France – From Nuit Debout to Global Revolution Debout

Italian and french version

RevolutionDeboutis founded on the initiative of individuals who participate in the work of NuitDebout. It is open to contributions from anyone who needs to tune to the ongoing transition towards a new society, as opposed to the present one.

RevolutionDebout is composed of individuals that come from different experiences and it would be impossible to organise on the basis of general principles or statutory rules. Our working basis is the finding that the revolution is already under way and that it is not thanks to individuals of good will, to activist groups, or classes, but as a result of the clash between two opposing social systems: the dying Capitalism, and the new potentially existing society. It is this clash that moves individuals groups and classes, not the opposite.

Social conflict begins to affect directly the life of old capitalism metropolis, remained so far subdued ideologically, as well as materially. This system of corruption of the masses has now finished its course, the enormous social wealth produced is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and increasingly large masses of men are faced with the choice (ah bourgeois freedom!) to pay the rent or eat. If convergence of struggles (convergence des luttes) has a real meaning, it is for maximum targets, because minimum targets, crumbs, they are no longer there.

In this dynamics half-classes are projected down, taking with them the ideological dross of their past life. They talk revolution ideologically and morally. Part of our work is therefore dedicated to the language, to the criticism of its degeneration due to decades of ideology dealing.

To define the NuitDebout’s general mode of operation we prefer to resort to such a paraphrase as “taking direct decision” instead of the ambiguous term of democracy declined as: real, direct, total etc.
This mode is based on the direct organisation of participants in the fight. The form in which it moves this operation is cumbersome for the moment but we know that is not the form, more or less perfect, that our victory will emerge, but by the power that the revolutionary movement will succeed in expressing globally. The form can only result from the level of organization already present in society (e.g. in production). The very high level of technical organization of Nuit Debout (unlike its language level) is the proof.

Democracy and fascism are two forms of the capitalist State, their opposition is false: none of the two forms has never questioned its structural foundations: private property, wage labor … So the rejection of capitalism overlook its State form : democratic (oldest) or fascist (more modern). This is why we are sworn enemies of any form of politicking including that “for your sake”, another means to feed the habit of letting us fools as spectators of other people’s decisions. We do not need to ape the corridors of Parliament. We are convinced that the problem is not to build a new society through conspiracies or wily political maneuvering. To free the new society is enough the instinctive hatred of the social relations that we live anywhere outside in the workplace, at school and often even within place de la Republique. We do not need to reproduce the fetid bourgeois hierarchies and the formation of new clan power, even “for a good purpose.” On the horizon the global revolution, in this rejection of bourgeois categories and experiment with new forms of social relations, where competition, power games, selfishness have no place.

Those who believe that real change can be supported by the ‘parliamentary work” end to move the energy of the movement toward electoral ends, then towards the conservation itself. At first they move into the realm of utopia, because it is utopistic to think to turn back the wheel of history.Then they move safer towards the establishment of another clan: Podemos, Siryza, M5S are evidence. They end up becoming exactly what they say they are fighting and accept orders – alas! “for our sake”! – directly from the international markets.

NuitDebout was born and grew up in a contradictory reality, drowned in a counter-revolution that has lasted for nearly 150 years, that is since the bloody suppression of the Communards by the French State, bourgeois State par excellence. It is in that State that somebody whines about lost rights, granted in times of social peace but impossible in times of crisis. State agents seem to know it perfectly and require no extra frills to settle preventive measure of state of emergency against future mass social struggles.
Here it is the only possible form of the capitalist structure, from now until his violent death: it is fascism. We see it in the streets of Paris and thousand other cities in the world.