Saturday, June 6, 2009

17

revolutionary groups are not the historic party, they have not
been thrown up by the economic base, they are not an
inescapable result of capitalism's contradictions. In most cases
pro-revolutionary groups are created in response to purely political
events and have little connection to workers' struggles. Those who
argue for the transmission of revolutionary consciousness to the
working class by pro-revolutionaries see their role, effectively, as
one leadership. It is interesting for us to observe how those who
argue for the 'transmission of consciousness' model do not
practically escape from the confines of their milieu and do not
reach the working class, they seem content to exhort each other to
be more realistic, speak in a language the workers will understand,
etc etc. But nothing ever happens, if these activists were any good
then they would surely be locally recruiting five or more new
adherents every week. The fact that the message is not getting
through is, for us, the final critique of the concept of 'messages'.
To see in advance what ideological requirements are to be met by
the proletariat, despite all experience of the failure of this method,
is putting the cart before the horse and is a good example of
impatience, this is as true for 'councilists' as it is for vanguardists.

Because pro-revolutionaries have to learned how to wait, have
not learned to engage at the level of their experience - they are
always wanting to lead the way, wishing forward their hot-
brained solutions - they are forever looking back and wondering
why nobody is following them. Theories of consciousness and
organization are always attempts to impose past reflective forms
onto living struggles - consciousness in these schemes becomes
a stage, a precondition for the revolution. These pro-
conscious/pro-revolutionaries think that no matter how intense a
specific struggle might be, it is not explicitly political then it is
lacking in essence and therefore not wholly real - to the struggle
they bring always the political dimension but never consider how
the political dimension may, in reality, be lagging behind the
economic struggle.

No comments:

Post a Comment