Contributions to The Revolutionary Struggle, Intended To Be Discussed, Corrected, And Principally, Put Into Practice Without Delay : From Wildcat Strike to Total Self Management — Browsing
Behold the society we will build,
Behold the reason that we seek your destruction.
Translator's Preface (Ken Knabb, May 2001)
The text of this preface has been duplicated in its entirety from Ken Knabb's Bureau of Public Secrets website, where it appears as an introduction to his translation of the third chapter of Vaneigem's book. It has been included here in order to clarify the marked stylistic differences between the first two chapters, translated by Paul Sharkey, and Knabb's version of the chapter three, as well as his translation of the introduction, published here for the first time.
Raoul Vaneigem’s De la grève sauvage à l’autogestion généralisée, published under the pseudony... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
We want to see truth in the form of practical results
THE FOLLOWING PAGES are addressed exclusively to revolutionary workers. To workers, because no one except those who are directly involved in the processes of production is in a position to break the bonds of commodity domination. To revolutionary workers, because workers who remain submissive to labor unions or political parties are nothing but stupid slaves, working to reinforce the very system that oppresses them.
Over the last ten years increasingly frequent and radical wildcat strikes have shaken bourgeois-bureaucratic domination, but have not yet succeeded in overthrowing it. This latent insurrectionary movement has made the proletariat aware of capitalism's increa... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Chapter 1. The Subsistence Society
Haven’t you ever, just once, felt like turning up late for work or felt like slipping away from work early?
In that case, you have realized that:
Time spent working is time doubly lost because it is time doubly wasted...
as time which might more agreeably be spent making love, or daydreaming, on pleasure or on one’s hobbies: time which one would otherwise be free to spend however one wished;
as time wearing us down physically and nervously.
Time spent working eats up the bulk of one’s life, because it shapes one’s so-called “free” time as well, time spent sleeping, moving about, eating, or on diversions. Thus it makes itself felt in every par... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Chapter 2. The ABC of Revolution
The object of sabotage and misappropriation, whether practiced by the individual or the group, is the unleashing of a wildcat strike.
Every wildcat strike must develop into a factory occupation.
Every factory occupied must be appropriated and turned promptly to the service of revolutionaries.
By choosing delegates (who are subject to instant recall and mandated to collate decisions and to oversee their implementation) the assembled strikers lay the groundwork for a radical reorganization of society... into a society of universal self-management.
The instant the factory is occupied
1. Every assemblage of strikers should become an assemblage for universal self-management. All... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Chapter 3. Total Self-Management
1. Total self-management is the form of social organization in which everybody has the right to make the decisions that affect their everyday life, whether individually or collectively in self-managing assemblies.
2. It has appeared in the history of the workers movement each time that the people themselves have tried to make and implement their own decisions without giving up their power to leaders and without allowing themselves to be tied to any ideology.
3. It has been crushed by the combined effect of its own internal weaknesses, hesitancies and confusions, by its isolation, and by the leaders it has made the mistake of creating for itself or of tolerating, leaders who have led it to defea... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)