Monsieur Dupont

Monsieur Dupont is the pen name of two 21st century libertarian communists in Britain. (It is also the name of a men's clothing store in Mississauga Ontario and a song from the late 1960s, sung by Sandie Shaw.)

History and Ideas

For some time one of them had been a member of the British Anarchist Federation, the Manchester-based communist group Subversion and the rank and file organisation the Communication Workers Group. They had both been employed by Royal Mail as postmen and from this experience they developed a common understanding of class struggle through a six year long correspondence. One of them now writes as frére dupont.

Their writing is informed by anarchist, situationist and Marxist politics, and they are declaredly anti-leninist and anti-organisational. They link their ideas on economic determination of social form to two theoretical precedents, the communists Paul Mattick and Sam Moss.

The situation at present, they argued, is characterised by the failure of propaganda and recruiting organisations to either convey ideas outside of the milieu or recruit a mass membership, and that even at the most basic level revolutionary consciousness has not addressed this circumstance. The motivation for their intervention was to strike against 'milieu patriotism', and the 'reduced political language' of political activists. They had become increasingly frustrated with the failures of leftist organisations, which they perceived as unconsciously promoting bourgeois structures and ideologies. By contrast they wished to re-connect ideas to lived experience of capitalist conditions, thereby breaking the hold of 'specialists' of revolutionary theory particularly where these experiences contradicted received organisational responses. Their intervention coincided with a growing discontent within the anarchist milieu at the role of 'activists' and their writing continues to have a small influence within what has become known as the anti-politics milieu.

The duo discuss the origin of their adopted name in the text "Why Did You Join The Anarchist Federation For The Second Time?" The name Monsieur Dupont can be seen as a conscious development from a long tradition of collective pseudonyms (or the multiple-use name) which became a particularly popular motif during the ‘90’s, e.g. Luther Blissett, within the Stewart Home influenced section of the London and Italian avant garde, see the entries on Unpopular Books and London Psychogeographical Association. It may be noted that in French Dupont (literally 'of the bridge') is roughly the equivalent of Smith in Britain or Doe in the US - in so far it is recognised as an archetypal 'ordinary' name.

Their writings are controversial. They describe themselves incoherent and cynical, [ [http://www.libcom.org/library/impotence-councilism-dupont The Impotence of Councilism] ] understanding that this is a 'natural' response to the world. They rely heavily on logical fallacies in order to make their arguments. [The text [http://libcom.org/node/1751 The Real Movement] is a good example of this]

'To say, as we do, do nothing ... This is not to say do nothing.'

"Nihilist Communism"

This is the title of a book which they self-published in 2003. [Monsieur Dupont (2003) "Nihilist Communism: A critique of optimism - the religious dogma that states there will be an ultimate triumph of good over evil - in the far left". Self-published.] The book is subtitled 'a critique of optimism - the religious dogma that there will be an ultimate triumph of good over evil - in the far left'. The book argues against the conception of 'consciousness raising' and recruiting as practiced by the far left, whereby it is implicitly assumed that the social revolution may be brought about by enough persons spreading communist ideas effectively enough. They also argue regularly against class consciousness and even consciousness as a factor in revolution. To this, they counterpose a model of revolution based on a crisis of capitalism which will necessitate the appropriation of entire key industries by the "essential" proletariat - a class which they believe should be defined solely by the economic position of its members. They write (in a manner somewhat typical of their style):

'We do not know what anyone means when they describe the proletariat as a social category. If they are implying that the working class as a social body have something between themselves other than their experience of work then we utterly reject this. MD [i.e. Monsieur Dupont] have a penchant for Champagne and Tarkovsky movies whereas our neighbours prefer White Lightening [sic.] and WWF wresting, our economic position, however, is identical.' [ibid. 43.]

'The Proletariat will not be motivated by political values in its resistance to work but by its selfish interest to assert its species being; its bodily desire to be human floods across the barriers of separation. There is nothing nice or noble or heroic about the working class, it is essential to the productive process which constitutes the structure of our reality and therefore essential to revolution and the abolition of reality based on production.' [ibid. 44.]

In August 2008, Pygmalion Books published as a standalone work (in both digital and paperback form) a partial section of "Nihilist Communism" entitled "Cruelty or the Inclusion of the Distributive Sphere." [ [http://salondeverluisant.org/texts/nihilistcommunism.html Cruelty or the Inclusion of the Distributive Sphere] ] Their edition represents the final 40 pages of the book, the remainder of the which does not exist on the internet.

Criticism

Some leftists oppose the sentiments of the first paragraph above on the grounds that it is based on the logical fallacy of the straw man, ie the idea that the proletariat is defined by its consumption habits which is not generally held by the people they oppose. However, MD's argument is not about consumption habits at all, it is a meditation on Otto Rühle's assertion that 'Only in the factory is the worker of today a real proletarian, and as such a revolutionary within the meaning of the proletarian-socialist revolution. Outside the factory he is a petty-bourgeois, involved in a petty-bourgeois milieu and middle-class habits of life, dominated by petty-bourgeois ideology.' The second paragraph uses a definition of the proletariat which would exclude housewives, prisoners and the unemployed, while including some small businessmen, farmers and entrepreneurs because it assumes that only those most integrated into capitalist production are capable of halting it. It is thus in line with their qualified support for the UK fuel protests.

Monsieur Dupont also defined the concept of ‘pro-revolutionary’ as a means for rationalising the mutually alienated relation that exists between communist milieu and the working class. This concept describes a predicament in which those who have communist consciousness have no capacity to cause revolutionary events whilst those who have revolutionary capacity, the essential proletariat, do not have revolutionary consciousness. Whilst communists eagerly recognise proletarian resistance to capital, and discover their own ambitions in the alleged real movement, proletarians do not reciprocate, perceiving communist consciousness to be at best superfluous and at worst inhibitive to the realisation of their subjective self-interest.

In description of this predicament, Monsieur Dupont argued that those who possess consciousness under present conditions can no longer call themselves ‘revolutionaries’ unless they wish to substitute their subjectivity for the revolutionary class, and by definition thereby instigate a representational relation between themselves and the proletariat, thus falling back onto bourgeois political conventions (substitutionism). Monsieur Dupont pointed out that the only authentic response to this double bind was the willing adoption, by those with consciousness, of the self-descriptive term ‘pro-revolutionary’ which implies acceptance of the revolutionary role of the proletariat alongside the critical awareness of the detrimental effect ‘consciousness’ has upon proletarian action and organisation.

Monsieur Dupont stated that, under present conditions, one of the consequences of the alienation of the "pro-rev milieu" from the working class is the impossibility of transmitting consciousness, in other words, the milieu circulates its ideas only within the milieu. Ordinarily, ideas have no value except to those who value ideas, but this circumstance is transformed when material conditions are forced into crisis. It is only when the economic determination of ideas is broken at the productive base, that is when production has been halted, that consciousness ceases to merely reflect conditions and instead begins to describe possible routes out of the crisis. The movement from economic crisis (see crisis theory) to communist reformulation in response to crisis is Monsieur Dupont's understanding of the dynamic of social revolution.

References

External links

* [http://libcom.org/tags/monsieur-dupont An archive of some of Monsieur Dupont's writing]
* [http://www.lettersjournal.org/ A journal containing writing by frére dupont]
* [http://ardentpress.org/speciesbeing.html Species Being and Other Stories (a book by frére dupont)]
* [http://libcom.org/library/petrol-blockades-britain The Dynamics of Protests as Seen in the Recent Petrol Blockades in Britain (a pre-Monsieur Dupont text)]
* [http://libcom.org/library/communication-workers-group-rank-file-critique-subversion DAM rank and filists! The Communication Workers Group (a pre-Monsieur Dupont text)]