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2. The ABC of Revolution
Translated by Paul Sharkey
- The object of sabotage and misappropriation, whether practiced by the individual or the group, is the unleashing of a wildcat strike.
- Every wildcat strike must develop into a factory occupation.
- Every factory occupied must be appropriated and turned promptly to the service of revolutionaries.
- By choosing delegates (who are subject to instant recall and mandated to collate decisions and to oversee their implementation) the assembled strikers lay the groundwork for a radical reorganization of society... into a society of universal self-management.
The instant the factory is occupied
1. Every assemblage of strikers should become an assemblage for universal self-management. All this requires is:
a) the election of delegates subject to recall at any moment and mandated to oversee the prompt implementation of the assembly's decisions.
b) that the assembly have provision for its self-defense
c) that it should spread until it embraces all revolutionaries and that it should spread geographically in a search for optimum efficiency of misappropriation (i.e. to those regions possessed of both agricultural resources and primary industries).
2. All power is vested in the assembly in that it stands for the power which every individual seeks to wield over his own everyday existence.
3. The best guarantee against any other (and, of necessity) oppressive power (i.e. parties, unions, hierarchical organizations, groups of intellectuals or of activists — all of them embryonic states) is the prompt construction of radically new living conditions.
4. The only way of dissolving the State is for federations of delegates meeting as councils to render it inoperative. Only co-ordination of the struggles aimed at universal self-management can eradicate the commodity system.
5. Every discussion, every intervention must culminate in a practical proposition. A measure, once approved by the assembly, instantly becomes writ.
The prompt organization of self-defense
6. The right of self-defense is the first right of an assembly for universal self-management. It consists of arming the masses, securing and increasing the conquered territory, by means of creating the conditions for all to have a better life.
7. The revolution does not work out a plan, nor does it improvise: but it does anticipate and make preparations. This being so, it is vital that the assemblies have to hand the following information, above all else:
a) In supply areas: the whereabouts of warehouses, depots, supermarkets and distribution outlets. The location of factories regarded as being of primary necessity and which can be automated as soon as practicable; the location of plants which are considered convertible and transformable; the location of sectors believed parasitic and to be eliminated. Redistribution of farming areas.
b) In enemy territory: the location of barracks, police stations arsenals etc. The home addresses and itineraries of those leaders whose neutralization would result in the disorganization of the statist forces.
c) In communication and liaison zones: the whereabouts of truck, bus, train or aircraft depots, plus garages and petroleum depots; the location of telecommunications centers: local radio stations, print works, telex outlets, offset facilities, etc.
d) In the areas of basic necessities: water, electricity, hospital and clinic facilities, gasworks, etc.
8. The instant any area is occupied by revolutionaries it must be appropriated forthwith according to two incontestable principles: self-defense and free distribution of goods produced.
9. The best way to avoid isolation is to attack. Thus one must:
a) With an eye to the internationalist direction, create other nuclei for occupations and appropriations.
b) Strengthen and protect liaison between revolutionary zones.
c) Isolate the enemy and destroy his communications and use commando tactics to harass his rearguard and avoid being surrounded by splitting up his forces.
d) Disorganize the counter-revolution by rendering its principle leaders and best strategists harmless.
e) Make use of printing works, local radio stations and telecommunications to propagate the truth concerning the movement for universal self-management and to explain what we want and what our capabilities are. Act in such a way that the masses in each district, town or village are kept up to date with what is going on elsewhere in the country. Coordinate street fighting and the struggles in the towns and in the countryside.
10. We should steer clear of outmoded, passive and static tactics, such as the use of barricades, mass demonstrations and student style struggles. It is of the utmost importance that we invent and experiment with new and unexpected tactics.
11. The success of urban guerrilla tactics employed as a tactical back-up for occupied factories depends upon the speed and effectiveness of such raids. Hence the importance of small commando teams linking up what statists of every color already refer to as the "neighborhood hooligans", with "factory hooligans".
12. Our aim is to thwart all violence against the movement for universal self-management and not to spread that movement by force of arms. It is more important that we should disarm the enemy rather than liquidate him physically. The more resolute and swift our action, the less blood will be spilled.
13. The defection of some of those who would be initially hostile into the camp of universal self-management is the touchstone which will enable us to direct the success of the first measures we adopt and of their advantages to all.
14. Nevertheless, one must take into account those conditioned by hierarchy whom the habits of slavery and self-disgust, deep-rooted suppression and the taste for sacrifice push to their own destruction and to that of all the advances in the realm of actual freedom. It is for that reason that it is a good idea if, from the outset of the insurrection, internal enemies (trade union chiefs, party men, workerists, scabs) and external enemies (bosses, managers, cops, soldiers) can be neutralized.
15. In the event of the insurrection becoming isolated or losing its impetus, self-defense requires that we analyze different forms of possible withdrawal. These will vary according to the intensity of the struggle in which we are engaged, the nature of the mistakes made (e.g. the internal disorganization of the movement), the violence employed by the enemy, and the anticipated degree of repression, etc.
16. We need not fear failure: instead we should feel out what is and is not possible, so that we can anticipate avert and fend off repression. "There is nothing of the revolutionary in an individual who has yet to shrug off the bondage of intellectualism and, in objective terms, veers towards the counter-revolution... someone who will accept the proletarian revolution only if it can be achieved with ease and without conflict and can be assured instantly of the backing of the proletariat world-wide and can eliminate in advance any eventuality of defeat."
17. The men who carried out the massacres against the Paris Commune and the Commune of Budapest have taught us that the repression is always ruthless and that the peace of graveyard is the only promise that is ever honored by the forces of the Statist order of things. When the confrontation reaches the stage where the repression will spare no one, let us not spare any of these cowards who merely await our defeat as their opportunity to play the executioner. We must put their residential areas to the torch, eliminate hostages and ruin the economy so that not a trace remains of that which has prevented us from becoming all is left remaining.
18. Cherishing no illusions about that which awaits us in the event of defeat and determined, once our victory has been assured, to wreak no vengeance on former enemies, we stand ready to deploy all forms of dissuasion whilst the struggle persists — especially to destroy machinery, reserves and hostages with the aim of compelling the statist forces to retreat and disarm. Should the struggle be at a less drastic pitch, it will be to sever water, gas, electricity and fuel supply lines to bourgeois districts where the leaders reside and to dump rubbish there instead and sabotage the lifts at their residential tower blocks, etc.
19. The voice of the masses is not easily heard above the din of battle. The ingenuity of each individual will wreak new and effective weapons for the use of the self-defense commandos. As rapidly as possible, pilfering will give way to the conversion of whatever machinery may be available within our factories, in keeping with a rapid armament program laid down by the universal self-managing assemblies.
20. Among weapons suitable for immediate deployment one might predict rocket launchers made out of tubing (as tried out in Venezuela in the 1960's), ground-to-air missiles (tried out by young scientists' clubs), grenade launchers and catapults for molotov cocktails, flame-throwers, mortars, ultra-sonic equipment, lasers, etc. A study will also be made of various methods of armor plating, converted trucks and bull-dozers, as well as bulletproof vests, gas masks (products that will counteract the effects of incapacitating weapons). Also of the possibility of dosing the enemy's water supply with LSD, etc.
21. Research into anti-helicopter weapons: improvements to flak guns; surface to air rockets and cannons with remote control; also lasers, marksmen and stakes preventing landings.
22. We must prepare for defense against armor by means of anti-tank silos, remote-controlled rockets, bazookas, napalm jets and mines.
23. We must hold the roofs and cellars and dig tunnels to connect one building with another so as to facilitate the rapid and safe deployment of our self-defense commandos.
24. We must have recourse to deception and remote-controlled weapons with a view to minimizing our exposure to danger.
Hastening the passage from subsistence conditions to living conditions
25. We shall carry the day for sure if we can make significant for everyone the changeover from subsistence to life meaningful for everyone. This does not mean that we are going to beat the commodity system in our first engagement. It means only that the earliest measures adopted and implemented by the self-managing assemblies must render every reversion to former circumstances doubly impossible... by doing away with the old conditions and creating such advantages that no one will consent to being dispossessed of them.
26. The primary benefits of the system of generalized self-management will of necessity have the following results:
a) The system of trade and wage slavery will be replaced by the free distribution of goods which are necessary to the lives of every one of us.
b) Obligatory labor will give way to the passing of productive forces under the direct control of the self-managing assemblies and by the unfettered blossoming of individual and collective creativity.
c) An end to boredom and suppression and constraints, replaced by organization of sympathetic social conditions and an autonomy which would empower each individual to explore himself with the assistance of all, through recognition, emancipation, multiplication and harmonization of interests which have hitherto been stunted or sacrificed or bottled up or distorted and, all too often, diverted into destructiveness. All so that under the column of the good, history may note, once and for all, the final annihilation of the commodity system and with it, on a more positive note, the construction of a society that is radically new, albeit carried by each of us in his heart, already.
27. From the very outset our endeavor must be to prevent any backsliding, and to burn behind us the bridges of the old world, by helping to eliminate banks, prisons, asylums, courts, police stations, administrative buildings, barracks, churches and oppressive symbols. Not forgetting dossiers, files, identity papers, hire purchase agreements and payments records, tax forms, financiers' paper-mills and the like. Gold reserves can be disposed of through the use of acqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid).
28. As soon as possible, we must destroy the structures of the commodity system rather than persons, and we must liquidate only those who hope to drag us back to a system of exploitation, servitude, spectacle and boredom.
29. The end of commodity will usher in the era of GIFT in every form. Thus the assemblies for generalized self-management will see to the organization of production and to the distribution of priority goods. They will keep tally of offers to create and produce on the one hand and of the requirements of individuals on the other. Records kept scrupulously up to date will enable every person to have an insight into available stocks, the number and allocation of orders and the whereabouts and movements of the productive forces.
30. Factories will be reconverted and automated, or, in the case of parasitic sectors, destroyed. Almost, everywhere, small workshops for free creative labor will be at the disposal of everyone who wants to use them.
31. Parasitic buildings (offices, schools, barracks, churches) will, on the decision of the self-managing assemblies, generally be destroyed or, should they prefer, turned into collective granaries or warehouses or temporary dwellings or playgrounds.
32. Supermarkets and department stores will be turned into outlets for free distribution and a study will be made in each area into the convenience of stepping up the number of small distribution outlets (for which purpose small shops and stores may well be adapted).
33. Needs change the moment the dictatorship of the commodity is ended, for that dictatorship has never ceased misrepresenting our needs. Thus, motor vehicles become largely useless once space and time are available to all and once it is possible to move about freely to no time-able. So we must not only plan for the appearance of radically new demands and personal fantasies and unsought enthusiasms, but also gear everything towards the satisfaction of the same so that the only thing preventing their realization is the momentary shortage of material means and not the social organization.
34. The plan to abolish the distinction between town and country requires decentralization of the habitat (the right to be nomadic, the right to build one's house on available sites), the destruction of nuisance, pollutant industries and the creation within towns of areas of tilling and stockraising. (e.g. in the Champs Elysées).
35. The launching of the revolt will be the signal to all to withhold their talents from obligatory labor. That tiny spark of passion which enabled us to bear the harsh alienation of the trade we plied for the sake of mere subsistence, will forge newer and free vocations for us. So that anyone with a love of teaching will give his lessons in the streets: anyone enamored with cooking will have access to "communal" kitchens everywhere, each one competing with the other in the quality of his cooking. Thus will every creative disposition give rise to free artisanship and a proliferation of artifacts.
36. Each individual will have the right to make known his criticisms and demands, his opinions and creations, desires, analyses, fantasies and problems... so that the widest possible variety can spark off the best chances of encounters, agreements and harmonization. Printing presses, telex facilities, offset facilities, radios and televisions taken over by the assemblies will be placed at the disposal of every individual to this very end.
37. No one will fight without reservation unless he first has learned how to live without time hanging heavily on his hands.
Every strike must become a wildcat strike
38. The true meaning of any strike lies in its rejection of alienated labor and of the commodity which it produces and which produces it.
39. A strike only realizes this real meaning by becoming a wildcat, i.e. by jettisoning everything that impedes the autonomy of the revolutionary workers: such as parties, unions, bosses, leaders, bureaucrats, would-be bureaucrats, scabs, workers with the minds of cops and workers with the mentality of slaves.
40. Any pretext is valid grounds on which to unleash a wildcat strike for there is nothing that can justify the brutalization of obligatory labor and the inhumanity of the commodity system.
41. Revolutionary workers have no need of agitators. Such workers alone provide the impetus for the movement of general agitation.
42. In a wildcat strike, the strikers must exercise absolute power, to the exclusion of any other.
43. The only way of keeping outside organizations (all of them seeking to recuperate) at bay is to invest all power in the assembly of the strikers and to proceed to elect delegates charged with the co-ordination and implementation of the assembly's decisions.
44. No matter how limited it might be, a wildcat strike must pull out all the stops to win as much support as possible, e.g. by affording glimpses of free distribution. A strike by supermarket check-out assistants would permit both display and stored goods to be distributed free of charge. Workers might distribute goods they themselves have manufactured, or goods from their stores.
Every wildcat strike should blossom in to a factory occupation. Every factory occupation should blossom into the prompt re-adaptation of the factory
45. Occupation of the factory speaks of the determination on the part of revolutionary workers that they should be masters of the space and time hitherto taken up by the commodity. Unless they readapt the factory to their advantage they might just as well kiss goodbye to the creativity they seek, and to their most inalienable rights.
46. A factory which is occupied but not readapted makes a contribution to the spectacle which alleges that no one has the power to break the commodity system, in that it puts forward the argument, (the decisive argument) which alleges that bureaucracy and ideological manipulators are always necessary. But for anyone to lose sight of the wealth of technical possibilities available to us today is to render laughable that person's charges of utopianism.
47. A factory, once occupied, should instantly be readapted to serve the interests of self-defense (manufacture of arms and armor) and of the distribution, free of charge, of any useful items which might be manufactured there.
48. To break out of their isolation, revolutionaries have only their own creativity to rely upon. It is especially important that:
a) Provision be made for ways in which tactical support may be lent by other workers outside the factories. For instance, printers might interfere with the papers on which they work in order to ensure that precise and correct information is printed and that the program of the striking workers reaches the public. High school pupils might seize control of their schools and set up liaisons with the rest of the country and attack the forces of (dis)order: the inhabitants of a given region might neutralize the forces of repression and join with the striking workers in forming widespread and self managing assemblies; soldiers might seize their barracks and take their officers hostage and hand them over to the strikers. In time of revolution, there is no function that cannot be destroyed through subversion.
b) The conflict be internationalized and that the wildcat strike spread from division to division of the same industrial complex albeit geographically scattered, and between connected or complementary firms in one country and another, and between a factory and its source of raw materials. Not merely does the readapt ion of an economically viable region make a mockery of frontiers, but it furnishes the basis upon which can be built, not just a political international, but instead an international of revolutionary practice.
c) The guerrilla warfare of self-defense be made as coherent as is possible. Commando raids should be mounted against barracks, arms dumps and radio stations only to support and to expand the revolutionary workers' movement and not separately as is the case with terrorism, Blanquism or leftist activism: and should it prove useful, the attentat should be used selectively (against counter-revolutionary leaders with a view to rendering them harmless, or against police centers with a view to neutralizing them) and never indiscriminately (e.g. bombing of railway stations, banks or public places).
49. Over living hostages such as bosses, ministers, bishops, bankers, generals, highly-placed officials, prefects, police chiefs, etc. preference should be given to material hostages such as stocks, prototypes, gold and silver reserves, expensive machinery, electronic equipment, blast furnaces, etc.
50. We must know how to tailor our means of pressurizing and dissuasion to the nature of our demands. For instance, it is absurd to threaten, as the workers of the Slee company in Liege did (in September 1973) to blow up the plant unless they were given an interview with their members of parliament. Recourse to extreme measures should lead to radical measures (e.g. to the liquidation of the Statist enemy, or the disarming of the faces of repression, or to the evacuation of a town or entire region by the cops and the armed forces).
51. Risks are to be avoided except for worthwhile results. If isolation threatens, better to evacuate with an eye to the future endeavors, thereby avoiding the repression and turning each tactical withdrawal to the advantage of the revolutionaries.
52. Provision should be made for the destruction of buildings and hostages in the event of a threat of repression. Whatever cannot be readapted for the advantage of all may be destroyed: in the event of our succeeding, we can always rebuild — in the event of our being defeated we shall hasten the ruination of the commodity system.
53. Once and for all we must renounce mass demonstrations and student-style confrontations (with the use of cobblestones, sticks and barricades). In order to protect the commodity, the cops will not hesitate to open fire. Strike commandos should very quickly achieve the disarmament and neutralization of the statists.
54. We must never, at any time, place any trust in the statists nor agree to any truce. Instead we must spread our movement as quickly as we are able and never lose sight of the ferocity of the bourgeois and the bureaucrats in their repressions.
Prior to the wave of wildcat strikes, the practice of sabotage and readaptation by individuals is effective whenever it culminates in the unleashing of a wildcat strike.
55. Every worker is fully entitled to adapt for his benefit the products and techniques hitherto employed to his disadvantage.
56. Every worker is fully entitled to sabotage everything which serves to destroy him.
57. Sabotage and adaptation are the most widespread spontaneous gestures within the workers' ranks. A proper awareness of this should be propagated and the usefulness of the phenomena stressed so that it can be multiplied, perfected and given a fuller coherence.
58. In 1972, a report submitted by officials of the Commissariat for the protection of the State and the respecting of the constitution and by security chiefs in industry, in West Germany listed the following acts of economic sabotage: In a tyre factory, the solutions employed in their manufacture were, by various means and on various occasions interfered with.
— In a steelworks, the men shut off gas delivery valves, causing the blast furnace to cool down and hence, loss of production amounting to several million marks.
— A firm manufacturing television tubes received several returned products and realized that the glass had been stained by the addition of chemicals.
— A cellar housing machinery of high value was flooded when a water conduit was cut through.
— Persons unknown stole some perforated cards from a depot run by computers thereby holding up all work for a four day period. Such examples, made public through a German magazine, give some idea of the inventiveness of the individual when he applies himself to sabotage.
59. Sabotage enthuses one more than hobbies, gardening or bridge. With diligent preparation, there is every likelihood that it will bring us to a point where we can unleash a wildcat strike, factory occupation, reconversion of the factory for the benefit of all, and so it affords each of us a little more control over our own lives each day. A tradition of long standing among workers, it allows us to let off some steam by wreaking some petty vengeance as well as securing us a little rest whilst we wait for repairs to be done. Hitherto, it has only rarely gone beyond the level of dabbling. Everybody is aware that:
— It takes only a hammer or an iron bar to destroy a computer, a prototype, precision instruments, time-clocks, and the robots which control and ordain the pace of production. A heat source held close to the sensor plate will trigger the sprinkler systems in the ceilings of department stores and storage areas.
— A sprinkling of iron fillings in the carburetor, or sugar in the petrol tank or ammonium sulfate in the gearbox will put the car of a cop, boss, scab or trade union chief out of commission.
— Distribution of the telephone numbers of statists and of their car license numbers can serve as an aid to dissuasion and demoralization. But we really must try to move beyond the stage of mere dabbling.
60. The more complicated the commodity system becomes, the simpler the means that suffice to destroy it.
61. Terrorism is the recuperation of sabotage, its ideology and its separated image. Useful though it may be to destroy the cash registers of a supermarket the moment a wildcat strike is begun, or to give the cash they contain to the strikers, or to organize wildcat distribution of products and to explain what generalized self-management would be like, this would all be pointless unless linked with the operation of readapting the machinery.
62. The positive contribution of sabotage is that, being so used to knowing better than their bosses the errors made in the course of production in the pursuit of profit; the workers are equally capable of aggravating these errors or of correcting them once it becomes a matter of turning the machinery to their own advantage. The Lip experiment (recuperated from the beginning because of its failure to make a radical break with the commodity system) has at least underlined the evidence that the workers alone are equipped to wreak a definite change in the world. (The Lip workers have demonstrated the extent to which they have not succeeded in going far enough. Handicapped by the parasitic nature of their industry, they acted partly for the best in running their factory for themselves, seizing stocks and organizing a wildcat pay arrangement. But, in retaining union leaders, and reducing their movement to a simple advocacy of the "right to work", and allowing the worst enemies of the revolution to applaud the spectacle of their strike, they surrendered their autonomy and denied the movement any chance of expansion, and ushered in no real historic change). In the current state of the forces of production, we are capable of anything and nothing may lastingly resist our becoming fully aware of that fact.
63. Subject to every sort of alienation, the workers have this advantage over the rest of the proletariat: they have in their hands the source of every alienation thrust upon them i.e. the commodity process. Because the only power they have is the power to destroy utterly that which destroys them, they also hold the key to the global solution of the problems of harmonization, and readaptation of the economy to the organization of new human relations with their roots in gratuitousness.
64. Sabotage is par excellence anti-work, anti-militancy and anti-sacrifice. Each of us can pave the way for it by the simultaneous pursuit of his own enjoyment and the interests of all, a calculated risk, a case of execution, a favorable opening. It accustoms one to autonomy and creativity and lays a real basis for the relations which revolutionaries aspire to establish between themselves. It is the subversion-play on which bureaucratic recuperation founders. Here is a description of what happened in 1968 in a car plant near Detroit.
"... Acts of organized sabotage began to be noticed in certain sections of the plant. At first there were faults in assembly or even parts left out, but on a much larger scale than usual, so much so that numerous motors were rejected upon first inspection. Organization of this action brought various agreements between inspectors and some assembly workshops with mixed feelings and motives among the workers concerned certain of them were determined, others were merely out for some sort of revenge, still others took part only for the hell of it. Be that as it may, the movement spread rapidly amid an atmosphere of high enthusiasm... If, in the course of inspection or trials, a motor appeared which had apparently come down the line without any manufacturing defects, a simple twist of a monkey-wrench on the oil filter or valve cover or distributor was all that it took to set that straight. Sometimes motors were rejected simply because they failed to turn over quietly enough... Schemes devised during countless meetings led eventually to sabotage on the scale of the V-8 engine works as a whole... As six cylinder jobs the V-8s were assembled in a faulty manner or damaged during production so that they would be rejected. In addition, during trials, the inspectors agreed with one another to reject something like 3 out of every 4 or 5 motors under examination... Without the shop floor ever having admitted to their sabotage the manager was driven to embark upon a circuitous argument to attempt to explain (something which even he found it hard to accept) that the 'lads' should not be rejecting engines which were quite evidently defective. Of course although he might hint at this, he could at no time state it openly. All such efforts were in vain, for the 'lads' simply ignored him. Unfailingly they argued back that their interest and the company's were identical and thus that they had a duty to ensure that only products of the finest quality left their plant... During that summer a sabotage rota was organized throughout the entire plant as a means of securing increased free time for the workers. At meetings, workers would number themselves off from 1 to 50 or beyond. Similar meetings were held elsewhere in the plant. Each worker was allocated a certain period of time, say 20 minutes or so in duration, over the following two weeks. When his turn came he would do something to sabotage production in his workshop... and that would be, if at all possible, something serious enough to bring his entire line grinding to a halt. The moment management sent in a team of workmen to repair that 'breakdown', the whole process would be repeated at some other key point in the plant. In this way the entire plant was out of action for between 5 and 20 minutes per hour for a fair number of weeks, either because of a hold-up on one line or because of an absence of engines on the line. Even the techniques of sabotage that were utilized were very numerous and varied widely, and I have no idea which ones were used in most of the workshops... The remarkable thing about all of this is the level of cooperation and organization among the workers inside a single workshop and also between workers in different workshops. Whilst a response to the need for coordinated action, this organization was also a means of pursuing the sabotage, taking up collections or even of organization of games and competitions which served to turn the working day into a period of enjoyment. This is what happened in the workshop where the engines came for testing: The inspectors on the engine tests bench decided upon a competition centering upon the valves: this competition required that lookouts be posted at the entrances to their workshop and also that an understanding be reached with the workers on the engine assembly line to the effect that a certain number of engines chosen at random would not have their valves soundly attached. Whenever an inspector heard dubious vibrations, he would call out to everyone to clear the workshop whereupon the workers would abandon their work in order to shelter behind the crates and shelving. Next, the inspector would rev. the engine up to 4 or 5,000 revs. per minute. The engine would make all sorts of noises and eventually, after much clanking, would stop; and with one loud, sharp, cracking noise, the adjustable valve holding the gearbox would hurtle at great speed from one end of the workshop to the other. This was the signal for the rest of the workers to emerge from their shelters, cheering all the while. The inspector in question would then have another point chalked up to his score on the wall. This competition continued for several months, and involved the explosion of more than 150 engines. Betting was all the rage. In another instance, it all began with two workmen who hosed each other down one hot day with the hoses employed by the test workshop. This developed into a running battle with hosed water for weapons and it persisted throughout the entire workshop for several days. Most of the engines were ignored or simply given a brusque seal of approval so that people would be free to engage in the water-fight. In many cases the engines were destroyed or damaged so that the men would quickly be rid of them. All in all some 10 to 15 water jets were engaged in the battle, each one with a pressure force comparable to that of a fireman's jet. Water jetted everywhere as then men laughed and shouted and ran in every direction. Given this atmosphere there were very few in any mood to get down to their work. Their workshop was regularly awash to ceiling level and all of the men were absolutely saturated. In no time at all, they were bringing in water pistols and garden hoses and pails and the escapades assumed the scale of one huge carnival during working hours. One fellow strolled around wearing his wife's shower cap, to the huge amusement of the rest of the plant's workers who were unaware of what was going on in the test workshop..." (from the pamphlet Lordstown 72 published by 4 millions de Jeunes Travailleurs, Paris, See Also Solidarity Pamphlet 45).
65. The problem of organization is an abstract one unless it answers the question: "who organized and why?" At best, those organization set up without the workers have resulted in practical impotence and, on most occasions, in the renewal of bureaucratic apparatus. Organization set up in the name of the workers have, at best, created the conditions for bureaucratization and, most times have become instruments of para-statist oppression. The only form of genuinely workers' and revolutionary organization is the assemblage of wildcat strikers evolving into an assembly for general self-management, as described earlier. This is ushered in, not by other, necessarily hybrid and separate organizations, but by the revolutionary action which requires only intervention groups coming together for a precise operation and dissolving once that specific activity no longer has need of their existence.
66. Ephemeral groups formed as necessary by and for the exploration of the effects of a specific action, will see to it that the autonomy of the individual is respected, obedience repudiated and all sacrifice excluded. The only discipline will be the discipline that will be adopted after discussion and regulated by the requirements of the undertaking and of protection against any chance of repression.
67. Every revolutionary is entitled to act alone, in commandos or in ephemeral groups, but he should take care lest he act separately i.e. lose sight of the tactical line which leads from acts of sabotage and adaptation to the wildcat strike, and from the wildcat strike to collective occupation and adaptation of factories. Our revolution is a total, indivisible revolution. This means, for instance, that sabotage is not confined to action against work, but is applicable to every facet of commodity, dispensing with authoritarian attitudes, taboos (such as incest and sexual repression, self-centered conduct, Jealousy, avarice) and the lies of representation, etc, in such a way that everywhere freedom is encouraged along with strengthening of passions, harmonization of desires and personal wishes.
68. Only self-defense groups, formed for the purpose of encompassing a specific action and dissolving once it has been encompassed and once the protection of all has been assured, can prepare the way in any coherent fashion for the emergence of conditions favorable to the establishment of assemblies of general self-management.
69. The workers who are against work, parties, unions, commodity, sacrifice and hierarchy will form circumstantial self-defense groups. The "factory hooligans" as they are known to the statist front (from fascists to Maoists) represent the basis of a movement in whose absence the "neighborhood hooligans" lapse into terrorism, and from which the assemblies of generalized self-management will necessarily emerge.
70. The finest way in which to ensure the safety of a group engaging in sabotage or adaptation activities is to unleash a collective upsurge of revolutionary enthusiasm in the breasts of the workers and the population generally. And the best anonymity is to enjoy the fellowship of as many people as possible.
71. The absence of hierarchically arrived-at decisions cuts down the risks of police manipulation and bureaucratic machination. Nonetheless, every ephemeral group with a brief has an interest in:
a) setting itself up among people who know its members well;
b) taking account of the capacities and weaknesses of each individual, and attuning them to the action;
c) anticipating the failure of their plan through treachery or inadequacy, and preparing a variety of possible ripostes, taking care to avert any widespread repression (e.g. by taking hostages and by giving consideration to the extermination of probable exterminators and their accomplices, etc.) and by learning the lessons from their failures and, in practical terms, by turning each and every defeat into a defeat for the statists.
72. As a general rule, subversive activities initiated by a guerrilla group against the ruling system, should fulfill at least these 4 conditions:
a) They should give free reign to individual creativity and autonomy whilst giving a sharper edge to the empathies and antagonisms between the participants.
b) They should examine probable forms of repression and the method by which a response can be made for the benefit of the greatest possible number.
c) The struggle should be carried into every single facet of everyday life, which is the true yardstick of the progress or shortcomings of a long revolution.
d) It should always have an eye to the real pleasures and quality of life for all the workers of a factory, or an entire district or for the entire proletariat.
73. The degree of success can be measured by the speed with which the progression is made from sabotage and individual adaptations to the wildcat strike and to collective adaptation — this being the only act that furthers the movement towards generalized self-management.
74. The basic unit of generalized self-management is not the individual but the revolutionary individual who acknowledges obedience only to a circumstantial commitment to a specific purpose and to his own pleasure as the universal guide, and who pays homage to no organizational fetishism.
75. One does not improvise an act of sabotage or adaptation, be it by individual or group. Instead, one prepares for it as if it were a harrying action. One has to calculate the opportune moment, the relative strength of factors engaged on both sides, the lay-out of the land, possible defections and mistakes and everything that might contribute towards their correction, as well as the possibilities of withdrawal and the risks involved therein. One ought also to link one's action to an overall strategy, the central concern of which ought at all times to be the construction of a system of generalized self-management.
76. It is a good idea to circulate plans and details of factories, telecommunications centers, etc., so that access plans, the methods by which these are to be sabotaged and details as to how they operate are made available to a number of people who can then bring their powers of ingenuity to bear upon these questions.
77. It is good if documents such as we have just described can be discussed and criticized and amended, though not in any abstract fashion. Only practice can bring any real criticism to bear upon the revolutionary plan.
78. Similarly, the best way to eliminate ideologies and their armies of bureaucrats, is to struggle with the greatest possible consistency and as much precision as can be mustered for the goal of generalized self-management. The moment that wildcat strikes open up the possibility of forming self-management assemblages with elected, mandated and revocable delegates, and the moment that the free distribution of goods becomes the system, the ideologies shall see criticism in arms line up against their statist and bureaucratic aspirations denounce once for all the lies behind which they are masked.
79. The theoretical axiom according to which "... the right to live life to the full can be achieved only through the utter destruction of the commodity-spectacle system" must now assume a consistency in practice stretching from the overall strategic conception to the tiniest details of the tactical struggle. This is why it is not without its uses that every individual should draft and circulate his recommendations in the game of subversion (for instance, it is possible to dislodge any enemy from his premises simply by tossing in — together — a bottle of bleaching water — say, sodium hypoclilorite — and a flagon of sink or toilet cleaner (sodium hydrate based), and, remember that one hour prior to an expected tear-gas attack, one should absorb anti-histamine tablets (rumicin), etc., etc.). And one would do well to mistrust the phony information supplied by the cops themselves.
80. The struggle for the utter destruction of commodity is indivisible from the day by day elaboration of a full life freed of taboo and constraints. Of necessity, every revolutionary aspiration depends upon the quest for personal amelioration and upon a calculated gamble pitting risk against pleasure (minimum risk, maximum pleasure).
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