45

Militants and otherness

As mere anecdotal evidence, and briefly touching on the matter of
pro-revolutionary consciousness which we understand to be a
proposed solution to the problem of engagement and organization,
we should like it to go on the record that we have met with several
workplace militants and for the most part they have no political
consciousness. Many of these militants are very anti-political, we
would say there we post-political, but how did they become
militants if they did not receive political instruction? Their condition
is one of absolute refusal of the legitimacy of the manager, an
absolute intransigence over specific workplace issues and a kind
of terrifying site-specificity producing in them an absolute refusal to
look at the wider picture (like Ahab of the back of the white whale
they are consumed with a madness for not escaping). We do not
endorse such militants, we seem them as being stuck in a loop of
restricted gestures which their identity seems to depend upon,
what would they do if the had not their struggle? It is a fact of our
experience that most workplace militants are quite mad and/or not
especially very nice people to know; it is important not to get
wrapped up in their personal feuds but still we would argue that
these mad-eyed prophets are in advance and waiting in the desert, gone
mad with waiting, gnawing at locusts, sitting on poles. Some of
them, and of a certain age, cite Pink Floyd, and not Marx, as the
biggest influence on their lives. They required only a narrative of
otherness, something that was not contained in the usual cause
and effects of everyday life to legitimize their dispute. Will the
misty master break me, will the key unlock my mind? For such
people, the A to B thinking of most pro-revolutionary activists is too
basic and not even appropriate to the situation. To them it means
nothing to 'speak in a language the workers understand' because
nobody has ever spoken such a language.