Against domestication

by Jacques Camatte

The time we are now living through is without doubt the most critical period capitalist society has ever known. All the features which we associate with the classic crisis now exist as a permanent state of affairs, though production itself has not been affected, except to a limited extent in certain countries. Social relations and traditional consciousness are decomposing all around us, while at the same time each institution in society proceeds to ensure its survival by recuperating the movement which opposes it. (An obvious example here is the catholic church, which has lost count of all the "modernizations" it has embraced). One would think that the violence and torture which is now endemic everywhere would have people mobilized and up in arms against it, but instead it continues to flourish on a world scale. Indeed, the situation today makes the "barbarism" of the Nazis seem in comparison rather unprofessional, quite archaic in fact. All the conditions would seem to be ripe; there should be revolution. Why then is there such restraint? What is to stop people from transforming all these crises and disasters, which are themselves the result of the latest mutation of capital, into a catastrophe for capital itself?

Genres: Politics, Ecology

24 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Jacques Camatte was a French writer, philosopher, Marxist theoretician and member of the International Communist Party, a primarily Italian left communist organisation under the influence of Amadeo Bordiga. After Bordiga's death and the events of May 68, his beliefs began to fall closer to the tendencies of anarcho-primitivism and communization, later influencing accelerationism.