I never took part in the creation of Echanges, nor was I a regular contributor. I was however an assiduous reader and would, from time to time, send a brief correspondence. Echanges, meanwhile, reported on the episodic publication of Théorie Communiste.
Apart from the inevitable theoretical differences, relations between Echanges and Théorie Communiste were not always rosy: there were JPV’s diatribes against the so-called “theory of communization”; a clear animosity following the Hamsterley summercamp (England) in 2009; maneuvers with TPTG’s hoplites to keep us out of subsequent summercamps, etc. But these are a normal, healthy part of maintaining a dynamic and nimble “milieu” in every sense of the word. It’s all fair game, and for our part we’ve organized “summer meetings” to which Echanges wasn’t invited, without altering what I think is a mutual esteem.
At the root of all the theoretical differences between Echanges and Théorie Communiste lies the question of programmatism and by extension questions of autonomy and self-organization. By programmatism I mean the rising power of the working class, its affirmation as the dominant class, and the affirmation of liberated labor. One can argue that revolution is the abolition of all classes, but if one doesn’t understand that this means a moment of rupture with that first act of struggle, autonomy and self-organization, one hasn’t escaped the programmatic problematic one pretends to abandon.
So I was an avid reader, and it’s my reading that I’m going to talk about briefly.
Echanges has been criticized for “not theorizing non-intervention”. But what is intervention? To make intervention one’s practice and raison d’être is to recognize oneself, whatever the vicissitudes of the times, as the embodiment and custodian of the revolutionary nature of the working class (or, according to taste, proletariat), if not of the ineluctable sense of History. We can stay with what Pannekoek wrote in his correspondence with Chaulieu/Castoriadis, published by Echanges: “In these circumstances [strikes, revolutionary agitation], there always appear individuals who stand out in terms of courage or clarity of analysis, whether in discourse or in action. All these individuals form a de facto avant-garde, which we see emerging within all movements. They become de facto leaders, can contribute to the development of mass activity and, by virtue of the breadth of their views, can offer sound advice. When they come together in small groups or parties, with well-established programs, these fluid relationships become petrified.”
The great theoretical lesson (my emphasis) of Echanges is the observation and reporting “on the fly” of a class in struggle in the world, to use the title of the leaflet attached to the bulletin. To “theorize non-intervention” was to fall into the trap of intervention, to situate oneself in a problematic that was not that of Echanges.
Because there is a problematic and a theory of Echanges, the problem is that both have the disadvantage (or advantage...) of answering unasked questions. But could they be asked without distorting the answers?
The first of these questions concerns the historical nature of the contradiction between the proletariat and capital. Can there be particular historical configurations of this contradiction that punctuate exploitation and the development of capital?
The second: as a concept, the capitalist mode of production is invariant, but that’s just a concept. Are there restructurings of capital? How can we define them? What are their consequences?
The third is this: by not judging class struggles according to goals and norms, aren’t we introducing, in mirror image, a timeless norm?
Clearly, these three unasked questions are related. The theory of Echanges is a theory of the conjuncture or the aleatory that does not say its name.
For Echanges, and rightly so, there is no fatal contradiction or final crisis of the capitalist mode of production (CMP). It’s a question of following the struggles. The contradictions of the CMP are its very dynamic, in which we must continually position ourselves without being the “representatives” of a positioning. This is Echanges’ unspoken, unexamined theory. But if Echanges had formulated it, the publication could not have been a regular and meaningful expression of it. However, by not theorizing the matter, Echanges remains orientated towards a norm, that of autonomy and self-organization as a constant since the XIXth century and finally revealed with the emergence of the Councils in the XXth century. There is no history, only a sequence of events.
This doesn’t mean that for Echanges nothing changes. We could even say that Echanges takes account of the fact that everything is continually changing and modifying: the Luddites’ struggle is not the same as that of the workers or the Argentine piqueteros, or that of the racialized youth of the suburbs. Echanges also takes account of all restructurings: companies, work processes, circulation of capital, transport, social systems, states, classes, the world cycle etc. But to multiply restructurings is to deprive ourselves of the work of synthesis that enables us to discern the successive major restructurings of the valorization of capital, i.e., of exploitation, i.e., of the contradiction between proletariat and capital that marks its development and accumulation. It’s not a scene that changes, a modified scene in which the actors, remaining identical in themselves, would continue to play the same part, only taking care to adapt to the new setting. If there are restructurings in the history of the CMP, they are restructurings of the contradiction between classes: the structure and content of the class struggle, and the possible production of its overcoming, are thus modified.
It was by not asking the questions that Echanges was nevertheless answering that its originality, interest and theory were preserved. The absolute condition of this preservation was precisely “not to theorize non-intervention.” In so doing, it was possible to give free rein to the flow of class struggle in its conjunctural aspect and its aleatory future, right down to the interest taken in the permanence of struggles in their subterranean and invisible aspects. The situationists were wrong to call this a “choice of absence”, and the organization, maintenance and renewal of a network like Echanges invalidates this judgment. To “theorize non-intervention” would have been tantamount to setting standards, goals and positions. But by not asking the questions to which Echanges was responding, the publication was blind to its own foundations, and in so doing Echanges fell into the realm of unspoken norms.
All in all: a serious tip of the hat, a sincere admiration for fifty years of continuity and perseverance, and thanks for everything.
Roland Simon
(no relation to Henri)