On Organization
Fifth Estate history

The question of whether to combine in organizations, associations, federations, etc., has become a subject of some debate and much interest. Many feel that the only obstacle to organization is the relative weakness of the small numbers of persons who identify with a libertarian perspective, while still others feel organizations in and of themselves are bureaucratic and are incapable of producing the desired goal.

A pamphlet by Jacques Camatte and Gianni Collu, “On Organization,” explains that we now live in the era they designate as the real, as opposed to the earlier formal domination of capital. This means that all aspects of human activity that once remained outside of the domain of the market economy had to be absorbed within it.

The proletariat has itself been absorbed into a unity with capital, which can only be destroyed by a crisis. Class struggle as classically defined—strikes by unions and political activity by leftist parties and organizations—become nothing but the struggle for relative advantage for the spoils of capitalism. The authors state, “gangs confront one another in an obscene competition; veritable rackets rivaling each other in what they peddle, but identical in their essence.”

While theorizing about the existing society, within the group, under the pretext of negating it, an unbridled emulation is introduced which ends up in a hierarchization even more extreme than in society-at-large.

Within capital, all “revolutionary” activity devolves down into gang activity. The only activities that can be considered revolutionary are acts of revolution themselves at the point when the unity of capital is smashed and the relationships of capitalism are tossed aside.

from Fifth Estate #279, December 1976