Mystification does not only affect capitalist society but also affects
the theory of capitalism. Marxist theory elevated to the rank of
proletarian consciousness is a new form of consciousness:
repressive consciousness. We will describe some of its characteristics,
leaving aside the problem of determining whether or not all forms of
consciousness throughout history are repressive.
The
object of repressive consciousness is the goal which it thinks it
controls. Since there is a gap between this goal and immediate reality,
this consciousness becomes theological and refines the differences
between the minimum or immediate program and the maximum, future, or
mediate program. But the longer the path to its realization, the more
consciousness makes itself the goal and reifies itself in an
organization which comes to incarnate the goal.
The
project of this consciousness is to frame reality with its concept.
This is the source of all the sophisms about the divergence between
objective and subjective elements. It exists but it cannot be. And
precisely because of its inability to be, it has to negate and scorn
whatever is trying to emerge, to be.
In
other words, it exists but it needs certain events to be real. Since it
is a product of the past it is refuted by every current event. Thus it
can only exist as a polemic with reality. It refutes everything. It can
survive only by freezing, by becoming increasingly totalitarian. In
order to operate it has to be organized: thus the mystique of the
party, of councils, and of other coagulations of despotic
consciousness.
All
direct action which does not recognize this consciousness (and
every political racket pretends to embody the true consciousness)
is condemned by it. Condemnation is followed by justification:
impatience of those who revolt, lack of maturity, provocation by the
dominant class. The picture is completed by litanies on the
petit-bourgeois character of the eternal anarchists and the utopianism
of intellectuals or young people. Struggles are not real unless they
revive class consciousness; some go so far as to wish for war, so that
this consciousness will at last be produced.
Theory
has turned into repressive consciousness. The proletariat has become a
myth, not in terms of its existence, but in terms of its revolutionary
role as the class which was to liberate all humanity and thus resolve
all socio-economic contradictions. In reality it exists in all
countries characterized by the formal domination of capital, where this
proletariat still constitutes the majority of the population; in
countries characterized by the real domination of capital one still
finds a large number of men and women in conditions of 19th century
proletarians. But the activity of every party and every group is
organized around the myth. The myth is their source. Everything begins
with the appearance of this class which is defined as the only
revolutionary class in history, or at least as the most revolutionary.
Whatever happened before is ordered as a function of the rise of this
class, and earlier events are secondary in relation to those lived or
created by the proletariat. It even defines conduct. Whoever is
proletarian is saved; one who is not must expiate the defect of
non-proletarian birth by various practices, going so far as to serve
terms in factories. A group achieves revolutionary existence only at
the moment when it is able to exhibit one or several "authentic"
proletarians. The presence of the man with calloused hands is the
guarantee, the certificate of revolutionary authenticity. The content
of the program defended by the group, its theory, even its actions,
cease to be important; all that matters is the presence or absence of
the "proletarian." The myth maintains and revives the antagonism
between intellectual and manual. Many councilists make a cult of
anti-intellectualism which serves them as a substitute for theory and
justification. They can pronounce any idiocy; they'll be saved; they're
proletarians.
Just
as it is thought by many that one who leaves the party thereby ceases
to be revolutionary, so it is considered impossible to be revolutionary
without claiming one's proletarian position, without taking on the
virtues thought to be proletarian. The counter-revolution ends at the
mythical frontiers which separate the proletariat from the rest of the
social body. Any action is justified in the name of the proletarian
movement. One does not act because of a need to act, because of hatred
for capital, but because the proletariat has to recover its class base.
Action and thought are unveiled by intermediaries.
This is how, especially after 1945, the proletariat as revolutionary class outlived itself: through its myth.
A
historical study of proletarian revolutionary movements would shed
light on the limited character of this class. Marx himself clearly
exposed its reformist character. Fundamentally, from 1848, when it
demanded the right to work, to 1917-1923, when it demanded full
employment and self-management by workers' unions, the proletariat
rebelled solely within the interior of the capitalist system. This
seems to conflict with Marx's statements in his "Critical Notes on the
Article 'The King of Prussia and Social Reform.' By a Prussian". But at
this moment the proletariat really manifested itself as a class without
reserves, as a total negation. It was forced to create a profound
rupture which makes possible an understanding of what communist
revolution and therefore communism can be. [16] Marx was right; but the capitalist mode of production, in order to
survive, was forced to annihilate the negation which undermined it. The
proletariat which is outside of society, as Marx and Engels say in The German Ideology,
is increasingly integrated into society; it is integrated to the extent
that it struggles for survival, for reinforcement; the more it
organizes itself, the more it becomes reformist. It succeeds, with the
German Socialist Party, in forming a counter-society which is finally
absorbed by the society of capital, and the negating movement of the
proletariat is over. [17]
Didn't Kautsky, Bernstein and Lenin simply recognize the reality of the
workers' movement when they declared that it was necessary to unite it
with the socialist movement: "The workers' movement and socialism
are in no way identical by nature" (Kautsky)?
Doesn't
Lenin's discredited statement that the proletariat, left to itself, can
only attain trade-union consciousness, describe the truth about the
class bound to capital? It can be criticized only from the
standpoint of the distinction, made by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy,
between class as object of capital and class as subject. Without a
revolutionary upheaval the proletariat cannot become a subject. The
process through which it was to become a subject implied an outside,
external consciousness, which at a given moment would become incarnated
in the proletariat. This consciousness coming from the outside is the
most reified, the most estranged form of repressive
consciousness! Consequently, the point is not to rehash the
debate and return to Marx, but to recognize that the cycle of the
proletarian class is now over, first of all because its goals have been
realized, secondly because it is no longer the determinant in the
global context. We have reached the end of the historical cycle during
which humanity (especially the part situated in the West)
moved within class societies. Capital has realized the negation of
classes - by means of mystification, since it retains the conflicts
and collisions which characterize the existence of classes. The reality
is the despotism of capital. It is capital we must now face, not the
past.
Almost
all social democrats were aware of the divorce between the real,
reformist movement of the working class and the socialist goal.
Bernstein proclaimed that it was necessary to adapt once and for all,
clearly and straightforwardly, not hypocritically (like the
majority of the socialists) by making revolutionary proclamations
in order to hide compromises. [18] At the same time, it became increasingly problematic to define and
delimit the proletarian class. This problem became so acute that by the
beginning of this century almost all revolutionaries were trying to
define the proletariat in terms of consciousness: Luxemburg,
Pannekoek directly, Lenin, Trotsky indirectly through the party, etc.
The Russian revolution merely increased the urgency of specifying the
proletarian class; this is the context of Korsch's attempts, and
especially of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. Later on
Bordiga held that the class should be defined in terms of the mode of
production which it builds. Thus it can be a class for itself only from
the moment when its actions move toward this goal, only to the extent
that it recognizes its program (which describes this mode of
production). For Bordiga, it exists when the party exists,
because the program can only be carried by the party. "We still need an
object, the party, to envision the communist society." [19] But to the extent that men and women are able to move on their own
toward communism, as is evident among young people today, it becomes
obvious that this object, the party, is not needed.
In
sum, for party as well as council advocates, the problem of action
would largely be reduced to finding a direct or indirect means for
making the proletariat receptive to its own consciousness - since in
this view the proletariat is itself only through its consciousness of
itself.
[16] In the original Fredy
Perlman translation the two sentences immediately before this,
beginning 'But at this moment (...)', were shown as a quotation from
Marx and a reference was given to an english translation of Marx's text
'The King of Prussia (etc.)'. Looking at the french text this is
evidently an error based on a misprint and this sentence is actually by
Camatte. Thanks to Antagonism for drawing attention to this.
[17] Which proves that it was
impossible to hold on to a "classist" discourse and behavior while
maintaining the basic "aclassist" thesis of the necessity of the
proletariat's self-negation.
[18] On this subject, see the book by H. Mueller published in 1892, Der Klassenkampf in der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie,
Verlags-kooperative Heidelberg-Frankfurt-Hanover-Berlin, 1969. This
book clearly shows the duality-duplicity of men like Bebel, who
expressed themselves as "rightists" in parliament and as "leftists" at
workers' meetings, who told one audience it would be very long before
the principles of socialism could be realized, while telling another
that socialism was around the corner. This book is also interesting
because it contains positions which were later to be taken up by the
KAPD (German Communist Workers' Party).