Mr. Kabir,

I would agree to a point but this author's critique of ideology in itself collapses into metaphysics or an onto-theology of subjectivity ( I may dilate on that if time permits).  You should ask yourself what really is thinking?  What does the author understand by thinking?...Deconstructing his own theory of "self-thinking" shall expose his assumptions and sedimented normativity that still privileges calculative form of thinking which is very shallow and not self-emancipatory at all.

In any case what is your own understanding of thinking, Mr. Kabir?

Ebou


-----Original Message-----
From: Amadu Kabir Njie [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 10:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [>-<] Fw: The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself


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The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself

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Introduction

This essay was originally published in the United States in 1975 by The
Spectacle under the title "Self-Theory: the pleasure of thinking for yourself."
An extensively revised edition was published in London in 1985 by Spectacular
Times under the title "Revolutionary self-help: a beginner's manual," and it
has appeared twice since then in American periodicals under the title
"Revolutionary Self-Theory"; in 1989 it was published in a slightly revised
edition by OVO, and in 1992 in a further revised edition by No Longer Silent
(NLS). This edition is an extensively rewritten and somewhat expanded version
of the text which appeared in NLS.

As the editor of No Longer Silent commented, "...at this point it's fair to say
that 'RST' has been penned by multiple authors, which is as it should be.
Hopefully this trend will continue as future editions of this text appear.
After all, the propaganda, literature, and so forth that we produce should not
be considered as immutable tomes, determining the language and boundaries
within which we are expected to interpret our experiences, but rather as fluid
and alterable, reflecting our experience of reality as we are."

This is entirely in keeping with the sentiments of the previous authors/editors
who stated, "...the ideological supermarket-like any supermarket-is fit only
for looting. It is more productive for us if we move along the shelves, rip
open the packets, take out what looks authentic and useful, and dump the rest."


In fact, that is exactly the approach which I've taken while editing this text:
I've retained those portions which were useful and insightful, but I've
jettisoned a lot of waste material, including almost all of the
marxist/situationist jargon plus a number of statements (particularly in the
concluding section) which were factually incorrect or simply missed the point;
as well, I've cleaned up the text by eliminating a number of non sequiturs and
hopelessly fuzzy statements and by using terms (e.g., "ideology") in a more
precise manner than in the previous editions of this work. What I've done,
essentially, is to take a situationist tract and translate it into plain
English.

I've also introduced a certain amount of new material which contradicts some of
what I've deleted. Thus, it's quite possible-in fact quite probable-that the
authors/editors of the previous versions of this essay would take strong
exception to some of the changes I've made. While I regret that my alterations
and additions may upset the original author(s), the point of this essay is to
get people to think for themselves; and I believe that the changes I've made
increase the effectiveness of the pamphlet in that regard.

But despite the changes in this edition, the central thesis of this essay
remains unchanged: that all genuine revolutionary impulses and activities stem
directly from the desires of individuals, not from any ideologically imposed
sense of "duty" with its attendant guilt, self-sacrifice, and self-deadening
"shoulds." As the previous authors/editors of this essay have chosen to remain
anonymous (or pseudonymous), the editors of this edition shall likewise remain
so.



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Those who assume (often unconsciously) that it is impossible to achieve their
life's desires - and, thus, that it is futile to fight for themselves - usually
end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead. They may appear to engage in
self-directed activity, but in reality they have accepted alienation from their
desires as a way of life. All subjugations of personal desires to the dictates
of a cause or ideology are reactionary no matter how "revolutionary" the
actions arising from such subjugations may appear.

Yet, one of the great secrets of our miserable, yet potentially marvelous time,
is that thinking can be a pleasure. Despite the suffocating effect of the
dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think
for themselves; and by doing so - by actively, critically thinking for
themselves, rather than by passively accepting pre-digested opinions - they
reclaim their minds as their own.

This is a manual for those who wish to think for themselves, a manual for
creation of a personally (rather than ideologically) constructed body of
critical thought for your own use, a body of thought which will help you to
understand why your life is the way it is and why the world is the way it is.
More importantly, as you construct your own theory, you will also develop a
practice: a method to get what you want for your own life. Theory, then, must
be either practical - a guide to action - or it will be nothing, nothing but an
aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of
ideas divorced from actions is the eternal waiting room of unrealized desires.
Forming your own practical theory, what could be called "self-theory," is
intimately connected to achieving the realization of your desires.

Therefore, constructing your self-theory is a revolutionary pleasure. It is
both a destructive and constructive pleasure, because you are creating a
practical theory - one tied to action - for the destruction and reconstruction
of this society. It is a theory of adventure, because it is based on what you
want from life and on devising the means necessary to achieve it. It is as
erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.



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Any system of ideas with an abstraction at its center - an abstraction which
assigns you a role or duties - is an ideology. An ideology provides those who
accept it with a false consciousness, a necessary component of which is
other-directedness. This leads those who accept the ideology to behave as
"objects" rather than "subjects." to allow themselves to be used rather than to
act to attain their own desires. The various ideologies are all structured
around different abstractions, yet all serve the interests of a dominant (or
aspiring dominant) class by giving individuals (though the term hardly seems
appropriate-"members of the herd" is perhaps more accurate) a sense of purpose
in sacrifice, suffering, and submission.

Religious ideology is the oldest example: the fantastic projection called "God"
is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as "His"
object.

In the "scientific" and "democratic" ideologies of "free enterprise," capital
investment is the "productive" subject directing world history - the "invisible
hand" guiding human development. In order to prosper, the early capitalists had
to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. They exposed
the mystification of the religious world and replaced it with the mystification
of technology and commodity capitalism, wherein Profit becomes the Supreme
Subject of the cosmos.

The 57 varieties of leninism are "revolutionary" ideologies in which the Party
is the rightful subject entitled to dictate world history by leading its object
- you, the proletariat - to the promised land through replacement of the
corporate-capitalist "free enterprise" apparatus with a state-capitalist
leninist apparatus.

The may other varieties of dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The new forms
of religious mysticism help to preserve the status quo in a round about way.
They provide a cheap and tidy way to obscure the vacuousness of daily life and,
like drugs, make it easier to live, or rather exist, with this emptiness - and
so prevent us from recognizing our real roles in the functioning of the
socioeconomic system.

All of these ideologies differ in the specific sacrifices they demand of you,
the object, but all are structured in the same way. All demand an inversion of
subject and object; things, abstractions, take on the human attributes of power
and will, while human beings become things, tools to be used in the service of
these abstractions (God, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fatherland,
etc., etc.). Ideology is upside down self-theory. It fosters acceptance of the
separation of our narrow, daily lives from a world that appears totally beyond
our control. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the life of
the world.

All abstraction based ideologies demand duty, sacrifice for the cause; and
every such ideology serves to protect the dominant social order. Authorities
whose power depends upon docility must deny us our subjectivity, our conscious
will to act for our own desires. Such denial comes in the form of demands for
sacrifices for "the common good," "the national interest," "the war effort,"
"the revolution.".....



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We rid ourselves of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking ourselves:
How do I feel? How's my life? What do I want? An I getting what I want? If not,
why not? This is being conscious of the commonplace, being aware of your
everyday routine. That real life exists - life in which you are active, a
subject acting to achieve your desires - is a public secret that becomes less
secret every day, as the breakdown of daily life constructed around
abstraction-based ideologies becomes more and more obvious.



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The creation of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself on being fully
conscious of your desires and of their validity. Authentic "consciousness
raising" can only be the "raising" of people's thinking to the level of
positive (non-guilty) self-consciousness, free of imposed morality in all its
forms. This type of consciousness can be termed "radical subjectivity."

Conversely, what many leftists, therapy mongers, racism awareness trainers, and
sisterizers term "consciousness raising" is the practice of beating people into
unconsciousness with guilt-inducing, ideological billy clubs.

The path from self-negation to self-affirmation passes through point zero, the
capital city of nihilism. This is the windswept still point in social space and
time, the social limbo in which one recognizes that there is no real life in
one's daily existence. A nihilist knows the difference between surviving and
living.

Nihilists reverse their perspectives on their lives and the world. Nothing is
true for them but their desires, their will to be. They reject all ideology in
their hatred for the miserable social relations in modern society. From this
reversed perspective they clearly see the upside-down world of commodity
capitalism in which subject and object are inverted, and people and abstract
concepts are converted into things, commodities to be sold. They see daily life
as a theatrical landscape in which "everyone has their price," God (via
televangelism) and happiness (smile buttons) become commodities, radio stations
say they love you, and detergents have compassion for your hands.

Daily conversation offers sedatives such as, "You can't always get what you
want," "Life has its ups and downs," and other cliches of the secular religion
of survival. "Common sense" is just the non-sense on common alienation.
Everyday people are denied (and deny themselves) an authentic life and are sold
back its representation.

Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which destroys them.
They cannot go on living as they are. Soon, most realize that they must devise
a coherent set of tactics in order to transform the world.

But if a nihilist does not recognize the possibility for the transformation of
the world, his or her subjective rage will ossify into a role: the suicide, the
solitary murderer, the street hoodlum-vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional
mental patient...all seeking compensation for a life of dead time.

The nihilists' mistake is that they do not realize that there are other
nihilists with whom they can work. Consequently, they assume that participation
in a collective project of self-realization is impossible.



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This project of collective self-realization, the changing of life itself
through the transformation of social relations, can properly be termed
"politics." Politics, however, also signifies a mystified, separate category of
human activity, an isolated interest with its own specialists - politicians,
political consultants, etc. It is possible to be interested (or not) in this
type of politics just as it is possible to be interested (or not) in football,
stamp collecting, music, or fashion. What people see as "politics" today is the
social falsification of the project of collective self-realization; it has
become a spectacle and a parody. And that suits those in power just fine.

Authentic collective self-realization is the revolutionary project. It is the
collective transformation of social relations and the natural world according
to the desires of all participants.

Similarly, "therapy" at present usually refers to attempts to "help"
individuals "adjust" to their restrictive social roles and to the banality of
daily life. Authentic therapy involves changing one's own life by changing the
nature of social life. Therapy must be social if it is to be of any real
consequence. Social therapy (the healing of society) and individual therapy
(the healing of the individual) are linked together: each requires the other,
each is a necessary part of the other.

For example, in present day society we are expected to repress our real
feelings and play a role. This is called "playing a part in society" (how
revealing that phrase is). Individuals put on "character armor" - a steel-like
suit comprised of role playing, posing, and concealing one's desires as a
defense against other individuals. Transforming social relations and surpassing
the role-playing game requires the conscious decision of most if not all
individuals to shed these roles and truly communicate; therefore, the end of
individual role playing is directly related to the end of social role playing.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


To think actively, critically, is to make your life - as it is now, and as you
want it to be - the center of your thinking. This positive self-centering is
accomplished by a continuous assault on externals, on the false issues
("support our troops"), false conflicts (e.g., those arising from notions of
facial "superiority"), false identities ("American," "patriot," "Catholic,"
white Christian"), and false dichotomies (economic survival" versus "a clean
environment") which permeate social life.

People are kept from analyzing the basic nature, the totality, of everyday life
by the media focus - including "consumer" surveys and public opinion polls - on
mere details: the spectacular trifles, the phony controversies, and ridiculous
scandals. Are you for or against trade unions, cruise missiles, identity cards?
What's your opinion of soft drugs, jogging, UFO's, progressive taxation,
Michael Jackson's latest nose job, the royal family's sexual relations?

These are diversions, false issues. The only issue for us is how we live.
There's an old Jewish saying, "If you only have two alternatives, then choose
the third." It impels people to search for new perspectives. We can see the
artificiality of false dichotomies by searching for that "third choice."

Being conscious that there is a third choice allows us to refuse to choose
between two supposedly opposite, but equally repulsive, possibilities which are
presented to us as the only possible choices. In its simplest form, this "third
choice" consciousness is expressed by the person brought to trial for robbery
and is asked, "How do you plead, guilty of not guilty?" "I'm hungry and
unemployed," she replies. A more theoretical, but equally classic, illustration
of this consciousness is the refusal to choose between the corporate-capitalist
ruling classes of the West and the state-capitalist ruling classes of the
former Eastern bloc. All we need to do is to look at the basic social relations
of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and China, North Korea,
and Cuba on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there,
as here, the vast majority work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up
control over their life's work, control over both what they produce and how
they produce it. And, of course, what they produce in both East and West is
then sold back to them as commodities.

In the West, the surplus value, or the value produced over and above the value
of the workers' wages, is the property of the corporate management and
stockholders, who keep up a show of domestic competition. In the East, the
surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit
domestic competition. Big difference.

Like the false issues and false conflicts cited above, false questions are used
to distract us from living in the present, from seeing the totality of
existence. One example is the stupid conversational question, "What's your
philosophy of life?" It poses an abstract concept of "life" that has nothing to
do with real life because it ignores the fact that "living" is exactly what we
are doing at the present moment, and our "philosophy of life" is clearly
revealed by our actions.

False identities are perhaps an even more potent form of mystification. In the
absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phony social identities
- they contemplate and attempt to emulate a huge variety of roles presented to
them in school, church, and especially, the "entertainment" media. These social
identities can be ethnic ("Italian-American"), residential ("New Yorker"),
nationalistic ("patriot"), sexual ("gay"), cultural ("Giants fan"), and so on;
but all are rooted in a common desire for affiliation, for belonging.

Obviously being "black" is a much more real identification than being a "Giants
fan," but beyond a certain point, such an identification only serves to mask
one's real position in society; and in order to recognize that real position,
you have to reject the false identities, false conflicts, and false
dichotomies, and begin with yourself as the center. From there you can examine
the material basis of your life, stripped of mystification.

An example: suppose that you want a cup of coffee from the vending machine at
work. First, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the workers on
the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantation and in the refineries,
the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have the workers who made the
different parts of the vending machine and the ones who assembled it. Then the
ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite, smelted the steel, and work for
the electric utility which supplies power to the machine. Then all the workers
who transported the coffee, cups, and machine. then the clerks, typists, and
communication workers who coordinated the production and transportation.
Finally, you have all the workers who produced all the other things necessary
for the other ones to survive. That gives you a direct material relationship to
several million people, in fact, to the immense majority of the world's
population. They produce your life, and you help to produce theirs. In this
light, all artificial group identities and special group interests fade into
insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment of your life that at present
is locked up in the frustrated creativity of these millions of workers, held
back by obsolete and exhausting methods of production, strangled by lack of
control over their own productivity, warped by the insane rationale of
commodity accumulation which pits one against all and makes life a mad scramble
for economic survival. Here we begin to discover a real social identity - in
people all over the world who are fighting to win control over their own lives
we find ourselves.

Those who have a vested interested in the political and economic status quo
continually present us with false choices, that is, with choices which preserve
their power ("Vote Democratic!"/"Vote Republican!"/"But Vote!"). We are
constantly being asked to choose sides in false conflicts. Governments,
corporations, political parties, and propagandists of all kinds constantly
present us with "choices" that are no choice at all. We are given the illusion
of choice, but as long as those in power control what our "choices" will be
("choices" which we perceive as the only alternatives available to us), they
will also control the outcome of our "decisions."

The new moralists love to tell those of us in the rich West how we will "have
to make sacrifices," how we "exploit the starving children of the Third World."
The choice we are given is between sacrificial altruism or narrow
individualism. (Charities cash in on the resulting guilt.) Yes, by living in
the rich, wasteful West we do exploit the poor of the Third World - but not
personally, not deliberately. We can make some changes in our lives, boycott,
make sacrifices, but the effects are marginal. We become aware of the false
conflict with which we've been presented when we realize that under the global
socioeconomic system we, as individuals, are locked into our roles as
"exploiters" just as others are locked into their global roles as the
exploited. We have a role, but little power to change it - at least
individually. Therefore, we reject the false choice of "sacrifice of
selfishness" by calling for the destruction of the global social system whose
existence forces that decision upon us. Tinkering with the system, or offering
token sacrifices, or calling for "a little less selfishness," simply won't do.
Charities and reformers never go beyond such false choices as "sacrifice" of
"selfishness" - but if any true social progress is to be made, the rest of us
must do so.

Those in power continually use such falsifications to divert and disempower us.
By spreading myths like, "If we shared it all there wouldn't be enough to go
around," they attempt to deny the existence of any real choices and to hide
from us the fact that the material preconditions for social revolution already
exist.



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Any journey toward self-demystification must avoid the twin quagmires of
absolutism and cynicism.

Absolutism is the total acceptance or rejection of all components of particular
ideologies, or indeed, of any set of ideas or concepts. An absolutist cannot
see any choice other than complete acceptance or complete rejection; s/he sees
things purely as good or bad, black or white. The absolutist wanders along the
shelves of the ideological supermarket looking for the ideal commodity, and
then buys it lock, stock and barrel. But the ideological supermarket is fit
only for looting. It is of more practical use to us to move along the shelves,
rip open the packets, take out what looks authentic and useful, and dump the
rest.

Cynicism is a reaction to a world dominated by ideology and "morality." Faced
with conflicting ideologies, the cynic says, "A plague on both your houses."
The cynic is as much a consumer as the absolutist, but one who has given up
hope of finding the ideal commodity.



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The process of constructive thinking is a process of continually adding to and
modifying one's current body of self-theory as well as resolving contradictions
between one's new thoughts and perceptions and one's previous beliefs. The
resulting synthesis is thus more than the sum of its parts.

This synthetic method of constructing a theory is counter to the eclectic
method in which one collects a rag bag of favorite bits from favorite
ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions. Modern
examples include "anarcho-capitalism," "christian marxism," and liberalism in
general.

If we are continually conscious of how we want to live, we can critically
appropriate from anything: ideologies, culture critics, technocratic experts,
sociological studies, even mystics (though the pickings will probably be slim).
All the rubbish of the old world can be scavenged for useful material by those
who want to reconstruct it.



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The nature of modern society, unified globally through its capitalist economic
system, makes necessary a self-theory which criticizes all areas in which
socioeconomic domination exists (i.e., both the corporate capitalism of the
"free" world and the state capitalism of the "communist" world) as well as all
forms of alienation (sexual poverty, enforced participation the rat race for
survival, etc.). In other words, we need a critique of the totality of daily
existence from the perspective of the totality of our desires.

Opposed to this project are all the politicians and bureaucrats, preachers and
gurus, city planners and policemen, reformers and leninists, central committees
and censors, corporate managers and union honchos, male supremacists and
feminist ideologues, landlords and eco-capitalists who work to subordinate
individual desires to that hideous abstraction, "the common good," of which
they are the supposed guardians. They are all forces of the old world-bosses,
priests, and other creeps who have something to lose if people extend the game
of seizing back their minds into seizing back their lives.

Revolutionary theory and abstraction-based ideologies are enemies, and every
politically conscious person knows it.



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By now it should be obvious that self-demystification and the creation of our
own revolutionary theory do not eradicate our alienation; "the world," with its
capitalist economic relations permeating every aspect of life, goes on and is
reproduced every day with the acquiescence and assistance of billions of
people.

Although this text has the creation of self-theory as its focus, we do not mean
to imply that revolutionary theory can exist separately from revolutionary
practice. In order to be consequential, to effectively reconstruct the world,
practice must be based in theory, and theory must be realized in practice. The
revolutionary project of ending alienation and transforming social relations
requires that one's theory be nothing other than a theory of practice, realized
in what we do and how we live. Otherwise theory will degenerate into an
impotent contemplation of the world, and ultimately into a survival mechanism -
an intellectual armor that acts as a buffer between the daily world and
oneself. And if revolutionary practice is not the practice of revolutionary
theory, it degenerates into, at best, altruistic militancy - "revolutionary"
activity as one's social duty or role. At worst, it degenerates into pure
gangsterism.

We don't strive for a coherent theory purely as an end in itself. For us, the
value of coherency is that it makes it easier to think critically and
effectively. For example, it's easier to understand future developments in
social control if you have a coherent understanding of present day social
control ideologies and techniques.

Having a coherent theory makes it easier to put into practice your strategy for
realizing your desires.



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In the process of constructing self-theory, the last theories that must be
dealt with (one hesitates to call them "ideologies," as they are not based in
abstractions with their accompanying "shoulds" and "duties") are the ones that
have the most resemblance to revolutionary self-theory. These are situationism
and syndicalism.

The Situationist International (1958-1971) was an organization of theoretically
oriented, ultra-left, European (especially French) marxists. Many believe, as
did the original author(s) of this essay, that the situationists "made an
immense contribution to revolutionary theory." That evaluation is, however,
overly generous. Virtually all of the key insights attributed to situationist
writers can be found in the works of earlier anarchists, social democrats, and
philosophers such as Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Oscar Wilde, George
Bernard Shaw, Wilhelm Reich and Friedrich Nietzsche (though the insights in
question were scattered and often were not developed with the rigor found in
the better situationist texts). The primary reason that this is not widely
recognized is that most of the early situationists and their followers came
from marxist backgrounds and were simply not familiar with the vast body of
non-marxist progressive writings produced in prior decades; and the younger
situationist followers often have had very little in the way of political
experience and are as unfamiliar with early progressive literature as were
their marxist predecessors.

A secondary reason for the overestimation of the importance of the
situationists is that situationism is a French ideology utilizing an arcane
marxist-derived jargon ('poverty of...,' 'society of the spectacle,'
'reification,' 'dialectical,' etc., etc.); as well, virtually all situationist
texts are written in a very difficult to follow, jargon ridden, muddy
style-which makes them inaccessible to most people. Thus, situationism has a
great deal of snob appeal for those with intellectual pretensions. Once you've
mastered the jargon and read (or claim to have read) the key (one is tempted to
say "sacred") texts, you certainly at least appear to be an intellectual. Thus
it's not surprising that "situationist" poseurs, attached as they are to their
"situationist" roles and "intellectual" pretensions, often have little regard
for truth and regard decent human behavior as "bourgeois"; it follows, then,
that in political controversies they often resort to deliberate distortions,
fabrications, and ad hominem attacks upon those who have the temerity to
criticize their ideas. (Some, incredibly, have even used the slogan, 'the
personal is political,' as an excuse for scurrilous personal attacks.) The
destructive - and ultimately self-defeating effects of these vicious tactics
are so obvious as to need no further comment.

But perhaps the most critical weakness of situationism is that it offers no
coherent method for "getting from here to there," that is, from "the society of
the spectacle" to the free society.

Having said this, it should be added that the great virtue of the situationist
writers was that they presented their insights in a more or less coherent
manner and expounded upon them at length. (The qualifier "more or less" is used
due to the very low quality, stylistically, of almost all situationist texts.)
At its best, situationist theory offered a critique of "spectacular" society,
that is, society in which people are reduced to the level of passive observers
and consumers rather than active participants. It made an extensive critique of
how both ideology and commodification turn people into passive, alienated
observers and consumers rather than active participants. It made an extensive
critique of how both ideology and commodification turn people into passive,
alienated observers of their own lives. Thus, situationist theory is a body of
critical thought which can be incorporated into one's own self-theory - but
nothing more. Anything more - the unquestioning acceptance of situationist
theories and the identification of oneself with those theories - is the
ideological misappropriation known as situationism. Situationism can be quite
the complete survival ideology, a defense against the wear and tear of daily
life. And included in the ideology is the spectacular role of being a
"situationist," that is, a radical jade and ardent esoteric.



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The other body of ideas which bears a great deal of resemblance to
revolutionary self-theory is, to use the term broadly, syndicalism. Variants
include anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary syndicalism, and council communism,
with anarcho-syndicalism being the most important of the three.

Real self-management is the direct management (without any separate leadership)
of social production, distribution, and communication by workers and their
communities. The movement for self-management has appeared again and again all
over the world in the course of social revolution: Russia in 1905 and
1917-1921; Spain in 1936-1939; Hungary in 1956; Algeria in 1960; Chile in 1972;
and Portugal in 1975. The form of organization most often created in the
practice of self-management has been workers' councils: sovereign assemblies of
producers and neighbors that elect delegates to coordinate their activities.
The delegates are not representatives, but carry out decisions already made by
their assemblies. Delegates can be recalled at any time should the general
assembly feel that its decisions are not being rigorously carried out.
Partisans of all of the above mentioned forms of syndicalism advocate such
practices.

The great virtues of syndicalism are, first, that it seeks to destroy all
coercive authority as well as the commodity accumulation mentality. Second, it
does provide a practical means of "getting from here to there." And third, it
recognizes that the one essential function of social organization is to provide
the economic base - production and distribution of goods and services - upon
which all else rests. Syndicalism recognizes that this is the one area in which
extensive organization (of the libertarian type described above) is needed, and
that it's best to leave all other areas of life as free as possible from
organizational influence. Virtually all critics of syndicalism, including the
original author(s) of this essay, miss this essential point. (It's certainly
true that a thorough critique of all types of domination and mystification is
necessary to social transformation, but one need only glance at the better
syndicalist publications to see that at least some syndicalists are making such
a critique.) Given the destruction of coercive authority (one of syndicalism's
central goals) and adequate advance preparation (i.e., demystification), it
would be absurd not to expect an explosion of creativity in all areas of life -
art, music, writing, architecture, family relations, sexual relations,
community structure, etc.,etc.

There are, however, two great dangers in syndicalism. The first is that many
syndicalists develop tunnel vision: they become so obsessed with labor
struggles and self-managed economic schemes that they not only fail to analyze
non-workplace related forms of domination and mystification, but they often act
as if such problems do not exist. Thus, if this syndicalist tendency would
succeed in its aims, it could well help to produce a self-managed society in
which other than economic forms of domination and mystification still exert
their baleful influences - for example, it's easy to envisage a worker
controlled economic system which coexists with religious mystification,
homophobia, and sexism. This would be contrary to anarchist principles, but
many syndicalists are syndicalists first and anarchists (or
"anti-authoritarians") second, which is more than a bit like the tail wagging
the dog.

The second danger is related to the first: syndicalists sometimes forget that
syndicalists organizations are just a means, not an end. They sometimes develop
a bad case of organizational fetishism; this can be termed "organizationitis" -
an intellectual hallucination in which means and ends are reversed, in which
the syndicalist organization is perceived as an end in itself, as being more
important than its goal (the free society). Sadly, in some cases that goal
seems to be entirely forgotten. And, even more sadly, "organizationitis"
sometimes - but not inevitably - leads to an even worse disease,
bureaucratization.

But these are not condemnations of syndicalist theory; they simply show that
even the best theory is, in itself, no guarantee that its holders will always
act in accord with its principles or will develop insights which go beyond
those contained in the theory. This isn't terribly surprising. We all live in
the world of commodity capitalism, and it would be shocking if we weren't
burdened to a greater or lesser degree with the character traits such a life
engenders; and it would be equally shocking if these character traits didn't
cause problems in syndicalist organizations - indeed, in organizations of any
type, including the most informal.


Still, the situation is far from hopeless. A high degree of personal awareness
among participants can reduce the dangers of organizationitis and
bureaucratization. As well, there are many procedural devices which are very
effective at reducing such problems; these include decentralization, mandatory
rotation of offices, term limitations, strict delimitation of responsibilities,
and immediate recallability. With such safeguards, participation in common
projects of self-liberation is more than feasible; it's desirable.

The world can only be turned right side up by the conscious collective activity
of those who construct a theory of why it is upside down. Spontaneous rebellion
alone is not sufficient. Without adequate advance preparation, the old world
will simply reappear after any rebellion, embedded as it is in the psyches of
the fabled "people." An authentic revolution can only occur if there is a
coherent and practical mass movement of self-conscious individuals in which all
of the mystifications of the past are being consciously swept away.


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