»Communism will be an intense and unpredictable struggle for life on the part of the species, which no one has yet brought to a conclusion, since the sterile and pathological solitude of the Ego does not deserve the name of life, just as the treasure of the miser is not wealth, not even personal wealth.« Amadeo Bordiga, ‘The Guignol in History’, Il programma comunista nos. 7 (April 3–17, 1953)
The Case of the Praxis Group
A group of people who met through their participation in various struggles decide to produce a theoretical magazine. What they produce could be described as a Marxist journal for anarchists, combining reports of struggles and movements, many of which they participated in, with longer historical and theoretical material. It also embodies a set of assumptions about the role of those who want revolution, assumptions that could be summarized along the following lines: you intervene or involve yourself in struggles not as teachers or provocateurs, but as fellow proletarians who share a desire for revolution. While ready to make friends and comrades in the struggle, you never make growing a group the goal. Instead, you push struggles as far as they will go by being open to the radical potential of any given moment. You ruthlessly oppose bureaucratic manipulators of all stripes, and all those who for whatever reason are wedded to the return to normality. To do this you must draw on the rich history of proletarian struggle, a history that —from the Paris Commune to May '68, from the emergence of workers' councils in the early twentieth century through to the refusal of work and the "Movement of '77" —demonstrates again and again the spontaneous capacity of proletarians to leap ahead of their situation, to educate their educators.
This way of orienting itself to struggles worked well for the group both in its practice and in its capacity to make theoretical sense of what was going on in the world. However, when confronting a sophisticated theory that challenged some of these assumptions, the group proved unable to deal with the crisis that the new ideas provoked. A division emerged between a group orthodoxy and dissidents attracted to the new ideas. The group's internal discussion, which had been characterised by an openness and seriousness towards critique, became polarised between these two sides: one side feeling it had given the discussion as much time as it deserved, the other wanting to pursue it to the end. The discussion became stuck. Following a logic of conflict escalation —trust broke down, motives became suspected. One side argued that the ideas it was fed up with did not really make sense or add up to that much. They suspected that behind the other side's insistence on pursuing the theoretical discussion there was a destructive impulse towards the group's previously shared aim. The other side saw a defensiveness and bad faith in the first side's argumentation, which they traced back to the discussion, implicitly questioning some key unstated assumptions of the group. At a certain point, the group seemed to arrive at a thoughtful way of going forward. The orthodox side agreed to develop their critique of the new ideas. Although this course of action seemed to offer the possibility of real progress, it was suddenly abandoned. The orthodox side moved from talk to action, expelling the dissidents without any further discussion. Thus, despite the group having enshrined a critique of the sect-like behaviour prevalent in other groups, it had split and had done so in an acrimonious and unpleasant way, which had a wrenching, traumatic character for both sides. Those who had left or been expelled reformed as a discussion group taking a great deal of time to work through what had happened. The residual group redirected itself to practical matters, to what it saw as its prime task —the production of the magazine —and rarely discussed what had happened and why.
The Case of the Theory Group
A small group of individuals meet regularly, reading and discussing a variety of texts, talking about whatever is raised that is considered worth talking about. The group imposes a very strict frame for its discussion: everyone is expected to do the reading, come to every meeting, and be committed to the process for at least a couple of years. The notion is that such rigid boundaries will allow the content of the group — the conversational process — to be unconstrained and attain a depth that would not be achievable if the commitment to the process was less demanding. Whilst an interest in struggles, in communism and in the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism forms a background to why the group had come together, this purpose is not held to tightly in the conversation, which is instead allowed to take its own course. There is an idea of being maximally open to what is happening in the world rather than trying to fit it into any existing theoretical framework. One or more people take up subjects for research with the intention of writing something and bringing it back to the group. There is an idea of eventually publishing in some form, but there is a desire not to rush into it. There is a faith in the idea that if one takes one's time something truly worthwhile may emerge. That approach seems to be paying off. The discussions are rich and creative. There seems to be something like a collective field between the participants: ideas flow freely, with each adding to others' contributions without much sense of anyone owning the ideas. There is a shared sense of making progress together and that something worthwhile, even important, is developing. The comparison is made to the good feeling of a band jamming whose music is really coming together.
However, at other points, relations between individuals and between individuals and the group as a whole become troubled. Distrust, hostility, even paranoia emerge that negatively mirror the intensity of the positive feelings when the group is working well. At times what is going on feels for some members strange, distressing, even a bit mad. At such moments the group which seemed to thrive on the freely given creativity of its members suddenly makes great demands of time and emotional effort to understand and manage its internal tensions. With some members engaged in post-graduate academia, one fear that emerges is that the ideas freely given to the group's collective discussion may be appropriated by some members to pursue individual academic careers. When one member states his desire to go abroad to study and requests altering the group's way of operating so that he can continue to be involved in some way, a strong reaction is provoked. His departure is felt by everyone as a big loss and a threat to the group's continuity. However, while some might be willing to facilitate "membership from afar", others feel the group must take this member's decision to leave the country as a complete break; this, or they themselves cannot continue with the group. The group is consumed by a tension that is only resolved when this member "agrees" to cease group membership. Less than a year later, an individual who has played a leading role in the group resigns, expressing exhaustion with the "politics of groupuscule life". Going forward, efforts by new people to become involved are as often as not difficult either for the new members, the existing ones or both. The group survives these and other stresses, eventually producing a publication that has a measure of success, but the feeling in the group rarely touches either the exhilarating creativity or the tension and struggle of the earlier period.
These stories express some of the gratifying but also frustrating and unpleasant sides of being together in groups, in this case “political” groups. Neither group were sects in the normal sense: they were not orientated towards recruitment and numeric growth but focused on specific tasks. They were composed of people with a degree of maturity and experience in struggles and theory. Indeed, the way in which the Praxis Group related to struggles (an orientation largely shared by the Theory Group) is perhaps about as good an approach as can be suggested. Participation in struggles on such a basis creates moments of connection with others that can be profoundly transformative. However, the emotionally charged way some of the conflicts were expressed underscores a darker side of group life that is also a common experience.
What was striking about the experience of the Praxis Group was that it prided itself on openness and non-dogmatism towards struggles, but in its own discussions succumbed to an intractable conflict resolved only by resorting to actions that it did not even try to explain rationally. The Praxis Group pattern of conflict between a side representing the established position and a dissenting tendency is one often repeated in political groups, frequently leading to acrimonious and venomous splits that those outside the group—and even participants themselves—often find hard to understand.
In the case of the Theory Group, there was a sudden switch to hostility and distrust after it had functioned at a high degree of almost effortless cooperation. This case captures something experienced by other groups and projects we have heard of, namely an inability to sustain themselves at an initially exhilarating, intensely rewarding, and high level of cooperation and shared creativity without at some point crashing into an opposite experience of suspicion, mistrust, and antagonism.
These experiences seemed quite baffling until we came across some psychoanalytic theories of group dynamics. These theories can help explain these and other cases, and we will return to them later. See parts III and IV below. However, we might wonder what relevance such small group experience really has to getting beyond capitalism...
If “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”; ‘Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men’s International Association’, 1864 (MECW 20), 14. if communism is a matter of billions ceasing through revolution to produce and reproduce capital, changing their form of life and thus themselves, then how do we understand the existence and activity of those “minorities” (including ourselves), who in the apparent absence of such a general movement develop an explicit consciousness of the need for “revolution” or “communism”? Do they have certain “tasks” now or in the future? Is it possible to be revolutionary in the absence of revolution or to be communist in the absence of communism? If not, then how do we understand ourselves and our activity?