"In a nutshell? It means that a revolution is only communist if it changes all social relationships into communist relationships."
Communization Theory or Communization is an 
Ultra-Left political movement which views the dictatorship of the proletariat to no longer be a sufficient transition to communism, instead proposing a process known as communization which is the destruction of 
Capitalist social relations and the replacement of them with communist ones. Despite their dislike of the dictatorship of the proletariat (or at least its traditional interpretation) and the state, they dislike 
Anarcho-Communists for saying that the destruction of capital is immediate, instead imagining it as a process of insurrection. They take from a variety of tendencies such as 
Bordigaism, 
Councilism, 
Situationism, 
Autonomism, and 
Insurrectionary Anarchism. The crux of their theory is the dislike of workerism, proposing that the communist movement must be a movement by which the proletariat rejects proletarianism, as the proletariat is a class defined by its own oppression. This puts them at odds with many 
Marxists who emphasize the worker in the dictatorship of the proletariat and in lower stage communism or 
Socialism. Despite its Marxist roots, the movement is very diverse, with it becoming aligned with movements such as the 
Post-Left, Insurrectionary Anarchism, 
Ego-Communism, 
Nomadology, etc yet still keeping to its Marxist roots.
History
Proto-Communization
Post-68 Formation
Modern Communization
Currents
Communization can generally be divided into multiple currents:
Post-Autonomism, a political tendency founded by figures such as 
Antonio Negri and 
Michael Hardt, while not traditionally part of Communization Theory nor proclaiming itself to be so, shares many fundamental similarities with Communization Theory, such as its rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its abandonment of the proletarian-as-revolutionary-subject. What differentiates Post-Autonomism from other communizing tendencies is its affirmation of multiplicity and difference as the foundation of revolutionary action, with the diverse multitudes serving as the revolutionary subject. The preferred mode of action is the revolutionary construction of new and autonomous communities independent of existing systems. This frequently leads to Post-Autonomists being accused (by both 
Non-Marxist Communizers and 
Marxist Communizers) of optimism, pacifism and even 
Liberalism due to their lesser focus on violence and emphasis on differential identities.
Anarchist Communization, as it has been labelled by outsiders, is a school of Communization exemplified by French collectives Tiqqun and later Comite Invisible. While they share the Post-Autonomists rejection of the proletarian-as-revolutionary-subject, they are markedly different in their ruthless and oftentimes borderline misanthropic critique of capitalist society and outright abandonment of positive identity. Owing their greatest theoretical debts to 
French post-structural philosophy and the 
Situationist International, these communizers focus on psychosocial and cultural critique over economic analysis and share more in common with 
Post-Leftist movements than Marxism and display a notable hostility to any defined identities and strict doctrines.
Marxist Communization is the most Marx-influenced branch of Communization Theory, drawing most of its perspectives from both Marx himself and the historical 
Dutch-German and 
Italian Left Communists. Perhaps set in motion by 
Jacques Camatte's Post-Marxist theories which were nonetheless rooted in the (Italian)Left Communist tradition, these Communizers, led by 
Gilles Dauve, 
Theorie Communiste and Endnotes, reject the party-form, all forms of time/labor counting and generally the dictatorship of the proletariat itself, while they are divided on issues such as the periodization of capitalism into particular eras and sociocultural perspectives(particularly Dauve, who has some rightfully 
controversial cultural takes.)
- There are other smaller schools which could arguably be considered parts of Communization Theory, such as
Andrew Culp's Dark Deleuzianism, some varieties of 
Post-Anarchism (particularly those influenced by 
Georges Bataille and 
Georges Sorel,) 
Zerzan's Primitivism and the 
Ego-Communist tendency in general.
Beliefs
The Self-Abolition of The Proletariat
The central thesis of (Marxist) communization is that of the self-abolition of the proletariat, or anti-workerism. This view is not in itself opposed to the Marxist position but is rather opposed to the consistent workerization of this position seen in the Marxist movement. Orthodox Marxist parties and movements have usually valorized and lionized the proletarian condition rather than seeing it as something to be immediately overcome. For communizers, and in their opinion, for Marx, the proletarian class only exists in relation to the capitalist mode of production: it itself is a component of capitalism. This is central to the communizer diagnosis of the USSR and later Marxist-Leninist states. These states valorized the proletarian condition and maintained the relations of production which consistently reproduced the proletarian condition. Which came first is irrelevant, as both failures produce one another. What the communizers essentially argue is that Orthodox Marxist and later, Marxist-Leninist experiments did not constitute a definitive break with the capitalist mode of production, but rather a renegotiation of it, because they maintained the fundamental social relations of capitalism and failed to trigger a process of communization, instead creating new structures that quickly crystallized into a permanent bureaucratic structure which eventually gave way to traditional capitalist relations.
For some other communizers, such as the communization of Tiqqun and Comite Invisible, as well as Theorie Communiste, the self-abolition of the proletariat is still upheld, but with a different foundational analysis. Non-Marxist and revisionist Marxist communizers generally decenter the revolutionary subject. Rather than fixing the revolutionary process on a particular class, such as the proletariat, these communizers view revolution, or more accurately insurrection, as a process that is not centered in the conditions and identity of a particular class, as the very process of insurrection actively dissolves class. This is not to say that communization excludes the proletariat. Indeed, it is very likely that insurrection will be performed by and large by the proletarian class. The non-Marxist communizers simply reject the class identity as the root of revolutionary activity, especially Tiqqun and Comite Invisible, who instead view the generalized alienated human subject in capitalism as the revolutionary subject.
The Immediatism of Communism
Communizers insist that the revolution should directly abolish the value-form, wage-labour, money, the state and all capitalist relations in the very act of insurrection, rather than institute a “transitional” regime or stage between capitalism and communism. In this view, communism is not a distant project to be built after seizing state power, it is the content of the revolution itself.[4]
Crisis and Insurrection
Abstract Labor and Time Counting
Variants
Anarcho-Communization
Relationships
Friends
Autonomism - Hugely influential to me. Great means of struggle.
Insurrectionary Anarchism - We are very similar. You're a bit naive though.
Libertarian Marxism - Basically me. Reject the dictatorship of the proletariat though.
Marxism - Amazing historical analysis and gives us the way forward. The dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer useful though.- Situationism - You are very flawed but you are very influential to me.
Impossibilism - The revolution must be achieved through the working class itself.
Marxist Feminism - The patriarchy was the first class distinction.
Frenemies
Anarcho-Communism - Kropotkin had great analysis but you are way too dogmatic and don't engage in the materialist analysis of history.
Council Communism - You show great flaws in the party form but then submit to workerism.
Italian Left Communism - Great emphasis on the content of communism and the rejection of opportunism, but sadly you emphasize the party.
Neo-Marxism - Great extensions on Marx's theory but a lot of you are way too liberal.
Anarcho-Egoism - Petty-Bourgeoisie individualist but some of my theorists like you a lot.
Ergatocracy - While you are right that the revolution must be achieved by the working class itself, you quickly fall to workerism.
Enemies
Capitalism - Down with capital! Molotov at your business!
Reactionaryism - We must revolt against your oppression!
National Bolshevism You aren't a communist, nor a socialist; just another oxymoronic gravedigger.
Reformism - An useless system that doesn't work.
Social Democracy - Capitalism cannot be reformed, it can only be destroyed.
Totalitarianism - An oppressive and genocidal force that must be eradicated.- Liberal Socialism - Socialists cannot take power through existing state machinery.
Leninism - Reject the party form!
Maoism - Gravedigger!
Marxism–Leninism - Gravedigger!
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism - Gravedigger!
Mutualism - Petty bourgeoisie anarchism.
State Socialism - Just contradictory.
Trotskyism - Revisionist fool.
Utopian Socialism - Rejects the materialist analysis of history.
Democratic Confederalism - "At last we’ve found a revolution that does not scare the bourgeois."[5]
Notes
- ↑ "The near totality of men rising against the totality of capitalist society, the struggle simultaneously against capital and labour, two aspects of the same reality: i.e. the proletariat must struggle against its own domination so as to be able to destroy itself as class and to destroy capital and classes. Once victory is assured worldwide, the universal class which is really constituted (formation of the party according to Marx) during a huge process preceding the revolution in the struggle against capital, and which is psychologically transformed and has transformed society, will disappear, because it becomes humanity. There are no groups outside it. Communism then develops freely. Lower socialism no longer exists, and the phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat is reduced to the struggle to destroy capitalist society, the power of capital."
- ↑ "We have got to remember that capital, as it constantly overthrows traditional patterns of life, is itself revolution. This should lead us to think again about the nature of revolution, and to realize that capital is able to take control of social forces in order to overthrow the established order in insurrections directed against the very society which it already dominates. Never before have vision and understanding been more vitally necessary; every separate revolt now becomes a further stimulus for the movement of capital. But people have been robbed of their ability to think in a theoretical way and to perceive reality as part of the outcome of an historical process — this has happened as a result of the process of domestication. And in a similar way, this capacity for theoretical thought has been prevented from ever taking root in the material development of our planet and in us as a species due to the existence of a split between the mind and the body, and the old division between physical and intellectual work (which automated systems are now in the process of surmounting to capital’s benefit). Revolution can no longer be taken to mean just the destruction of all that is old and conservative, because capital has accomplished this itself. Rather, it will appear as a return to something (a revolution in the mathematical sense of the term), a return to community, though not in any form which has existed previously. Revolution will make itself felt in the destruction of all that which is most “modern” and “progressive” (because science is capital)." - Jacques Camatte, Against Domestication
- ↑ Our critique of progressivism does not mean supporting tradition against modernity. Societal customs have many oppressive features (particularly but not only regarding women) that are just as anti-communist as the domination of money and wage-labour. Communisation will succeed by being critical of both modernity and tradition. To mention just two recent examples, the protracted rebellion in Kabylia and the insurgency in Oaxaca have proved how collective links and assemblies can be reborn and strengthen popular resistance. Communisation will include the revitalization of old community forms, when by resurrecting them people get more than what they used to get from these forms in the past. Reviving former collective customs will help the communisation process by transforming these customs.
- ↑ https://libcom.org/article/communization-theory-and-abolition-value-form-internationalist-perspective
- ↑ https://libcom.org/article/rojava-reality-and-rhetoric-gilles-dauve-and-tl
Further Information
Wikipedia
Literature
- Endnotes 1 by Endnotes
- Endnotes 2 by Endnotes
- Endnotes 3 by Endnotes
- Endnotes 4 by Endnotes
- Endnotes 5 by Endnotes
- Everything Must Go! The Abolition of Value by Gilles Duavé and Bruno Astarian
- Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement by Gilles Duavé
- From Crisis to Communization by Gilles Duavé
- Communization and its Disconects by Benjamin Noys
- Tiqqun 1 by Tiqqun
- The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee
