The world will not be changed by millions of people voting for change, or demonstrating for change, because capitalist power is not constituted with reference to human feelings: political desires and demonstrations, which are the social forms consciousness takes, cannot touch capitalist domination but are merely determined by it. We have no place for consciousness in our scheme, we see no need for a generalised formulated desire for revolution. Revolution belongs to the mute body and its resistance to, and its giving out to, the imposition of work. What is needed in the revolutionary struggle is precedence given to the needs of the body (consumer culture is a contemporary echo of this). The slogans are not inspiring or romantic: more rest, more pay, less work, no deals on productivity. However, once this demand-regime is set in motion it cannot be side-tracked except by counterfeit political demands, or formulations of radical consciousness made by those who seek to lead it. Once the body tends toward rest, it cannot rid itself of that inclination unless it is roused again to work for some political vision. In short the struggle of industrial workers against capital will be conducted entirely in selfish terms, which in the end describes itself as the struggle against work in the interest of highly paid sleep. In the present nothing has significance but the desire to extend half-hour lunch breaks into hour lunch breaks.
For us the revolutionary function of the proletariat is very mechanical, and only a relatively small number of people will be significant in the mechanism. On the other hand we think it is important that other groups also act selfishly (the disabled for example, or local communities) and so drain energy from the authorities: these other social and political struggles are marginal and cannot finish the job (they cannot seize the means of production) but they are never-ending in that they are concerned with the articulation of needs which cannot be satisfied. However, we think the damage caused to capital by the anti-capitalists is outweighed by their falsification of their own role, that is their false representations of, and hopes for, consciousness and the political sphere in general and their neglect of production.
Incidentally, it may seem that our formulations of how a revolution could take place are rather dystopian, a-human; certainly it gives us little pleasure to slowly erase our previously held leftist tendencies. But at least our concepts are clear and lay down precise criteria. This cannot be said of most pro-revolutionaries, who get extremely vague when discussing how such-and-such of their gestures will engage with, let alone overthrow, present conditions. We would, perhaps, place more trust in pro-revolutionaries and thus in a human-based, participatory revolution, if it were not for the lamentable history of ideas-led revolutions. Pro-revolutionary practice is synonymous with rivalry, personal ambition, corruption, stupidity, and failure.
We view revolutionary and anti-capitalist movements not as mistaken forms of otherwise correct positions but as capitalist movements in themselves; revolutionary movements effect only the reorganisation of capitalism and as such, at the end of their acts, words, and breath, are pro-capitalist. To be a Leninist is to be as much a capitalist as a Keynesian, Trotsky was as capitalist as Ford; to be an Anti-capitalist is to be as much a capitalist as any other liberal reformer. There are different forms and interpretations but the theoretical maintenance of the working class as workers (whether for state owners or green collectives) and the emphasis on the re-organisation of production (whether in terms of nationalisation or with reference to the environment) means they are always within the capitalist frame of definition.