REVOLUTION
AS A GAME
(The
last chapter of the essay “The Revolution of Modern Art-The Modern Art of
Revolution” written by T.C,C.G,C.R,and
The
new revolutionary movement can be no more than the organisation of popular
revolt into its most coherent,its richest,form.And there is no organisation to
date which would not completely betray it.All previous political critiques of
the repressive hierarchy engendered by the past revolutionary argument-that of
Solidarity,for example-have completely missed the point:they were not focussed
on precisely what it was that this hierarchy repressed and perverted in the form
of passive militancy.In the context of radical “ethics” still bogged down in
singularly distasteful forms of sub-Christian masochism,the ludic aspects of the
revolution cannot be over-emphasised.Revolution is essentially a game and one
plays it for the pleasure involved.Its dynamic is a subjective fury to live,not
altruism.It is totally opposed to any form of self-sacrificial surbordination of
oneself to a cause-to Progress,to the Proletariat,to Other People.Any such
attitude is diametrically opposed to the revolutionary appreciation of
reality:it is no more than an ideological extension of religion for the use of
the “revolutionary” leaderships in justifying their own power and in
repressing every sign of popular creativity.
The
game is the destruction of the sacred-whether it be the sanctity of Jesus or the
sanctity of the electric mixer and the Wonder-loaf.Tragedy,said Lukacs,is a game
played in the sight of godlessness.The true form of godlessness will be the
final achievement of revolution-the end of the illusory and all its forms,the
beginning of real life and its direct self-consciousness.
The
revolutionary movement must be a game as much as the society it prefigures.Ends
and means cannot be disassociated.We are concerned first and foremost with the
construction of our own lives.Today this can only mean the total destruction of
power.Thus,the crucial revolutionary problem is the creation of a praxis in
which self-expression and social disruption are one and the same thing:of
creating a style of self-realisation which can only spell the destruction of
everything which blocks total realisation.From another point of view,this is the
problem of creating the coherent social form of what is initially and remains
essentially an individual and subjective revolt.Only Marx’s original
project,the creation of the total man,of an individual reappropriating the
entire experience of the species,can supersede the individual-v-society dualism
by which hierarchical power holds itself together while it holds us apart.If it
fails in this,then the new revolutionary movement will merely build an even more
labyrinthine illusory community;or,alternatively,it will shatter into an
isolated and ultimately self-destructive search for kicks.If it succeeds,then it
will permeate society as a game that everyone can play.There is nothing left
today that can withstand a coherent opposition once it established itself as
such.Life and revolution will be invented together or not at all.
All
the real creativity of the time will grow from this movement and it is in this
perspective that our own experiments will be made and should be understood.The
end of this process will not merely be the long overdue end of this
mad,disintegrating civilisation.It will be the end of prehistory itself.Man
stands on the verge of the greatest breakthrough ever made in the human
appropriation of nature.Man is the world of man and a new civilisation can only
be based on man’s free and experimental creation of his own world and his own
creation.This creation will no longer accept any internal division or
separation.life will be the creation of life itself.The total will be confronted
only with his ever-increasing appropriation of nature,of his own nature,finally
elaborated,in all its beauty and terror,as our “worthy opponent” in a ludic
conflict where everything is possible.