At Dusk

What has hitherto been understood by radical theorists as the “modern revolutionary movement” is shattered; it only lingers as an image of opposition to advanced capitalism. The currents which issued from May ’68 subsided at the moment when they were forced to become, rather than simply appear to be, something serious. Today, the question is not whether these spent forces of the student and worker extreme left are in a state of regroupment, but whether the possibility of a new revolutionary movement can be discerned within the present situation. Any attempt to establish any real continuity between past and current developments is a forced connection: to advance the idea of a single, uninterrupted movement that has evolved from a student to a proletarian base is to ignore the new social and political realities—which are often not radical at all—in advanced capitalism. The dispersed, isolated tendencies which comprise the remnants of “authentic” revolt against “spectacular” power will be differentiated on the basis of how—not if—they respond to these fundamentally altered conditions. Those who simply look within present reality in order to confirm an already-formulated theory will not participate in the further progress of radical criticism; it is, after all, precisely the most modernistic features of situationist theory which have proved to be the most problematic (the cybernetic welfare state, the primacy of “spiritual” poverty over material poverty in modern society). In this respect, situationist theory conveys a false sense of grandeur: it appears to have resolved all theoretical problems when in fact it hardly begins to discuss them. To speak of more contemporary issues, the present world economic crisis has outdistanced avant-garde theory. The unexpected character of capitalism’s most recent crisis and the unanticipated crisis of its opposition have left this theory quite literally in a critical predicament. And if situationist theory has hitherto ignored the critique of the political economy of the spectacle, it has done so at its own peril and now bears the consequences of this disdain for the “dismal science.” Given such a critical deficiency, all talk of how much the S.I. was able to “anticipate” current events can only be ironical; the defects of the situationist critique have their origins in the theoretical immaturity of the S.I. It is not that situationist theory is simply in need of revision, but that it is useless, and this inutility can be measured by the distance of situationist criticism from the concrete. The theoretical tendencies which based themselves on the analysis of the S.I. are unable to comprehend, much less interrupt, the course of contemporary history. Any theoretical tendency’s downfall begins when it can no longer prove its superiority on its chosen field, and given the prolonged conceptual impasse of extremist criticism, it is not surprising that new contributions to social analysis have come from circles which were once dismissed by the S.I. as “ideological.” Within the vacuum of extremist theory itself, the anachronistic positions of the ultra-left have come to enjoy, faute de mieux, a certain preeminence. No comprehensive perspective has emerged to supplant the supposedly “coherent” one of the S.I., and in view of the present fragmentation of situationist theory into various disciplines—radical psychology, sociology, etc.—the importance of a unitary (i.e., integrated) social criticism becomes even more important. But before revolutionary criticism can be renewed, it must account for the collapse of its previous perspectives, and having done so, its development of further positions must not consist simply of a reconceptualization of situationist theory, but of establishing new theoretical bases for the “critique of existing conditions.” Nothing can be considered as given—such issues as the “modern proletariat,” which has been considered almost as an undifferentiated category, and the spectacle must be subjected to new interpretations. What is in fact required is a new theory of social history corresponding to changed (objective) circumstances; and such a theory will only emerge through an analysis of the exact historical configurations of the present epoch. Criticism must specify the precise determinants of the contemporary social situation. Theory must decisively orient itself towards social transformation, and the lines of its analysis must parallel the developmental planes of its objects, primary among these being international capitalism. Like all revolutionary theory, this criticism must express itself as a theory of contradiction, as an explanation of the essential, and therefore basic, antagonisms within the social formations with which it is concerned. To deny the continued validity of existing interpretations of contradictions within capitalist society is not to deny the existence of such contradictions, but to dispute the way in which they appear within previous explanations. The task of developing alternative critical positions involves an articulation of theory out of an analysis of contemporary issues, and not the reverse, a mechanistic application of theoretical models to reality. However much a new rev- olutionary perspective may be grounded in previous traditions—i.e., Marxian theory—it must appear as the product of sustained practical research, rather than arise as an a priori interpretation of events.

In radical theory, as elsewhere, old myths die hard. One of the most persistent of such illusions has been the myth of a unified international movement, in which various scattered instances of “social” revolt have been imbued with a formal unity. Those who contrive the image of a single global class struggle which is “irreducibly” present everywhere and which manifests itself, if not in an identical form, then in an identical content, cannot establish any real unity among the isolated events they analyze, precisely because they cannot establish the real specificity of these events. Unless theory is able to comprehend the particularity of social conflict and describe the precise context in which such conflict emerges, it cannot generalize from the specific to the universal, i.e., reason inductively. Much of extremist theory, however, fails to recognize, much less explain, the differing levels of development within international opposition to capitalism. Thus, the fact that a radical social crisis has recently emerged in such countries as Egypt, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, while remaining only latent in others, is incomprehensible within such an idealized interpretation of contemporary history. The repeated failure of social reality to behave in ways which theory predicted it “should” is nowhere more evident than in the present economic crisis of advanced capitalism, where the issues which situationist theory once dismissed as irrelevant—pertaining to those of material survival, wage demands, etc.—have become paramount. Behind situationist criticism’s inability to anticipate the primacy of economic issues—rather than ones relating to social authority—in affecting the development of proletarian consciousness, and hence, activity, lies a more general failure to advance a theory of social praxis and its objective determination. In order to correct such a deficiency, “qualitative” criticism must investigate the precise factors which condition social practice; it must elaborate a complex dialectic involving the relation between the specific socio-economic environment within which the proletariat is situated and the “internal” movement of the proletariat. What is required is thus not just a theory of the proletariat as a revolutionary class but a theory of the proletariat as it exists presently within capitalist society and of the cumulative process of its development into a revolutionary class. With respect to this latter process, the question of the politicization of the proletariat, considered not in the narrow sense of bourgeois politics, but in the sense of the extension of proletarian demands beyond a “redress of grievances” within the capitalist economy, must be confronted. Since the present economic crisis of capitalism is quite naturally also a social crisis (manifested in unemployment), a crisis which contains the possibility of a crisis of social power, such theoretical concerns become decisive. The present crisis imposes immediate exigencies upon all “far left” theoretical tendencies: either these currents will be able to respond effectively to new historical conditions, or else they will disappear as theoretical elements. These requirements are obviously different for critical tendencies than for the conventional organized left, which has already established a certain presence in proletarian sectors. For the theorists of the extreme left, their separation from the proletariat assumes the dimensions of a crise de conscience, one which results from the discrepancy between the theorists’ affirmation of a “proletarian theory” and their objective removal from the proletariat; it arises from the “pernicious chasm” which divides theoretical knowledge from its practical effect. And this crisis is not only a crisis of conscience, but one of consciousness, reflecting the divorce of theoretical understanding and proletarian consciousness.

If, as Lukács maintains, capitalism’s economic contradictions only assume revolutionary proportions when the proletariat perceives them subjectively, as a crisis of its own power, consciousness then becomes central to contemporary discussions, and more importantly, to those tendencies which are seeking to become revolutionary formations. Unless a radical grouping is to assume a purely passive role in history, awaiting the “spontaneous” appearance of a proletarian revolution, it must consider the question of the “introduction” of theoretical perspectives into proletarian struggles and define its project around the generalization of proletarian class consciousness. For the radicalized intelligentsia, such a consideration must initially proceed from an examination of its objective social position. Here, the distance between theory and practice is fundamentally the distance between those who conceive of the necessity of the proletariat’s becoming a revolutionary class and this social class itself. This disjunction—and the contradictions which it embodies—forms the real context within which any organizational problematic for a radical tendency whose activity is based outside the proletariat must develop. For such a tendency, all practical questions must be posed in relation to the critical distinction between revolutionary practice as conducted by a small theoretical elite and revolutionary practice as the practice of a class. As long as this distinction remains, a primary question for theory is that of understanding the precise role of revolutionary organization as a practical force engaged in radicalizing activity. It is an indication of the extent to which this subject has been neglected in contemporary theory that one has to go back to such an impoverished source as Lukacs to find even a tentative discussion of a “theory of practice.” For instance, it is worth noting that if the S.I. always insisted on the importance of organization, it nonetheless did not escape a definite spontaneist orientation in its practice. The S.I. really had no theory of organization; it viewed its organizational activity passively, seeing it as a mere expression of a larger “revolutionary movement.” The S.I. could only proclaim a vague identity between its practice and that of workers, without ever examining the real relationship between the two. Furthermore, the S.l.’s approach to the “concrete,” its perception of what was important in contemporary history, revealed a fundamental weakness in its practical orientation. Its view of the objective role of a revolutionary organization was less concerned with the immediate effects of organized practice than with the ultimate goal towards which this practice was directed—the “total transformation of social life.” Its lack of concern for the direct impact of its practice was seen as a proof of its revolutionary integrity, indicating a refusal to compromise with the “issues of the day,” but this presumptuous attitude also condemned it to a position of historical inconsequence.

As with most of the non-Leninist left, the situationist movement has always been more concerned with what a revolutionary organization is not rather than with what a revolutionary organization is. It should be evident, however, that the denunciation of Leninism does not in itself resolve the problem of vanguardism and revolutionary practice; the relation of any “conscious minority” to proletarian movements is implicitly hierarchical. Despite their habitual (and necessarily self-effacing) description of themselves as “conscious proletarians,” revolu- tionary theorists, as part of a distinct social category, the intelligentsia, are products of the existing division of labor in capitalist society. Theoretical knowledge, like the academic disciplines it incorporates, is itself specialized, and it is produced by (self-proclaimed) “experts,” remaining largely inaccessible to those outside the “academy,” and thus, precisely to those it is intended to influence. Furthermore, theoretical knowledge confers proprietary rights upon its possessors, being an instrument which, under present circumstances, can be wielded only by a privileged few, even as it seeks to attack the basis of this privilege. The modern-day Conspiracy of Equals is carried out on the hierarchical terrain of existing society, and to a certain extent, vanguardism is not only avoidable, but necessary. All theory, whether consciously or not, is avant-gardist if it is really radical and expresses historical movement; theory emerges as a consciousness of history, a rising above immediate reality which places itself in a relatively narrow forward position within contemporary ideas. But the knowledge which it presents must be communicated to others if it is to become social theory, and it is in its transmission as much as in its conception that theory becomes socialized, that is, reencounters its object, but this time acting upon, rather than simply comprehending, reality. And if theory forms the basis of organized activity, then practice itself must be aligned in an historical direction: a radical grouping only attains an avant-garde status when it is able to anticipate social change and to historicize its practice, i.e., project itself into a determining role within social praxis. Theoretical consciousness, however, does not ipso facto result in an interventionist capability: it is not enough simply to interpret social reality, theory must prove the validity of its interpretation within reality. All pretensions—situationist and otherwise—to the contrary, practice can only be considered as revolutionary when it is activity which revolutionizes existing social conditions. Radical praxis must be explained as historical mediation, as a mediation between people and their history. Theoretical consciousness is here placed at the middle of things: at the same time that it strives to become a practical force, it must incorporate reality on a conceptual level. It must define reality and its possibilities. It is in this sense that “intervention” can be understood literally as a coming between, as a radical separation of alienated social forces and alienated social relations. This coming apart can obviously only lead to the creation of new social relations. Such an activist conception of organization should not be misunderstood: to restate the obvious, an organization is only revolutionary to the extent that it becomes an historical subject, initiating and consciously “directing” (in the sense of shaping) social transformation. And it becomes so only by actively situating itself in such a way as to effect change; it must place itself at the very center of social contradictions precisely in order to intensify them, and thus, resolve them in a radical fashion. But it is quite evident that practice cannot be seen in terms of a “will to power,” as if a group could command influence over events simply because it displays an ambition for such power. In its “drive for hegemony” (or theoretical and practical “supremacy”), an organization with revolutionary aspirations encounters the objective constraints to its activity; it is constrained not only by its own limitations (the degree to which it has an impact upon events), but by historical development. Here, as poor Lukács once remarked, “only the dialectics of history can create a radically new situation,” and the “autonomy” of a group is thus only limited. The bases of all radical activity are historical ones, and it is these bases alone which confirm—or refute—a theoretical perspective.

Organizational practice can be defined as the externalization of critical activity, but this definition, far from providing an answer to the question of a contemporary revolutionary practice, only states the crux of the problem. It is one thing to recognize that radical theory must establish its own immediacy and that critical activity must relativize itself and achieve a position of influence in the objective field of its description; it is another to describe how this relativization is to take place. While such a question cannot be resolved in the space of the present text, one can delineate, even simplistically, two of its aspects: the integration of revolutionary activity within contemporary social practice, that is, the concretization of its theory; and the direction of social praxis towards revolutionary ends. The existing models of “revolutionary practice” only represent an isolation of the aspects of this process, and in doing so, distort the content of each. Militantism, although achieving a crude specificity, completely subsumes practice within the issues of capitalist reformism, while its apparent opposite, the principled contemplative attitude favored by the situationists and others, only attains a “qualitative” ephemerality. If the consequences of militantism are obvious, those of anti-militantism are less so—however, they represent equally false alternatives. In its inability to connect itself to historical development, to link itself with present historical struggles, anti-militantism only sublimates its negativity, and the practice of extremist theoretical tendencies is therefore conducted vicariously. Such tendencies, for example, idealize the “inherent radicalism” of wildcat strikes and factory sabotage, while expediently ignoring the resemblance between “unofficial” actions and official ones, namely, their common origins in localized disputes and their organization around specific demands. The contradiction between specificity and total opposition cannot be easily resolved, but the possibility of a solution can be located in the joining of the categories of concrete and universal in a revolutionary strategy. If the degree to which the strategy of a revolutionary organization becomes the strategy of a class is dependent upon historical circumstances, it is nonetheless possible to distinguish two issues which any successful revolutionary strategy must confront. The strategic concerns of practice are, quite simply, the acceleration of revolutionary class consciousness and its necessary concomitant, the revolutionary self-organization of the proletariat. Radical practice must be conceived of as the synthesis of these two strategic dimensions, as communicative activity which embodies both the generalization of consciousness and the creation of autonomous organizational forms. Strategic theory is thus in its very essence a theory of combat in which the tactical questions so long neglected by extremist theory become crucial, and it is a theory not of Revolution in the abstract but of revolution as a process and of its corresponding stages of radicalization. On this level of concern, radical perspectives only attain specificity by apprehending, and thus critically appropriating, the immediate issues through which opposition constitutes itself, not in order to preserve them, but precisely in order to raise them to the level of the general. Revolutionary strategy only becomes important when it is elaborated during a period when social contradictions materialize rather than remain hypothetical. Under “optimum” conditions of social conflict, the alternatives confronting revolutionaries are reduced to either “pure” (and purely marginal) theoretical research or a conscious attempt to connect their practice to that of radicalized sectors of the proletariat. An ability to effect such a vital connection depends upon the successful implementation of a revolutionary strategy, and this implementation initially has more effect on the strategists themselves rather than on the social forces they are attempting to influence. For contemporary theorists, the essential transformation is that of a critical tendency into a revolutionary formation capable of sustained practical intervention within society. Such a formation must not only be able to “communicate theory,” but must also be able to explode false consciousness at the very point of its production and consumption. This intervention against social ideology does not, in the condescending language of certain situationists, “prepare the way for the proletariat,” but rather, provides an actual basis for opposition. Here, the correspondence between “proletarian” tendencies and revolutionary formations whose activity, whatever the class composition of its members, arises outside of an immediate context within the capitalist work force, becomes crucial. The viewpoint of such formations on this matter is necessarily distorted by the very fact of their indirect relation to class struggle; they tend to view the proletariat as an inert mass in need of theoretical direction even as it remains supposedly capable of “radical autonomy” and tend to conveniently ignore the possibility that the development of radical consciousness within sectors of the work force would render their own theoretical tendencies completely irrelevant. Even now, with the growth of rank-and-file movements and caucuses within the work force, the connection between a conscious minority of the proletariat and a conscious minority of the intelligentsia must be confronted—more so, obviously, by the latter. Assuming that the role of theoretical tendencies still remains vital in the project of developing class consciousness, and thus, of clarifying the issues of contemporary “political” debate, the question of revolutionary organization can still be considered, however one-sidedly, by such tendencies. A revolutionary organization must itself be capable of opening a revolutionary front against capitalism; it cannot proceed, as some would have it, from the proposition that the proletariat is “already in revolt,” but must itself seek to create foci of radical opposition. Needless to say, theoretical tendencies, unlike Lenin, will not be delivered in a sealed train to the revolutionary front; they will have to construct both the train and the rails. Historically, revolutionary organizations have become such only in their ability to mobilize social forces, to make history. However much it may contradict the “egalitarian” (sic) principles of the S.I., revolutionary mobilization does not involve the integration of the revolutionary organization within the proletariat, but the integration of the proletariat within revolutionary organizational structures (even when organized revolutionary tendencies emerge within the proletariat itself, they do not aim to assimilate themselves into the rest of their class, but to strive for preeminence within that class). But unless Leninism offers the only “road to the proletariat,” a revolutionary organization cannot play the role of a “general staff” to the workers’ army, yet that is precisely the role projected by even the most “anti-hierarchical” theory, where “consciousness” is identified, however implicitly, with an ability to command. Within present conditions, the “transformation of consciousness into conscious existence” appears as a contradiction, as a separation between theory (theorists) and practice (the proletariat). This separation cannot be resolved by any theoretical argument; its attempted solution remains the crucible in which any contemporary radical practice will be tested.

The present economic crisis of capitalism affords unique opportunities, while presenting unique difficulties, for a revolutionary practice based on a “unitary critique”; the social dislocations caused by the current near-depression give a precise meaning to the theory of alienation in capitalist society, but at the same time a concretization of this theory is required if it is to retain any relevance. In a period of high unemployment, the critique of alienated labor loses its absolute centrality; it is alienated existence in its entirety which must be put into question. The practical translation of a particularized qualitative critique of capitalist society must involve a direct challenge to militantism on its own ground, without, however, succumbing to the obvious temptation of ouvrierisme, i.e., an exclusive orientation towards productive sectors on account of their strategic importance. This rejection of a narrow definition of the “working class” does not mean that the situationist theory of the modern proletariat should simply be invoked instead; rather, it is precisely this theory which must be proved in the current period. Either the various sectors of thev “proletariat” in American society will demonstrate a radical commonality of interests against capital, or else this theory will have to be rejected. The unification of the proletariat can hardly be considered as a given; rather, it is something which has yet to be accomplished and remains the very rationale of revolutionary organizations. All illusions about the proletariat must be abandoned: the situationist myth of an intuitively “radical” proletariat engaged in spontaneous activity is only the other side of the militants’ crude adulation of the misery of working-class culture. In the present crisis, the praise of isolated acts of proletarian resistance is less important than undertaking a concentrated assault on the ideological dependency of the proletariat on economic and social institutions. It is of course not enough merely to point out the insufficiencies of present opposition to capitalism; the revolutionary tendency must formulate a positive response to capitalism’s crisis. The attack upon the ideological crisis of the proletariat must at the same time be an indication of the precise means of superseding the forms to which the proletariat is presently subservient. In view of current social reality, the automatic response of traditional situationist theory—having the proletariat seize control of the means of production and form workers’councils—is no longer sufficient: these proposals are as archaic as their terminology. In order to formulate a contemporary strategy, various new factors must be taken into consideration—for example, in a depressed economy, the locus of social conflict shifts from a direct contestation of capitalist power to a general challenge of social authority, an opposition which arises, strictly speaking, outside of production. Even if this were not so, the question of the revolutionary administration of society as a whole has hardly been adequately treated, and it would still be necessary to analyze traditional themes such as those of “mass strike” and “revolutionary insurrection” on a comprehensive basis. Existing leftist theories of social transformation are no more germane to reality than the predictable rhetoric within which they are couched. And while the present text does not pretend to have formulated an alternative, it does at least recognize the complexity of the issues confronting radical criticism in the present era.

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Up until now, the situationists, like their predecessors, have interpreted the world—and have disappeared in so many ways. Our attempt to explain the failure of the situationist project has been less an attempt to resurrect this project than to clarify certain issues which are central to contemporary radical debate. Our somewhat tedious examination of a radical theory of the past will hopefully prepare the way for an investigation of present historical realities, their causes and ramifications. This task, however, has not been undertaken simply because of its importance for contemporary theory, but rather, was imposed on us by our foregoing participation in the situationist movement; it has been a just retribution for our previous mistakes. Nonetheless, without making any pretensions to a similarity in theoretical content, our position is analogous to that of Marx and Engels in The German Ideology. If nothing else, we have achieved a certain “self-clarification.” But at the same time, we have become increasingly aware of our irrelevancy in the contemporary situation; to a certain extent, the present text represents time lost for ourselves in relation to the development of a modern revolutionary theory. It is an extended, if necessary, digression which reveals more about what we don’t know than about what we do. At present, our tendency is a practical nullity in terms of its ability to play a significant social role in creating an opposition to capitalism, and in terms of theoretical research, the necessary prerequisite to any practice, our project has only begun. This text is a transitional document: in the course of its writing, our perspectives have changed. Within the space of these pages, we have outlined our critical concerns, but these remain to be amplified. In a very real sense, we are forced to begin again as theorists, and this renewal brings with it both a real theoretical independence and a corresponding intellectual primitiveness. The future of our tendency is uncertain, but necessarily so; it must bring new perspectives.

— David Jacobs & Christopher Winks
for the tendency Perspectives