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On the anniversary of the Haitian Revolution, I am reminded of how reflecting on an uprising of the enslaved forms a crucial part of my politics, which is proletarian self-abolition. When I talk of prole self-abolition, talking about the self-abolition of the enslaved is an important metaphor.

When the enslaved abolishes their own enslavement, we mean the abolition of slavery. The emancipated does not institute slavery in new forms; we cannot talk of the “slavery by and for the enslaved.” In just the same way, the “proletarian state” is incoherence because the state forms part of proletarianization. To speak of a “proletarian state” is as if to speak of a “prole-administered proletarianization” or perhaps a “proletarianization by and for the proletariat,” a notion as incoherent as the “slavery by and for the enslaved.”

The prole, just like the enslaved, cannot institute the means of their oppression (proletarianization, enslavement) over their own class as a means of emancipating their class.

Just as the emancipation of the enslaved means the smashing of the edifice of slavery, the emancipation of the working class means the proletariat abolishing proletarianization, not its reconstitution in new form “by and for” the proletariat. It means the self-abolition of the proletariat, a self-emancipation by a revolutionary process.

As one French ultraleft group said it best, the revolution would be proletarian by those who make it and anti-proletarian in its content. Proletarian revolution is simultaneously anti-proletarian revolution.

#anarchism
#communism @communism #communization #communisation

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