Friday, March 27, 2009

203

opposes capitalism also somehow incarnates a moving on from
present conditions? Or isn't this an idealization of opposition,
looking for something positive in what could only be anti? Perhaps
it is a desire to identify counter-examples to the way things are, to
have alternatives and escape routes right now. It seems there is a
confusion in the communist milieu over the differing value of
political aspiration and conflict that is inherent to economic
structure. Only those who name themselves 'aufheben' could
discern in historical ruptures a continued movement of progress
towards communism, each moment adding its brick to the anti-
capitalist citadel.

Capitalism, if it is to collapse, will enter its final crisis being driven
to its extinction by the proletariat, but in this destruction we should
not look for too many positive forms of signs of future freedom; the
end of capitalism as a base for social possibility is a precondition of
communism but the death of capital will not be pretty. And nor will
communism be constituted in the actual process of capitalism
destruction, one is not born in the other's death even if that death
is a prerequisite. We should not hope to hand over all
responsibility for the institution of communism to the workers, who
as a social category will be destroyed along with capital in the
collapse, we should not hope for it in singular future evens nor
should we get round the a-political nature of crisis by theoretically
expanding the concept of the working class to include everyone so
as to allow for some kind of participatory people's revolution
against capital. There will come a point in the struggle of the
proletariat against capital where all sane people will wish for a
return to capitalism as it was and whatever lies in the future will
look very doubtful, such will be the conditions of our world's
unpleasantness.

Are all piecemeal struggles entwined together in their roots, roots
which taken together sustain a great tree of Revolution? Perhaps,
but only in a negative sense, in that capital reproduces its
conditions and the struggle against those conditions all over the
world, there is no necessary communist element in specific
proletarian struggles, even if there is a contingent one: the
proletariat are the structural factor within generalized production
that has a potential chance of overthrowing production, so every
instance of industrial conflict points faintly to the possibility: if this
instance should coincide with and then deliberately connect to

No comments:

Post a Comment