The collective does not communicate with the mass. It makes contact with other collectives. What if other collectives do not exist? Well, it should talk to itself until the day they do. Yes. By all means, the collective also communicates with other people, but it never views them as a mass - as a constituency or audience. The collective communicates with individuals in order to encourage self-organisation. It assumes that people are capable of self-organisation, and given that alternative, they will choose it over mass participation. The collective knows that it takes time to create new forms of organisation. It simply seeks to hasten the crumbling of the mass.
Much of the problem of 'communication' these days is that people think they have got to communicate all the time. You find people setting up administrative functions to deal with information flows before they have any idea what they want to say. The collective is not obsessed with 'communicating' or 'relating' to the movement. What concerns it is the amount of noise - incessant phone calls, form letters, announcements of meetings, etc. - that passes for communication. It is time we gave more thought to what we say and how we say it.
What exactly do we mean by contact? We want to begin by taking the bureaucracy out of communication. The idea is to begin modestly. Contact is a touching on all sides, The essential thing is about its directness and reliability. Eyeball to eyeball.
Other forms of communication - telephone, letters, documents, etc. - should never be used as substitutes for direct contact. In fact, they should serve primarily to prepare contacts.
Why is it so important to have direct contact? Because it is the simplest form of communication. Moreover, it is physical and Involves all the senses - most of all the sense of smell. For this reason, it is reliable. It also takes account of the real need for security. Those who talk about repression continue to pass around sheets of paper asking for names, addresses, and telephone numbers.
There are already a number of gatherings which appear to involve contact but in reality are grotesque facsimiles. The worst of these and the one most people flock to is the conference. This is a hotel of the mind which turns us all Into tourists and spectators . A lower form of existence is the endless meeting - the one held every night. Not to mention the committees formed expressly to arrange meetings.
The basic principle of contact between collectives is: you only meet when you have something to say to each other. This means two things. First, that you have a concrete idea what it is you want to say, Secondly, that you must prepare it in advance. These principles help to ensure that communication does not become an administrative problem.
The new forms of contact have yet to be created. We can think of single examples. A member of one collective can attend the meeting of another collective or there may be a joint meeting of the groups as a whole. The first of these appears to be the more practical, however, the drawback is that not everyone is involved. There are undoubtedly other forms of contact which are likely to develop. The main thing is to invent them.