Today in North America there are a million political tendencies, grouplets, factions, etc., like anywhere else. Unlike some, I do believe proletarian struggle is alive around us all the time here as well (though usually not under a radical heading). There is a stark division though between the struggle and political life. This division is so deep that the two rarely touch, except through the institutional left (unions, ngos, lobbyist groups, etc) which serve to recuperate and diffuse struggle. Broadly speaking, political activity is a seperate sphere of life. It is analogous to a subculture with its own selective demographic, language, social rituals (protests, internet forums, etc), and its seperation from society as a whole. This is not a critique so much as a statement of fact, and one that is natural. Others would say that in low times of struggle this always will be the case, the gap between revolutionary politics and the class widens. This is essentially right, but I don’t like the high/low concept as it obscures how struggle actually happens and makes it seem mystical as though our job is to sit and wait for the big battles.

Given this separation, it’s can be difficult for revolutionaries to cut their teeth doing mass work in struggle. Many revolutionaries don’t live or work in areas or industries/job classes where struggle is ready to participate in (and are unwilling/unable to make changes necessary to do so), and there are often no mentors to show you the ropes on how to build from scratch. The overwhelming majority of work that people do is external support work say for ngos and unions, protests and rallies, educational work, and organizing the left. All of this is necessary, but does not overcome the problem of grounding the left in concrete struggles which would give a firmer basis to ideology. I’m not making a value judgment, just pointing out the dynamics with a left divorced from the struggles of the class.

The last bit, the drive to re-organizing the left, is widespread and deeply problematic however.  The logic I’ve heard repeated is that we lack the material and human resources necessary to organize. Without those resources, we are doomed to failure in our struggles. Building revolutionaries out of struggle takes a long time (years). Instead we have to organize the existing progressives and revolutionaries in the broad left, gather enough support, and then strategize and build campaigns.

The problem with this is not so much the logic as the logic in the social context and in practice. The left is made up of people who essentially come to their ideas through their own personalities, people they know, ideological fashions, etc. There is little struggle to develop, reshape, and form ideology as the movement of thought and action together in dialogue. Given this, the left is made up of people whose thought is divorced from their practice. The existing divisions then will exist at that level. If we have nothing to offer beyond our arguments and our ideas, perhaps some may be moved, but the bulk will not. If our strategy is re-organize people on a theoretical basis based on some perceived unity of some broad left ideology, we lack the tools to truly move people since we’ve already closed ourselves off to struggle from the start. This becomes a viscious cycle with people arguing struggle is impossible, yet unable to meet the prerequisites of struggle without struggle, and so on. This is to set aside of course the problematic aspect of trying to recruit solely from the left, which is a very selective section of society with its own baggage and problems.

In struggle though we see how ideas and activity can be transformed through the clash of one’s world view with the new circumstances of collective struggle. In general, people are attracted to good work. Working together provides the basis to have harder conversations and exchanges about where we want to go, which otherwise people might blow each other off about. If you are working on good stuff, you can build relationships, and expand that work. Sometimes you’ll win people over to your positions, other times they’ll move you, or you both change. That process however is much more dynamic and a realistic model for how we build a movement, than the concept of trying to spread propaganda and make arguments to the left (a self-selected group within society united by ideological conceptions… I’ll come back to how we define the left later).

The requirements for struggle are much lower than some would have you think. Many of the campaigns I’ve been involved in began with one workplace contact, and one or two outside organizers doing it in their free time. Things will heat up, large campaigns take more people, and there’s serious limitations to such a set up. Yet still, I have seen again and again in workplace struggle that it is possible with a small group of workplace organizers to fight problems at work, to win, and to develop lifelong committed organizers out of those struggles and sometimes even revolutionaries. The reason is fairly simple, people care. When your job is making your life miserable and you’ve come to the point where you want to do something, you have a level of commitment. Struggle takes a social life which has a natural pendulum, and shakes it all up. That undermining of the standard rhythms which hurt us, opens space for reflection and reconsidering what is going on around us.

That relationship to struggle is fundamentally distinct from trying to get radical students to attend a debate about Venezuela. I think historically the North American left organizing the left has a poor track record with little to point to. I’m not sure to what extent mass organizing has been done in recent North American history. In the workplace the concentration was often in getting union staff or leadership positions or propagandizing workplace actions more than building an autonomous working class movement. There are some notable exceptions like STO, LRBW, etc., but they seem to be the slim exception.

This brings me back to what the left is and where the divisions lie. On the surface I think the left is divided along a number of ideological lines, and is distinct from other ideological currents by say internationalism, socialism, etc. At a deeper level though these divisions within the left essentially evaporate. I’m not sure distinctions between say social democrats, anarchists, and communists are very useful anymore when considered from the view not of ideas, but ideas combined with practices. 

Instead I want to propose some more useful groupings for how we orient to the left, and how we move forward. The strongest left current is essentially a form of populism and pragmatism. It’s base analysis is around poverty, oppression, and injustice (as opposed to class relations), and it’s activity centers around similarly populist institutions like unions and NGOs. The populists fight over their role in the NGOs and unions, relationships to the state/elections, etc, but share the drive to build, sustain, and sometimes integrate with the institutional left on a broadly pragmatic (do what works) basis.

There is a material (as well as ideological) contradiction between the desire to transcend these institutions or to take them past their integrative role in capitalism, and the practice of building and sustaining them. These contradictions are mired by the left feeding the bureaucratic jobs of these institutions, and not being able to see past them to autonomous combative proletarian movements. The gap arises from seeing oppression and poverty as the main problem, and alleviation to that suffering as part of our movement (in its truest essence populism). Yet poverty and oppression are only symptoms of the problem, and the proposed solution to those problems is integrated into the real problem (capital and state social relations).

Another current is the pure theorists. Their practice is essentially the dissemination of ideas, and likewise have no ideological unity. This movement comes from academia either directly or indirectly, and stays mostly on the sidelines of struggle, or participates only in an intellectual capacity with communiques and propaganda. 

The smallest current though are those that actively and legitimately are involved in direct struggles around proletarian demands in housing, workplaces, transit, communities, etc., and seek to build movements for transformation out of these struggles. This current is divided ideologically though as the practice is not unified or developed into coherent tendencies based on the limited experience and history it’s had.

I’m not arguing for the empirical truth of these ad hoc categories, so much as a clarification of our strategy in organizing related to divorce of practice from theory and theory from practice. These groupings allow us to see the problem with organizing the left, its inherent divisions, and the need to root our theory in practices. The most solid foundation will be built in the last group. Our tendency will be built not through merely trying to apply our theory, but rather through developing our ideas in struggle alongside others committed to the mass fight. In terms of resources, that is where we are most likely to have success, and that is where we are most likely to develop ourselves as well. 

It isn’t that we shouldn’t try to organize the left, but how we do it. Seeing the dynamics, material and ideological contradictions within the left and the lack of praxis, it is necessary that we fight that battle not within the logic that the left has itself in, but outside of it. We won’t overcome the populism of the left by fighting populism inside NGOs for more struggle-based NGOs, we’ll overcome populism through building fighting class organizations and struggles where those possibilites exist. Such struggles undermine the base of populism directly and give inspiration to the people who would become fodder for the institutional left.

It is like a workplace, we build relationships with everyone, we extend our hand, and make sure to do the work across the board, but we make strategic priorities to move as many people as possible, and to build the struggles that will transform our coworkers. We don’t focus on the progressive workers, because they often aren’t the ones who will move the struggle forward. That doesn’t mean we don’t organize them, but we see their role. Instead we focus say on the most respect workers, or the ones who stand to loose the most and who we need to support the struggle or our fight will fail, etc. In that process, all the categories of progressive, conservative, etc., get turned on their head. That is the process we need to be apart of.

I’m speaking here not about subjectivity, how people think about these movements, but objectively, of movements and struggles. My reason is this, objectively speaking the divisions that existed between marxists and anarchists have blurred to such an extent, that it is no longer possible to speak realistically of separate movements merely on the historical basis of people drawing from those two traditions. Reasons:

I. Ideas

1. Those who call themselves marxists are overrun by anarchist concepts. 

Marxists today have to define themselves on the terms of anarchism, which is many ways has ascended to become the dominant revolutionary discourse consciously or not. You hear maoists talking about participatory democracy and autonomy, you hear trotskyists call Venezuelan government organs decentralized community councils, and you hear communists speak about anti-politics, anti-statism, the unity of capital and the state, the incoherence of the transition period, etc. 

2. Anarchists have been so deeply influenced and change by marxist ideology. 

Anarchists of all kind draw from, study, work with, etc., marxist concepts. Anarchist groups reframe lenin is supposedly libertarian terms, anarchists utilize marx’s thought (the good and the bad) on economics, marxists formulate libertarian organization in response to marxist debates, and annex marxists into the anarchist cannon. This is natural given that marxism produced the the greatest breadth and depth of thinking around revolution in the 20th century.

II. Action

1. Marxists have assumed anarchist practice under the banner of marxism.

Marxism, which once scorned direct action, affinity groups, direct democracy, etc. (and in some archaic or avant garde manner occasionally does), has embraced anarchist practice and reconfigured it to fall within the orthodoxy of marxism. Marxism in name, anarchist in practice. Or so it goes with many.

2. Anarchists have assumed marxist practice under the banner of anarchism. 

Guevarism, leninist organizational practice + assembly votes, national liberation, marxist practice of revolutionary struggle, etc., all find practice in the void filled by anarchists relative youth when it comes to practice. Correspondingly, we find reconceptualization of marxist struggle as though old concepts in libertarian clothing transforms the reinvention of dead struggles. Or even more bizarrely, the dressing up of social democracy, keynesianism, and reform as stepping stones to libertarianism. 

This is all at the level of appearances; reformists masquerade as revolutionaries, revolutionaries dress up as their favorite superheros, radicals afraid of change throw old names at new struggles and try to force todays wooden blocks into history’s circular hole. 

What is really going on is the emergence of a number of distinct tendencies arising from real struggles in the proletariat (broadly understood). 

1.The revolutionary farce

Liberalism expressed in its more raw and extreme form yearns for a revolutionary upheaval, but settles on revamping it in the form of improving capitalism. The left is extremely good at reproducing this revolutionary masquerade, and perhaps that constitutes nearly the whole of the left. Anarchist, marxist, socialist, or liberal, we can see the emergence of a pan-left movement which is diverse in ideology but united around supporting the left-wing of capital in the attempt to reform capital along humanistic lines.

2. Old moles blindly chewing pages under the mountain of dead texts

Likewise there are hangers on, prophets of the second coming of some hackneyed representative of authentic revolution who saw the light but wasn’t given the chance the make the revolution we are unwilling to make ourselves. Again the ideology diverges, but the practice is unitary. Education and propaganda, marketing and PR, these revolutionaries and their worship of political organization are in the business of selling ideas to masses held back by being duped by worse ideas. If they intervene at all, it is to try and influence ideas and further propagate the message, which if only it took hold in the masses would mean certain revolution. This concept of revolution is as old as revolution itself, and is a tragic comedy of the Waiting for Godot sort. Unlike the reformists above, these old moles will find no unity since they are united only by their love of their own ideas, party line, or commitment to the futile external propaganda of class that a million times more revolutionary than the self-proclaimed revolutionaries. 

3. The non-dialectical synthesis of marxism and anarchism

A sector of the marxist and anarchist movements are quickly finding themselves dissolved into one and another. On a practical basis, we literally see this in struggle. Revolutionary tendencies emerge less on the historical basis of identification with a particular history, than with the unity of practice and ideas in struggle. To this end we see both in the theory of libertarian revolutionary (consider the anarchism of the ultraleft and the marxism of communist anti-union anarchists) and the practice (networks of militants, workplace struggles that supersede unions, assemblies and councils, consciousness through action, and content in struggle beyond mere form).

In essence we see that the historical destruction of the left by its own reformism and procapitalist stance, led to the dissolution of practice from theory, an anti-praxis of sorts. Alongside this, the birth of new struggles in the post-soviet era, began to undermine both the theory and the praxis. We now see the emergence of a new praxis, whose theory or praxis is absent or incomplete.

There is reason to be hopeful in the last case, with the emergence of a non-sectarian libertarian tendency that supercedes the historical limitations of marxism and anarchism, yet which utilizes the advances of both. There is hope here, because we can see in practice the advances of this in terms of both practice and theory on a global scale. Bizarrely, from a motley crew of parts of the SAC, the IWW, SolFed, working place resistance groups in the UK, workers struggles in France and Germany, to the industrial slums of India, we see a kind of dialogue unusual for groups of people who directly fight in struggles. This collective engagement transforms revolutionaries in struggle beyond their individual and grouplet bounds, and can open up space for the emergence of perspectives that can rupture the staleness of the left in our time. To this end, we are better served by open debate, reflection, and collaborative practice on the basis of this emerging praxis than we are by clinging to the fetish of identity-based historical associations, semantic and intellectually driven debates, and the reproduction of internet stances isolated from active strengths of an immanent proletariat.

Faith in Struggle

The basic problem of consciousness is this, how can people go from believing what they do now  to being dedicated to fundamental transformation of society? This question has troubled radicals of all stripes throughout the ages. The question itself has a number of assumptions. Firstly, lack of such consciousness prevents revolution. Secondly, having it on some level at least brings us closer to revolution. Thirdly, this transformation will not happen on its own.

It is worth questioning this logic though. I’d hazard the assertion that no revolution that occurred has been done by a conscious revolutionary society. Instead revolutionaries have always been objectively minorities. Moreover though revolutionaries can come to represent the aspirations and perspectives of the people, revolutionaries can’t make revolutions for the people, nor are they able to impose their ideas on the people in struggle. Thus revolutions have been made by a majority of non-revolutionaries. That’s not to say people were duped. If I move to Atlanta, I may not know what i am moving to, but I know that I’m moving there, and how it differs from my present circumstance. I think the role of consciousness in revolution is thus overemphasized in that revolutionary consciousness itself only has a partial role in moving people towards revolution, it is an incomplete consciousness (especially in self-proclaimed revolutionaries!), and the relationship between struggle and consciousness are extremely complex. 

These are merely assertions that i won’t try to defend here with the struggles and reflection that brought me to them. Instead I want to explore a parallel in anarchosyndicalism (really syndicalism as well) that have implicitly a similar answer to the problem of consciousness, and one that departs radically from the traditional answers the left offered in terms of education, spontaneism, or substitutionism of the party. 

Before the 20th century, anarchism was an isolated philosophy. A turn to individualistic violent activities, or propaganda of the deed, alienated the base of anarchism, and brought severe repression on the movement. Anarchism produce the ideological propaganda group or the insurrectionary cell, both divided from the struggles of the exploited, and ineffective in deepening the struggles for transformation. Some anarchists went head on into workplace organizing in some of the first unions (especially in Latin America). Battles organizing helped produce a number of lessons through the struggle itself. Political infighting and electoralism divided the class, and weakened the fight against the capitalists. The use of indirect political action were fought on the ground where the capitalists were strongest, whereas direct action showed the power of the working class acting collectively. Moreover the workers occasionally, in high points of struggle, demonstrated their ability to assume control of the economy and reorganize it for collective needs. 

Rooted in the direct struggles of the workers, and emphasizing the need for a libertarian methodology and form of organization, anarchism saved itself from the dustbin of history, or the social democracy of marxism at that time. Through anarchosyndicalism anarchism reached the peak of its strength, and built the organizations, theory, and struggles that people now know as anarchism. 

At the heart of syndicalism, of which anarchosyndicalism evolved out of and eventually overshadowed, was a radical break with other revolutionaries on the concept of radicalization. Though it is hard to speak in quantitative terms since these movements were overwhelmingly proletarian and consequently had a gap between its most vocal elements and its base, some trends can be noted.

Unlike propaganda groups, syndicalists did not believe that the task of revolutionaries was solely to produce and distribute ideas that would inspire or engage the people to join the struggle. Unlike the state socialists, syndicalists did not think that capturing state power alone would produce a revolutionary proletariat (the anarchosyndicalists of course rejected the state route all together, but the CGT and IWW too emphasized the union over the electoral route). Syndicalism put struggle at the heart of its concept of radicalization. Struggle in the workplace and in society in general was the site where revolutionary consciousness could develop, but also blossom when there was enough space for such struggle not to be coopted and diverted into reformism, service unionism, or merely the conquest of state power without fundamentally altering the social relationships of capitalism. The syndicalist organization provided a vehicle for the development of consciousness collectively by proletarians organized around common grievances.  

"The level of selfishness or social duty, individualism or solidarity, that exists in society is the result of social structures and economic imperatives. So our consciousness would change if our society and economy were to change. When the way we worked and lived was different, so was our consciousness. As social structures and the economy have continued to develop and change in a selfish and negative fashion, so the negative side of individualism has come to the fore." Solidarity Federation, The Economics of Freedom http://libcom.org/library/economics-freedom-anarcho-syndicalist-alternative-capitalism

At the heart of this quote is an understanding of consciousness as rooted not merely in the dominant power structures of our time, but also in the activities and social organization that people engage in within society. This forms a kernel of the syndicalist methodology to revolution in that it implies to some degree that we require new means of organizing ourselves in order to open space for the development of revolutionary consciousness. 

Arguing against the leftist (both anarchist and marxist variants) idea that unions are inherently reformist in virtue of their including non-revolutionary workers, syndicalists argued that workers organizations are not static. The consciousness of union members change with the periods of struggle. Unions may come to revolutionary consciousness and activity in so far as the sections of the working class that make it up come to those conclusions in their thoughts and struggles.  

"We are often told that unions cannot be more than reformist because the must encompass a maximum number of workers. But history shows that mass unions are perfectly capable of developing anti-capitalist strategies (the Spanish CNT, the French CGT before 1914, the IWW, the Mexican CGT, the French CGTU …. ) Unions will tend to follow the consciousness of the working class because they are combat organisations, especially of the most militant parts of the working class. During periods of „social peace“ reformist tendencies will naturally come to the fore. In pre-revolutionary times unions are perfectly capable of developing a revolutionary program. A political party will come under the same pressure of class struggle, even when it is a so-called mass-party with a, rare, working-class leadership". Goals of the CSR, Comité Syndicaliste Révolutionaire http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/display/6411/index.php

The Necessity of an active minority

The syndicalists believe/d that the struggle itself and its organs provide the deepest education for the communization of society by the working class itself. Through building united proletarian power, and the experiences of organizing and fighting the ruling class, the working class prepared itself and deepened its abilities to build towards revolution. 

"To them Socialist education does not mean participation in the power policy of the national state, but the effort to make clear to the workers the intrinsic connections among social problems by technical instruction and the development of their administrative capacities, to prepare them for their role of re-shapers of economic life and give them the moral assurance required for the performance of their task. No social body is better fitted for this purpose than the economic fighting organisation of the workers; it gives a definite direction to their social activities and toughens their resistance in the immediate struggle for the necessities of life and the defence of their human rights. At the same time it develops their ethical concepts without which any social transformation is impossible: vital solidarity with their fellows in destiny and moral responsibility for their actions." Rocker, Anarchism & Anarchosyndicalism http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/rocker-rudolf/misc/anarchism-anarcho-syndicalism.htm#s5

We see contradictions here though between the organization and the class. At once the site of revolutionary consciousness is situated in the class in struggle, but then the organization is identified with that class. Yet it is obvious to us now why this is problematic, of which spain is only the most glaring example of how organizations and the class can diverge at the most crucial moment. In a sense the organization takes the role of the party, merely a decentralized party, in counterpoint to a class acting to abolish itself. 

"It is axiomatic that neither the rebellious mood of militants, nor the structure of an organization, however well conceived, make it REVOLUTIONARY A labor movement is REVOLUTIONARY only to the extent that the workers feel the need to organize themselves into revolutionary unions dedicated to the abolition of capitalism and the state, to take possession of the means of production and establish a society selfmanaged by the workers. Lacking these revolutionary perspectives, rebellious movements gradually lose their dynamism and integrate themselves into the system. The chief function of a revolutionary minority is to "fan the flames of discontent" (IWW slogan).

Revolutionary ideas cannot be artificially planted. Workers become receptive when these concepts are confirmed and reflected through their own experience." Dolgoff THE AMERICAN LABOUR MOVEMENT: A NEW BEGINNING http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/text/labor#notes

We see here though an idea repeated throughout syndicalist publications that represents leaps and bounds over left thinking about consciousness. This is the idea that revolutionary consciousness emerges through struggle and reflection, and that that comes from present/ongoing/immanent processes within the working class itself, and that that is the basis of revolution. 

Syndicalists thus argued for struggles around day to day issues to open space for the emergence of class consciousness, against those who thought such struggle could only be reformist. This isn’t to say improving material conditions of workers is revolutionary (which some anarchist admirers of business unions affirm) nor that struggle inevitably leads to such consciousness, just that struggle is the domain where consciousness can emerge (perhaps with healthy skepticism of the propagandism of political organizations). 

"partial improvements do not have the effect of lulling the workers to sleep: instead they act as a reassurance and a spur to her in staking further claims and making further demands. The result of well-being - which is always a consequence of the display of proletarian might - whether the interested parties wrest it from the struggle, or the bourgeoisie deems it prudent and politic to make concessions, in order to take the edge off clashes which it foresees or fears - is to add to the dignity and consciousness of the working class and also - and above all else! - to increase and hone its appetite for the fight. As it shrugs off its physiological and intellectual poverty, the working class matures: it achieves a greater sensitivity, grows more alive to the exploitation it endures and its determination to break free of this is all the greater: it also gains a clearer perception of the irreconcilable contrast between its own interests and those of the capitalist class." Pouget, Direct Action http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/display/200/index.php

Syndicalists were aware though of the limitations of bread and butter struggles.The fundamental transformation of the social relationships of capital are the ultimate target, and this is no way guaranteed by shifts in working conditions.

"But, no matter how important one may suppose them to be, piecemeal improvements cannot take the place of the revolution, or stave it off: the expropriation of capital remains a necessity if liberation is to be feasible…Obviously partial gains (no matter how important we may suppose these to be and even if they should largely whittle away at privileges) do not have the effect of altering economic relationships - the relations obtaining between boss and worker, between leader and led. Therefore the worker’s subordination to Capital and the State endures. From which it follows that the social question looms as large as ever, and the "barricade" dividing the producers from the parasites living off them has not been shifted, much less flattened." Pouget, Direct Action http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/display/200/index.php

Communization and the immanence of communism as a present movement

The conception of revolution common to all left currents tends to that of the historical rupture, the day when men with guns show up, stuff gets taken over, and something new gets pronounce. There’s difference on the how long it takes, who does it, what means are used, etc., but that generally is the framework. In a sense even interstitial revolution, withdrawing from capital, gradualism, etc., fit the same framework on a slower time scale. These theories merely regionalize the rupture. 

A contribution of the ultraleft is a rejection of this concept of revolution, instead understanding revolution as a process of communization already present as a process within the proletariat. 

"Communism is not a set of measures to be put into practice after the seizure of power. It is a movement which already exists, not as a mode of production (there can be no communist island within capitalist society), but as a tendency which originates in real needs." Dauve, Eclipse and Remergence of the Communist Movement

This is to say that communism is a movement arising from the conditions of existence of the proletariat that has within it, elements of the abolition of capital and class itself including the proletariat. Unlike many, Dauve doesn’t allow the state or proletariat to survive the revolution (for good historical reasons), but rather than utopian speculation about how post-revolutionary society could operate, we find communism already growing within the conditions that breed capitalisms end. 

"Communism does not even know what value is. The point is not that one fine day a large number of people start to destroy value and profit. All past revolutionary movements were able to bring society to a standstill, and waited for something to come out of this universal stoppage. Communization, on the contrary, will circulate goods without money, open the gate isolating a factory from its neighbourhood, close down another factory where the work process is too alienating to be technically improved, do away with school as a specialized place which cuts off learning from doing for 15 odd years, pull down walls that force people to imprison themselves in 3-room family units - in short, it will tend to break all separations." Ibid

This conception, in contrast to the idea of the disruption and destruction of capital, is that communism arises from a process of communication the creation of new forms of social relationships which emerge from the antagonistic struggles of the proletariat against capital. 

"The mechanism of the communist revolution is a product of struggles. Their development leads to a time when society forces all individuals whom it leaves with no other perspective to establish new social relations. If a number of social struggles now seem to come to nothing, it is because their only possible continuation would be communism, whatever those who take part in them may now think. Even when workers are just making demands they often come to a point when there is no other solution but a violent clash with the State and its assistants, the unions. In that case, armed struggle and insurrection imply the application of a social programme, and the use of the economy as a weapon (see above, on the proletariat). The military aspect, as important as it may be, depends on the social content of the struggle. To be able to defeat its enemies on a military level, the proletariat - whatever its consciousness - transforms society in a communist way." Ibid

This is the inverse of how many think of revolution, in fact the justification for a transitional period. Dauve lays out the challenge that the inability to defeat capital and the state is the defeat of the revolution, and likewise a revolution is the defeat of the capital of which the military component is merely an expression. This interplay between illusory revolution (the left masquerading as liberators) is an ongoing theme in ultraleft writing, which allows us to step back and more objectively consider the role of self-proclaimed liberatory movements, which in contradiction end up saving capitalism. 

"The communist revolution is the continuation as well as the surpassing of present social movements. Discussions of communism usually start from an erroneous standpoint: they deal with the question of what people will do after the revolution. They never connect communism with what is going on at the moment when the discussion is going on. There is a complete rupture: first one makes the revolution, then communism. In fact communism is the continuation of real needs which are now already at work, but which cannot lead anywhere, which cannot be satisfied, because the present situation forbids it. Today there are numerous communist gestures and attitudes which express not only a refusal of the present world, but most of all an effort to build a new one. In so far as these do not succeed, one sees only their limits, only the tendency and not its possible continuation (the function of "extremist" groups is precisely to present these limits as the aims of the movement, and to strengthen them)." Ibid

Aufheben, responding to and agreeing in part with Theorie Communiste, draws out these conclusions concerning theory. The left is obsessed with nostalgia. Famed heros who supposedly had it all right (makhno, trotsky, lenin, bordiga, malcolm x, whoever) but were defeated by trickery or the peasantry or whoever. But considered from the above perspective, communism as an immanent movement of the proletariat, these notions are tossed aside.

"Communism is the attempt to express the real movement; but the real movement is not fully present until it is successful; thus communist theory is only partial - an aspiration - and the theoretical work is never quite finished. It is taken forward by advances in the class struggle and the reflection on this. Put another way, theory does not take the point of view of the totality but of the aspiration to the totality. It is inadequate and unhistorical to assume that the ultra-left had the right ideas but that they simply lost out to the wrong ones, and on this basis to assert its critique of trade unions and leftist political parties when the opportunity occurs." Communist Theory Beyond the Ultra-Left http://libcom.org/library/communist-theory-beyond-the-ultra-left

Objections to economic reductionism

Refreshingly Dauve rejects the marxist notion that flies in the face of common sense. Marx’s 19th century structuralism and reductionism is not soft pedaled or re-read ala a sacred text into the truth. Likewise Dauve believes in historical indeterminancy, that revolution is not inevitable and that history has no linear march.

"The “economy” 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." A Contribution to the Critique of Political Autonomy http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008

Theorie Communiste believes in a stronger periodization typical of the ultra-left, which tries to find a historico-materialist basis arising from distinct periods for contemporary struggles. There’s a whole debate on this that I won’t get into http://endnotes.org.uk/

"With exploitation as contradiction between the classes we understand their particularisation as particularisation of the community , and therefore as being simultaneously their reciprocal implication. This then signifies: the impossibility of the affirmation of the proletariat, the contradiction between the proletariat and capital as history, the critique of all theories of the revolutionary nature of the proletariat as a definitive essence buried or masked by the reproduction of the totality (the self-presupposition of capital). We have historicized the contradiction, and therefore revolution and communism and not just their circumstances. Revolution and communism are produced historically through the cycles of struggle that mark time in the march of the unfolding contradiction." Theorie Communiste http://libcom.org/library/theorie-communiste-0

The Unity of form, content, and function

Perhaps a unique contribution of the ultraleft is the notion of content and form in theory and the implications of neglecting these concepts in our understanding of struggle. It is essentially a negative critique about the left ignoring content over form (calling for direct democracy independent of the content… which reaffirms capital) or ignorning form over content (leninist authoritarianism-cum taylorist capitalism). 

"Revolution has, but is not a problem of organization. All theories of "workers’ government" or "workers’ power" only propose alternative solutions to the crisis of capital. Revolution is first of all a transformation of society, i.e., of what constitutes relations among people, and between people and their means of life. Organizational problems and "leaders" are secondary: they depend on what the revolution achieves. This applies as much to the start of the communist revolution as to the functioning of the society which arises out of it. Revolution will not happen on the day when 51% of the workers become revolutionary; and it will not begin by setting up a decision-making apparatus. It is precisely capitalism that perpetually deals with problems of management and leadership. The organizational form of the communist revolution, as of any social movement, depends on its content. The way the party, the organization of the revolution, constitutes itself and acts, depends on the tasks to be realized." Eclipse and Remergence of the Communist Movement

"Unions and workers’ parties offer their services to wage workers in exchange for recognition and support, including financial support. Extreme-left groups pretend to offer the waged a better defence of their interests than the union and party bureaucrats who they consider to be too moderate. In exchange they demand even less : approval, however half-hearted, for their programme. Interventionists or libertarians, all see the same solution to the continuity between proletariat and communism — they conceive the content of communism as being outside the proletariat. Not seeing the intrinsic relation between proletariat and revolution — except that it is the former which makes the latter — they are obliged to introduce a programme." Dauve, The Story of our Origins http://libcom.org/library/the-story-of-our-origins-dauve

Dauve has something, which once uttered seems so obvious its bizarre that no one says it. Insurrections fail because workers are not at that moment revolutionary (in content). Though obvious, it is no mere assertion. Ignoring content obscures this point. Capital and the state must be reproduced to exist. Without that reproduction, they die. This is the crux of the whole revolutionary problem, the preparedness of the working class to make communist society itself. Dauve has a whole article dedicated to this issue http://libcom.org/library/when-insurrections-die

"Caught in pincers between the SPD and the CIO — the two forms of the counter-revolution born out of workers’ struggles — the German Left had to oppose itself to both of them. But it had difficulty in seeing that the IWW would have disappeared or become a reformist organisation. As an autonomous workers’ organisation, the IWW retrospectively displayed all the virtues. But it is not enough for a structure to be workerist and anti-bureaucratic for it to be revolutionary. That depends on what it does. If it takes part in trade union activities it becomes what the trade unions are. Thus the German Left was also mistaken about the nature of the CNT. Nevertheless, overall it showed that it’s too superficial to only take account of the trade unions, and that it is the reformist activity of workers themselves which maintains organised, openly counter-revolutionary, reformism."

It is refreshing to see such a thorough going statement of anarchism, which goes beyond the bumbling of marx and engels around issues of the state and the transition.

"However, one can foresee that a movement of communisation, that destroys the State, undermines the social base of the enemy, and spreads under the effect of the irresistible appeal arousing the birth of new social relations between men, will bond together the revolutionary camp far better than any power which, while waiting to conquer the world before communising it, would behave no differently than… a State."

Yet Dauve does make one error. I’m not sure if this is a matter of translation, strange use of "content" or if it is throughout Dauve’s thought, but he fails to notice the difference between content (qualities, character, etc) and function (perhaps more closely tied to form, though not identicle with form or content). This has political consequences, but I don’t deal with that here.

"In both cases, the form — the organisation of workers — was put before its content — the function of this organisation." Ibid

Critique of Democracy and educationist approaches

"Leninism is 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, bottom v. up, horizontal v. vertical, commune v. government, decentralization v. centralization, self-management v. top management, local community v. 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 and living units will be dynamic enough to get together without any of them alienating 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 little bits of it everywhere." http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008

This is correct, and interestingly is a critique of anarchism, normally anarchism launches at others. That is that it lacks a critique of power. Another way of saying this, and this is the thrust of the article, that the politics of autonomy prioritizes the structure of democracy over the content (with some semantics thrown in about superceding the concept of democracy rooted in capitalism). 

"Opinion is a set of (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 democracy prefers a collective making of ideas. But both think the only way to free thought is to be correctly educated or even better, self-taught, this self being here again preferably collective."

This attitude is pervasive, and leads radicals to self-conceptualizing their work as education and that the problem with workers is that they have the wrong ideas. Leninists, anarchists, and activists alike share this bed, and continually put themselves forward as the torch bearers of truth. 

"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 as by starting to change the material basis of social relationship. No self-managed street fighting and grassroots district solidarity, however indispensable 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 a world 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 transform reality." Ibid

The nature of change is the crux of our task, and without that component, our politics because a hollow worship of assemblies, councils, and self-management. It seems like a cruel fate for the life of struggle to resolve into the worship of dead forms of living fights, but that’s the product of a left wholly alienated from the experiences and struggles of a living class. 

Theorie Communiste too points out how the concept of autonomy is one rooted in capitalism, and in trying to project it into classless society, thereby mixes up reaction against domination and the products of a liberated existence.

"We can only speak of auto-nomy if the working class is capable of relating to itself against capital and finding in this relationship to itself the basis of and the capacity for its affirmation as dominant class. Autonomy supposes that the definition of the working class is not a relation but is inherent to it. It was a question of the formalisation of what we are in present society as basis for the new society, which is to be constructed as the liberation of what we are." Self Organization is the first act of the revolution, it then becomes an obstacle to be overcome http://libcom.org/library/self-organisation-is-the-first-act-of-the-revolution-it-then-becomes-an-obstacle-which-the-revolution-has-to-overcome

They see the disappearance of autonomy as being a hallmark of communization of society, though not going so far as to say autonomy is reactionary alltogether.

"If autonomy disappears as a perspective, it is because the revolution can no longer have any other content than the communisation of society, which means for the proletariat its own abolition. With such a content, it becomes inappropriate to talk of autonomy and it is unlikely that such a programme would entail what is commonly understood as "autonomous organisation". The proletariat can only be revolutionary by recognising itself as a class, and it recognises itself as such in every conflict and even more so in a context where its existence as a class is the situation that it has to confront in the reproduction of capital. We should not mistake the content of this "recognition". To recognise itself as a class won’t be a "return to itself" but a total extroversion through its self-recognition as a category of the capitalist mode of production. What we are as a class is immediately nothing other than our relation to capital. This "recognition" will in fact be a practical knowledge, in the conflict, not of the class for itself, but of capital." Self Organization

Now I’ve discovered that Castoriadis presents a new theory of consciousness that abandoned the traditional marxist notions of false consciousness. I can’t find any of his writings I can quote (they’re in book form or on google books), however he rejects the seperation between theory and practice, and the idea that ideas are exclusively the products of economic classes. Castoriadis sought to refound our ideas about consciousness (though it seems like he only touches on this in his broader discussions of economic and social agency) on active rationality of people who come to ideas from any number of routes, and who are capable of transformation through active engagement in autonomous struggle and self-reflection. I have to do further research into his works to draw any conclusions.

I’ve also discovered Zero Work/Midnight Notes partly came to their understanding of the problems with traditional marxist economics and the role of self-organization in history via Castoriadis. See this link.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/rawick/1969/xx/self.html

I first started thinking about this when I was shown Martin Glaberman’s collection of writings, Punching Out. One of Glaberman’s main contributions to thinking about changing the world is about the relationship of thought to action. Glaberman, an autoworker most of his adult life, participated in the wildcats in autoplants during WWII. During the war workers voted nearly unanimously for a no-strike pledge on largely patriotic pro-war grounds. Most of the left, aligned with the soviet union, supported the pledge as it serve the USSR’s need for relief, and the unions and leftists got in line to serve Stalin’s foreign policy, and promote the no-strike idea. Thereafter though one of the largest strike waves in history exploded across the auto industry. The press was baffled. Glaberman presents a way of making sense of the situation. Workers supported the idea of the war when asked to reflect about the situation. That is, as individuals sitting in their kitchen reading the paper or the union no-strike ballot, they make a decision on the basis of the conscious reasons and arguments presented. Yet working in the factory, an individual alongside other workers in hellish conditions, the workers had different experiences. When asked why they struck, workers said they supported the war, but they didn’t willingly break the pledge, the employers made them strike. Glaberman has the insight to point out that the two contexts, individual reflection and action in a social context, are very different. His conclusion is that there is a gap between thought and action, and action can proceed consciousness. Understanding this, Glaberman helps us reframe much of history where working class self-activity seems less than linear.

The stock answer these days is to claim that there are agitating leftists always involved in these struggles that seem spontaneous. That completely misses the point. It isn’t whether someone is saying radical things at the point of struggle or not that makes these actions happen, because sometimes radicals agitate and it doesn’t work. The question is why did it happen at this moment (rather than another) and how did it happen? Especially considering that when you speak to participants their verbal and conscious understanding of the activity departs from their actions. This destroys any idea of clean causality coming from revolutionaries, and instead demands a more dynamic and socially rooted (that account of action is rather individualistic) conception. Which is to say, yes organized revolutionaries are necessary but not sufficient.

All of this accords with what we know from everyday life. People talk and don’t back it up with their actions, people act even when their words are insufficient. People know things they can’t or don’t say, and people say things they don’t understand. In fact we see how bankrupt the idea of conscious activity being a good representative of people’s activities and potential activities is from our education. Studies show again and again that people learn through activity being incorporated and used in their everyday life. For thousands of years people are trained in culture, work, and community through apprenticeship, mentoring while working side by side, and bringing people into an form of activity rather than explicit explication of whatever content is transmitted. Language learning is somewhat unique, but illustrates the point. No one ever taught you the subjunctive, you developed an understanding through being in a linguistic community and speaking.

These insights clash with Freire, who I began reading recently, since the pedagogy of the oppressed is wholly founded on the notions of developing self-reflective consciousness of oppression and liberation. It appears to me (I could be wrong) that the underlying assumption is a degree of stability between being consciously aware and active and acting in accordance with those ideas. Correspondingly, these changes are to be had by acting in the realm of conscious thought. Freire seems explicit about this at a number of points such as:

"Problem-posing” education, responding to the essence of consciousness — intentionality — rejects communiques and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian “split” — consciousness as consciousness of consciousness."

Throughout POE Freire psychologizes about the oppressed’s though processes and sees the problem in terms of internalized oppressor consciousness, and liberation in terms of the rupture of oppressed consciousness. While Freire recognizes that it isn’t merely a problem of having the right thoughts ("Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking methods of domination (propaganda, slogans — deposits) in the name of liberation."), he doesn’t take the further step to question what relation there is between thought, knowledge, and action nor whether education as such is the (empirically) most effective for bringing about such changes.

There are ambiguous pieces in the work though such as "The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality." and "In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it." Yet it is hard to understand this as moving beyond mere reflexive consciousness since there is little discussion of non-conscious elements, the relationship they have to consciousness, etc. Instead there is merely the assertion that the world and consciousness are dialectical. Moreover by stressing intentionality (a philosophical trade term meaning mental states about action) and tying it to consciousness, Freire makes a crucial error since intentionality is by and large an unconscious affair. Reasoning about what to do explicitly is relatively slim, and occurs generally when something fails to conform to our preexisting understanding of the world. Freier then restates this confusion, in apparent contradiction of the quotes above, as "A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation". There is no reason to think this to be the case for the casuality between perception and understanding of one’s class situation and seeing the ability for change is not at all unmediated. In fact it can lead to further entrenchment, alienation, and demotivation. Rather than seeing mere struggle and liberatory dialogue and mutual education yielding understanding of the potential for change, we must understand that it is the social life of the struggle in coevolution with the mental lives (conscious and unconscious) of the oppressed in struggle that CAN yield such a change, and not the it WILL lead to it. 

One could argue that  education as a notion could be stretched to incorporate activity itself, but this would stretch the idea to be so general as to include more or less everything. If POE is a methodology or a mentality, it is hard to see what sense we could make of it if not about conscious reflexivity beyond mere slogans of dissolving the teacher-student distinction and the oppressed developing their own practice and ideas.

I do think POE is a strong statement of libertarian ideas, perhaps even a crucial piece of revolutionary thought, but want to stay on the topic of consciousness, so won’t go deeper into it. I

These problems are particularly intense if we consider radicalization, or the process by which one becomes an active and committed revolutionary (which we should recognize that not everyone is even conscious this has occurred at times). This isn’t to say again that say radicalization IS unconscious, but rather to question how it operates. Indeed I suspect it is like anything else, a mixture of conscious and unconscious elements. The problem is for revolutionaries that if our methodology is focused only the conscious elements, we are misanalyzing the way humanity actually functions, and trying to impose a view of the mind and society borrowed largely from intellectual history and activity. 

A stock answer to thinking about unconscious transformation in struggle is to say that revolutionaries have always been in these struggles, and to equate spontaneism with unconscious transformation. That is to wholly miss the point. There have been revolutionaries spread out across time and struggles certainly. The question isn’t were they there, but why did this struggle emerge here and when it did?Unless we assume a very crude linear (banking concept) of revolutionary propaganda, then we need to develop an understanding of how struggle emerges even in apparent contradiction to the conscious rationalization of the participants at times. The WWII strikes illucidate this, and as Glaberman describes so do most revolutions. Russian workers and peasants were sexist, racist, imperialistic, and perhaps self-hating in the Russian revolution, but still during the revolution they surged past the left who lagged behind in the most backwards ideas of society and ultimately restrained and repressed them. Were there revolutionaries there making those arguments? Sure. Why did those arguments work and what process occurred to allow that rupture then though. That is the question, and it is a question you can’t arrive at through hollow logical syllogisms about people seeing that they are a class, consciously. 

In an unrelated research train of thought I read Changing the World Without Taking Power by Holloway. Holloway grazes these issues through his attempts to deal with reification and commodity fetishism. The dirty version of this is that if capital is able to penetrate society not merely in terms of work, but also to reproduce relations of people as relations of people to mere objects, and even these may harden into institutionalized forms of mediated social activity (such as the state), then revolutionary consciousness is problematized as it is mediated by commodity relationships. This caused some people to go nuts (adorno), and others didn’t care (Lenin) because belief in a scientifically guided party with privledged access to the truth (in light of having Marxist doctrine as its guide) would overcome the proletariat’s false consciousness created by commodity fetishism (partly). For someone who takes these ideas seriously, this is a big problem. History has spoken about the party’s unfailing nature and gives us no guarantees in pursuit of liberation. 

Holloway looks to Lukacs to find a way, and in early Lukacs find the foundations of a theory though one that is marred by an illogical midstream appeal to party sanctity and ultimately abandoned it all together in the name of party discipline under the Comintern’s demands. Briefly spoken, there are two conceptions of commodity fetishism: one were it is a done deal, and another where it is an ongoing struggle within the life of the proletariat. The Frankfurt School and PoMo theorists like the first, Holloway the second. The first, when viewed this way, is clearly false. Capitalism, though having spread throughout society, clearly has failed to in a totalizing way fetishize all of society. There is active struggle and contradictions at every stage, and ruptures occur all over often without the knowledge of the left.

Lukacs, via Holloway, makes a distinction in the traditional notion of consciousness between empirical consciousness (that which exists and is attributed to individual proletarians say) and imbued consciousness. Imbued consciousness can be observed by seeing the activities of groups emerging and acting as though it were an entity unto itself. That is to say that the proletariat in struggle can act and does act as a historical actor in certain time periods and may do so without the individual consciousness of the participants. Here Lukacs drops the idea, which amounts essentially to a form of complex adaptive systems theory applied to a revolutionary praxis and within a (heavily modified) conception of dialectics.

Holloway uses this concept to account for the potential of revolution, though he doesn’t develop ideas about consciousness, which clearly seem to emerge from it. Lukacs understands these issues via distinctions in terms of emergent behavior of groups versus individuals, while the same principle can be applied within the activity of a person (the relation between intentionality, consciousness, upbringing, collectivity, unconscious reasoning, etc) and then again at a higher level of the emergence of groups. This has led me to look to reread Lukacs, as well as perhaps flesh out my ideas on consciousness in a more coherent and researched form. It’s nice to have philosophy actually be useful, and things I know about the mind, language, and philosophy of action potentially inform concrete methodology about organizing! 

The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) is an organization of anarchist communists that has existed for over 50 years now. One of the things that makes the FAU unique is that it is one of the few organizations to have peaked after WWII, and has a continuous line from the heyday of anarchism in Spain and Italy in the 20s and 30s up to present day. 

For reasons I have never been able to figure out, anarchists fleeing fascism in Spain and Italy largely settled in Uruguay. This included luminaries like Luigi Fabbri and his daughter Lucce (who would go on to help found the FAU). Carrying with them the lessons of the Red Years and the Spanish Revolution, it is a conjecture though perhaps not unfair that the Uruguayan anarchist movement contained within it a more mature practice than many other places in the world. Though Fabbri, the theorist of dual organizationalism, died in 1935 shortly before there were experiments in regional and national predecessors to the FAU on a dual organizationalist basis. 

The rise of the FAU came after the death of hope for the FORU, the uruguayan anarchosyndicalist union with a once glorious history, though unlike the North American deviationism hostility of anarchist communists to the FORU was not present. The FAU was born in a time not that dissimilar to our own. Uruguay had industrialization, bourgeois democratic state, and the presence of legalistic bureaucratic unions existing alongside an institutionalized left.  

At the time Huerta Grande had been written, a split had already occured in the FAU. The FAU was formed of militants of the workplaces struggles and FORU, academics especially from the school of medicine, and cultural anarchists. In the early 60s a split brewed with a grouping around Lucce Fabbri and the majority amongst the FAU leadership of Gatti, Mechoso, and the like. The split has been characterized in a number of ways: pro-cuba vs anti-castro, "syndicalist" (i.e. mass workplace struggle) vs culturalist, bourgeois vs proletarian. I think some element of each is true and distorted. Ultimately the majority kept the FAU, pronounced support for the Cuban revolution and Castro, and focused on workplace and student mass struggles. The minority created GEAL, an educationalist anarchist grouping and were active in Comunidad del Sur, a large comune outside Montevideo, both of which continue to exist to this day. 

Huge transformations occured across the FAU’s existence. The prosperity of Uruguay, due to its cattle industry, relative wealth of natural resources, and high degree of industrialization, hit a brick wall in the 60s. Mass struggle exploded onto the scene in the 60s as real wages declined and cost of living skyrocketed. The FAU helped set up the CNT, a new union federation though not explicitly anarchist while have libertarian features, alongside marxists and other revolutionaries. The FAU constituted an active minority within the CNT and had a strong presence in some locals. 

Amidst these struggles Tupamaros began their armed struggle. Interestingly enough, Tupamaros took much of their theory and practice from Abraham Guillen, a spanish anarchist who had been a member of the FIJL (federacion iberia juvenil libertaria). Guillen fought in the civil war, fighting to the end he was sentenced to death and imprisoned by franco. He escaped in 1945, and fled to France. Eventually he settled in Argentina in 1948. He was involved in the Uturuncos, an armed struggle movement in Argentina, and was imprisoned in 1961 because of this. After a few months in jail, Guillen sought asylum in Uruguay in 1962. Guillen became the primary theorist of armed struggle in the Southern cone of Latin America. His treatise on the topic, philosophy of the urban guerilla, was published in 1966 as a direct response to Che Guevara.

Guillen’s anarchism is an interesting testament to the times. Guillen came to believe in a form of anarcho-marxism combining the discipline and unity of armed revolutionary marxism with the decentralization, democracy, and libertarian values of anarchism. His arguments, which I believe he abandoned according to an interview with a comrade who knew him (anecdotal I know), were that marxism of the 60s represented a scientific advance in proletarian struggle, but suffered from limitations of the authoritarianism of leninism. In a way his essays read not unsimilar to the Friends of Durruti or even the FIJL’s take on the CNT’s lack of organization in responce to the attacks of Franco and the Bolsheviks in Spain. Guillen felt the need though to break with traditional anarchism, and resort to the caricature of anarchism being identified with being opposed to coordination. 

Guillen’s writings focused on urban warfare, and he argued successfully in the Southern Cone that Guevara’s program of rural struggle would be suicide (which Che proved shortly in Bolivia). Instead Guillen argued to act within the urban environment using the mass anonymity to vanish into the proletarian neighborhoods as cover. Guillen, true to his anarchist foundations, had a different conception of armed struggle from the foco-theory types. He saw armed struggle as being merely an arm of the popular movements. He saw armed action as a tool of strengthening workers’ struggles but not as an outside force acting for workers, instead as an organized proletarian grouping accountable to and acting within proletarian movements. Likewise he opposed some of the senseless brutality of armed groups (including some actions by Tupamaros which he criticized strongly) that served only to elevate their sense of militancy, but served no strategic role in furthering the mass struggles.

The FAU was in the middle of these debates. Uruguay in the 60s faced a crisis as Tupamaros launched an urban guerilla struggle independently from the masses and ultimately with a militancy they were not in a position to back up. FAU aligned with the left, in what we can now see to be essentially a populistic manner. Viewing the revolutionary left as new (as opposed to the old Uruguayan communists who were institutionalized social democrats), scientific, and having vague connections to libertarianism. The FAU worked within a number of left unity projects including publications, unions, housing mass organizations, students, etc. Likewise as the military repression sharpened and the dictatorship loomed, the FAU inched towards armed struggle and marxism. 

Huerta Grande was written at this pivotal time, in 1972. In 1968 the State declared a state of emergency because of Tupamaros. In 1972 civil liberties were further suspended, and in 1973 a military dictatorship was implimented. The FAU had gone underground in 1971 to deal with the repression. It was restructured into: the FAU (clandestine organization), OPR-33 (subordinate armed wing of the FAU), and ROE (a student front for FAU & OPR-33 activity). The FAU had changed through its close work with other left groups. Little written material is available for the period so it is somewhat speculative and pieced together by the survivors to assess what went on. It appears that the FAU was made up of anarchists friendly to some variants of marxists, marxists attracted by the FAU’s work in the proletarian neighborhoods, and anarchists who had moved to a castroist interpretation of anarchism. The OPR-33 throughout its life carried out actions alongside popular struggles, rather than autonomously from them. Bank robberies, kidnappings (though lacking the violence of other left groups of the time notably), and armed actions against the military were launched throughout those years.

While these differences are interesting it is worth noting that by 1974 half of all FAU militants had been murdered by the Uruguayan and Argentinian militaries. Fleeing Uruguay, some in fact literally fleeing on foot from concentration camps, Operation Condor ensured that the military would be able to do whatever it pleased in any of the countries of the Southern Cone. This is where things get hazy. In 1974 el Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo began to be formed. Some accounts say it occured in France in exile, while officially the PVP claim it was formed in Argentina. Either way this party was formed by the majority of the FAU, elements of Tupamaros, and unaligned marxists. It claimed to be a synthesis of libertarianism and marxist theory. Drawing strongly from people like Poulantzas, the FAU had become  transformed. Accounts of militants vary though. Some went along with it, though expressing criticism of working with outright Leninist authoritarians. Others considered it merely an extensive of anarchism. Still others expressed complete transformation, and the irrelevance of anarchism. A minority of the FAU remained anarchists and disappeared from print anyways until after the dictatorship.

Ultimately though all these projects faltered. The FAU, Tupamaros, and PVP were all effectively crushed. It wasn’t until the end of the dictatorship and in 1986 that the FAU would re-emerge. When it did, it was recreated mostly by young people embracing anarchism for the first time. The PVP is today apart of the ruling center-left coalition, and ruling class partakers in the management of capitalism. The FAU reborn repudiated past positions on Cuba, elaborated the theory of especifismo, and eventually helped found especifista groups across the southern cone. In this way we can see that the FAU has lessons and experience unique to it as a group formed at the 2nd half of the 20th century, living through the rise and fall of armed struggle and dictatorship, and elaborating its own unique take on the problems of anarchism and organization. 

Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League

"At the soonest possible moment after the overthrow of the present governments, the Central Committee will come to Germany and will immediately convene a Congress, submitting to it the necessary proposals for the centralization of the workers’ clubs under a directorate established at the movement’s center of operations."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

Ernst Mandel, Vanguard Parties

"What does “centralization” mean? It means centralization of experience, centralization of knowledge, centralization of conclusions drawn out of actual militancy."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1983/03/vanguard.htm

Marx, Capital Vol I

"Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

Marx, 18th of Brumaire

"Finally the parliamentary republic, in its struggle against the revolution, found itself compelled to strengthen the means and the centralization of governmental power with repressive measures. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of breaking it."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm

Marx, Civil War in France 

"The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Marx, Abolition of Landed Property

"National centralization of the means of production will become the natural basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers consciously acting upon a common and rational plan."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/12/03.htm

Marxists.org

"

Centralisation (or centralism) is the process or policy of concentrating communications and decision-making in a single “nerve centre”. The term dates from the 18th century when it was used in relation to forms of government and colonial rule.

Decentralisation is the process of distributing power and activity as far as possible.

Marxists believe not only that a combination of the two is optimum (a truism) but that an organisation should aspire to be as decentralised as possible, but that when an organisation is under stress or suffers trauma is has to be capable of employing a much higher degree of centralism.

However, any organisation that is normally centralised and lacking in democracy usually finds it most difficult to respond to crisis and change when necessary. Over-centralism in a workers’ organisation, such as Stalinism, is a symptom of decline."

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/e.htm#centralisation

Engels, Principles of Communism

"Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Lenin, State and Revolution

"If the workers voluntarily unite their armed forces, this will be centralism, but it will be based on the “complete destruction” of the centralized state apparatus—the standing army, the police, and the bureaucracy."

"Now if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the communes in striking at capital, in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately-owned railways, factories, land and so on to the entire nation, to the whole of society, won’t that be centralism? Won’t that be the most consistent democratic centralism and, moreover, proletarian centralism?"

Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question

"Marxists are, of course, opposed to federation and decentralisation, for the simple reason that capitalism requires for its development the largest and most centralised possible states."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/crnq/6.htm

Lenin, Left Wing Communism in Germany

"The anti-Party group of Democratic Centralists, consisting of Sapronov, Osinsky, V. Smirnov and others, came out against the Party line. Behind a cover of phrases about Democratic Centralism but in fact distorting that principle, they denied the need for one-man management at factories, came out against strict Party and state discipline, and alleged that the Central Committee did not give effect to the principle of collective leadership."

Mao, Quotations from Mao

"The policy for political work in our army units is fully to arouse the rank and file, the commanders and all working personnel in order to achieve three major objectives through a democratic movement under centralized leadership, namely, a high degree of political unity, better living conditions, and better military technique and tactics." 

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch15.htm

Mao, Rectify the Party’s Style of Work

"They forget the system of democratic centralism in which the minority is subordinate to the majority, the lower level to the higher level, the part to the whole and the entire membership to the Central Committee."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_06.htm

Mao, Combat Bourgeois Ideas In The Party

"The solution of all these problems hinges on strengthening collective leadership and opposing decentralism. We have all along opposed decentralism. The directive issued by the Central Committee to its bureaus and the army commanders on February 2, 1941 stipulated that all circular telegrams, declarations and inner-Party directives bearing on the country as a whole must have the prior approval of the Central Committee"

"The decision on strengthening Party spirit puts the stress on the strict observance of discipline under democratic centralism, in other words, the minority is subordinate to the majority, the individual to the organization, the lower level to the higher level and the entire Party to the Central Committee (a case of subordinating the majority to the minority, as this minority represents the majority)."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_32.htm

Trotsky, On Democratic centralism and the regime

"When the problem is political action, centralism subordinates democracy to itself. Democracy again asserts its rights when the party feels the need to examine critically its own actions."

Trotsky, The Transitional Program

"The inner structure of the Fourth International is based on the principles of democratic centralism: full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm

Mao, On the 10 Major Relationships

"For instance, we are now having a meeting, which is centralization; after the meeting, some of us will go for a walk, some will read books, some will go to eat, which is independence."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_51.htm

Progressive Labor Party, On Democratic Centralism

" The Party is divided into cells, or clubs, which meet regularly to evaluate members’ work and to make suggestions about how to improve it, and to evaluate the Party’s positions and make suggestions for change. These suggestions are taken by the club leader to section meetings (made up of the club leaders and other leading comrades in an area, and by section leaders to the Central Committee. Based on the collective experience of the Party, the leadership decides on new positions (a new line) which all Party members are then bound to put into practice. Only if all of us put the same line into practice can we find out if the line works; if each of us goes our own way, we will never have the common strength of a united Party."

http://www.plp.org/pl_magazine/democent.html