THE JOY OF THINKING... FOR YOURSELF

by Various Anonymous Authors

This essay was originally published in the United States in 1975 by The Spectacle under the title "Self-Theory: the pleasure of thinking for yourself." An extensively revised edition was published in London in 1985 by Spectacular Times under the title "Revolutionary self-help: a beginner's manual," and it has appeared twice since then in American periodicals under the title "Revolutionary Self-Theory"; in 1989 it was published in a slightly revised edition by OVO, and in 1992 in a further revised edition by No Longer Silent (NLS). This edition is an extensively rewritten and somewhat expanded version of the text which appeared in NLS.

Despite the changes in this edition, the central thesis of this essay remains unchanged: that all genuine revolutionary impulses and activities stem directly from the desires of individuals, not from any ideologically imposed sense of "duty" with its attendant guilt, self-sacrifice, and self-deadening "shoulds."

This text is not copyrighted. Please feel free to reproduce it.

1

Those who assume (often unconsciously) that it is impossible to achieve their life's desires -- and, thus, that it is futile to fight for themselves -- usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead. They may appear to engage in self-directed activity, but in reality they have accepted alienation from their desires as a way of life. All subjugations of personal desires to the dictates of a cause or ideology are reactionary no matter how "revolutionary" the actions arising from such subjugations may appear.

Yet, one of the great secrets of our miserable, yet potentially marvelous time, is that thinking can be a pleasure. Despite the suffocating effect of the dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think for themselves; and by doing so -- by actively, critically thinking for themselves, rather than by passively accepting pre-digested opinions -- they reclaim their minds as their own.

This is a manual for those who wish to think for themselves, a manual for creation of a personally (rather than ideologically) constructed body of critical thought for your own use, a body of thought which will help you to understand why your life is the way it is and why the world is the way it is. More importantly, as you construct your own theory, you will also develop a practice: a method to connect with others having similar thoughts and thus get what you want for your own life. Any theory, then, must be either practical -- a guide to action -- or it will be nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. Ideas divorced from action is the eternal waiting room of unrealized desires. Forming your own practical theory, what could be called "self-theory," is intimately connected to achieving the realization of your desires.

Therefore, constructing your self-theory is a revolutionary pleasure. It is both a destructive and constructive pleasure, because you are creating a practical theory -- one tied to action -- for the destruction and reconstruction of this society. It is a theory of adventure, because it is based on what you want from life and on devising the means necessary to achieve it. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.

2

Any system of ideas with an abstraction at its center -- an abstraction which assigns you a role or duties -- is an ideology. An ideology provides those who accept it with a false consciousness, a necessary component of which is other-directedness. This leads those who accept the ideology to behave as "objects" rather than "subjects," to allow themselves to be used rather than to act to attain their own desires. The various ideologies are all structured around different abstractions, yet all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring dominant) class by giving individuals (though the term hardly seems appropriate -- "members of the herd" is perhaps more accurate) a sense of purpose in sacrifice, suffering, and submission.

Religious ideology is the oldest example: the fantastic projection called "God" is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as "His" object.

In the "scientific" and "democratic" ideologies of "free enterprise," capital investment is the "productive" subject directing world history -- the "invisible hand" guiding human development. In order to prosper, the early capitalists had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. They exposed the mystification of the religious world and replaced it with the mystification of technology and commodity capitalism, wherein Profit becomes the Supreme Subject of the cosmos.

All of these ideologies differ in the specific sacrifices they demand of you, the object, but all are structured in the same way. All demand an inversion of subject and object; things, abstractions, take on the human attributes of power and will, while human beings become things, tools to be used in the service of these abstractions (e.g., God, free markets, democracy, etc., etc.).

Ideology is upside down self-theory. It fosters acceptance of the separation of our narrow, daily lives from a world that appears totally beyond our control. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the life of the world.

All abstraction-based ideologies demand duty and sacrifice for the cause; and every such ideology serves to protect the dominant social order. Authorities whose power depends upon docility must deny us our subjectivity, our conscious will to act for our own desires. Such denial comes in the form of demands for sacrifices for "the common good," "the national interest," "the war effort," or "the revolution," to name a few.

3

We rid ourselves of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking ourselves: How do I feel? How's my life? What do I want? Am I getting what I want? If not, why not? This is being conscious of the commonplace, being aware of your everyday routine. That real life exists -- life in which you are active, a subject acting to achieve your desires -- is a public secret that becomes less secret every day, as the breakdown of daily life constructed around abstraction-based ideologies becomes more and more obvious.

4

The creation of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself, on being fully conscious of your desires and of their validity. Authentic "consciousness raising" can only be the "raising" of people's thinking to the level of positive (non-guilty) self-consciousness.

Conversely, what many leftists, therapy mongers, racism awareness trainers, and sisterizers term "consciousness raising" is the practice of beating people into unconsciousness with guilt-inducing, ideological billyclubs. Such people pass from self-negation to self-affirmation through point zero: nihilism. This is the windswept still point in social space and time, the social limbo in which one recognizes that there is no real life in one's daily existence.

Nihilists knows the difference between surviving and living. They reverse their perspectives on their lives and the world. Nothing is true for them but their desires, their will to be. They reject all ideology in their hatred for the miserable social relations in modern society.

From this reversed perspective the nihilist clearly sees the upside-down world of commodity capitalism in which subject and object are inverted, and people and abstract concepts are converted into things, commodities to be sold. Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which destroys them. They cannot go on living as they are. Soon, most realize that they must devise a coherent set of tactics in order to transform the world.

But if a nihilist does not recognize the possibility for the transformation of the world, his or her subjective rage will ossify into a role: the suicide, the solitary murderer, the street hoodlum-vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional mental patient... all seeking compensation for a life of dead time.

The nihilist's mistake is that s/he does not realize that there are other nihilists with whom s/he can work. Consequently, s/he assumes that participation in a collective project of self-realization is impossible.

5

This project of collective self-realization, the changing of life itself through the transformation of social relations, can properly be termed "politics." Politics, however, also signifies a mystified, separate category of human activity, an isolated interest with its own specialists -- politicians, political consultants, etc.

It is possible to be interested (or not) in this type of politics just as it is possible to be interested (or not) in football, stamp collecting, music, or fashion. What people see as "politics" today is the social falsification of the project of collective self-realization; it has become a spectacle and a parody. And that suits those in power just fine.

Authentic collective self-realization is the revolutionary project. It is the collective transformation of social relations and the natural world according to the desires of all participants.

Similarly, "therapy" at present usually refers to attempts to "help" individuals "adjust" to their restrictive social roles and to the banality of daily life. Authentic therapy involves changing one's own life by changing the nature of social life.

For example, in present day society we are expected to repress our real feelings and play a role. This is called "playing a part in society" (how revealing that phrase is). Individuals put on "character armor" --a steel-like suit comprised of role playing, posing, and concealing one's desires as a defense against other individuals. Transforming social relations and surpassing the role-playing game requires the conscious decision of individuals to shed these roles and truly communicate with each other.

6

To think actively and critically, is to make your life -- as it is now, and as you want it to be -- the center of your thinking. This positive self-centering is accomplished by a continuous assault on externals, on the false issues ("support our troops"), false conflicts (e.g., those arising from notions of racial "superiority"), false identities ("American," "patriot," "Catholic," "white Christian"), and false dichotomies ("economic survival" versus "a clean environment") which permeate social life.

People are kept from analyzing the basic nature, the totality, of everyday life by the media's focus -- including "consumer" surveys and public opinion polls -- on the spectacular trifles, the phony controversies, and the ridiculous scandals. Are you for or against trade unions, cruise missiles, identity cards? What's your opinion of soft drugs, jogging, UFOs, progressive taxation, Michael Jackson's latest nose job, the royal family's sexual relations?

These are diversions, false issues. The only issue for us is how we live. There's an old Jewish saying, "If you have only two alternatives, then choose the third." It impels people to search for new perspectives. We can see the artificiality of false dichotomies by searching for that "third choice."

Being conscious that there is a third choice allows us to refuse to choose between two supposedly opposite, but equally repulsive, possibilities which are presented to us as the only possible choices. In its simplest form, this "third choice" consciousness is expressed by the person brought to trial for armed robbery and, when asked, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" replies "I'm hungry and unemployed."

A more theoretical, but equally classic, illustration of this consciousness is the refusal to choose between the corporate-capitalist ruling classes of the West and the state-capitalist ruling classes of what's left of the Communist bloc. All we need to do is to look at the basic social relations of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and China, North Korea, and Cuba on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there, as here, the vast majority work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up control over their life's work, control over both what they produce and how they produce it. And, of course, what they produce in both East and West is then sold back to them as commodities.

In the West, the surplus value, or the value produced over and above the value of the workers' wages, is the property of the corporate management and stockholders, who keep up a pretence of domestic competition. In the East, the surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit domestic competition. Big difference.

Like the false issues and false conflicts cited above, false questions are used to distract us from living in the present, from seeing the totality of existence. One example is the stupid conversational question, "What's your philosophy of life?" It poses an abstract concept of "life" that has nothing to do with real life because it ignores the fact that "living" is exactly what we are doing at the present moment, and our "philosophy of life" is clearly revealed by our actions.

False identities are perhaps an even more potent form of mystification. In the absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phony social identities -- they contemplate and attempt to emulate a huge variety of roles presented to them in school, church, and, especially, the "entertainment" media. These social identities can be ethnic ("Italian- American"), residential ("New Yorker"), nationalistic ("patriot"), sexual ("gay"), cultural ("Giants fan"), and so on; but all are rooted in a common desire for affiliation, for belonging.

Obviously being "black" is a much more real identification than being a "Giants fan," but beyond a certain point, such an identification only serves to mask one's real position in society; and in order to recognize that real position, you have to reject the false identities, false conflicts, and false dichotomies, and begin with yourself as the center. From there you can examine the material basis of your life, stripped of mystification.

An example: Suppose that you want a cup of coffee from the vending machine at work. First, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantation and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have the workers who made the different parts of the vending machine and the ones who assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite, smelted the steel, and work for the electric utility which supplies power to the machine. Then all the workers who transported the coffee, cups, and machine. Then the clerks, typists, and communication workers who coordinated the production and transportation. Finally, you have all the workers who produced all the other things necessary for the other ones to survive.

That gives your cup of coffee a direct material relationship to several million people -- in fact, to the immense majority of the world's population. They produce your life, and you help to produce theirs. In this light, all artificial group identities and special group interests fade into insignificance.

Now see that the frustration you feel at the lack of enrichment of your life is mirrored in the frustrated creativity of these millions of workers, all -- like you -- held back by obsolete and exhausting methods of production, strangled by lack of control over their own productivity, warped by the insane rationale of capital-accumulation which pits one against all and makes life a mad scramble for economic survival. Here we begin to discover a real social identity -- people all over the world are fighting to win control over their own lives.

Those who have a vested interest in the political and economic status quo continually present us with false choices, that is, with choices which preserve their power ("Vote Democratic!/Vote Republican! -- But Vote!"). We are constantly being asked to choose sides in false conflicts. Governments, corporations, political parties, and propagandists of all kinds constantly present us with "choices" that are no choice at all.

We are given the illusion of choice, but as long as those in power control what our "choices" will be ("choices" which we perceive as the only alternatives available to us), they will also control the outcome of our "decisions."

Moralists love to tell those of us in the rich West how we will "have to make sacrifices," how we "exploit the starving children of the Third World." Charities then cash in on the resulting guilt. Yes, by living in the rich, wasteful West we do exploit the poor of the Third World -- but not personally, not deliberately. We can make some changes in our lives, boycott, make sacrifices, but the effects are marginal.

Those in power use similar falsifications to divert and disempower us. By spreading myths like, "If we shared it all there wouldn't be enough to go around," they attempt to deny the existence of any real choices and to hide from us the fact that the material preconditions for social revolution already exist.

We become aware of the false conflict with which we've been presented when we realize that under the global socio-economic system we, as individuals, are locked into our roles as "exploiters" just as others are locked into their global roles as the exploited. We have a role, but little power to change it -- at least individually. Tinkering with the system, or offering token sacrifices, or calling for "a little less selfishness," simply won't do. Therefore, we reject the false choice of "sacrifice or selfishness" by calling for the destruction of the global social system whose existence forces that decision upon us.

7

Our journey toward authentic power must avoid the twin quagmires of absolutism and cynicism.

Absolutism is the total acceptance or rejection of all components of particular ideologies, or indeed, of any set of ideas or concepts. An absolutist cannot see any choice other than complete acceptance or complete rejection; s/he sees things purely as good or bad, black or white. The absolutist wanders along the shelves of the ideological supermarket looking for the ideal commodity, and then buys it lock, stock and barrel.

But the ideological supermarket -- like any supermarket -- is fit only for looting. It is of more practical use to us to move along the shelves, rip open the packets, take out what looks authentic and useful, and dump the rest.

Cynicism is a reaction to a world dominated by ideology and "morality." Faced with conflicting ideologies, the cynic says, "A plague on both your houses." The cynic is as much a consumer as the absolutist, but one who has given up hope of finding the ideal commodity.

8

The process of constructive thinking is a process of continually adding to and modifying one's current body of self-theory as well as resolving contradictions between one's new thoughts and perceptions and one's previous beliefs. The resulting synthesis is thus more than the sum of its parts. This "synthesis" method of constructing a theory is counter to the eclectic method in which one collects a rag bag of favorite bits from favorite ideologies without ever confronting the resulting contradictions.

If we are continually conscious of how we want to live, we can critically appropriate from anything: ideologies, culture critics, technoratic experts, sociological studies, and mystics. All can be scavenged for useful material by those who want to reconstruct it.

9

The nature of modern society, unified globally through its capitalist economic system, makes necessary a self-theory which rejects all areas in which socio-economic domination exists (i.e., both the corporate capitalism of the "free" world and the state capitalism of the "communist" world) as well as all forms of alienation (sexuality, poverty, enforced participation in the "rat race," etc.). Instead, we need a philosophy of daily existence from the perspective of our needs and desires.

Opposed to this project are all the politicians and bureaucrats, preachers and gurus, city planners and policemen, reformers and leninists, central committees and censors, corporate managers and union honchos, male supremacists and feminist ideologues, landlords and eco-capitalists who work to subordinate individual desires to that hideous abstraction, "the common good," of which they are the supposed guardians. They are all forces of the old world-bosses, priests, and other creeps who have something to lose if people extend the game of seizing back their minds into seizing back their lives.

10

By now it should be obvious that self-demystification and the creation of our own revolutionary theory do not eradicate our alienation; "the world," with its capitalist economic relations permeating every aspect of life, goes on and is reproduced every day with the acquiescence and assistance of billions of people.

Although this text has the creation of self-theory as its focus, we do not mean to imply that revolutionary theory can exist separately from revolutionary practice. In order to be consequential, to effectively reconstruct the world, practice must be based in theory, and theory must be realized in practice.

The revolutionary project of ending alienation and transforming social relations requires that one's theory be nothing other than a theory of practice, realized in what we do and how we live. Otherwise theory will degenerate into an impotent contemplation of the world, and ultimately into a survival mechanism -- an intellectual armor that acts as a buffer between the daily world and oneself. And if revolutionary practice is not the practice of revolutionary theory, it degenerates into, at best, altruistic militantism -- "revolutionary" activity as one's social duty or role. At worst, it degenerates into pure gangsterism.

We don't strive for a coherent theory purely as an end in itself. For us, the value of coherency is that it makes it easier to think critically and effectively. For example, it's easier to understand future developments in social control if you have a coherent understanding of present-day social control ideologies and techniques.

Having such a coherent understanding makes it easier to put into practice your strategy for realizing your desires.

11

In the process of constructing self-theory, the last theory that must be dealt with (one hesitates to call it an "ideology," as it is not based in abstractions with their accompanying "shoulds" and "duties") is the one that has the most resemblance to revolutionary self-theory: situationism.

The Situationist International (1958-1971) was an organization of theoretically oriented, ultra-left, European (especially French) marxists. Many believe, as did the original author(s) of this essay, that the situationists made an immense contribution to revolutionary theory. This contribution is generally ignored or derided, for two reasons.

First, virtually all of the key insights attributed to situationist writers can be found in the works of earlier anarchists, social democrats, and philosphers such as Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Wilhelm Reich and Friedrich Nietzsche, though the insights in question were scattered and often were not developed with the rigor found in the better situationist texts.

A secondary reason for the underestimation of the importance of the situationists is that situationism is a French ideology utilizing an arcane marxist-derived jargon ('poverty of...,' 'society of the spectacle,' 'reification,' 'dialectical,' etc.). Virtually all situationist texts are written in a very difficult to follow, jargon-ridden, muddy style -- which makes them inaccessible to most people. As a result, situationism has a great deal of snob appeal for those with intellectual pretensions.

Thus it's not surprising that poseurs, 1atched as they are to their "situationist" roles and "intellectual" pretensions, often regard potential allies as "bourgeois." It follows, then, that in political controversies they often resort to distortions, fabrications, and ad hominem attacks upon those who have the temerity to criticize their ideas.

At its best, situationist theory offered a critique of "spectacular" society, that is, society in which people are reduced to the level of passive observers and consumers rather than active participants. It made an extensive critique of how both ideology and commodification turn people into passive, alienated observers of their own lives. But perhaps the most critical weakness of situationism is that it offers no coherent method for "getting from here to there," that is, from "the society of the spectacle" to the free society.

Thus, situationist theory is a body of critical thought which can be incorporated into one's own self-theory. Anything more -- the unquestioning acceptance of situationist theories and the identification of oneself with those theories -- is the ideological misappropriation known as situationism. And included in the ideology is the spectacular role of being a "situationist," that is, a radical jade and ardent esoteric.

12

Real self-management is the direct management (without any separate leadership) of social production, distribution, and communication by workers and their communities.

Attempts at self-management have appeared again and again all over the world in the course of social revolution: Russia in 1905 and 1917-1921; Spain in 1936-1939; Hungary in 1956; Algeria in 1960; Chile in 1972; and Portugal in 1975. The form of organization most often created in the practice of self-management has been workers' councils: sovereign assemblies of producers and neighbors that elect delegates to coordinate their activities.

These earlier attempts at self-management sought to destroy all coercive authority as well as the commodity (i.e., capitalist) economy. Given the destruction of coercive authority and adequate advance preparation (i.e., demystification), it would seem to be absurd not to expect an explosion of creativity in all areas of life -- art, music, writing, architecture, family relations, sexual relations, community structure, etc.

That is not what happened. Instead, they developed tunnel vision: they became so obsessed with labor struggles and self-managed economic schemes that they not only failed to analyze non-workplace-related forms of domination and mystification, but they often acted as if such problems did not even exist.

The second danger is related to the first: they sometimes forget that the organizations they created were just a means to an end. They developed a bad case of organizational fetishism, or "organizationitis" -- an intellectual hallucination in which means and ends are reversed, in which the organization is perceived as an end unto itself, as being more important than the goal -- a free society. Sadly, in some cases that goal seemed to be entirely forgotten. And, even more sadly, "organizationitis" lead to an even worse disease, bureaucratization.

For real self-management to succeed, we must produce a self-managed society in which other-than-economic forms of domination and mystification cannot still exert their baleful influences -- for example, a worker-controlled economic system which coexists with religious mystification, homophobia, and sexism. Fortunately, humor is a great antidote to such societal controls.

In addition, we must never create a self-managed organization which perpetuates or manages itself. A high degree of personal awareness among participants can reduce the dangers of organizationitis and bureaucratization. As well, there are many procedural devices which are very effective at reducing such problems; these include decentralization, mandatory rotation of offices, term limitations, strict delimitation of responsibilities, and immediate recallability.

With such safeguards, participation in common projects of self-liberation is more than feasible -- it's desirable.

Conclusion

The world can only be turned right side up by the conscious collective activity of those who construct a theory of why it is upside down. Spontaneous rebellion alone is not sufficient. Without adequate advance preparation, the old way of looking at the world simply reappears after any rebellion, embedded as it is in the psyches of the fabled "people." An authentic revolution can only occur if there is a coherent and practical mass movement of self-conscious individuals in which all of the false realities are consciously demysitifed, exposed and expunged.

THE END

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