The Dictatorship of Survival

“The logic of capitalist society, its universal law, is valorization”. We eventually discovered what you call “value” : “…the basis – the regulation of trade through the quantity of work crystallized in each commodity – that is, Value…” If we understand you correctly, here is the remedy to what you call value: “The central question was the centralised organisation of production according to human needs, and so against profit. This organisation directly allows a reduction of the quantity of work (in scope and in intensity), through the immediate liquidation of everything that does not serve the human being. From then and from the application of the principle “he who does not work, neither shall he eat”, the civil servants and the other bourgeois are forced to take part in the collective effort against generalised commodity production. The abolition of all the useless functions and the liquidation of the industries that produce nothing, in order to increase the well-being of the proletarians, leads to an increasing automation of the production tasks, all these measures being necessary in order to attack fundamentally the waged slavery.” We shall pass quickly over the identity of the good, internationalist Red Khmers, who are supposed to decide what are “human needs” and the “useless functions”, in their centralised leadership: since it is not us, it can only be you.

If we have correctly understood, what you call “value” (for us it is rather the thought of trade in things, cf. ‘Enquiry into the nature and causes of the people’s misery’, by J.-P. Voyer), the act of transforming things into commodities. If this value is abolished, profit and a few “useless functions” and “industries that produce nothing”. Is that at the edge of communism? Actually, you oppose “bourgeoisie”‘s rational management of needs, to the point where you think that this “bourgeoisie” does not really manage needs. We think, on the contrary, that this is precisely why it, or rather its bastard offspring, are criticizable. In your letter, you write “we have no element allowing us to understand why you think that we want to organise the world around needs”. Maybe you should read your own writings in Communisme n° 35, page 18, the abstract quoted above, which we dare hold as reflecting your programatic thought, to the point that you blame the Makhnovists for not having applied it, and in which you even emphasize: “The central question was the centralised organisation of production according to human needs“! Like children, you deny the critique before even hearing it, as if you had to remain uncriticizable!

We persist, of course, in saying that economy is a religion, in the sense that Marx gave to the word “religion”. We know that Marx attempted to criticize religion from a point of view that would be exterior to religion. However, we do not think that he achieved this goal: he has criticized political economy from the point of view of political economy, and so have you after him. We thus repeat here what we were saying in our previous letter, which you did not bother taking into account: economy is the religion of survival. Let us use a vocabulary closer to yours : in the current world, it is the dictatorship of survival against life; we, on the opposite, want to establish the dictatorship of life, against survival. What you call “value”, “production”, etc. are concepts of economy, religious concepts, concepts of survival. With your “automation” and your “reduction of the quantity of work” (we want to abolish work, not reduce it; just as life, today, is opposed to survival, play is opposed to work, and history to everyday life) you are only in competition with those you call “bourgeois”, for the rational management of the “human needs”. And after this shortened work, what do we do? A little culture, a little leisure, a little social revolution? In the dictatorship of survival, life is the remain, the whipped cream, the reward when one has deserved it. We do not see how your “centralised organisation” attempts to remedy this nonsense. Life, considered as a leisure at the end of need, finally defeated, always pushed away in some quantitative reduction of work, in the abolition or the abundance of profit, does not exist, except in the idealist projections of the materialists, whether communist or social-democrat, workers or bosses.

Your project, which is based only on this mix of idealism and of thick positivist common sense, seems to be justified only by a frenzied utilitarianism, which joins, it too, as a competitor, the one of dominant economists. Those think that the superfluous is necessary for the essentials; other, the Red Khmers and apparently you, think that the superfluous is superfluous to the essentials. Here is all your dispute, in this world. But the two parties do agree: human society shall be organised around the essentials. We uphold the contrary. It is around the superfluous that human society should be organised, according to its finality. Thus, we think that in revolt, necessity is the condition of its defeat. Revolt is superfluous itself. The poor may very well not revolt. At least to do this, nobody can force them, quite fortunately. Revolt precisely is the expression of their freedom, inalienable. There again, you have read us wrongly, there again, you have tried to verify your theory in what you read, rather than modifying your theory depending on what you read. On page 4 of your letter, you quote a rather long excerpt from our analysis of the insurrection in Iraq and you conclude with: “So you also highlight the fact that poverty of food, clothes … constitute needs, necessities that prompt to revolt”. Well no! These needs are the conditions eof this revolt, not the necessities that prompt to it. It rains while the Madagascans are revolting. That does not mean that they are revolting because of the rain. The Iraqis are hungry during their insurrection? Certainly, but what makes them rise up is not hunger.

Please note, however, that these necessities may, in different circumstances, prompt to revolt, why not. Each aspect of this world is likely provoke anger. But the Riots’ Library knows of modern rioters that the pretext, not only is of little importance, but is all the better superseded in revolt that it looks like the sad need, and so, that any one may serve the purpose, including the sad need. But the sad need cannot become cheerful one day; no more than “increase the well-being of the proletarians” (ugh!) could one day have more chances to abolish poverty, the cause of revolt, that is the lack of life, of offensive, of history, of debate (that is blah blah blah) than to prolong survival, the defense of the granted things, the improvement of daily life and of the spectacle (that is blah blah blah, but in the others’ mouth). Thus, we are not surprised that you find it delirious that we suppose that the insurgents of Iraq have started to despise need and survival. But get out of your beginning of 20th century for a while (how, after an issue in which your were attempting to publicise a modern insurrection, can you have gone back, calmly, to 1917, without mentioning this modern insurrection anymore, as if it had not existed nor modified your understanding of 1917! Have you nothing more burning to say!), and you will have a chance to see with us that what is ridiculous is not our “negation of the natural condition of the human kind”, but maybe what you call “natural condition of the human kind”! All the conservatives of the world, all those who offer to increase “well-being” by decreasing work, have this backward vision of “the natural condition of the human kind”: their whole theory is built on it. And their whole practice would collapse, if it turned out that the “natural condition of the human kind” is only a theory, invalidated for a long time, of human kind on itself.

(Excerpt from ‘Correspondance avec le GCI’ (‘Correspondance with the ICG’ [International Communist Group]), 1992.)

Source: www.teleologie.org/OT/textes/txtGCI5.html

Translated in 2009 by a third party. Contact: historyhereandnow@gmail.com