camatte wandering of humanity imposed

8/2/2019 Camatte Wandering of Humanity Imposed

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WHATISINVARIANTISTHEASPIRATIONTOREDISCOVER

THELOSTHUMANCOMMUNITY, ANDTHISCANNOTTAKE

PLACETHROUGHAREESTABLISHMENTOFTHEPAST,BUTONLYTHROUGHNEWCREATION

THE WANDERINGOF HUMANITY

JA C Q U E S CAMAT T E


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J A C Q U E S C A M A T T E

39

[5]Ibid., pp. 540-541.

[6]Ibid., p. 541.

[7] As is done by Victor in Rvolution Internationale No. 7, srie 1, p. 4 o the article Volo-

ntarisme et conusion.

[8] Various authors have spoken o stagnation and declining production between the two

world wars. Bordiga always rejected the theory o the decline o the capitalist mode o pro-

duction as a gradualist deormation o Marxs theory (see Le renversement de la praxis

dans la thorie marxiste, in Invariance No. 4, srie 1.

[9] Marx, Grundrisse, p. 541.

[10]Ibid., p. 410.

[11]Ibid., P. 541.

[12]

Ibid.[13] This is what Marx shows when he analyzes fxed capital in the Grundrisse, and also

in Book I oCapital where he analyzes the transormation o the work process into a

process o production o capital (see also Un chapitre indit du Capital, Paris: Ed. 10/18,

1971).

[14] Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 541-542.

[15]Invariance, Srie II, No. 1.

[16] Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 420-421.


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2 . G r o w t h o f P r o d u c t i v e F o r c e s ;D o m e s t i c a t i o n o f H u m a n B e i n g s

The capitalist mode o production becomes decadent only with the outbreak o e-

ective revolution against capital. As o now, human beings have been decaying or a

century, they have been domesticated by capital. This domestication is the source o

the proletariats inability to liberate humanity. Productive orces continue to grow,but these are orces o capital.

Capitalist production develops technique and the combination o the social pro-

duction process only by simultaneously using up the two sources rom which all

wealth springs: the land and the laborer. [9]

It makes no sense to proclaim that humanitys productive orces have stopped

growing, that the capitalist mode o production has begun to decay. Such views reveal

the inability o many theoreticians to recognize the run-away o capital and thus to

understand communism and the communist revolution. Paradoxically, Marx ana-

2929

I I . D e c l i n e o f t h e C a p i t a l i s t

M o d e o f P r o d u c t i o n o r D e c l i n e o fH u m a n i t y ?

IT has oten been thought and written that communism would blossom ater the de-

struction o the capitalist mode o production, which would be undermined by such

contradictions that its end would be inevitable. But numerous events o this centuryhave unortunately brought other possibilities into view: the return to barbarism,

as analyzed by R. Luxemburg and the entire let wing o the German workers move-

ment, by Adorno and the Frankurt School; the destruction o the human species, as

is evident to each and all today; fnally a state o stagnation in which the capitalist

mode o production survives by adapting itsel to a degenerated humanity which

lacks the power to destroy it. In order to understand the ailure o a uture that was

thought inevitable, we must take into account the domestication o human beings

implemented by all class societies and mainly by capital, and we must analyze the


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actually by Camatte. Thanks to Antagonism or drawing attention to this.

[17] Which proves that it was impossible to hold on to a classist discourse and behavior

while maintaining the basic aclassist thesis o the necessity o the proletariats sel-

negation. [18] On this subject, see the book by H. Mueller published in 1892, Der Klassen-

kamp in der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie, Verlags-kooperative Heidelberg-Frankurt-

Hanover-Berlin, 1969. This book clearly shows the duality-duplicity o men like Bebel,

who expressed themselves as rightists in parliament and as letists at workers meet-

ings, who told one audience it would be very long beore the principles o socialism could

be realized, while telling another that socialism was around the corner. This book is also

interesting because it contains positions which were later to be taken up by the KAPD

(German Communist Workers Party).

[19] Bordiga at meeting in Milan, 1960.

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4 . C o m m u n i s m

Revolutionary reormism - the project o creating socialism on the oundation o

capitalism and in continuity with the capitalist mode o production - disintegrated

between 1913 and 1945. It is the end o what turned out to be an illusion: the illusion

o being able to direct the development o the productive orces in a direction which

diered rom the one they had taken in reality. We can actually agree with Marxs

view that ater 1848 communism was possible precisely because the irruption o the

capitalist mode o production had broken all social and natural barriers and made ree

development possible. But the mentality, the representations o people were such

that they could neither concieve nor perceive such a uture. They were too dependenton the millenarian movement o value, or they were too debilitated by the limita-

tions o the perverted remains o their ancient communities, to be able to set out on

a new path to reach another community. Even Marx and Engels ultimately consid-

ered capitalism a necessary moment, and thought that all human beings everywhere

would inevitably come to experience it. Only the revolts o the Russian populists,

and their desire to avoid the capitalist road, made Marx understand his error. But this

recognition was insufcient. From the middle o the 19th century, with the justifca-

tion provided by Marxist theory (the theory o the proletariat), all humanity set out

camatte wandering of humanity imposed

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