The Prime Corrective; a reflexive apparatus; a counter-dispositif

1a. The purpose of the Prime Corrective is to inhibit intellectually the natural tendency of self-identifying communists to engage voluntarily in activities which they rationalise as communist when the actual motivation for their participation remains unclear, over-determined, or even perverse. However, the Prime Corrective is formulated as if purity of motivation were possible. Framed as such, The Prime Corrective seeks to inhibit the tendency to self-legitimation in communist motivation and records that such well-meaning intention is objectively neither a sufficient reason for intervention, nor a likely indicator of success. The function of the Prime Corrective is to establish a theoretical threshold for distinguishing ‘communist’ interventions and personal enthusiasms and is thereby intended to aid in facilitating the ability of the self-identifying communist to recognise more accurately the boundaries between personal and communist life categories. 

1b. The Prime Corrective is formulated firstly negatively, then ambivalently, then positively. The directionality within this formulation is intended to inhibit enthusiasm and to formally present the primacy of the negative position in theory. The formulation's structure derives from cybernetic theories of constraints and framing. This formulation seeks to encourage a sense of incredulity and bafflement in the place of group patriotism and the ideological representation of truth-principles. This formulation introduces a cushioning layer of perplexity through unusually formulated, or self-restricting, 'principles', and thereby presumes the advantageousness of the delayed solution. 

1c. The formulation of the Prime Corrective also draws on theories of both dispositif (or apparatus) and transference. The Prime Corrective may be understood as a therapeutically formulated 'apparatus' by which a set of (perhaps arbitrary) organising constraints and framings, which might otherwise have gone untheorised, are deliberately transferred across into the field of 'communist intervention'. The purpose of this therapeutic transference is to render the given operational constraints of that field as more apparent, more categorisable, and more responsive. The theoretical intention of the Prime Corrective is to introduce a further layer of consciousness into the field of communist intervention... and to thereby partially counter the conditional relation between 'apparatus' and behaviour.

1d. The Prime Corrective does not simply pun on the word directive, it is also an attempt to describe a traffic that is identifiably not a directive flowing between the apparatus of principles and ideals on one side and the apparatus of behaviours and decision-making on the other. The term corrective is intended to imply a life that is lived through a structure which is not formulated in terms of law or rules... it is an attempt to side-step the process of degeneration of ideals into rules which is inherent to the ideology of realism.  

2. In its most simple, negative formulation, the Prime Corrective establishes the primacy of the principle of non-interference for self-identifying communists within non-communist events, discussions, struggles and campaigns. The Prime Corrective is thus formulated on the presumption that, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous. Some of the experiential-historical bases of  such disastrous outcomes in the historical communist project are caused by:  mistaken assumptions concerning motivation; the inapplicability of such interventions; the inappropriateness of such interventions; mistaken notions of pedagogy; mistaken notions of communication; mistaken notions of elective endeavour; mistaken notions of collective endeavour; mistaken notions of historical process; mistaken notions of human society; mistaken notions of human community. The historical implementation of Terror as a strategy and end by communists, an outcome of their fundamental misunderstandings concerning human nature, necessitates the formal neutralisation of those misunderstandings through application of the Prime Corrective. However, the Prime Corrective only applies to communist intervention, and is not relevant to individual involvement in events, discussions, struggles and campaigns. 

3. In its most simple, ambivalent formulation, the Prime Corrective records that communist intervention is impossible in a non-communist environment; and in those moments and places which have objectively achieved the threshold for intervention, intervention becomes redundant. The simple ambivalent formulation therefore assumes that the threshold to tolerate communist consciousness is achieved in populations by other means than communist intervention. It also assumes that the task of self-identified communists is to watch for signs of this achievement. The negative purpose of the Prime Corrective is to inhibit intellectually the natural tendency of self-identifying communists to consider communist interventions to be the cause of communist society.  The positive purpose of the Prime Corrective is to facilitate intellectually the tendency which recognises the necessity of an achieved threshold of receptivity to communist organisational forms amongst wider populations as being the deciding factor in the success such organisational forms.

4. In its most simple, positive formulation, the Prime Corrective states that communists may only intervene as communists in those places and moments where the threshold for receptivity to the ideas of communism has already been achieved. Where the threshold has been achieved the necessity for communist intervention has thereby been superseded – this sets in motion a relation between communists and social organisation that is undertaken outside of the frame of ‘intervention’. The Prime Corrective in its most simple positive formulation therefore assumes that self-identifying communists may only ‘intervene’ as communists within those situations where already  communist consciousness is already present. In its most primitive, positive formulation it begins from the assumption: communists may only speak with communists.