Originally
appeared in Internationale Situationniste No.11 (October 1967). Translated
by Ken Knabb and taken from Situationist International Anthology, Bureau
Of Public Secrets, 1981
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Minimum Definition Of Revolution Organisations
(This definition was adopted by the 7th
conference of the SI)
SINCE THE ONLY purpose of a revolutionary organization is the abolition
of all existing classes in a way that does not bring about a new division
of society, we consider any organization revolutionary which consistently
and effectively works toward the international realization of the absolute
power of the workers councils, as prefigured in the experience of the
proletarian revolutions of this century.
Such an organization makes a unitary critique of the world, or is nothing.
By unitary critique we mean a comprehensive critique of all geographical
areas where various forms of separate socioeconomic powers exist, as well
as a comprehensive critique of all aspects of life.
Such an organization sees the beginning and end of its program in the
complete decolonization of everyday life. It thus aims not at the masses'
self-management of the existing world, but at its uninterrupted transformation.
It embodies the radical critique of political economy, the supersession
of the commodity and of wage labor.
Such an organization refuses to reproduce within itself any of the hierarchical
conditions of the dominant world. The only limit to participating in its
total democracy is that each member must have recognized and appropriated
the coherence of its critique. This coherence must be both in the critical
theory as such and in the relation between this theory and practical activity.
The organization radically criticizes every ideology as separate power
of ideas and as ideas of separate power. It is thus at the same time the
negation of any remnants of religion, and of the prevailing social spectacle
which, from news media to mass culture, monopolizes communication between
people around their one-way reception of images of their alienated activity.
The organization dissolves any "revolutionary ideology," unmasking it
as a sign of the failure of the revolutionary project, as the private
property of new specialists of power, as one more fraudulent representation
setting itself above real proletarianized life.
Since the ultimate criterion of the modern revolutionary organization
is its totalness, such an organization is ultimately a critique of politics.
It must explicitly aim to dissolve itself as a separate organization at
its moment of victory.
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