Against Domestication

This is a translation of "Contre la Domestication" by Jacques Camatte which was published in the French journal Invariance (Annee VI, Serie II no. 3, 1973). It was translated by David Loneragan and first published by Falling Sky Books, Kitchener, Canada in 1981. It was reprinted by Autonomedia collection Against Domestication in 1995. The time we are now living through is without doubt the most critical period capitalist society has ever known. All the features which we associate wit the classic crisis now exist as a permanent state of affairs, though production itself has not been affected, except to a limited extent in certain countries. Social relations and traditional consciousness are decomposing all around us, while at the same time each institution in society proceeds to ensure its survival by recuperating the movement which opposes it. (An obvious example here is the catholic church, which has lost count of all the "modernizations" it has embraced). One would think that the violence and torture which is now endemic everywhere would have people mobilized and up in arms against it, but instead it continues to flourish on a world scale. Indeed, the situation today makes the "barbarism" of the Nazis seem in comparison rather unprofessional, quite archaic in fact. All the conditions would seem to be ripe; there should be revolution. Why then is there such restraint? What is to stop people from transforming all these crises and disasters, which are themselves the result of the latest mutation of capital, into a catastrophe for capital itself?