This World We Must Leave, and other essays

Challenging post-Marxist essays translated and reprinted from Jacques Camatte's journal Invariance. Camatte's writing emerges from the spirit of Paris 68, but from a less familiar perspective. Neither a Parisian post-structuralist nor a situationist, Camatte comes from an ultraleft Franco-Italian communist background, and takes Marx in a more ecological, anarchistic direction.

Camatte believes that capital had succeeded in integrating the working class into the system, and "domesticating" all of humanity. Capital has become independent of humans, including the capitalists themselves, and has created a "material community" in its own image. Since pretty much everything is under the domination of capital, all of society must be overturned, not just the ownership of the means of production. Camatte longs for a return to pre-capitalist forms of authentic community. He has a soft spot for religion, which he believes has retained a memory of a community long lost. He also attacks technology, modern science, overpopulation and the destruction of the environment.

But how should the new state of affairs be brought about? This is less clear. In some texts, Camatte talks about a general revolution of humanity against capital. He looks upon the Green movement, feminists, organic farming, hippies and marginals as new revolutionary forces. However, in one text (not included in this volume), titled "The last train has left the station", he claims that nothing (!) can be done. Perhaps he was just being sarcastic, but there is a certain logic in his position, pointing in a pessimistic direction. What if the slaves of capital doesn't want to rebel? What then? Leave this world, or what?

The present collection also includes Camatte's text on organization, in which he rejects all traditional organizations as inherently capitalist, including those of the workers' movement and the traditional left. (from review by Ashtar Command)