A CONTRIBUTION

T0 THE CRITIQUE of PoLITICAL AUTONOMY

GILLES DAUVE
A CONTRIBUTION

TOTHE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL AUTONOMY

IT'S VERY DIFFICULT TO FORCE INTO OBEDIENCE.
WHOEVER HAS NO WISH TO COMMAND.
J.-J. ROUSSEAU

No critique beyond this point

Any eritique of democracy arouses suspicion, and even more so

i critique is made
by those who wish a world without capital and wage-labour, without classes, without
aStte.

Public opinion dislikes but understands those who despise democracy from a re-
actionary or elitist point of view. Someone who denies the common man’s or woman's
ability to organize and run himself or herself, logically will oppose democracy. But
someone who firmly believes in this ability; and yet regards democracy as unfit for hu-
‘man emancipation, is doomed to the dustbins of theory. At the best, he s looked down
upon as an idior; at the worst, he gets the reputation of a warped mind who'll end up in
the poor company of the arch-enemies of democracy: the fascists.

Indeed, if “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the
working classes themselves”, it scems obvious that in order to emancipate themselves,
the exploited must not only do away with the power structures that enslave them, but
also create their own organs of debating and decision-making. Exercising one’s collec-

tive freedom, isn't that what democracy is all sbout?

hat assumption has the m:
simplicity: to change the world and live the best possible human lfe, what better way
than to base this life on institutions that will provide the largest mumber of people with
the largest freedom on specch and decision-taking? Besides, whenever they fight, the
dominated masses generally declare their will to establish the authentic demoeracy
that's been so far lacking.

Forall these reasons, the eritique of demoeracy is a lost or forgotten battle.

Set the controls for the heart of the matter

Democracy claims to be the most difficult abjective to achieve, and also the most vital,
the ideal that all human beings desire: the theory and practice of collective freedom

Democracy is equated with organizing sociallife by common decisions which take into

account everybody’s needs and desires as much as can be.
Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

But that ideal also claims that to be more than just an ideal, this process of common
decision-making should happen in conditions of eguality between us all. Mere politi-
cal equality gives each citizen rights but not effective powers: real democracy implies
socio-economic equality, with no more rich and poor, no more master and servant, no
‘more boss and employee. So a fair total reorganization and sharing of riches will enable
each of us to get a fair share in decision-making on big issues as well as on minor ones.
We'll have a democracy that's not just formal, but real.

This is where we bump into a logical flaw.

Sharing is a basic and elementary necessary human attitude, but no-one seriously
expects it to solve the social question. At best, it can alleviate it. No moralist or prophet
has ever convinced the rich and the mighty to divide their wealth and power fairly be-
tween all human beings. We're entitled to ask where this sacial (and not just political)
“fairness” is going to come from? Democracy can't achieve it on its own. This so-called
“real” democracy lacks reality.

Democracy is a contradictios

it pretends to give and guarantee something essential
which inevitably evades it.

Stil, while most people go on at length about the failings of democracy, very few are

i to discuss it nature, because it appears as the best framework for human emanci-
pation, and the only way to get it. Any resistance to exploitation, and any endeavour to

ereatea world without exploitation, is faced with the hard fact of the exploiters” control
overthe exploited. The endless struggle against fuctory despotism, against boss rule on the

shop floor and outside the factory, and also the struggle for rank and file control over

astrike, go beyond the mere refusal to depend upon a boss, a local politician, or evena

union or party leader. That negative has a positive dimension. It the first step to direct,

non-competitive, solidarity relations, which entail new ways of meeting, discussing and

‘making decisions. No social movement, big or small, can evade the issue: Who rules?
Otherwise, without procedures and structures different from top-down ones, the “lower
classes” will eternally be treated s inferior. Be they called a commune, a commitiee,
a collective, a soviet, a council, or a simple general meeting, every participant in these
bodies realizes his individual freedom as well as his collective existence. Liberty and
featernity are lived through acts.

Now, do these forms create the movement or just express and structure it?

I¢s no use disclaiming our question on the grounds that these forms do both...

because the nature of democracy is to treat the space-time of debate and decision,

not as what it is, a component of social life (and therefore of all positive change), but

as the prime condition of social life (and therefore of all positive change). That's what
we'll be discussing

On the way, we'llalso have to show how this blindinglightis even more attractively
deceptive because the word *democracy” itself is confused and confusing.

But first, a ltcle historical meandering, to see what critique is not ours.

The traditionalist or reactionary critique

Inspiteof
archists like C)

2014 century, shared a common distaste for the Rights of Man, because they all dismiss the

ferences, the opponents of the French Revolution like Burke, late mon-

Maurras, or the German thinkers of the Conservative Revolution in the
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy Var makt 2008

notion of the universality of the human species. “In my life, 've seen Frenchmen, Ialians,
Russians, etc; as for Man, | must confess I've never met him (.)” (. de Maistre, 1796)
“They prefer the supposedly real abstraction of the soil, the nation, the people, the Vo, the
natives, etc., to the more obviously abstract abstraction of the modern voting citizen. To
them, human beings can only be “brothers” and “sisters” if they belong to a certain group
or origin. That group can even be (German) labour in E. Junger's The Worker (1932), but
its still limited. Communism, on the contrary, is the possibility of the universal.

Our critique addresses the State, demoeratic or dictatorial. Reactionary critique ad-
dresses the democratic State. Fascism has a deep hatred of democracy and, if it comes to
power, it does away with political competition, but what he hates about the democratic

system is parliamentary procedures, not the State institutions which fascists seduce,

conquer, occupy and fortify, thereby taking to their extreme potentials which exi
all parliamentary regimes.

Communism opposes democracy because it is anti-State. Fascism only opposes de-
‘mocracy; because it is pro-State. We take on democracy as a form of the State, whereas
reactionaries take it on as a political form they consider too fecble to defend the State.
Mussolini and Hitler destroyed parliamentarianism in order to create analmighty central

executive and admi

trative power. Communi

s have had to deal with parliamentarian-
ism as one of the forms (and not a fecble one) of government and repression. Reaction

denounces free will and bourgeo

dividualism to replace them with (0ld or new) forms
of oppressive authority. They want less than indi

iduals. The communist perspective

aims to realize the individual’s aspi

ions to a freedom that is both personal and lived
with others. It wants more than the individual,

Nietzsche’s critique

In the eyes of Nietzsche, a society of masters ruling over slaves has been succeeded
by the society of the average man, the man of the masses, where only slaves are to be
found. Zarathustra’s author stood for a new aristocracy; no longer based on birth, nor
on money, nor (as the Nazi interpretation would have it) on power, even less on race,

but on the free /mind/spirit/ who's not afraid of solitude. It's because he would like

every one of us to rise above himself and above the “herd” that Nietzsche is hostile to

socialism (he sees any collectivism as another type of gregariousness), and to anarchism
in Beyond Good & Evil).

For what concerns us here, the flaw in Nietzsche’s vision does not lic in
is undeniable (in that respect, the Third Reich

‘much). More basically, a solution which is neither hiscorical nor political, but mythical

(an “autonomous herd”, as he calls i

wl not distort his wi

and poetic, can only have meaning and value as an artist’s morals. Nietzschean politics
can’t be recuperated because it does not exist. He was not dealing with the social ques-

tion. His ethics s only to be lived by the individual, a the risk of losing one’s mind, as

happened to the philosopher himself.

The individualist critique

‘The democratic system is often blamed for crushing the individual under the collective.
The poet and dandy Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) wrote: “Nothing more ridiculous
than looking for truth in numbers (..) the ballot box is only the way to create 2 police
Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

force.” And in the 207 century, Karl Kraus: “Democracy is the right for everyone to
be the slave of all*

Whatever element of truth this point of view may contain, the partisans of democ-
racy have their answer ready. They do not deny the pressure of democracy over the
individual. They say the democratic system gives everyone a larger scope for freedom
than he would get if his individuality was locked within itself, or if it had to go into an
unpredictable congregation of individual atoms

Some individualists are more social than others. They suggest an association of frecly

consenting individuals. This is precisely one of the variant of the democratic contract,
perhaps one of the most progressive.

Ignoring democracy
Before 1848, large sectors of socialism did not expect anything from democracy, because
they stood outside politics. In spite of their quarrels, these schools of thought agreed on
the generalization of associations, as a remedy to the “dissociation” (P. Leroux) brought
about by the triumph of industry and money. All that was needed was to combine pas-
sions (Fourier), creative minds and productive abilities (Saint-Simon), or mutual bonds
(Proudhon). Unlike the neo-babouvists who'd inherited Babeuf's experience and advo-

cated the seizure of political power by organized mass violence, all the above mentioned

thinkers believed in the supremacy of morals: a new world would be born less out of

than by an ethical impetus. Some even hoped that socialism could be founded
(funded, actually) by generous enl

tened bourgeois, on a small scale at first, and then
develop as the bulk of society would follow its example, political power having little or

nothing to do about it therefore there was no need for revolu
This is neither a eritique of politics nor of democracy.
The communist perspective is anti-political, not a-political.

The Revolutionary Syndicalist critique: circumventing democracy

Though it may seem to have only a historical interest, this critique s stll active today,
in a different way from 1910 of course. The idea to absorb politics into the economy,
. to have a directly social democracy, is surfacing again in the current utopia of a
seizure of local power so generalized that it would tzke away the substance of central
polic

In Changing the World Without Taking Power (2002), ]. Holloway argues that radical

al power (the State), and thus relieve us from the necessity of destroying the State.

transformation is now so embedded in our dai

s that we're gradually transform-
ing the fabric of saciety, without the need for a potentially dictatorial break. Evolution
instead of revolution, what else? The “slow revolutions” notion, recently theorized by
A Bartra, partly inspired by the situation in Mexico and taken up by some radicals,
amounts to no revol

In the mid-19th century, too, instead of addressing democracy; some hoped to go
round it.

Proudhon believed that work gave the toiling masses a political capacity: let’s find
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy Var makt 2008

new way of producing goods, ler’s make the bourgeois useless, the rest will follow, and
the workshop will replace government. Democracy was neither accepted nor fought

against, but directly realized by work, without any mediation.

About fifty years later, revolutionary syndicalism had 2 loathing for parliamentary
democracy. The vehicle for change was to come from labour organized in industrial
(a5 opposed to trade) unions, which would unite the whole class, skilled and unskilled.

Proudhon had been the ideologue of craftsmen and small industry. Anarcho-syndical-

ism was adapted to the age of trusts and huge factories, but the principle was similar: a
fusion between industry and government. After acting as an egalitarian body fighting

the bosses and police, the union would later manage the economy during and after the
revolution. Some syndicalists, like De Leon in the US, wanted parallel political and
industrial action, but to them politics was clearly outside and against parliament.
Revolutionary syndicalism has been reproached for ts clitism. Its true it emphasized
the role of active minorities that would /spur/pushy the less advanced into action. But
most revolutionary syndicalists aimed at an active class conscious mass elite, utterly
different from what they saw as the passive mass of sheeplike social-democrat voters.

Georges Sorel (1847-1922) thought that the labour union, unlike parliament and party

, bred “a fair and real orga

d equality”, as all members were wage-labourers and
in solidarity with each other. The “new political principle of the proletariat” s the “gov-
ernment by vocational groups” self-organized in the work place. “Resistance bodies wi

finally enlarge their scope and range so much that they will absorb nearly all polit
asuccessful “struggle to suck bourgeois political organization dry of alllfe”.

On one essential poin, Sorel had a point: “Marx believed that the democratic regime
has the advantage that as workers are no longer attracted to fighting the monarchy or
the aristocracy, the notion of class becomes easier to grasp. Experience teaches us the
opposite; democracy is quite good at preventing the advance of socialism, by diverting
workers’ minds toward trade-unionism under government protection.” (1908)

Sorel, however, only scored a negative point against Marx, because experience was
also teaching the opposite of what he was expecting: the union failed as well as the party,
and union self-organization was often sucked dry of al life by bourgeois democracy.
)

any class who wants to liberate itself must create its own organ”, H. Lagardelle wrote in

“You can't destroy a

y by using the organs which are there to preserv

1908, without realizing that his eritique could be applied as much to the unions (including

asupposed revolutionary syndicalist French CGT on a fast road to bureaucratization
and class collaboration) as to the parties of the Second International. Revolutionary
syndicalism discarded the voter and preferred the producer: it forgot that bourgeois

society ereates and lives off both. Communism will go beyond both

Anti-parliamentarianism

Understanding universal suffrage as the act by which that the workers swap their po-
tential violence for a voting paper, is part of the essentials of social eritique. Attacking
elections has been a constant theme for the anarchists, and was not uncommon among
socialists before 1914. Al left factions and parties in the Second International agreed that
Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

any parliament remains under the control of the ruling class, and election day is always
a set back for radicalism. After 1917, this remained a fundamental tenet of all varieties
of communists. Even those who advocated tactical use of elections regarded the soviets,
and not the Parliament, s the policical basis and organ of a future revolution.

That being said, and it must be said, rejecting parliament does not sum up nor define

our perspective, no more than despising the rich or hating money: Mussolini also wanted
t0 bring down old bourgeois institutions, and he succeeded, up to a p

The Bolshevik critique: dictatorship versus democracy
In 1920, against Kautsky’s Terrorism & Communism published a year before, Trotsky
wrote a book with the same title. Kautsky opposed democracy and mass freedom to
civil war and systematic use of violence. Trotsky distinguishes between democracy as
universal suffrage, and democracy as the mass of the people itself: to understand what
is meant by “people”, one has to go into class analysis.

Before parliamentarianism as we've known it since the end of the 197H century,
Trotsky explains, there were examples of early conservative democracy: the agrarian
democracy of the farmers in the New England town meeting, the Swiss self-government
-d by Rousseau in The
Social Contract, 1762). Then, as capital and labour became “the polar classes of society”,

of the urban lower middle classes and the rich peasantry (pr

bourge

democracy developed as “the weapon of defence” ag:

st class antagonisms.

‘Trotsky reminds the reader what Western civilized democracy has led to: a world war.

As for Russia, Trotsky justifies terror and coercion methods on the grounds that

they’re the only methods available i the proletariat s to defend itself against a far more
terrorist and bloodthirsty counter-revolution. “When the civil war is over (..) By means

ion of distribution,

of asystematically applied labour service, and a centralized orgas
the whole population of the country

1l be drawn into the general system of economic
arrangement and self-government.”

Knowing that Trotsky was at the same time advocating forced militarization of la-
bour, one can only read those lines as statesman talk justifying his own power over the
common people. For what concerns us here, Trotsky only targets democracy because

of whatit's become under capitalism: an

sperialist democracy”. So, (... we repudiate

democracy in the name of the concentrated power of the proletariat”. He is interested

in the forms taken by democracy (and claims Bolshevism will later achieve a superior
form), not in the democratic principle.

The anarchist critique: dispersing power

Leninism s haunted by the seizure of power, anarchism by its obsessive fear. As a reply
to authority and dictatorship, anarchism stands for the collective versus leadership, bot-
tom versus up, horizontal versus vertical, commune versus government, decentralization
versus centralization, self-management versus top management, local commaunity versus
mass electorate: a plurality of true democracies instead of a false one, and ultimately
the State will be destroyed by universalized democracy. Lots of small scale production
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy Var makt 2008

and living units will be dynamic enough to get together without any of them alienat-
ing its autonomy. Like the polis of Ancient times, the modern metropolis falls prey to
oligarchic tendencies: myriads of federated co-ops, collectives and districts will be able
to run themselves, and thus remain democratic. If power is split between millions of
elements,it becomes harmless.

We won't solve the problem of power by spreading litle bits of i everywhere.

Bordiga’s critique: the opposite of democracy

Amedeo Bordiga is one of the very few who took democracy seriously: he didn’t look

atits methods, but atits le. However, he

cened so much proletarian democracy
to bourgeois democracy that he ended up missing the principle itself.

His starting point is that democracy consists in individuals regarding themselves as
equals, each making his own opinion according to his free will, then comparing it with
the opinion of others, before taking a decision (usually after a vote and according to
‘majority rule: this is important, yet not essential to the definition). Parliament stifles the
proletarians by forcing them into a political partnership with the bourgeois. Nothing
originalin that laststatement, but the deduction that follows is not so common: Bordiga
thinks worker democracy is also to be rejected, becaus:

decomposes the proletarian

fighting spiritinto individual decisions. Democracy means a reunion of equal rights and

wills, which,

impossibl

in bourgeois parliamentarianism, and pointless in proletarian

class activity: revolution does not depend on a mass of individual decisions getting to-

gether, nor on majority or proportional procedures, but on the a

y of the organized
aparty”,
but his party is very different from the Leninist one, since it is not based on socialist

proletariat to act as centralizing body and a collective mind. (Bordiga cal

intellectuals introducing socialism into the working class from outside. To make things

‘more complicated, Bordiga never openly criticized Lenin’s conception of the party:)
“(.) the principle of democracy has no intrinsic value. It is not a “principle”, but

rather a simple mechanism of organization (..) revolution is not a problem of forms

of organization. On the contrary; revolution is a problem of content, a problem of the
‘movement and action of revolutionary forces in an unending process ()" (The demo-
cratic principle, January 1922)

Indeed communist revolution is the creation of non-profit, non-mercantile, co-

operative and fraternal social relations, which implies smashing the State apparatus and

doing away with the division between firms, with money s the universal mediator (and
‘master), and with work as a separate activity. That is the content.

What Bordiga fails to see, is that this content won't come out of any kind of form.
Some forms are incompatible with the content, We can’t reason like the end was the only
thing that mattered: the end is made out of means. Certain means get us closer to the end
we want, while others make it more and more remote and finally destroy its possibility.
‘The content of communism (which Bordiga was right to emphasize) can only be born
out of the self-organized action of “the vast majority” of the proletariat (Communist
if the

dictator is one part of the proletariat oppressing the rest. Soon enough that part loses

Manifesto). The communist movement is not demoeratic: neither is it dictatorial,
Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

10

whatever proletarian character it had and turns into a privileged group telling people
what to do. Thi

early as 1920-21

is what happened in Russia, as some like Otto Riihle understood as

Bordiga lacks a eritique of politics. He perceives of revolution as a succession of
phases: first it would replace bourgeois power, then it would create new social relations.
“This is why he has no trouble believing that the Bolsheviks could have ruled Russia for
years and, even without being able of transforming the country in a communist way,

ill promote world revolution. Yet power is not something revolutionaries can hold on

to with no revolution happening in their country or anywhere else. Like many others,

Bordiga equates power to an instrument. When Jan Appel was staying in Moscow as a
KAPD delegate in the Summer 1920, he was shown factories with well-oiled machines
that could not be operated for lack of spare parts: when the revolution breaks out in
Europe, the Russian workers would el him, you'll send us spares and we'll be able to
operate these machines again. After October 1917, the Bolsheviks must have thought
of themselves as something similar: a machinery still partly idle but preparing for world
revolution. Unfortunately, power (and even more so State power) s not a tool waiting

tobe properly handled. It’ a social structure that does not remain on stand-by for long.

It has a funeti

it connects, it makes people do things, it imposes, it organizes what
exists. If what exists is wage-labour and commodity exchange, even in the original and
‘makeshift existence it had in Russia in 1920, power will manage that kind of labour
and that

structure is only defined by its acts, and if it does not act it soon withers

ind of exchange. Lenin died a head of State. On the contrary, a revolutionary

Like Trotsky, Bordiga theorizes the necessity to do violence to particular proletar-
ians in the name of the future interests of the proletarians in general: as late as 1960, he
would stlljustify the Bolshevik repression of the Kronstadt rising in February-March,
1921. He never understood that at the time he was writing The Democratic Principle,
the Russian experience that he extensively used to back up his thesis was eliminating
whatever revolution was left in Russia. Bordiga was attacking democratic formalism on
behalf of a revolution that was already more formal than real.

Dictatorship s the opposite of democracy: The opposite of democracy is not a cri-
tique of democracy.

Council communism: the quest for non-violence
The “German” Communist Left agreed with the “alian” Left on the rejection of bour-
geois democracy. The disagreement focused on worker democracy.

What has come to be known as “council communism” was one of the carliest eritics
of the failure of Bolshevism, and remains one of the best. But as time passed, council
communists have tended to be wary about anything that might be a constraint upon
the working class. Their critique of bureaucracy as the main obstacle to revolution led
them to democracy. Not bourgeois democracy, needless to say, worker democracy; but
in that respect both bourgeois and worker forms proclaim the same purpose: to prevent

ncroachments on personal freedom.
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

Var maic 2008

We won't reply (as Bordiga would) that individual freedom is an illusion and is ir-
relevant to communism. We only say that in any case such freedom can't be guaranteed
by the democratic principle.

What this quest for non-pressure boils down to s the desire to avoid the il effects of
conflicts. As it happens, the “protection” provided for by democracy only works in the
absence of any serious crisis among the persons concerned, be they proletarians instead
toad

of bourgeois. As soon s debates not enough to resul ion willingly accepted
by the group as a whole, the group can’t carry on as a mere confrontation of free wills

(unless it’s only a friendly debating society). Either the group thinks that maintaining

the community matters more than the disagreement. O it splits. Or it forces a d
unto the participants. In all cases, the democratic principle has been suspended.

The ultimate result of turning free will into an absolute would be for a radical
group to do nothing but circulate data and information: no theory, except the theory of
exchange, the theory of the necessity of autonomy:. No theory, except the theory that
1o theory must be imposed onto the working class. Such a non-theory would of course
be inaccessible to criticism, which would help the group developing its own informal

bureaucracy.

Bordiga’s theory of the party denies the problem. Councilism evades it by waiting for
such an overwhelming proletarian majority that al conflict will be resolved without any
verbal or physical violence. The “party or autonomy” alternative was born out of our past

failures. A future revolutionary movement will have to go beyond that alternative.

The critique of “formal” democracy

“Traditional Marxist analysis has the merit /of stressingto stress/ that democracy gives

possibiliies that only become realities for those able to use them: in a class society, the
‘members of the ruling class will always be in a much better position to do so. Everyone
i (nearly) free to publish a paper, but the ads necessary to finance a daily or a magazine
won't go to an anti-capitalist press. The ballot paper of Henry Ford s counted as one
vote like the ballot paper of one of his workers, but Mr Ford will hold more sway on
public affairs than any of his workers, or even of thousands of them.

Like some previous critiques, this one points to an essential feature of democracy;

but its shortcoming is to treat democ

ic forms as if they lacked reality, whereas they
are real, with a reality of their own.

I¢soften said that the liberties allowed by a democratic regime are only cosmetic: that
istrue, but only part of the truth. Everybody knows that freedom of specch favours the
business lawyer more than his cleaning lady. In an unequal society, knowledge, culture,
politics and access to the public scene are also unequal. Yet, today as yesterday, by us-
ing and enlarging possibilicies left to them, the workers, the common people have been
able to better their lot, and thus they ve given some content to liberties that aren’t just
empty shells. True,this betterment was caused more by direct often violent action than
by democracy properly speaking: nevertheless, legal unions, liigation bodies, as well
as local auth,

s, members of parliament or even governments favourable to labour

11
Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

12

have helped channel these demands, moderating them and pushing them forward at the
same time. Democracy and reformism have led a couple’s lfe for nearly 150 years now,
although they’ve often been strange bedfellows.

Explaining that a worker’s ballot paper only formally weigh the same as his boss’s,

only proves that so-called political equality does not make for social inequality. Yet
reformists have never said the opposite. They say: “Since Mr Ford’s ballot paper weighs
amillion times more than one of his workers’, les get together the votes of millions of
workers and we'll be stronger than the Ford family. We'll turn into reality the appear-
ance of power that the bourgeois have granted us.” Against the might of capital, lsbour

has the strength of numbers: speaking in public, having papers independent from the

bosses’ press, organizing in the workplace, meeting and demonstrating in the street, are
after all easier in democracy, a the exploited and oppressed have experienced. In general,
the mass of the population has more ways to improve its conditions of work and life
with Adenaver than Hitler, with De Gaulle than Pétain, with Allende than Pinocher,
with Felipe Gonzales than Franco, ete.

1f parliament was only a sham, and freedom of speech only a deception, there wouldn't
be any more parliaments, parties or political campaigns, and they wouldn’t still rally

voters,and even’

passions. (Unless we think this is due to continuous crafty bourgeois
conditioning: but surely over a century of democratic regime should have acted as an

eye opener..) Democracy is not a show ~ not just a show.

So Churchill was right ...?
“This brief survey seems to leave us with only one option, summed up by W. Churchill
in the House of Commons on November 11, 1947: “Democracy is the worst form of
government ~ except for all other forms, that have been tried from time to time.”

1¢s significant that the best known definition of democracy should be based on
parados, even a play on words. In fact, everybody makes fun of Churchill’s phrase, and
yet everybody aceepts it, with one reservation: everybody thinks he has the solution to
really get the best out of this lesser evil

(I¢s also significant that the famous British statesman should have added cynicism

to pragm: afive-min-

min another phrase: “The best argument against democracy

ute conversation with the average voter.” This second sentence s less often quoted: the
scornit displays for the actors — extras would be more appropriate - of democracy might
discredit the first definition.)

Let's go back to the word itself

Westminster is not on the Acropolis

If we putback inits place, ic. n history, this reality commonly called democracy, we re-

alize how poorly the word is adapted to what it has labelled for a couple of centuries.
Modern times have given an utterly new usage to a notion born in Ancient Greece.

Nowadays, the man in the street, the academic or the political activist, everyone uses

the word democracy for st century B.C. Athens and 2157 century Italy or Sweden.
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

Var maic 2008

The people who would never dare talk about a prehistoric “economy” or “work”
among New Guinea tribesmen see no anachronism in applying the same term to
a system where citizenship meant an ability (theoretical but also partly effective)
t0 govern and be governed, and to a system where, for 99 per cent of the citizens,
citizenship comes down to the right 1o be represented.

This gap was more readil
ing fathers of the US Consti
‘meet and exercise their government in person”, and republic (2 term of Roman and not

admitted in the early days. James Madison, one of the found-

tion, differentiated becwveen democracy, where “the people

Greek origin), where “they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents”.
With the passing of time and the rise of the modern bureaucratic State (which Madison
opposed), democracy has become a mere synonym for power vested in the people.
Common wisdom bemoans the limits of a Greek democracy closed to women,
slaves and foreigners, and rejoices over the openness of modern democracy to larger and
larger sections of the population. The ideal of radical demaocrats is a demos that would
welcome all human beings living on a given territory. They forget that the Ancient
Athenian fortunate enough to enjoy citizenship was not a citizen because he was a hu-
‘man being, but because he happened to be a co-owner of the polis: he was a landowner,
small or big. The demaocrat

system emerged as a way to manage s smoothly as possible
the contradictions within a community of male family heads, inexorably divided by a
gro

g unequal distribution of fortune.

I¢s only because it was I

ited t0 a group that shared something vital (a superior

social position, albeit undermined by money differences) that Greck democracy could
afford to be participatory (which did not save it from periodic crises). In Europe or the
US today, nothing can be compared to the demos of Pericles’ time. When it applied to
societies ruled by the capital-labour relationship, the word “democracy” tells us more
about what these societies think of themselves than about their reality:

A question of words?

If we wish to stick to the word comminism and object to democracy, it not for tradition’s
sake, but for historical motives. In spite of its imperfections, communism expresses the
endeavour of the exploited and of the human species to liberate itself. The word and the
notion were meaningful (that is, debatable and debated) in 1850 o 1900, The revolution
that failed in Russia, and Stalinism later; loaded the term with a totally different meaning.
Asthe S.1. once explained, captive words become like prisoners put to hard labour: they:
t00 are forced to work for the benefit of those who've captured them. Communism is
not bureaucratic by nature.

On the contrary, democracy has been a distorted word ever since its return in the
‘mouth of bourgeois revolutionaries from the 18th century onwards, and of most (but
not all) socialiss in the 1971 and 2078 centuries. The distortion does not consist in an
outright le like the Maoist descriptions of lfe in China, but in a mental displacement
of reality: as it identifies modern parliaments to Ancient agoras, and the 215T century
citizen to a 574 century B.C. Athenian citizen, and as it suggests the modern one has a
Tot more power, it compresses history and confuses us.

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Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

Exploitation and / or domination?

Do inequality, poverty and misery exist because a few privileged ones make decisions
for us all? Or have these happy few got a near monopoly over decisions because they
already are rich and therefore powerful? The question is sterile.

Mountains of books and articles have been and are sill written to refute the alleged
Marxist claim that “the economy” explains next to everything. Who ever made such a
claim?

“According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining
factor is the production and reproduction of reallife. Other than this neither Marx nor
T have ever asserted.” (Engels, letter to J. Bloch, September 21, 1890)

The “cconomy” surely does not explain power. Profit-making strictly speaking does
not account for (local or world) wars. A similar socio-economic “infrastructure” can
coexist with very different and opposed political forms. Capitalist Germany was suc-
cessively run by a monarchist caste, by bourgeois, by the leaders of a nationalist-racist
inthe East,
then again by bourgeois when the country was reunified. History provides us with many

one-party State, then after 1945 by bourgeois in the West and by bureaucrat

examples of non-coincidence between economic might and political authority, and of
a modern State oceasionally ruling against the bourgeois, forcing the general interest
of the system upon reluctant industialists o businessmen. Faced with a large strike in
the Ruhr, Bismark himself compelled the bosses to geant a wage rise. Although usu-
fren the

ally in Europe money brings about power, in Africa and in the East, power

quick way to fortune, with family or clan misappropriating public funds or siphoning

off foreign trade. Also, its not uncommon for political rulers to dispossess the rich, as
we've seen in Russia over the last ten or twenty years.
Yet,

and of manufacturing go hand in hand or come down to the same thing. Commanding

the vast majority of cases, political leaders and masters of the land, of rade

‘men usually goes together with putting them to work. The two forms of control can
clash with one another, but not for long: one consolidates the other. Power does not

1 rule and possession of the means of production rarely coincide,

y there’s neither exploitation without domination, nor domination
without exploitation: the same groups have direct or indirect control over wealth and
power.

The exploiter needs to be able to put pressure on the person he exploits: he only
exploits what he has supremacy over. Domination is a precondition and a necessary
form of exploitation. Let’s not try and decide which one logically or chronologically
comes frst. Exploitation is never just “cconomic” (I have someone work for me, in my
place and for my benefit), but also “political” (instead of someone making decisions
about his life, I take the decisions myself, for instance I decide when to hire and fire
him). Society s not divided, as Castoriadis thought in the 19605, between order-giv-
ers and order-takers. Or rather, this division exists, but these “orders” have to do with

what structures today’s world: the capital-wage labour relati

n (which does not mean
it determines everything). There is no need to oppose exploitation to domination. Hu-

general, and capitalism in particular, can only be understood by the

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link between exploitation and domination. Firms are not just profit makers: they are
also power structures, but they remain in business s long as they create and accumulate
value, otherwise they go bankrupt.

Politics as the foundation of democracy

If polities means taking into account society as a whole (including the reality of power),

and not just as an addition of local or technical issues, then any social change is political,

any social eritique s political, and. revolution has to do with politis.

Polities, however,is something else than this concern for the global,the general, the

total, because it turns this totality into a new specialization, into an activity removed from
direct social interests. That special dimension cannot ignore socio-cconomic hierarchies
and oppositions. But it deals with them by shifting them on a level where the roots of
these conflicts will never be changed, only their consequences.

Ancient Greece's real contribution to history was not the principle of democracy asa
set of rules and institutions by which citizens make collective decisions. The innovation
went deeper. It invented what democracy is based upon: a special time-space reserved for
confrontation, and distinct from the rest of social lfe. In that specific sphere, a person

is taken away from ivate interests, from fortune and status differences, from his

social superiority or inferiority, and placed on an equal footing with allthe other citizens.

Equality of rights alongside social inequality: that s the definition of politics. Society

is fully aware of its inability to suppress group or class antagonism, so it transfers the
antagonism onto a parallel level that’s supposed to be neutral, where conflicts are ac-
knowledged and softened in the best possible interest of the continuation of the system
as a whole. It this separation that Marx's early writings were dealing with. Direct o
worker people’s democracy maintains the separation while it claims to go beyond it by
involving everyone in the democratic process, as if popular empowerment could solve
the problem of power. Unfortunately, getting everybody inside a separate sphere does

not suppress separation.

Any human group thinks of and reacts to the whole of its situation. But class

societies, in thousand ways and through trial and error, have divorced debating,

‘managing and de

ion-making from the rest. Logically, these societies regard this
dissociation s the “natural” and uni

rsally desirable best possible way of solving
human confl

Class divi
divisions will entail going beyond politics.

ns, in certain conditions, have created politics: doing away with class

Democracy is not to be denounced and smashed, but superseded. Like other
essential critiques, the critique of democracy will only become effective by the com-
‘munizing of society.

As long as people content themselves with a “fair” redistribution of wealth, they
inevitably also go for a “fair” redistribution of power. Only an altogether different world
will no longer be absessed with power, with taking it, sharing i, or scattering it. We'll
solve the political question when we stop treating it as the prime issue.

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16

Manufacturing consent... and dissent

‘When writers like N. Chomsky expose the conditioning of public opinion by the State,

‘media and lobbies, they fail to ask themselves what is being conditioned.
Opinion is thought of as a collective motley and fickle spirit that sometimes de-
termines events and sometimes is tossed about by them, as if these events were within

its reach one day, and out of reach the next. For instance, German opinion is reported
to have been indifferent or hostle to Hitler in 1923, then to have listened to him after
from him for good after the fall of the Third Reich. It like

these successive points of view had been taken regardless of what German individuals,

1929, before moving away

groups, classes, unions, partis, etc, were doing each time.

Another example is the day there was a reversal of French opinion in 1968: the huge
rightwing demonstration on the Champs Elysées, May 30,is described as the death knell
for the rebellion in the streets and in the factories. Yet this shows what public opinion
really

In April, most future rebels had no idea they would be soon marching in the
street or stopping work. A few days later, pushed on by the early street fighting and the
initiative of a minori

of workers, millions of people discovered what they wanted to
do and could do. A couple of weeks later the ebb of the strike wave (and for many, the
satisfaction of secing their demands at least partly met) wore out the revolt and enabled
conservative forces to get a grip on themselves.

Thus, from beginning to end, the shock of the largest general strike in history de-
termined the flow of events, and successively made people aware of possible changes,
enabled law and order supporters to resurface, and created despair among the rebels but
also numerous rebounds over the next ten years.

Men’s “social being determines their consciousness”. Admittedly it works both ways,
but certainly a lot more this way than the other. After 1945, in France as elsewhere, the
workers at the Billancourt Renault plant near Paris had been fed with Stalinist slander
depicting (real or /invented/imagined/) Trotskysts as fascists and agents provocateurs
in the pay of the boss and the police. The CP-led union, the CGT, had unrelentingly
and usually successfully prevented work stoppages: “The strike is the weapon of big
business...” In the Spring 1947, the Billancourt workers went on a two-week strike,
partly managed by the rank and file, and elected a well known Trotskyst, Pierre Bois,
on the strike committee. Yet they'd been “conditioned” by years of propaganda, and
the tiny revolutionary minority could only answer back by poorly distributed leaflets,
with the risk of being beaten up or sacked, as the CGT held sway over the running of
the plant. Ifin such negative circumstances, a substantial number of workers dared lay
down tools and designate 2 Trotskyst to represent them, it's not because they would
have had access at last to Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed or other critical analyses of the
bureaucracy: More simply; the pressure of their conditions of work and life, and their own
resistance to exploitation led them to disobey union orders, to fight alongside persons
ke P. Bois, and treat as comrades those they distrusted before. In some ways, there was
‘more militancy on the premises in 1947 than in 1968: in 47, a few strikers debated about
‘manufacturing firearms, and the union van was turned over by rebellious workers.

By the same logic, when the strike was over, with the CP being expelled from gov-
ernment and the beginning of the Cold War, the CGT taok on a tougher ar

-bourgeois
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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i

One reason (or pretext) for the government getting rid of its CP ministers was the
Stalinists’ getting on the bandwagon and siding with the strikers. The worker bureau-
eracy got back its influence over the mass of the workforce. Not entirely, though: the
Trotskysts tried to take advantage of the strike to launch a small union (called Syndicat
Démocratigue Renault), which struggled along for a couple of years before dying away.
1f very few workers had confidence in it, it not because Stalinist slander would have
retrieved the efficiency it had lostin the Spring 1947. The reason is more down to carth:
the CGT was better in tune with the needs of the proletarians, pressed some of their
demands and structured their struggles. The CGT defended and represented them bet-

ter than 2 union which was a small minority in Renault and had hardly any support in

the rest of the country.

From propagandist to educationist

Opinionisa setof (individual or group) ideas about the world. Representative democracy
wishes each of us to form his ideas on his own, and only afterwards to compare them
to other persons’ ideas. Direct demoeracy prefers a collective making of ideas. But both
think the only way to free thought i to be correctly educated or even better,self-taught,
this self being here again preferably collective.

Because of the rise and fall of totalitarianism in the 207H century, the word and

the reality of propaganda are now commonly looked down upon. In 1939, 5. Chako-

in published The Rape of the masses (translated into English in 19405 new edition by
Haskell Flouse, 1982): adisciple of Pavloy; he argued that totalitarian (especially Nazi)
‘methods of mind control were based on the use of emotional urges to create conditioned
reflexes. Chakotin was theorizing his own practice: he'd been in charge of anti-fascist
propaganda for the German SPD in the early 1930s. He said he appealed to reason, not
to the senses as the Nazis did, but that did not prevent him from devising crowd condi-
tioning techniques for mass meetings. Chakotin's failure to beat the Nazis at their own
gameis a sign that Hitler’s success was only marginally caused by crowd manipulation
techniques. Germany turned to Hitler when the Weimar republic proved incapable of
offering any other (radical, reformist or conservative) solution o its crisis.

Ed. Bernays, perhaps the first professional advertiser on public relations, had al-
ready described in Propaganda (1928) how an “invisible government” ruled democratic
society. He claimed to be able to act on the collective subeonscious with a combination
of Freudism and crowd psychology, and invented advertising techniques that he sold
t0 big business as well as politicians. In 195.4, he was instrumental in destabilizing the
(democratic) government of Guatemala that the US finally toppled. In those days,

sill anovelty to “sell” a candidate to the White House like a soft drink, and by similar
‘methods. Unpalatable Bernays was ahead of his time, and heralded ours, when no party
dares engage into propagand:

t communicates. Commercials don’t sell goods, they sell
lfestyles. Parties don't promote programs, they promote meaning and imagery.
Unlike the simplistic agit-prop of yesteryear, today’s most advanced political ad-
vertising does not pretend to change our views: it presents itself as a helping hand that
will allow us to make up our own opinions. Advertising now calls itslf information,

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18

needless to say interactive information. Everything is supposed to be “bottom up”.
Modern management has become the ideal model of all relations. The “progressive”
boss gives the staff a large margin of self-organizing in their work... as long as they
reach the objective set by the company. The teacher aims at bringing out his student’s
patient: Be Yourself! The
contradiction remains the same in every field of activity and ends up in more control

autonomy: The psychologist (counsel, sorry...) repeas to

over staff (particularly thanks to computerization), more bureaucratic guidelines in
schools, and more counselling.
How could it be otherwise? The critique of “education first” (or self-education

first) was expressed as early as 1845

“The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbring-
ing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the
educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society between two parts, one
of which is superior to society.” (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 111)

Nobody belicves much of what commercial or political advertising says, yet it works.
No driver watching a Peugeot tv commercial regards the new SW 407 as the best estate
car ever made, and no voter expects the presidential candidate to keep all his promises,
but people buy cars, take part in elections, and that’s what matters. The content of the
‘message is far less important than popular participation in and acceptance of the whole
system.

“The more information and discussion there is, the better.

Democrats, moderate or radical, al think that the inadequacies of democracy come from

the fact that there is never enough of it not enough good schooling, no enough quality
papers, no enough serious talks on tv... and our information resources are never wide
and varied enough.

Democracy is indeed based on (individual and/or collective) free will but this free-
dom must be properly fuclled by the largest possible information and discussion.

This vision is to be expected from party professional organizers, teachers, media
people, publishers and all those who make 2 living (and a sense) out of communication.
Butitis surprising that so many revolutionaries also should regard getting and exchang-
ing ideas as the prime mover of history:

In Orwell's 198y, Winston is watched by a telescreen forcibly installed in hi

ing-room and which he is forbidden to switch off. In the early 215 century, tele

is no longer the main popular screen it was in 1962 or 1990. On the Internet, at home

or on portable cell phones, people have direct access to forums where thousands of
talks take place between a government minister, an ccologist, a businesswoman, a gay
activist, an unemployed, an antiglobalizer, or sometimes an anarchist. At the click of a
‘mouse, I can get loads of data and differing views on what's going on today in Peking
or La Paz. A few more clicks, and I challenge these data and views in the company of an
Internaut from Sydney or Montreal, and have my own views on these events circulated
worldwide in a matter of minutes. This instant and universal availability also applies

to the past. Unless I have a special fondness for the canals in Amsterdam, I no longer
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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visit the International Institute of Social History to know about the Ruhr Red Army in
1920. Not everythingis available on-line, but there’s more on the Inernet now than on.
any single public ibrary... or of course newspaper kiosk. Most of all is not just there
t0 be read, but exchanged and debated.

Since everything is made measurable these days, it's likely someone will invent
system that monitors and quantifies all verbal exchange (including conversations on the
web, on phones, etc.) taking place at one particular moment on this planet. Even taking
into account the growth in population, the figure is likely to be higher than in 1970.

Modern man is a parados. He keeps repeating he is increasingly being dispossessed

(and he puts the blame on entities he calls the economy, finance or globalization) and

yet, when his workday is over, he feels he is repossessing his existence by reading about

dispossession in the paper, or (better and more interactive) by chating about
berspace.

Theless power we have over our lives, the more we talk about . The contemporary
citizen s dissatisfied with heavy and remote traditional democratic mechanisms. At the
same time, he is given a continuous instant democracy made of opinion polls, webtalk,
participatory radio and tv, and tele-reality shows. He's not just asked his poli

ences every four or five years: every day is now election day. Mixing Lati

we could say we now live in a home centred domoeracy which gives us the liberty to
change things from our own home: I help solve environmental world problems by buy-

ing energy saving light bulbs for my living-room.

People used to make fun of Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park as a symbol of socially
harmless free speech. Today's generalized self-managed speech is universally and imme-
diately circulated. In the workplace, in the classroom, in 2 couple, in a family, between
professions, between performers and spectators, between cultures, religions, medi,
among neighbours, everywhere, everything ought to be discussed and all information to
be shared, so that power should constantly flow and never erystallize, so no-one could

‘monopolize it The 1999 Kosovo war was the first with mass Internaut involvement, Ex~

eryone of us becomes a self-appointed reporter: Don’t hate the media: Be the media!

To impose us what to think, democracy tells us what we have to think about. When
Habermas extolled the virtues of the “public sphere” in 1962, healso bemoaned its under-
‘mining by commercial mass media. He could be more optimistic today, when universal
debate seems to revive the “openness” he favours: a citizen is now a person with access

to the press, to the media and to the Internet. Yet this new citizenship amounts to the

iberty to voice our views on world affairs,ie. on what is currently being said on world
affairs by the press, the media and on the Internet. The public sphere passes off as a
reality that can put a check on State power, but when did it really determine the course
of events, or was able to stop the descent into catastrophes like 1914, Hitler the second
world war, or colonial and post-colonial massacres? Giving one’s opinion is as relevant

as opinions are decisive, and they’re not decisive, not much. The liberal conservative
Tocqueville was more to the point

“(..)itis an axiom of political science in the United States that the only way to neu-
tralize the impact of newspapers is to multiply them” (Democracy in Americay1835)

Mostof all, democracy triumphs by telling us where to think. The 1900 paper reader

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20

could choose to buy socialist or a rightwing daily, but he had hardly any influence
on the structure and evolution of the press. The organization of the Internet is equally
beyond the reach of a website browser or writer: for a start, he was never asked about
the birth of the web itself. Saying the Internet was created by (and would not exist with-

out) millions of Inernauts, is as true as saying that

ions of drivers are responsible
for the development of the car industry. Making a principle of maximum information
and discussion, is inevitably prioritizing the framework where information circulates
and discussion takes place. Of course, everyone wishes the channels of communication
t0 be as much “bottom up” as possible, but how could they be if the whole life of the
ions of

communicators is “top down” organized? Society is not the addition of

publicly shared experiences or views.

“The idea of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”: this is as much true
as in 1845. The difference s that billions of ideas are now being circulated and (nearly)
universally available. But who has the power? The politicalsystemis still tuned to general
and presidential elections, and the rest is an accessory to the rhyme. In 1900 or 1950,
polities was talked about but not made

illage hall debates. Neither is it made today
on the Internet. Spectacle-induced passivity (as analysed by the §.L.) has taken the form

of a constant show of act

How ahout taking direct democracy at its word?

According to its supporters, here i

what direct democracy is aiming at:
(1] The respect of a majority.

[2] The expression of minorities, which are granted a large latitude of action.
(3] The possibility of free speech, in order to avoid pressure and violence: “Let’s talk
firse”

(4] The primacy of collective will, not the will of an individual or of a handful of
persons.

51 The respect of decisions taken in common.

Let’s take them one by one.
(1] Majorrry kuLE. Alot of social movements have been launched by a minority, often
avery small one. In the 19305, at the time of large strikes by unskilled labour in the US,
two sit-downs involving about 10,000 people were started in Akron by half a dozen

workers. In 1936, at Goodyear, while the union was negotiating with the boss about
wages, 98 unskilled workers aid down tools, followed by 7.005 others, which forced the

‘management to yield after 36 hours. One might object that in all such cases, a minority

only initiates actions soon taken up by a majority. True, but this very fact shows how

little relevant the majority criterion is.

The participants in a picket line put their interests (and the interest of labour as
whole) above the interests of the non-strikers: they do not respect the right to work of
those who want to work. Democrats might argue that the strike is supported by a great
‘majority of the workforce: that would be forgetting that democracy isalso the protector

of minorities. By the way, what is a majority? 51 per cent? 6o per cent? 95 per cent? We
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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are faced with the inadequacy of the self principle. “Let the workers themselves decide...”
Who'll decide when a minority ceases to be a minority and starts becoming a majority,
and when a majority gets big enough to be considered as the common will?

[2) MinoriTy miGHTS. Any deep movement, whether for simple demands or more,
will pull along i its wake a number of yet undecided persons and ask them to do what
they did not previously feel like d

‘When pigueteros go round the neighbourhood

and ask for 50 peaple to come and reinforce their road block, the picket members are
not acting 25 a boss summoning his personnel, or an army officer calling his soldiers to
order: they expect other proletarians to fulfil their obligation to the pigueteros as well
as to themselves

There are differences between the bulk of the rank and file and its most active ele-

‘ments: for these elements to turn into a new ruling elite in the plant and possibly in

society, it takes more than the g unrest on the shop floor. Bureaucratization
is nearly always the result of reformism, not the other way round, and it can rise out of
activist minorities as well as of consenting majorities. The existence of a majority and

a minority is not a valid enough indicator helping us to assess a situation and to deal

with it. The majority/minority duality functions in combination as well as in opposi-
tion. Nobody ever thinks about this in a vacuum. If you agree with a decision, you
“naturally” tend to believe it comes out of a sufficient number of people. Those who
disagree are inclined to believe the opposite: to them, this majority is not enough of a

‘majority, they’d like another, a more numerous one...

(3] Fee seeca. Its pointless to wonder if speech takes place before, after or during
the act of rebellion. In 1936, in the General Motors plant at Toledo, al the work force
gathered for a general meeting but,as a participant said, *it was like everyone had made
up his mind before a single word was uttered”, and a sit-down strike started. Those
workers were not brainless robots. Exchanging words then was unnecessary because
it had taken place before, in hundreds of informal discussions and small meetings. The
action that was born out of them spoke for itself.

If we equate demoracy with exchange, these encounters can be called democratic,
butit was not the democratic principle that made it possible.

On the other hand, in many conflicts, urging the participants to get together and
speak can result in the movement becoming more aware of iself and stronger, o7 losing
its momentum when it was just starting to gather speed. An expression which ceases to

be action and experience dissolves into free-wheeling talk. In the same way, looking for
“more information” can be an excellent way of forgetting the essential information: the
common determination to fight on.

Unlike God's Word that was turned into flesh, human words express ideas, partake
of events, strengthen (o sometimes weaken) our behaviour, but they do not create.

A strike or a ot is forced to take action and to choose between options. But it does
not relate to them like a philosopher or scientist testing a set of hypotheses and then,
by mere reasoning and with no outside interference, opting for the best. In a social
‘movement, specch helps sort out what has been maturing in the participants’ mind, in
relation to their past and present.

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22

Social eritique usually rejects the secret ballot paper in favour of open public voting
that does not cut up the continuity of the voters®action. The election moment separates
each voter from the others and from the rest of his lfe (the polling booth is called an
isolator in French). One of Thatcher's main anti-strike measures was to make it illegal
to 8o on strike without a secret ballot procedure. Nevertheless, history provides us
with 2 many examples of people - and workers ~ being manipulated by a public show
of hands, a game in which Stalinists had become experts

The point we are making is that historical evolution is not the result of a majority

rule based on a confrontation of opinions and on the maximum availability and sharing

not saying that information and discussion are pointless. No act
is sufficient in itself, nor is its meaning so obvious that it would require no expression
atall. In the General Motors, 1936, example mentioned above, verbal exchange did oc-
cur, but before the decision to strike, and it contributed to the decision. In such a case,
respecting democracy would have meant forcing a discussion upon the workforce: this
‘may have revealed the determination of the workers, or it may have deflected it. Debate
s never good o bad in iself.

[4) Conenion Wit Democracy always presents tself a5 a protection, as the means to secure

non-violence among its participants, because democrats treat each other as equals.
Acting on behalf of others does not necessarily turn anyone into a leader. Most
bureaucrats do not build up their authority by positioning themselves above the mass,
rather by sheltering behind the mass. A bureaucrat pretends to have no personal ambi-
tion and to serve the interests of the rank and file. While we're certainly not looking for
charismatic figures, there's no need to be afraid of individual initatives cither.

g on community as a principle leaves us stuck with the majority versus
minority intractable dilemma already discussed. Among those who share a common
. someone often becomes aware of an opportunity before the others: trying

to convince the others that this opportunity must be seized won't be a purely intellectual
exercise. Arguments are going to be thrown about and its likely there will be a conflict
of wills at some point. Ideas won't meet on neutral ground until one is recognized as
the best because of

ner logical superiority. Truth belongs to no-one. It rushes and
shoves. “Truth is as immodest as light () It possesses me” (Marx, 1843). Consistency~
reaching is not a peaceful process. An essential idea shatters my certainties and does
not come to me without some violence. If democracy means choosing between options
with the only guidance of individual free will and not outside interference, then truth
is not democratic.

Making it a principle of having any action decided upon by the whole group, and
then any change of action also debated and re-decided upon by 2 new group meeting
(or some general consultation), means no action. Those groups who say they operate
on such a total self-management basis only self-manage their own speech.

(5] ResPECTING COMMON DECISIONS. Everybody'sall for respecting common dec
unless or until the decision is deemed wrong.

In France, 1968, the Peugeot plant at Sochaux (at the time, one of the biggest concen-
trations of skilled workers in that country) went on a sit-down strike on May 20. When
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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agreat majority of the labour force voted to return to work on June 10, minority re-
occupied the premises, and was violently expelled by the police in the early hours of the

1178, At that moment, thousands on non-strikers were arriving by bus for the morning
shift: instead of resuming work as they had intended to, they immediately joined the
ex-occupiers and fought the police with them for the whole day. Two workers got killed.

Rumours later said that some rioters had used guns, and that cops had been killed but

the police would not admit t. True or (probably) false, these rumours show how tough
the fighting was. The local working class lived the event as an outright confrontation
with bosses and State. The return to work only took place on June 20, and labour got a
better deal than had been granted nationally.

In other words, after voting to go back, a large proportion of the labour force not
only decided not to go back, but rallied what had been until then a minority of isolated
extremists. The first occupation had involved between 100 and 1.000 persons, out of a
workforce of over 35.000, with 3.000 union members. True, the general meetings could
be called non-democrati: they took place under the combined pressure of the CGT and
the media. But the very fact of contradicting one’s vote, and what's more, without having
had a proper meeting, shows that, unlike what the democratic principle maintains, the
debating and v

space-time is not decisive.
What happened was not simply a reflex of instinctive worker solidarity. At the Bil-
Iancourt Renault plant, in 1972, the murder of a Maoist worker by a security guard hardly

caused any reaction among his work mates, who were indifferent to what they saw as
useless leftist troublemaking. In 1968, the Peugeot workers felt they had something in

common with a radical minority that was not alien to them. Besides, afew years before,

wildeat strikes had broken out at Sochaux, often in

iated by young workers. Also, dur-
ing the first 1968 occupation, hundred radicals had st up a short lived “forum” that
served as a medium for open discussions on a variety of controversial issues. The June
11 eruption did not come out of the blue: it had been prepared by past informal debates
and unofficial meetings, which (better than democratic procedures) paved the way for
an apparently spontancous outburst. “Faceless resistance” is not just canteen or coffee
‘machine conversations: it serves as a springboard for open conflict.

Assessing these five criterions shows frst that a lot of positive events have happened
without or against them, secondly that they have often failed to prevent what they were
supposed to prevent. None of the standards of direct democracy really works

Actually, a defender of direct democracy won't ask for them to be fully imple-
‘mented. He might even agree with most of the points we've been making, but he'll say
behind them

t, ye are not under

democratic standards are not to be taken as absolutes: it's the gui

that matters, the motive, the impetus: “But if ye be led by the Spi
the law.” (Saint Paul, Galatians, 5:15)

That's the whole point: this tric
and the Spi
because it is indeed the quest for formal criterions: it pretends to give us rules of con-

nterplay between the letter and the spirit, the law

There was no contras

ion for Saint Paul. There is one for democracy,

duct that provide the best possible freedom. So this sudden non-formality goes against
how democracy defines itself. Democracy is not the ad hoc running of social life. Its

communism that relies on the ability of fraternal (non competitive, non profit-secking,

etc.)social relationships to create the organization best fitted to them. Democracy is the

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24

exact opposite: it sets procedures and institutions as a prerequisite and a condition of
the rest. It says society is based on its political organization (top down or bottom up).
And then, when experience proves democratic standards don’t work, democracy says
we can do without them... or even that we must do without them. Democracy is there
tosolve conflicts, yet when they re too serious, it can’t solve them any more. What's the
use of a principle that can only be applied when social life runs smoothly and we don’t
need the pri

This letter versis spirt is a contr:

iple? Democracy functions as far as society can remain democratic
rulers ~left

ion for democracy; but democrati

or right - can manage it. They know perfectly well that demoeracy has to be and will be
suspended in times of erisis. Suspended partly, when Britain fought the IRA. Or totally,
when the Algerian army cancelled the 1991 elections after the first round had been won
by the Islamists, and took over power, with full support from Western countries. The
bourgeois have no qualms provisionally turning into dictators... in the long-term interest
of democracy: “no democracy for the anti-democrats”. Being a lesser evil, demoeracy
sometimes ceases to be democratic to avoid a worse evil.

For radicals who beli

e in direct democracy, however, this contradiction is a trap:
they won't get a full and permanent reality out of a system that can’t provide it

ing
tive content democracy (if we wish to keep the word) may have, can't be the result of

Priori ct democracy does not produce direct democracy. Whatever posi-

democracy.

Contradiction in communist theory.

Even a cursory reading of Marx is enough to realize he was at the same time staunch

supporter and an enemy of democracy. As his texts can be found in paperback or on
the Internet, a few very short quotes will suffice here.

Marx argues that democracy is the culmination of politics, and that a political eman-
cipation is partial, selfish, bourgeois emancipation, the emancipation of the bourgeois.
If, s he writes, “the democratic State [is] the real State”, assuming we want a world
without a State, we've got to invent a life with neither State nor democracy. However,
when Marx presents democracy as “the resolved mystery of all constitutions”, whereby
“The constitution appears as what it is, the free product of men” (Critique of Hegel’s
philosophy of Right, 1843), he is opposing real democracy to the existence of the State,
and therefore supporting democracy.

Besides, Marx was only indirectly addressing democracy through a eritique of bu-
reaucracy, and targeting politics through the eritique of the State, particularly through
its theorization by Hegel: “All forms of State have demoeracy for their truth, and for
that reason are false to the extent that they are not democratic.” (7d.)

One last quote, interesting because it's written decades after the early works, and
by someone who was coming close to admitting the possibility of a peaceful transition
to socialism: “One must never forget that the logical form of bourgeois domination is
precisely the democratic republic (..) The democratic republic always remains the ast
form of bourgeois domination, the form in which it will die.” (Engels, ltter to Bern-
stein, March 14, 1884)
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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Intuitions leave much room for interpretation, and the context often blurs the mes-
sage. To understand these conflicting views, we must bear in mind that, in the mid-19th
century, a groundswell of social movements, from Ireland to Silesia, was pressing for
radical democratic demands and social demands, both at the same time, combined and
opposed, and this confrontation resulted in a eritique of politics as a separate sphere.
Lets notidealize our past. The same thinkers and groups often mixed these demands and
that eritique. The purpose of The German Ideology was to prove that history cannot be

d by the conflicts of ideas or political platforms, but by the social relations by

human beings organize their lives and, above all, by the material conditions of
ives. Those pages are to be read in connection with The Jewish Question, Critigue
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Law, The King of Prussia & Social Reform, the Theses on Feuerbach and other similar
texts which address the democratic bourgeois revolution, but also the Rights of Man,

and reject a revolution that would only have *a political soul”. For example, Marx sees

1789 and especially the 1793-9 Terror in France as the culmination of political wi

that deludes itself into believing it can change the world from the top. There’ little
doubt that Marx wished to apply his “materialist” method not only to history, religion,
philosophy and the economy, but also to the question of power and to politics as a field
of special knowledge, as separate science and technique. Yet at the time he was describ-

ing the political sphere as another form of alienation, he was also pressing on with the
completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution, and a few years later he became
the editor of a liberal progressive paper, the Neue Reinische Zeitung, subitled “Organ

Of Democracy”.

‘The deeper the communist movement goes, the higher ts contradictions are. Marx

happens to be among the few thinkers who come closest to a synthesis and therefore
inevitably combine its most opposing elements, the dimensions our movement s at most
pain to reconcile. Its no accident that Karl Marx should have given one of the best ap-
proaches of communism (in particular but not only, in his early works) and welcomed

the advent of capitalism as a world system.

...and contradiction in proletarian practice

1§ Marx was perhaps the writer who went the furthest in extolling and rejecting democ-

racy,it's because he was a concentrated expression of the forced situation in which the

proletariat used to live and sill lives. Intellectual discrepancies mirror a practical dilemma
which the proletarians have to solve to emancipate themselves.
Like others in his time, ke R. Luxemburg later, like the German Left after 1914-15,

Marx reflected a contradictios

: the self-awareness and the “community culture” (Sel-
stoerstindigung and Versammlungskultur, as they were called in Germany around
1900) in the workplace and in the workers’ district, confront bourgeois democracy with
proletarian community. But using one’s condition as a major weapon is a double-edged
sword for the proletarians. Guy Debord may not be the most acute eritique of democ-
racy, but he points to something essential in The Society of the Spectacle, theses 87 &
88. The bourgeoisie was able to use its socio-cconomic power s the main instrument of

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its political ascent. The proletarians can’t use their social role to emancipate themselves,
because this role s given to them by capital. So their only radical weapon is their negative
potential... closely linked to the positive part they play in the reproduction of capital.
‘The bourgeois won by asserting themselves on the basis of what they already socially
were. The proletarians can only win by fighting against themselves, ic. against what
they are forced to do and be as producers (and as consumers...). There’s no way out of
this contradiction. Or rather, the only way out is commaunist revolution.

It was enough for the bourgeois to get together and find the means to run society:
so creating suitable decision-making institutions was enough (though it took centuries).
It was not only for the sake of culture and knowledge that from the 187+ century on-
ward the ascending eltes promoted networks of debating and scientific societies, clubs,
public ibraries and museums, and of course a growing press: the rising merchant and
industrial classes were building up a new type of sociability that helped them challenge
‘monarchs and aristocrats. The proletarians also need to get together: but for them, just
getting together is staying within capitalism,

Forwhat's it worth, democratic reunion s enough for the bourgeoisie. The proletariat
needs something else. Proletarian self-organization which fails to develop into a self-
eritique of wage-labour reinforces labour as the partner of the capital-labour couple: the
forced coupling goes on and so does the management of the couple, hence the peaceful
coexistence of opposites called democracy.

The partial, confused yet deep communist movement that developed in the first half

of the 1974 century initiated an equally confused yet persistent critique of democracy.
Both movement and critique were soon pushed in the background by the rise of orga-
nized labour that tried to make the most of bourgeois democracy. Yet every time the
‘movement re-emerged, it got back to basics, and revived some aspects of the critique
of democracy.

There's no need to be an expert in Marsology to know that most of these fundamen-
tals fell nto obli

ion: some texts got hardly any response, while others were put aside
by Marx and Engels and published much later. The “real movement”, as Marx called it,
scemed to have very little use for these writings. In the first half of the 2074 century, new
proletarian shock waves led to:a reborn critique that (re)discovered these long-forgotten
intuitions, but failed to be up to them. Indeed, Bolshevik practice after October 1917
could fall within Marx’s critique of the French revolution and of Jacobinism. As for
the worldwide 196080 earthquake, in spite, or rather because of its anti-bureaucratic
stand, it turned out to be a zenith of democracy (though, unlike the post-1917 period,
there was no revolutionary attempt to take over political power in the 19605 and 70).
‘The theoretical inroads made over 150 years ago have yet to be taken up.

The democratic appeal

Democracy is attractive because it gives more than the right to select leaders now and
then. Its appeal is to provide everyone with the means to go beyond the restricting circles
of family, neighbourhood and work, and to interrelate, to meet others, not just those
who are close, but all those living on the same territory; and possibly over the borders
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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t00. The democratic dream promises a potential universality, the earthly realization of a
brotherhood and sisterhood that religion offers in its own way. Marx was not the only
one to emphasize the intimate connetion between Christianity and the modern State:

the former sees each man as the bearer of an individual soul that makes him equal to

others in spi

(everyone can be saved); the latter sees each man as politically equal to
others (every citizen has a right to vote and be elected).

To fully appreciate the democr:

appeal, we should bear in mind what existed
before, when formal (.

political) equality was unheard of. Not just the ruling elite, but
many thinkers and artists showed open contempt for the mass of peasants and work-
men that were thought of as an inferior species. Most famous French writers treated the
Paris Commune fighters as if they'd been outside or below human standards. Uniil the
mid-2013 century; hatred of the workers was widespread among the middle and upper
ith

a patriotic way, so the bour-

classes, in Germany for instance. 193945 was the definitive taming of the rabble:

few exceptions, the toiling masses of the world behavey
geos stopped being scared of a populace that looked like it was accepting law and order
atlast, and now nearly everyone in a Western-type democracy accepts at least verbally
the notion that one human being s worth another. Yet this equivalence is achieved by
comparing quantified items. In democratic capitalism, each human person is my fellow
being inasmuch as his vote and mine are added and then computed. Moder citizenship
is the bourgeois form of freedom.

A system which is not its own cause... nor its own cure

Democracy

not responsible for what is or what might be regarded as ts positive as-
pects. Universal franchise never ereated itself. Civil rights rarely came out of elections
or peaceful debates, but out of strikes, demonstrations, riots, usually violent, often
with bloodshed. Later, once installed, democracy forgets about s origin and says “the
source of power is not be found in the street”... where indeed it came from. Politics
claims to be the basis of social life, but it results from causes that it merely structures.

The advent of the Spanish republic in 1931 was caused by decades of strfe, rioting and
class war that the new regime proved incapable to control, and it took a civil war and a
dictatorship to restore order. After Franco’s death, the cooling down of social conflicts

made possible the transition to a parliamentary system that (unlike i

the 19305) could
work as a pacifier and conciliator.

Democrats contend that, contrary to dictatorship, democracy has the merit of being
able to correct itself. This i true so long as the mere balance of power is upset. If the

structure of political rule is in jeopardy, it’s a completely different matter. As demoeracy
has not got its cause initself, neither has it got the remedy: the solution has to come from
outside electoral procedures and parliamentary institutions. The subtleties of Capitol
Hill political bargaining were unable to solve the crisis between North and South in the
186os:

slaughter. It was not forums or ballot papers that toppled Mussolini in 1943, but a suc-

to0k no less than a bloody civil war, a forerunner of 207H century industrialized

cession of uncontrollable strikes. It was not a return to the Weimar republic that put an

end to Nazism, but a world war. It was only when the French army illegally took over

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28

civilian power in Algiers, May 1953, that in Paris politicians were forced to institute a

more stable poli

al system, and started realizing the colonial era was over.
Democracy is a remarkable violence filter. But because it is born out of violence, it

only overcomes is tragedies by giving way to more violence. Biologists say that one of

the definitions of a lfe form isits abilty at reproduction, organization and reorganiza-

tion. How politically,socially (and intellectually) valid is a phenomenon that's unable to

explain tself and to cure tself? How consistent s it? What sort of reality are demoeracy

supporters talking about?

And yet it holds out..
After nearly two centuries of electoral and parliamentary experiences, including en-

deavours to make some revolutionary use of the universal franchise by radicals from

Proudhon to Lenin, and in spite of a thousand betrayals and renunciations of its own
principles, modern democracy still soldiers on... and thrives.

Inalarge part of the world, and in whatis known as the developed or rich countries,
democracy remainsa reality, and a desirable one, because it fits in with the inner logic of
the industrial, merchant and wage-labour civilization, therefore with capitalism. Not all
capitalismis democratic, far from it, as s shown by Stalin’s Russia and Hitler's Germany,
and now by China. But the Third Reich and the USSR yielded to their democratic rivals,
and pluto-bureaucratic C)

¢s boom will only go on if it accepts substantial doses of

freedom of speech. Capitalism is economi 1 and there can be no efficient

competition among capital (as well as an efficient lsbour market) without some competi-

tion in politics too. Democracy is the most adequate political capitalist form.
Whether we like it or not, democracy is an excellent expression of life under
capitalism. It helps maintaining the degree of liberty and equality required by capitalist
production and consumption and, up to a point, also required by the necessary forced
relationship between labour and capital. While democracy is one of the obstacles that
stand in the way of communist revolution, it does serve the interests of labour in its
dai

To put it bluntly, there’s no practical eritique of democracy unless there’s a critique

nevitable “reformist” action.

of capitalism. Aceepting or trying to reform capitalism implies accepting or trying to
reform its most adequate political form.
There's no point in sorting out bad (bourgeois) democracy and good (direct, worker,

popular) democracy: But there’s no p er in declaring oneself an anti-democrat.

Democracy is not the Number One enemy, the ultimate smokescreen that veils the
proletarian eyes, the unveiling of which would at long last clear the path to revolution.
There are no “anti-democratic” specific actions to be invented, no more than system-
atic campaigns against advertising billboards or tv ~ both closely linked to democracy,
actually.

The participants in millions of acts of resistance or of attack, be they strikes, demon-
strations, flying pickets, insurrections, are well aware that these practices have little to do
with parliamentary games, and indeed that they re the exact opposite of parliamentary
games. Knowing it does not stop them from calling such practices democratic, and from
Gilles Daé: A Cantrbution t the Critigue of Plitical Autonomy

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regarding these practices as the only true democracy; because the participants consider
as identical democracy and collective freedom, democracy and self-organization. They
say they are practising trie democracy because they self-manage their struggle, do away
with the separation between those represented and their representatives, and because the
general meeting (unlike parliament) is an assembly of equals: so they often believe they
are at last giving reality to what is /a sham/make belief/ in the bourgeois world. Each
of them regards democracy as the fact of treating his workmate, the person marching

beside him, ered

ing a barricade with him, or arguing with him in a public meeting, as

afellow human being.

It would be pointless for us to go into a head-on confrontation with him to try and
persuade him to stop using the word *democracy . Democracy’s shortcoming s to treat
anindispensable element of revolutionary change as the primary condition of change, or
evenasits essence. So, in future troubled imes, our best contribution will be to push for
the most radical possible changes, which include the destruction of the State machinery,
and this “communization” process il eventually help people realize that demoracy is
an alienated form of freedom, If democracy means giving priority to form over content,
only a transformation of the social content will put back form where it belongs.

Whenever a movement keeps moving forward and confronting boss and State power,
itis not democratic. Democracy is the separation between action and decision.

When, however, and this is bound to be often the case, the content of the movement

is compatible with “industrial dispute” arbitration and conciliation, then its normal
that form and procedure should come to the fore. In the eyes of nearly all participants,
organizing the general meeting according to rules becomes more important than what
the meeting decides. The meeting is seen as a cause of the strike, more exaetly as the
cause of its continuation: because it can put an end to the strike, it is now perceived of
as its detonator. Reality is put on its head. Democracy is the supremacy of means over
the end, and the dissol

their own behaviour as democratic, they are not “wrong”: they reason according to the

n of potentialities in forms. So when these workers ideologize

actual limits of their behaviour.

When the fact of asking the rank and file for its opinion breaks the determination of

the rank and fle, it’s usually because this determination has already declined. In 1994,

in one of its French plants, the energy and transport multinational Alstom terminated

astrike by calling for a referendum: the personnel voted to return to work. The unions
ing a second referendus

retaliated by it confirmed the first. “Company (or plant)

democracy” was not killing the conflic, it was finishing it off. In fact, after an initia

‘militant phase, the strike had lost ts vigour. By submitting to an individual seeret ballor,
the workers confirmed they had ceased to think of themselves as an acting collective.
A community that agrees to give only individual opinions no longer exists as com-

‘munity.

Communism as activity

Equality is a vital tenet of democracy. Its starting point is the existence of individals:
it compares them from a criterion, and wonders if each of them s either inferior or
superior to the other according to the chosen eriterion. Old time democracy contented

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Giles Dauvi: A Cantribution o th Critigue of Poltical Autonomy Var makt 2008

itself with “One man, one vote”. Modern demaocrats will ask for equal pay, equal rights
in court, equal schooling, equal access to health service, equal job offers, equal opportu-
nity to create one’s business, equal social promotion, some would say an equal share of
existing wealth. As soon as we get into real social and daily life the lst becomes endless
and, to be comprehensive, it has to be negaive at some point: equality implies the right
not 10 be discriminated against on account of one’s sex, colour, sexual preferences,
nationality, religion, etc. The whole political spectrum could be defined by how much
i included in the list. Rightwing I

rals might limit equality rights to electoral rights,
while far left reformists extend equal

102 guaranteed substantial income, a home, job.
protection, etc.,in an endless debate between personal freedom and social fairness. The
rejection of, and the search for social (and not just political) equality are two sides of

the same coin. The obsession with equality is born out of a world laden with inequal-

ity, a world that dreams of reducing inequality by giving more to each individual, more
rights... and more money.

Equality protects individuals. We'd rather start by considering what the members
of society are doing together, and what they have and don’t have in common. Human
beings lose their mastery over the running of their personal and group life when they

lose the mastery over their conditions of existence, and first of all over the production

of the material basis of these conditions. Our problem is not to find how to make

common de

ions about what we do, but fo do what can be decided upon in common,
and 10 stop o7 avoid doing whatever cannot be decided upon in common. A factory run
according to Taylor's methods, a nuclear power station, a multinational or the BBC will
never come under the management of its personnel. Only a bank that confines itself to
‘micro-credit can remain under some degree of control by the people working there and

by those who receive its micro-loans. When a co-op operates on a scale that enables it
to rival large companies, its special “democratic” features begin to fade. A school can
be self-managed (by staff and schoolkids) as long as it refrains from selecting, grading
and streaming, That is fine, and it’s probably better to be a teenager in Summerhill than
at Eton, but that won't change the school system.

Whoever does not situate the problem of power where it belongs,is bound to leave
itin the hands of those who possess power, or to try and share it with them (as social-
democracy does), or to take power from them (as Lenin and his party did).

The essence of pol

al thought is to wonder how 10 organize people’s lives, instead
of considering first what those to-be-organized people do.
Communism is not a question of finding the government or self-government best

suited to social reorgani not a matter of institutions, but of acti

Self is not enough

It seems only die-hard party builders could object to autonomy: who wants to be a de-
pendant? Yet we may wonder why autonomy has become a buzzword lately. Trotskysts
are not authoritarian any more. Any leftwinger now is all for “autonomy”, like nearly

looking for working class vote talked of “socialism” in 1910. The

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popularity of this notion may be a sign of growing radicalism. It certainly also has a lot
to do with contemporary daily life and the spaces of freedom it grants us: more open
communication channels, new types of leisure, new ways of meeting, making friends
and wravelling, the “network society”, the Internet, etc. All these activities have one thing
in common: everyone s at the same time constantly on his own and constantly relating
to everyone and everything,

No revolution wi

out autonomy: quite ! Autonomy s necessary. But it’s not
enough. It is not the principle on which everything can or must be based. Autonomy
‘means giving oneself one’s own law (nomos). It's based on the self (asto).

Is this what happens in real life?

Everybody wishes collective decisions. So do we. And the best way to get it s for
each of us to take part in the decision-making. But once you and I are part of it, we sill
have to make the decision. Is this “self” strong enough? Autonomists have their answer
ready; the individual self may be weak, but the collective self s strong. Who's being
naive here? Adding individual wills only transforms them into something qualitatively
different if and when they act differently. So we're back to where we started. Aggregating
selves widens the scope of the problem without solving it. The solution can only come,
not from what autonomy is supposed to give us, but from what it

founded upon.
Autonomy in itselfis no more creative than any form of organization.

Many radicals believe in the equation...

autonomy + anti-State violence = revolutionary movement

...and see it vindicated for instance in the Oaxaca protracted insurrection. While
this event is one of the strongest outbursts of proletarian activity in the recent years, it
demonstrates that autonomous violence is necessary and insufficient. A revolutionary
‘movement is more than a liberated area or a hundred liberated areas. It develops by
fighting public and private repression, as well s by starting to change the material basis
of social relationship. No self-managed street fighting and grassroots district solidarity,
howeverindispensable they are, inevitably contain the acts and the intentions that bring
about such a change. So it's the nature of the change we've got to insist upon: creating
aworld without money, without commodity exchange, without labour being bought
and sold, without firms as competing poles of value accumulation, without work as

separate from the rest of our activities, without a State, without a specialized political

sphere supposedly cut off from our social relationships... In other words, a revolution

that is born out of a common refusal to submit, out of the hope to get to a point of no
return where people transform themselves and gain a sense of their own power as they
teansform reality.

GILLES DAUVE, OCTOBER 2008

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32

*PS.1

The best concise pamphlet on the subject that we know of is Communism Against
Democracy, Treason Press, Canberra, Australia, 2005, composed of two texts by Wildeat
(Britain) and Against Sleep And Nightmare (US). Available on the Treason website.
See also J. Camatte, The Democratic mystification, 1969.

« PS. 2 for (possible) political correctors.
Most of the

& woman”. This is not out of neglect of the other half of our species. This be does not

e, this essay uses “he” and “man” as a means to say “he & she”, “man

‘mean male. s the grammatical nexter whi

encompasses both masculine and feminine.
We're well aware that no grammar is socially or sexually neutral. A better society will

create better words. For the time being, the old fashioned neuter form has at least the

advantage of not giving us the llusion of false equality in speech. The reader who's gone

that far would not expect us to believe in democracy in language.