Bad work habits and sloppy behaviour undermine any attempt to construct collectively. Casual, sloppy behaviour means that we don't care deeply about what we are doing or who we are doing it with. This may come as a surprise to a lot of people. The fact remains: we talk revolution but act reactionary at elementary levels.
There are two basic things underlying these unfortunate circumstances:
There is no doubt that the Pepsi generation is more politically alive. But this new energy is being channelled by organisers into boring meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of mass society. After a while, critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings become a routine like everything else in life.
A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis on mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely, do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to. Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group achievement.
Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects, political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore, they don't understand how it will be accomplished.
The short span of attention is one tell tale symptom of instant politics. The emphasis on responding to crisis seems to contract the span of attention - in fact there is often no time dimension at all. This timelessness is experienced as the syncopation of over-commitment. Many people say they will do things without really thinking out carefully whether they have the time to do them. Having time ultimately means defining what you really want to do. Over-commitment is when you want to do everything but end up doing nothing.
The numerous other symptoms of casual politics - lack of preparation, being late, getting bored at difficult moments, etc. are all signs of a political attitude which is destructive to the collective. The important thing is recognising the existence of these problems and knowing what causes them. They are not personal problems but historically determined attitudes.
Many people confuse the revolt against alienated labour in its specific historical form with work activity itself. This revolt is expressed in an anti-work attitude.
Attitudes toward work are shaped by our relations to production, i.e. class. Class is a product of hierarchic divisions of labour (including forms other than wage labour). There are three basic relations which can produce anti- work attitudes. The working class expressed its anti-work attitude as a rebellion against routinised labour. For the middle class, the anti-work attitude comes out of the ideology of consumer society and revolves around leisure. The stereotype of the 'lazy native' or 'physically weak woman' is a third anti-work attitude which is applied to those excluded from wage labour.
The dream of automation (i.e. no work) reinforces class prejudice. The middle class is the one that has the dream since it seeks to expand its leisure-oriented activities. To the working class, automation means a loss of their job, preoccupation with unemployment, which is the opposite of leisure. For the excluded, automation doesn't mean anything because it will not be applied to their forms of work.
The automation of the working class has become the ideology of post-scarcity radicals - from the anarchists at Anarchos to SDS's new working class. Technological change has rescued them from the dilemma of a class analysis they were never able to make. With the elimination of working class struggle by automation (the automation of the working class) the radicals have become advocates of leisure society and touristic lifestyles. This anti-work attitude leads to a utopian outlook and removes us from the realm of history. It prevents the construction of collectivity and self-activity. The issue of how to transform work into self-activity is central to the elimination of class and the reorganisation of society.
Self-activity is the reconstruction of the consciousness (wholeness) of one's individual life activity. The collective is what makes the reconstruction possible because it defines individuality not as a private experience but as a social relation. What is important to see is that work is the creating of conscious activity within the structure of the collective.
One of the best ways to discover and correct anti-work attitudes is through self-criticism. This provides an objective framework which allows people the space to be criticised and to be critical. Self-criticism is the opposite of self-consciousness because its aim is not to isolate you but to free repressed abilities. Self-criticism is a method for dealing with piggish behaviour and developing consciousness .
To root out the society within us and to redefine our work relations a collective must develop a sense of its own history. One of the hardest things to do is to see the closest relations - those within the collective - in political terms. The tendency is to be sloppy, or what Mao calls 'liberal', about relations between friends. Rules can no longer be the framework of discipline. It must be based on political understanding. One of the functions of analysis is that it be applied internally.
Preparation is another part of the process which creates continuity between meetings and insures that our own thinking does not become a part-time activity. It also combats the tendency to talk off the top of one's head and pick ideas out of the air. Whenever meetings tend to be abstract and random it means the ideas put forward are not connected by thought (i.e. analysis). There is seldom serious investigation behind what is said.
What does it mean to prepare for a meeting? It means not coming empty-handed or empty-headed. Mao says, "No investigation, no right to speak." Assuming a group has decided what it wants to do, the first step is for everyone to investigate. This means taking the time to actually look into the matter, sort out the relevant materials and be able to make them accessible to everyone in the collective. The motive underlying all the preparation should be the construction of a coherent analysis. "We must substitute the sweat of self-criticism for the tears of crocodiles", according to a new Chinese proverb.