Spontaneity and organisation (two)

Communist organisations are ‘really’ capitalist organisations because they reproduce the essence of present conditions within themselves as an organisational principle. Despite their ideology of change, they mystify the fact that their major function is to reproduce themselves under present conditions – their central survival strategy is adaptation to the existing environment. The only means by which a group can be successful (i.e. grow) under capitalist conditions is through increased investment of capital. The more capital that is invested within an organisation, the more members it will gain; and the more difficult it becomes for it not to fall back into the reproduction of its own structures as an end in itself. In other words, the only means of successfully reproducing an organisation under capitalist conditions is to reproduce it as a capitalist organisation. 

In order to maintain the cohesion of its structure, the membership of an ostensibly revolutionary organisation tends to conspire against its own principles, which in contradiction to this conspiracy tend to reflect negatively upon the actual activities involved in organisational recycling. Caught within its own antinomy, an organisation conspiring against itself, will seek to displace its internal contradictions via unprincipled and irrelevant personal attack against its critics... Perhaps the major consideration in deciding not to join a ‘revolutionary’ organisation would be the prospect of having to adopt  unpleasant externalising character traits in order to defend the organisation against its own principles. 

All ‘pro-revolutionary’ organisations reproduce themselves as a non-antagonistic expression of their conditions but the extent that they struggle against this fate depends on the capacity to identify this conditioning critique. It is possible to construct distancing procedures which actively encourage sufficient critical awareness amongst members so that they reflect back on the process of reproduction within their organisation but generally this is foresworn in favour of a culture of simple minded ‘solidarity’.