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The Passion of Communism Do not all uprisings, without exception, have their roots in the wretched isolation of men from the community [Gemeinwesen]? Does not every uprising necessarily presuppose isolation? Would the Revolution of 1789 have occurred without the wretched isolation of the French citizens from the community? It was intended precisely to abolish this isolation. But the community [Gemeinwesen] from which the worker is isolated is a community of quite different reality and scope than the political community. The community from which his own labour separates him is life itself, physical and mental life, human morality [Sittlichkeit], human activity, human enjoyment, human being. Human being is the true community [Gemeinwesen] of mankind. [...] A social revolution takes the standpoint of the whole because — even if it were to occur in only one factory district — it represents man’s protest against a dehumanized life, because it starts out from the standpoint of a separate real individual, because the community [Gemeinwesen], against whose separation from himself the individual reacts, is man’s true community, human being.1 1. Marx, ‘Critical Notes on the Article: “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian”’ Vorwarts! no. 63 August 1844. (MECW 3): 204– Italian Invariance in the 1970s 205, translation adapted. The Passion of Communism 249 INTRODUCTION alternative to capital”.4 Operaismo, on their analysis, tradition in the early 70s, failed to “pose that minimum Marxist objective: the while later it was reviews such as Insurrezione, Puzz While Jacques Camatte has received recognition from the English- negation of the proletariat”, and to understand the and especially Maelstrom speaking world, few have commented on members of the larger circle present historical task as “the negation of all the organ- that continued to work who contributed to or developed the ideas of the journal Invariance, ised structures that restrict being to the cage of through its implications. individuals such as Giorgio Cesarano, Gianni Carchia, Furio di Paola, professions and economy”.5 Similarly, the radical acts 4. Jacques Camatte, and Carsten Juhl. This tradition, given the name “radical critique” by of the young Metropolitan Indians6 and Autonomia ‘La révolte des étudiants Cesarano, had its greatest impact in Italy in the period from 1968 did not signal the emergence of new subject positions, Italiens: un autre moment through 1974, during which its adherents populated groups like but were rather themselves the signs of a crisis of sub- de la crise de la repré- Comontismo, Ludd, and Councilist Organisation. After Cesarano’s jectivity and of a desire for communism that could sentation’ in Invariance Series III nos. 5-6 (1980). suicide and the self-dissolution of these factions, the tradition’s influ- only be satisfied by humanity’s destitution of a his- 7 ence waned until the next wave of struggles were brought to an end torically contingent form, capital. This Italian devel- 5. Ibid. in the late 70s. Then a period of reflection opened; balance-sheets opment of Camatte’s thought goes against what were drawn, and “[Cesarano’s] works (especially Apocalypse and are perhaps the three central points of his English- 6. The Metropolitan Indians were an offshoot Revolution and Survival Manual) were read by many language reception: (1) that he became an anarcho- of Autonomia that 2 comrades, especially the young”. In the later period, 2. Furio di Paola, ‘Dopo primitivist advocate of the pre-capitalist community, emerged in 1975, marked Antonio Negri wrote polemics against this “pessimis- la dialetica’ in Aut Aut (2) that he advocates for a withdrawal from capital- by an emphasis on large 165 (1978). tic” thought, while for others like Mario Mieli and Gianni ist relations, and (3) that he is an abstract humanist.8 street confrontations. The name was inspired Carchia, the Invariance analysis grounded their own Rather than offering a systematic reading of Camatte’s 3. Camatte’s earliest writ- by the slogan ‘let’s leave 3 investigations. It is this context that is most relevant ings from the 1960s were work that would aim to absolve him of these three the reservation’, by which to contemporary debates in the English language, in first published in Bordigist readings, I examine how his work enabled the thinking was meant modern met- journals and, in addition which a relatively homogeneous narrative dominates of communisation as the destitution of capital’s form, ropolitan existence. to the single Italian edition the last century of developments in Italian political developed an ethical but non-quietist understanding of Invariance in 1968, his 7. Those who confuse thought, progressing neatly from Gramsci through texts were often translated of the pro-revolutionary milieu in its relation to the Camatte’s life choices Operaismo to Autonomia and finally the post-worker- and re-published in real movement and, finally, offered a non-humanist today for a position on Italy throughout the 1970s. ist theorists popularised during the anti-globalisation concept of dehumanisation. what might be necessary Mieli’s recently retrans- for revolution overlook movement. In this, Camatte and, to a greater extent, Cesar- lated Elements of a Gay the resolute critique of Crucial to examining this largely post-Bordigist Critique begins: ‘Contem- ano take a longer look at the history of domination in a activism on the part of and post-Situationist tradition is that it marks a dis- porary gay movements manner that is closer to the history of a civilisation the Bordigists: ‘I preserve have emerged in those tinct communist opposition both to insurrectionary comparable to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of intact my mentality: the countries in which capital men do not count, they militantism and workerism in Italy. While the former Enlightenment. This was not an abstract exercise, but has come to its real dom- do not represent anything, was rejected as a sacrificial ideology, the latter was ination’, followed by a two a way of grasping, largely through their reading of cannot have any influence; criticised for positing the existence of a proletarian page footnote explaining texts by Marx such as the “Urtext of the Critique of Po- the facts determine the Camatte’s analysis thereof. subject position — however sociologically updated as litical Economy” and the Grundrisse, the specific his- new situations. And when With respect to Carchia, the situations are ripe, the “mass worker” or “multitude” — that could affirm torical process through which a very particular form see the translated text then the men emerge... its own constitutive project. For the post-Invariance ‘Glosses on Humanism’ had become autonomous. The aim of such an investi- I am very happy to live far tradition, on the contrary, the present contained below. Journals such as gation was not to reject all technology and vestiges of from ridiculous and petty Agaragar and L’erba voglio “nothing human that could be stably posed… as an modernity — “a total rejection of the historical product… episodes of the so-called initially continued the militant politics, from → Endnotes 5 250 The Passion of Communism 251 total retreat”9 — but to clarify precisely what the po- the mean chronicle, progress and modernisation be brought to a halt.11 Sit- of Apocalypse and Rev- tential death of capital might mean through what we from the events day after uated between a confidence that “not even the dead olution (translated below) day. Nothing of all that calls for the ‘irreversible could today call the destitution of its essential forms. are safe” and that “only a redeemed humanity obtains interests me’ — Bordiga “domestication” of the 12 The overall argumentation of Camatte’s work through- quoted in Arturo Peregalli the fullness of its past”, Camatte and Cesarano ar- machine, in all its possible out the 70s is thus neither a form of primitivism, and Sandro Saggioro, gued that the species, in its works and desires, had manners of appearing’. which would seek to return to pre-modern commu- Amadeo Bordiga: La become really dominated, subjected to an inhuman sconfitta e gli anni oscuri 10. Jacques Camatte, nal forms, nor accelerationism, which would seek to spectacle by that imperative towards valorisation (Edizioni Colibri 1998). Bordiga et la passion du overcome capitalism through a deepening of its con- whose name is capital. For the circle surrounding communisme (Spartacus tradiction-in-process, but precisely an anti-utopian 8. Point (1) is present in Invariance came up against the following paradox 1974). theory that aims to restore the historical process from texts such as Tim Barker, that remains our own: the law of value dominates life ‘The Bleak Left’ N+1 no. 11. Fyodorov argued that that reproductive fixed-point we call capitalism — a yet somehow our dehumanised species must effect 28 (June 2017), (2) has all of humanity should process that would develop, from fragmented poten- been debated by Ray a rupture with the particular mediations of capital unite in rejecting progress tials that exist today, the work of “millions of human Brassier, ‘Wandering Ab- in order to reclaim its integral past and “surrender by directing its attention beings who have laboured in obscurity for millen- straction’ in Mute (Febru- itself joyously to the true divisions and neverending towards the past through ary 2014), and (3) has the common task of res- nia… the immense process of becoming of millions of confrontations of historical life”.13 To this end, it re- been argued by Theorie urrecting the dead. This 10 forces that are crystallised at any given moment”. Communiste in François mains fruitful today to revisit Camatte and Cesarano’s led, through Bogdonov It is with respect to the latter point that Camatte Danel, Rupture dans la Gemeinwesen. and Tsiolkovsky, to the developed his concept of the Gemeinwesen, which théorie de la révolution foundation of Russian (Senonevero 2003).
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