What is communization theory?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

What is communization theory? Though a superficial look I got the impression that its a highly intellectualized version o roffshoot of left communism

What does communization theory seek to do exactly? Not to be too negative but I get the impression its something of a fad among the "grad student left". Loren Goldner, whom I think is one of the most interesting leftcoms, said that its from a subculture "which has little connection to the working class". I suspect he's right but I'll repeat that I really have no idea what it is.

Can it be of use in trhe current class struggle?

[Sasha]

There is some good stuff in this thread; http://www.revleft.org/vb/showthread.php?t=177747
Also some other intresting threads pop up if you use the search function.

[Alexios]

I would suggest reading Volume 1 of Endnotes and Eclipse & Re-emergence of the Communist Movement.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

"Communisation theory" doesn't have that much in common with left communism, even if you consider the council communists to be left communists. The major influences on the "communisation theorists" were, if I'm not mistaken, the Situationists, and the less (traditionally) political currents in the autonomist movement, the Metropolitan Indians and so on.

Likewise, I wouldn't say that communisation theory is more "intellectual" than "orthodox" Leninism or Left Communism, although I find much of the commonly cited works to be incredibly obtuse.

Generally, communisation theorists conceive of the revolution as a communisation of consumption, before the seizure of state power (and possibly replacing it). The problem is that, first of all, they aren't speaking the same language as the rest of us - to us, the seizure of state power defines the revolution - and second, that communal consumption and organisation is not incompatible with the private ownership of the means of production. Groups like the Invisible Committee seem to have been largely uninterested in socialisation. This sort of communisation without socialisation (and I'm not saying every communisation theory group is like that) is, at best, a sort of impotent petit-bourgeois escapism that offers nothing to the working class.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

"Communisation theory" doesn't have that much in common with left communism, even if you consider the council communists to be left communists. The major influences on the "communisation theorists" were, if I'm not mistaken, the Situationists, and the less (traditionally) political currents in the autonomist movement, the Metropolitan Indians and so on.

Likewise, I wouldn't say that communisation theory is more "intellectual" than "orthodox" Leninism or Left Communism, although I find much of the commonly cited works to be incredibly obtuse.

Generally, communisation theorists conceive of the revolution as a communisation of consumption, before the seizure of state power (and possibly replacing it). The problem is that, first of all, they aren't speaking the same language as the rest of us - to us, the seizure of state power defines the revolution - and second, that communal consumption and organisation is not incompatible with the private ownership of the means of production. Groups like the Invisible Committee seem to have been largely uninterested in socialisation. This sort of communisation without socialisation (and I'm not saying every communisation theory group is like that) is, at best, a sort of impotent petit-bourgeois escapism that offers nothing to the working class.

Communisation theory unfortunately isn't a homogeneous re-theorising of Communism. So let us begin with Gilles Dauvé and Karl Nesic. They state that communisation is a revolutionary period marked by immediate political and social change at the same time.


[Communisation] means that a revolution is only communist if it changes all social relationships into communist relationships, and this can only be done if the process starts in the very early days of the revolutionary upheaval. Money, wage-labour, the enterprise as a separate unit and a value-accumulating pole, work-time as cut off from the rest of our life, production for value, private property, State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts, the separation between learning and doing, the quest for maximum and fastest circulation of everything, all of these have to be done away with, and not just be run by collectives or turned over to public ownership: they have to be replaced by communal, moneyless, profitless, Stateless, forms of life. The process will take time to be completed, but it will start at the beginning of the revolution, which will not create the preconditions of communism: it will create communism.

"Those who developed the theory of communisation rejected this posing of revolution in terms of forms of organisation, and instead aimed to grasp the revolution in terms of its content. Communisation implied a rejection of the view of revolution as an event where workers take power followed by a period of transition: instead it was to be seen as a movement characterised by immediate communist measures (such as the free distribution of goods) both for their own merit, and as a way of destroying the material basis of the counter-revolution. If, after a revolution, the bourgeoisie is expropriated but workers remain workers, producing in separate enterprises, dependent on their relation to that workplace for their subsistence, and exchanging with other enterprises, then whether that exchange is self-organised by the workers or given central direction by a "workers' state" means very little: the capitalist content remains, and sooner or later the distinct role or function of the capitalist will reassert itself. By contrast, the revolution as a communising movement would destroy - by ceasing to constitute and reproduce them - all capitalist categories: exchange, money, commodities, the existence of separate enterprises, the State and - most fundamentally - wage labour and the working class itself."
(Endnotes, # 2, 2010)

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat must both transcend their dialectical relationship, there cannot be a situation of one class (the proletariat) simply dominating as both need each other. The proletariat must cease to exist, just as the bourgeoisie can only cease to exist after being expropriated and having all social relations associated to being a bourgeois person removed. Think about it, if both classes require each other to exist, merely having one suggests that the other exists regardless of its formal abolishment.


Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.
(The Holy Family, Chapter 4)

Now notice the striking similarity between communisation theory and Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat, where every worker in a nation becomes the state, beginning a process of inverting and abolishing all existing social and political relations which are conducive to oppression and prevent human emancipation etc. (as opposed to mere political change which only goes as far as to presuppose the conditions which are being abolished politically, thus failing to abolish them "in reality"). Workers' power in its political manifestation, that is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Note 'the proletariat' not its representation in any form of vanguard or advanced group.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I did specifically note that not all of communisation theory is the sort of "collect welfare and organise trade with local farmers" escapism of the Invisible Committee.

And 'the proletariat', while retaining its cohesion as a class (generally - note the upward movement of the labour bureaucracy and aristocracy and the downward movement of the soon-to-be declassed elements), is not an undifferentiated homogeneous mass, politically. It contains reactionary and progressive strata, division according to gender and sexuality, race and colour, and nationality and language, and so on, and so on. If communisation theory can't address that - and I haven't read enough to say for certain if it can - then it loses all relevance.

As for Dauvé and Nesic - doing away with "State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts" can be either very revolutionary - in fact too r-r-revolutionary, since it ignores the need for a transitional state authority to defeat the counterrevolution, which communisation theorists have, again to the best of my knowledge, never addressed - or very reformist, if we're simply talking about squatting, illegalitarianism and such things, all of which are quite possible in the capitalist society.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

I did specifically note that not all of communisation theory is the sort of "collect welfare and organise trade with local farmers" escapism of the Invisible Committee.

Yes I probably missed that. Thank you for clarifying.


And 'the proletariat', while retaining its cohesion as a class (generally - note the upward movement of the labour bureaucracy and aristocracy and the downward movement of the soon-to-be declassed elements), is not an undifferentiated homogeneous mass, politically. It contains reactionary and progressive strata, division according to gender and sexuality, race and colour, and nationality and language, and so on, and so on. If communisation theory can't address that - and I haven't read enough to say for certain if it can - then it loses all relevance.

Yes it isn't a homogeneous mass. I completely agree. However, I have not read enough to comment on this with any certainty. It might be worth, as an extra point, trying to tie in how mindsets are changed in a revolutionary period, especially when people attempt to agitate during such a time while modifying social relations. The Spanish Civil War is a good example, how collectivisation affected the prominence of reactionary strata in peoples' minds (in an inversely proportional manner).


As for Dauvé and Nesic - doing away with "State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts" can be either very revolutionary - in fact too r-r-revolutionary, since it ignores the need for a transitional state authority to defeat the counterrevolution, which communisation theorists have, again to the best of my knowledge, never addressed - or very reformist, if we're simply talking about squatting, illegalitarianism and such things, all of which are quite possible in the capitalist society.

What do you mean by a transitional state authority? I cannot possibly discuss what I have quoted from you without making definitions clear.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yes it isn't a homogeneous mass. I completely agree. However, I have not read enough to comment on this with any certainty. It might be worth trying to tie in how mindsets are changed in a revolutionary period, especially when people attempt to agitate during such a time while modifying social relations. The Spanish Civil War is a good example, how collectivisation affected the prominence of reactionary strata in peoples' minds (in an inversely proportional manner).

I don't think the Spanish Civil War is a good example - at best, there was land reform and some factory occupations, avoiding the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie, and the "liberated" area took on the role of a massive materiel factory for the Popular Front government.

A better example, I think, is the behaviour of labour and socialist parties during the First World War, when a section of the proletariat was bought off by the imperialist bourgeoisie, forming the core of the patriotic "socialist" parties.

I think it's obvious such strata of the proletariat - even if they weren't immensely hostile to socialist ideas - can't participate in the dictatorship of the proletariat, not immediately at least.


What do you mean by a transitional state authority? I cannot possibly discuss what I have quoted from you without making definitions clear.

A state authority - a class dictatorship of the proletariat exercised through the dictatorship of the revolutionary party - that exists in the transitional period leading to the socialist society, oversees socialist construction, and organises the proletariat to smash counterrevolution, the remnants of the defeated classes, expropriate the peasantry etc.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

I don't think the Spanish Civil War is a good example - at best, there was land reform and some factory occupations, avoiding the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie, and the "liberated" area took on the role of a massive materiel factory for the Popular Front government.

A better example, I think, is the behaviour of labour and socialist parties during the First World War, when a section of the proletariat was bought off by the imperialist bourgeoisie, forming the core of the patriotic "socialist" parties.

I think it's obvious such strata of the proletariat - even if they weren't immensely hostile to socialist ideas - can't participate in the dictatorship of the proletariat, not immediately at least.



A state authority - a class dictatorship of the proletariat exercised through the dictatorship of the revolutionary party - that exists in the transitional period leading to the socialist society, oversees socialist construction, and organises the proletariat to smash counterrevolution, the remnants of the defeated classes, expropriate the peasantry etc.

As interesting as what you have said is, I cannot comment any further lest I derail the thread by discussing Marx's conception of the DotP in contrast to the Leninist conception. I have also observed your theoretical fixation on party structures. This is certainly opposed by communisation theorists.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As interesting as what you have said is, I cannot comment any further lest I derail the thread by discussing Marx's conception of the DotP in contrast to the Leninist conception. I have also observed your theoretical fixation on party structures. This is certainly opposed by communisation theorists.

I don't think it would be a derailment, given that different views of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat are part of the dispute between communisation theorists (and the Leninist PLP, to an extent) and the more traditional Marxist left (which is almost uniformly Leninist on the ground), but as you wish.

[The Jay]

I have what you need. http://riff-raff.se/texts/en/sic1-what-is-communisation

[Alexios]

As for Dauvé and Nesic - doing away with "State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts" can be either very revolutionary - in fact too r-r-revolutionary, since it ignores the need for a transitional state authority to defeat the counterrevolution, which communisation theorists have, again to the best of my knowledge, never addressed - or very reformist, if we're simply talking about squatting, illegalitarianism and such things, all of which are quite possible in the capitalist society.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. It might be wise to actually read the texts before coming in and making these kinds of accusations. The authors have, in great detail, addressed the "transitional state" and reformism. In fact that's one of the largest components of this body of work.