52

The revolutionary subject

We 'recognize' the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary subject
not because we are romantically attached to tits way of life, we do
not think in terms of 'salt the earth', or even that, in some dark
way, the workers' 'know' how society really works. We are not
interested in setting 'our gladiator' against the pet subjectivities of
other theorists, we have simply reached our conclusions because
we can see no other; for us, everything 'political' is contained,
politics as a practice is itself a technique for relating the social back
to the economic without antagonism.

The questions we asked have been hard for us: 'How are
women, organized as women, going to stop capital?' 'How are
blacks, organized as blacks, going to stop capital?' 'How are
women organized as workers going to stop capital?' 'How are
blacks organized as workers going to stop capital?' Many theorists
have tried to expand the definition of the working class to include
political elements within it, thus the struggle of women by
themselves for their position in the workplace is viewed positively
because they are struggling 'consciously', that is, politically, for a
defined political end. We, contrarily, see in this politicization of
struggle precisely the route by which it will be utilized to improve
productivity, because political consciousness is precisely the factor
that tricks workers into forgetting where their real power lies.
Women do not harm capitalism by establishing themselves as
equals to men in the workplace, blacks do not harm capitalism
because they establish themselves as equals to whites; equal
opportunity legislation is a source of great pride in capital's
civilization of itself, the ongoing victory of women and of blacks in
this area is proclaimed by capital as its own victory, its own self-
civilizing process towards a free, happy, equal society. Political
demands may be satisfied under capitalist terms and used as a
ground for further exploitation, this is the function of politics, and
rather politics in particular.

The truth of the workers struggle against capital is not political, it is
the truth of capitalism itself: the capitalist economy depends upon
the exploitation of workers to reproduce itself and its conditions,
therefore the workers alone, because of their centrality to the
productive process, have the capacity to stop production, only they
can reach past the roaring engines and press the off switch. It