Those organic networks of organisation that emerge through spontaneous rupture do meet limitations and it is that limitation that prevents the rupture from escalating and generalising into a new phase. Those "planned, conscious actions" do have a shelf-life when they come face to face with the logic of capital in everyday life. How do we stay on the streets when we have to reproduce ourselves? You are absolutely right to say we have to leave the mediating forms of union and party back where they belong; we need to abandon ideology as such. But there does need to be pre-formed networks of militant organising groups that have followed a strategic plan to prepare infrastructure, organisational tactics, class consciousness building methods and coordination to intervene into that social upheaval, that can connect and coordinate with those organic networks and begin to solve the immediate problems posed by the limitations of those social upheavals. If social upheaval is to become coordinated, escalate and generalise, there needs to be intervention that seeks the activity of immediate communisation - to immediately begin the activity that ends separation and overcomes class belonging. This requires organised and coordinated militants that can intervene. Whether this form is formal or informal is irrelevant. It's the content that matters.
Marx was right when he said that mass communist consciousness (a class consciousness that is meaningful) can only be produced in revolt. It is only in the activity of rebellion that seeks to end separation and overcomes class belonging that this consciousness can be mass produced and become meaningful. And for that activity to be produced requires intervention from militants. The most effective way to do that is through organisation, coordination and preparation. How to do this is what we should be discussing.
I don't think anyone denies that they meet limits. My point is that collective action and formal organization often meet limits, too. Militancy and militants are are a fact of class struggle, and of revolution--but often as not "they shoot themselves in the foot," to borrow from the title of Roland Simon's history of the ultraleft. Unlike TC, I try to imagine a limited role for militants in the unfolding of revolution--adventurism, not vanguardism. I don't think the spread of communist measures is simply the coordination among militants. If communization occurs, it will be an affair of everyday life, perhaps catalyzed in some instances by militants and in others not. I address this in "Revolutionary Motives."
Those organic networks of organisation that emerge through spontaneous rupture do meet limitations and it is that limitation that prevents the rupture from escalating and generalising into a new phase. Those "planned, conscious actions" do have a shelf-life when they come face to face with the logic of capital in everyday life. How do we stay on the streets when we have to reproduce ourselves? You are absolutely right to say we have to leave the mediating forms of union and party back where they belong; we need to abandon ideology as such. But there does need to be pre-formed networks of militant organising groups that have followed a strategic plan to prepare infrastructure, organisational tactics, class consciousness building methods and coordination to intervene into that social upheaval, that can connect and coordinate with those organic networks and begin to solve the immediate problems posed by the limitations of those social upheavals. If social upheaval is to become coordinated, escalate and generalise, there needs to be intervention that seeks the activity of immediate communisation - to immediately begin the activity that ends separation and overcomes class belonging. This requires organised and coordinated militants that can intervene. Whether this form is formal or informal is irrelevant. It's the content that matters.
Marx was right when he said that mass communist consciousness (a class consciousness that is meaningful) can only be produced in revolt. It is only in the activity of rebellion that seeks to end separation and overcomes class belonging that this consciousness can be mass produced and become meaningful. And for that activity to be produced requires intervention from militants. The most effective way to do that is through organisation, coordination and preparation. How to do this is what we should be discussing.
I don't think anyone denies that they meet limits. My point is that collective action and formal organization often meet limits, too. Militancy and militants are are a fact of class struggle, and of revolution--but often as not "they shoot themselves in the foot," to borrow from the title of Roland Simon's history of the ultraleft. Unlike TC, I try to imagine a limited role for militants in the unfolding of revolution--adventurism, not vanguardism. I don't think the spread of communist measures is simply the coordination among militants. If communization occurs, it will be an affair of everyday life, perhaps catalyzed in some instances by militants and in others not. I address this in "Revolutionary Motives."