examined more closely, however, most instances of majority oppression of minorities
turn out to be due not to majority rule, but to disguised minority rule in which the
ruling elite plays on whatever racial or cultural antagonisms there may be in order to
turn the exploited masses frustrations against each other. When people get real
power over their own lives they will have more interesting things to do than to persecute
minorities.
So many potential abuses or disasters are evoked at any suggestion of a nonhierarchical
society that it would be impossible to answer them all. People who resignedly accept a
system that condemns millions of their fellow human beings to death every year in wars and
famines, and millions of others to prison and torture, suddenly let their imagination and
their indignation run wild at the thought that in a self-managed society there might be some
abuses, some violence or coercion or injustice, or even merely some temporary
inconvenience. They forget that it is not up to a new social system to solve all our
problems; it merely has to deal with them better than the present system does
not a very big order.
If history followed the complacent opinions of official commentators, there would never
have been any revolutions. In any given situation there are always plenty of ideologists
ready to declare that no radical change is possible. If the economy is functioning well,
they will claim that revolution depends on economic crises; if there is an economic
crisis, others will just as confidently declare that revolution is impossible because
people are too busy worrying about making ends meet. The former types, surprised by the
May 1968 revolt, tried to retrospectively uncover the invisible crisis that their ideology
insists must have been there. The latter contend that the situationist perspective has
been refuted by the worsened economic conditions since that time.
Actually, the situationists simply noted that the widespread achievement of capitalist
abundance had demonstrated that guaranteed survival was no substitute for real life. The
periodic ups and downs of the economy have no bearing on that conclusion. The fact that a
few people at the top have recently managed to siphon off a yet larger portion of the
social wealth, driving increasing numbers of people into the streets and terrorizing the
rest of the population lest they succumb to the same fate, makes the feasibility of a
postscarcity society less evident; but the material prerequisites are still present.
The economic crises held up as evidence that we need to lower our
expectations are actually caused by over-production and lack of
work. The ultimate absurdity of the present system is that unemployment is seen as a
problem, with potentially labor-saving technologies being directed toward creating new
jobs to replace the old ones they render unnecessary. The problem is not that so many
people dont have jobs, but that so many people still do. We need to raise our
expectations, not lower them.(4)
Far more serious than this spectacle of our supposed powerlessness in the face of the
economy is the greatly increased power of the spectacle itself, which in recent years has
developed to the point of repressing virtually any awareness of pre-spectacle history or
anti-spectacle possibilities. Debords Comments on the Society of the Spectacle
(1988) goes into this new development in detail:
In all that has happened over the last twenty years, the most important change lies in
the very continuity of the spectacle. What is significant is not the refinements of the
spectacles media instrumentation, which had already attained a highly advanced stage
of development; it is quite simply that spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an
entire generation molded to its laws. . . . Spectacular dominations first
priority was to eradicate historical knowledge in general, beginning with virtually all
information and rational commentary on the most recent past. . . . The spectacle
makes sure that people are unaware of what is happening, or at least that they quickly
forget whatever they may have become aware of. The more important something is, the more
it is hidden. Nothing in the last twenty years has been so thoroughly shrouded with
official lies as May 1968. . . . The flow of images carries everything before
it, and it is always someone else who controls this simplified digest of the perceptible
world, who decides where the flow will lead, who programs the rhythm of what is shown into
an endless series of arbitrary surprises that leaves no time for reflection
. . . . isolating whatever is presented from its context, its past, its
intentions and its consequences. . . . It is thus hardly surprising that
children are now starting their education with an enthusiastic introduction to the
Absolute Knowledge of computer language while becoming increasingly incapable of reading.
Because reading requires making judgments at every line; and since conversation is almost
dead (as will soon be most of those who knew how to converse) reading is the only
remaining gateway to the vast realms of pre-spectacle human experience.
In the present text I have tried to recapitulate some basic points that have been
buried under this intensive spectacular repression. If these matters seem banal to some or
obscure to others, they may at least serve to recall what once was possible, in those
primitive times a few decades ago when people had the quaint, old-fashioned notion that
they could understand and affect their own history.
While there is no question that things have changed considerably since the sixties
(mostly for the worse), our situation may not be quite as hopeless as it seems to those
who swallow whatever the spectacle feeds them. Sometimes it only takes a little jolt to
break through the stupor.
Even if we have no guarantee of ultimate victory, such breakthroughs are already a
pleasure. Is there any greater game around?
[FOOTNOTES]
1. Ken Knabb (ed. and trans.), Situationist International
Anthology (Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p. 81 [Revised Edition pp. 106-107] [Geopolitics
of Hibernation]. Here and elsewhere I have sometimes slightly modified my original SI
Anthology translations.
2. See Maurice Brintons The Bolsheviks and Workers
Control: 1917-1921, Volines The Unknown Revolution, Ida Metts The
Kronstadt Uprising, Paul Avrichs Kronstadt 1921, Peter Arshinovs
History of the Makhnovist Movement, and Guy Debords The Society of the Spectacle §§98-113. (These
and most of the other texts cited in this book can be obtained through the distributors
listed at the end of the Situationist Bibliography.)
3. The journalists and governments superficial
references to the success or failure of a revolution mean nothing
for the simple reason that since the bourgeois revolutions no revolution has yet
succeeded: not one has abolished classes. Proletarian revolution has so far not been
victorious anywhere, but the practical process through which its project manifests itself
has already created at least ten revolutionary moments of historic importance that can
appropriately be termed revolutions. In none of these moments was the total content
of proletarian revolution fully developed; but in each case there was a fundamental
interruption of the ruling socioeconomic order and the appearance of new forms and
conceptions of real life: variegated phenomena that can be understood and evaluated
only in their overall significance, including their potential future significance.
. . . The revolution of 1905 did not bring down the Czarist regime, it only
obtained a few temporary concessions from it. The Spanish revolution of 1936 did not
formally suppress the existing political power: it arose, in fact, out of a proletarian
uprising initiated in order to defend that Republic against Franco. And the Hungarian
revolution of 1956 did not abolish Nagys liberal-bureaucratic government. Among
other regrettable limitations, the Hungarian movement had many aspects of a national
uprising against foreign domination; and this national-resistance aspect also played a
certain, though less important, role in the origin of the Paris Commune. The Commune
supplanted Thierss power only within the limits of Paris. And the St. Petersburg
Soviet of 1905 never even took control of the capital. All the crises cited here as
examples, though deficient in their practical achievements and even in their perspectives,
nevertheless produced enough radical innovations and put their societies severely enough
in check to be legitimately termed revolutions. (SI Anthology, pp. 235-236
[Revised Edition pp. 301-302] [Beginning of an Era].)
4. Were not interested in hearing about the
exploiters economic problems. If the capitalist economy is not capable of fulfilling
workers demands, that is simply one more reason to struggle for a new society, one
in which we ourselves have the decisionmaking power over the whole economy and all social
life. (Portuguese airline workers, 27 October 1974.)
End of Chapter 1 of The Joy of Revolution, from Public Secrets:
Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb (1997).
- Chapter 2: Foreplay
- Personal breakthroughs. Critical interventions. Theory versus ideology. Avoiding false
choices and elucidating real ones. The insurrectionary style. Radical film. Oppressionism
versus playfulness. The Strasbourg scandal. The poverty of electoral politics. Reforms and
alternative institutions. Political correctness, or equal opportunity alienation.
Drawbacks of moralism and simplistic extremism. Advantages of boldness. Advantages and
limits of nonviolence.
-
- Chapter 3: Climaxes
- Causes of social breakthroughs. Postwar upheavals. Effervescence of radical situations.
Popular self-organization. The situationists in May 1968. Workerism is obsolete,
but workers position remains pivotal. Wildcats and sitdowns. Consumer strikes. What
could have happened in May 1968. Methods of confusion and cooption. Terrorism reinforces
the state. The ultimate showdown. Internationalism.
-
- Chapter 4: Rebirth
- Utopians fail to envision postrevolutionary diversity. Decentralization and
coordination. Safeguards against abuses. Consensus, majority rule and unavoidable
hierarchies. Eliminating the roots of war and crime. Abolishing money. Absurdity of most
present-day labor. Transforming work into play. Technophobic objections. Ecological
issues. The blossoming of free communities. More interesting problems.
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