THE OBSESSION WITH HOLDING MEETINGS
 A significant characteristic of militancy is the time spent in meetings. Lets leave to one side the debates devoted to grand strategy : where are our comrades in Bolivia, when will we have the next world economic crisis, is the construction of the revolutionary party being advanced... Instead lets be content to consider those meetings concerning « everyday work ». It is perhaps in these that the misery of militantism is best displayed. Aside from a few desperate cases, militants themselves will complain of the number of these « meetings which make no progress ». Even though militants like to bask in one another's company, they cannot fail to suffer from the obvious contradiction between their will to act on the one hand, and on the other, the time wasted in fruitless discussion and endless debate. But they are condemned to remain in this dead end because they are only attacking « meeting-itus », without seeing that it is the whole of militancy which is called into question. The only way they have of ending the obsession with meetings amounts to retreating into an activism with less and less grasp on reality. WHAT IS TO BE DONE ? HOW SHOULD WE ORGANISE OURSELVES ? These are the questions which underlie and give rise to meetings. However these questions can never be settled and their solution gets no closer, because when militants put them to themselves, they pose them as if they were separate from their own lives. Answers are not found because the questions are not raised by those who possess a concrete solution to them. You can meet for hours and rack your brains but this won't conjure up practical support when ideas are lacking. While these questions are trifles for the revolutionary proletariat, because for them the problems of action and organisation arise concretely and form part of their struggle, for militants they become THE PROBLEM. An obsession with meetings is the necessary complement to activism. In fact, the problem which arises is always the same : how to merge with the mass movement while remaining separated from it. The solution to this dilemma is either for them to truly merge with the masses, through finding the reality of their desires and the possibilities for their realisation, or else to reinforce their power as militants, while lining up against the proletariat at the side of the old world. Wildcat strikes show that there are risks ! Militancy reproduces its internal failings in its relationship with the masses, in particular the obsession with meetings. You gather people and you count them. For some groups like the AJS [4] to present themselves and to count heads becomes the height of the action ! These questions of action and organisation, already separated from the real movement, are then mechanically separated from one another. The various tendencies of leftism concretise this separation. On one side we find the Maoists and the former Gauche Proletarienne [5], the pole of action, and on the other we find the trotskyists and the Ligue Communiste [6], the pole of organisation. In order to leave the dead end, which militancy is plunged into by separating from the masses, they either fetishise action or else fetishise organisation. Each protects its particular idiocy while mocking the orientation of rival groups. Notes [4] AJS - Alliances des Jeunes pour le Socialisme - Founded in 1969 as the youth movement of the ( lambertist ) Organisation Communiste Internationaliste ( OCI ). In 1968 the OCI was the most 'old left' of the French trotskyist groups, ( it was a member of the International Committee of the Fourth International along with the Healyite Socialist Labour League until it broke with Healey in 1971 ). It achieved the notable feat of calling on young people to tear down the barricades in 1968, and then still getting briefly banned by the government. Its youth wing, the AJS, acquired an unenviable reputation for its manipulative frontism. See Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche de 1945 à nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978., pp. 23-26. and on the OCI, A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism - Theory and Practise in France and the United States, Autonomedia, New York, 1988., pp. 64-73 and Chap. 7 ( translators note ). [5] Gauche Prolétarienne (GP). Formed in September 1968 by former members of the Union de Jeunesses Communistes ( marxiste-léniniste ), an Althusserite maoist group which had split from the UEC, the Communist Party's official student group, in 1966. At the start of 1969 they were joined by a number of members of the 'spontaneist' March 22nd Movement, and for the next three or four years GP became the most representative group within activist 'non-party' maoism. This current - which had few parallels outside France - is described in detail in A. Belden Field's book ( the relevant chapter is on line at the link below ). GP was characterised by the number of 'personalities' which it both attracted as sympathisers ( including Sartre and the publisher Maspero ), and which it created -- in France it exemplified the practice of 'radical chic'. Its organisational practise exemplified what was to become described in the US and the UK as the tyranny of structurelessness. Banned by the government in 1970, GP continued to function through a variety of fronts and networks of groups, and by attempting to take over or control other projects. See Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche de 1945 à nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978., pp. 23-26, 253-7 and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism - Theory and Practise in France and the United States, Autonomedia, New York, 1988., Chap. 3 ( translators note ). [6] Ligue Communiste. If the OCI ( see footnote 4 above ) represented the « old left » within trotskyism, the Ligue Communiste represented the « new left » basing itself on the 'new vanguards' of youth, students, black nationalism and national liberation movements. Ligue Communiste was the name adopted in 1968 when the ( frankist ) Parti Communiste Internationaliste ( PCI ) and Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire ( JCR ), the student group it dominated, were banned by the government. As the French section of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International, the PCI had practised entrism inside the French Communist Party until 1968. Its influence inside the party's official student group led to the formation of the JCR in 1967. The JCR was one of the most active student political groups during May 68, and its success in promoting itself was the springboard for the formation of the Ligue. See Roland Biard, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-gauche de 1945 à nos jours, belfond, Paris, 1978., pp. 206-9, 199-200, 266-70 and A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism - Theory and Practise in France and the United States, Autonomedia, New York, 1988., pp 49-64 and Chap. 7 ( translators note ). |