SELF-MANAGEMENT: THE SIGN AND BE

SELF-MANAGEMENT: THE SIGN AND BE

Nildo Viana *

The word self has many meanings. This is relatively common. There is rarely consensus on the meaning of words, especially when it comes to concepts or constructs, ie technical terms, scientific, philosophical, theoretical. We will not discuss here the problem of views on this issue, but only present a conception of, to thus clarify the conceptual question of the term self-management.

The class struggle around the sign

The word self-management can mean different things (GUILLERM and BOURDEUT, 1976; VIANA, 2008a). This discussion reminds Foucault and his book "The Order of Things" (1987), or the book of Cabral (1983) The Proletariat: The Name of the Thing. It has, in both cases, leaving aside the differences in concepts and meanings, an opposition: on the one hand, the word or the name and on the other, the thing. In class societies, marked by division and by antagonism, there are not only different perceptions of reality derived from the position of individuals in the social division of labor, but also opposition and often antagonism.

Marx explained that in his The German Ideology (Marx and Engels 1992): the social division of labor makes me have a distinct way of life of other people, I have different social relations, which I perceive the world from my activities, relationships (with other human beings and with nature). A person who sees only black and white, will have no notion of colors and no imagination to think them, but to a much more abstract level (like us, we can imagine abstractly that there may be other colors than those we know, but we can not imagine them directly), someone living in a slave society in the slave position, do not understand the relationships established between individuals of the planter class or notice of radically different way than they themselves realize.

However, there is another element in this whole process. The social division of labor and the different way of life it creates, generates not only a limitation on the perception of all that is society and other ways of life, but also promotes the formation of values, feelings, interests, unconscious processes, etc. These aspects influence the consciousness of individuals, and this awareness also influences them. The social division of wider work that is social classes, promotes intellectual differentiation, evaluative, sentimental, etc. This of course will interfere with the constitution and meaning of the words process. Undoubtedly, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class and so she will impose a certain "nomination" of the world. Similarly, the more complex the social division of labor in a given society, the more divisions and subdivisions exist even within the privileged classes.

In this context, it is interesting resume Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis and its view that there is a class struggle around the sign. Undoubtedly, their linguistic universe is very different from ours, which plays only other differences in conception, starting with the importance it attaches to the term "ideology", to illustrate with a distinction between sign and being, and therefore do not share its entire approach but only that more specific element (and then some, here, for our purposes, is beside the point). According to Bakhtin, "it is reflected in the sign, not only it is reflected, but is refracted. What determines this refraction of being in the ideological sign? The confrontation of social interests within the limits of one and the same semiotic community, namely, class struggle "(1990, p. 46).

Well, we will retain this author just this idea: there is a class struggle around the sign. But before that, there is also a class struggle around the words, even though there is consensus on its meaning or at least approach. Unwanted words, bearers of meanings that lead to unwanted beings, considered missing, false or contrary to the interests, values ​​and ideas of the ruling class (or another class, social group, etc.) may be censored, prevented from surfacing. They are censored, become "taboo", are prohibited recriminadas, marginalized, ignored. The words censored, banned, recriminadas omitted, point to the undesirable, false, non-existent, and relate to the wicked, the evil, which must be denied.

This may appear more simply and in everyday life and is already in the socialization of children with censorship to the "curse" and this may have sexual, religious connotation, etc. But not only that is censored. For those who lived in the period of military rule in Brazil, the word "communism" was censored / castigated and had to be given lower and cautiously. This process of censorship and recrimination achieves not only the words, but this is the case here analyzed. It can be illustrated as in the film The Village (Shyamalan, USA, 2004), in which imaginary beings who terrorize the villagers are "those which do not mention" or "we can mention" (and red, a color, is also censored). Those who can not mention are the monsters that haunt us, repress, and therefore, is that we do not want. Obviously that "we do not want" is something socially produced and according to certain interests, as in the film is a fictional production of the elders.

However, it is not always possible to censor and suppress the words as there are individuals and groups who insist on utter them and supposedly democratic regimes can not be silenced without good justification. It is at this point that emerges the class struggle around the signs. While in the first case it already exists, in the second case it is only this. If during the military dictatorship in Brazil, the word communism was censored / castigated, she was also re-signified so that this process could take place and it was in this context that some wrong images attributed to this term usually referring to state capitalism in the former Soviet Union (due to the Cold War and also political confusion around the term, apparently referring to Marx's thought), and ideas from the most absurd, as with that "communists eat little children" or that people received a predetermined ration, were an assignment of meaning to the term that frightened and justify censorship and recrimination.

In the case of the bourgeois-democratic regimes, what happens is primarily a class struggle around the signs. The word communism, revolution, socialism, solidarity, among many others, are resignified according to class interests, ideological conceptions, etc. This is the case, for example, those stated that there has been a revolution in Brazil in 1964. The word "revolution" here has the meaning antagonistic to what has, for example, in Marxist and anarchist conceptions. But the very terms "Marxism" and "anarchism" are reinterpreted (in this case, deformed). Marxism takes on many different meanings from its original meaning and so does anarchism. So if the revolution turns into mere change of government, or taking state power or even radical transformation of all social relations, we have three distinct concepts. In one case, the revolution, understood as "change of government" is close to the conservative conception that seeks to empty the radicalism of the term and trivialize it, stripping it of the political and symbolic efficacy. In another case, the revolution and seizure of state power, just reduced to a mere armed insurrection taking by force the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. In the third conception, Marxist, means a radical transformation of all social relations, that is, production relations and other social relations, including the abolition of the state apparatus. The revolution thus could mean a change of government, state form or its abolition.

The class struggle around the be the sign expressed

Summarizing the discussion so far: there is a class struggle around the sign. The same goes for the word self. However, before moving on to this specific case it is necessary to deal with another aspect, the being. The words express the beings, then it must recognize that there is a struggle also with regard to being. The class struggle around the signs only expresses the class struggle around the beings of concrete reality. The relationship between sign and being, or between "words" and "things" is quite complex. Some argue that words are arbitrary, mere creations. For others, they are exactly like the real, to be.

The reality contradicts the two conceptions: the words express the self, the same would be just a word to express it or only one meaning for each word; if the words are arbitrary or mere conventions, so either would be an imaginary parallel world without effective reality or is it just a real form of manipulation. As we know, there are many words to say the same thing, and the same word has several meanings. If I say puppy or dog, I am referring to the same animal, are synonymous, and their existence is more than known. And if I say "dog", I may be referring to the animal or the "devil." These are simple examples and, ultimately, whatever say dog ​​or puppy, as they refer to the same animal and it does it use the word dog with literal or figurative meaning. This alone does not negate the idea of ​​equivalence between word and thing or between sign and word.

Of course here we are at the level of simple language, because if we go for complex language, it is much more complicated. If I say "capitalism", I am referring to a particular mode of production or society (the capitalist mode of production is part and fundamental determination of capitalist society), but I can also say "modernity" or modern society, or even as Marx put , modern mode of production or even bourgeois (Marx and Engels 1988). If the word capitalism means the being that is the capitalist modernity and society too, so no problem. However, the complex speech plan, there is another problem, that is its meaning. What is the meaning of the word "capitalism"? And "modernity"? Marx is possible to understand that there is an equivalence between sign and being, but if we understand capitalism in the Weberian sense or any other? The word may be the same, but it is another. While Marx thinks of the totality of social relationships established as from the capitalist mode of production, in Weber (1987) is only a fragment of that reality and that's why he can speak in several "types of capitalism" and find capitalism in slave society. Weber's construction is arbitrary, and he seeks to legitimize this by advocating the development of "ideal types".

So to a relativist, the question is only that each defines the word differently. However, here we have an ideological strategy that is another way to do away with the self, the real. It can do this through censorship and reproachful words, but also through ideological reframing, or deformation of its meaning. It uses the word capitalism, but she means something else, which is not your being. The substitution is meant, while substitution of being real. And this substitution of being means that a true is replaced by false. Ideology fulfills that role. This occurred with capitalism, communism, marxism, self-management and countless other words and signs. However, this deformation of meaning can occur either through maculação as ornamentation, namely beautification or euphemisms order to make it acceptable or legitimate forms of domination and exploitation. An example of the latter is the word "democracy" used indiscriminately to justify and legitimize practices even dictatorial, as in the case of call state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe as "popular democracies", but also call the American system of "free world "among many other examples.

The class struggle around the meaning of self-management

The case of the term "self-management" is just one of thousands. Instead of ideological procedure, it will be from the word self-management means to later arrive at the meaning of the word. The origin of the precedes the origin of the word and its true meaning. The word self precedes its existence and its origins date back the so-called utopian socialism. With the emergence of capitalist society and all its social problems, also emerges the proposal of a new society. In forms often fanciful and detail without analyzing its establishment possibilities, who could be the main agent of this process and how it would transition from one form of society (capitalist) to another, or unrealistic ways (education, reason , cooperatives), the utopian socialists leading up to the idea of ​​establishing a society marked by freedom and equality. Because of these limits, they are abstract utopias, which, however, express some stage of the labor movement, the period of its emergence and expansion, being suitable for this moment, although conservative at a later time due to the advancement of class struggles.

Proudhon deepened slightly this process and later Bakunin developed his views by removing some ambiguities and deepening the federalist proposal and use of the term "anarchy" and Marx was the idea of ​​the new company from the association of ideas and communism. Pannekoek, Rühle and other councilists communists kept the word "communist" or "council system". The conception of Pannekoek (1977) on the workers' councils performs the expression of being that is communism as Marx thought, just providing greater concreteness due to new historical experiences that made emerge the new organizational form of the proletarian struggle. Until then, the word self did not exist, just the meaning of being that she expressed and other words existed toward fulfilling such an expression: federalism, anarchy, communism, association, socialism, etc. Subsequently, be self-management reappear with other names, such as "advice system" (some councilists Communists), for example.

With the passage of time, emerge the self word. It comes in two forms and in both cases open opposition to "communism", whose meaning was distorted by Bolshevism. Thus we can speak of a Yugoslav genesis of the word self-management and a French genesis. In Yugoslavia, the word self in samoupravlje servocroata, union samo (auto) and upravlje (management) (Arvon, 1982; GUILLERM and BOURDEUT, 1976) presents an attempt to advance an alternative to the regime of the USSR (it was an independent regime and it has to do with the fact that it was the only Eastern European country to have gotten rid of the Nazis on their own instead of others, released by the country of Stalin), which became known as "Titoism", name derived from the leader Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito. The Yugoslav regime was called "self-managed" and was organized through the nationalization of the means of production, led by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (name of the Communist Party in this country) with the existence of co-management in the factories and small private properties. The term self-management would be reduced to a process of "business management", as will be further understood in France. The alleged "self-management" in the factories was what anywhere else would call "co-management" or "participation" for the workers only were managing production processes to a limited extent, and "what" produce, "when" and "why" were defined externally, the state bureaucracy, leaving workers greater influence only the "how" to produce.

Here is revealed the ornamentation, another aspect of the class struggle around the signs, trying to innovate and embellish something that, in essence, no different from other social and historical processes. As well as the former Soviet Union it was said "socialist" or "communist", Yugoslavia was said "self-managed", a new name that actually did not match the etymology of the word, since what existed was a hetero with participation of workers aspects of the work process and organization of the industry (as production units). Similarly, the Nazi Party was said "socialist", as well as the thousands of supposedly "socialist" parties and "communists".

French genesis is in Yugoslavian own experience, and the autogestion word is a literal translation samoupravlje. According Arvon:

The term self-management was introduced in France in the late sixties to designate the Yugoslav experience from 1950 in order to establish an anti-bureaucratic and decentralized socialism. The choice of the term does not, however, very appropriate. As the notion of "management" is loaded from a purely economic rationality, self-management is a priori limited to "running a business" of a collectivity, the personal "(Robert dictionary definition) (Arvon 1982: . 7).

This import of the word, therefore, is at odds with their true meaning. But the relationship between being (communism, anarchy, free association of producers, etc.) with the sign (self-management) did not exist neither in the Yugoslav case and not in his first appearance in France. This, however, will change with the emergence of May 1968, which is when the word gets its true meaning:

The sudden emergence of the notion of self-management in France is usually attributed to the unexpected spectacle of a Yugoslavia that suddenly emerged from the docile squad satellite countries [of the USSR - NV], is isolated since 1950 by engaging with recklessness in a self-managed process. However, this hypothesis does not contain more than one part of the truth and also sees amended by simple chronology: since fashion self-managed date of the early 1970s, would be necessary to admit that the knowledge of a new socialist experiment conducted by a country in Europe took about twenty years to appear in France and there to raise derivation (Arvon, 1982, p. 38).

In this sense, the French genesis of the word gives it a new meaning. This "new meaning" means, in essence, unite the sign and being self-management, non-existent union previously as being the utopian project of a new society based on general self-organization of society existed, as well as a word expressing it (among others, as anarchy, communism, council system, self-government of the producers freely associated individuals, etc.) emerges later, but meaning something narrower (co-management enterprises) and is in a given context of class struggle being and the sign are unified:

It was much the explosion of all authoritarian structures in May 1968 which gave birth in France to curiosity about a fundamentally anti-authoritarian process undertaken elsewhere and which had almost been enough anatomical studies even before that would place its brutal update. Confused suction May 1968 to replace an oppressive centralism, of Jacobin origin and an all-powerful bureaucracy, characteristic of the traditional socialist model for political and economic organizations decentralized in which it would be lawful for each take back their full existence, taking their own destiny account, in a word, "mean" a life that became absurd, goes in search of a global doctrine that can translate it in clear terms; and in this regard the self-management lends itself wonderfully (Arvon, 1982, p. 38).

In France, before the outbreak of the student and workers' struggle, the Situationist International has pointed to a self-management concept in the writings of Debord and others, including being one of his sources of inspiration. After May 1968, the definition of self became predominantly during this time. Some authors, ambiguities, began to use the term, as Henri Lefebvre, George Gurvitch and Roger Garaudy. This is the same case of the Central Trade Union CFDT - French Democratic Labour Cofederação, that despite inspire and be influenced by May 1968, limited self-management to management. However, without deforming the concept of self-management that emerged as a result of the class struggle, the works of Alain Guillerm, Yvon Bourdet, among others, kept the revolutionary and proletarian essence of this concept. These authors and others, self-management means a new society, based on widespread collective self-management of relations of production and social relations (GUILLLERM and BOURDET, 1976; TRAGTEBERG, 1986; VIANA, 2008b).

Thus, the subsequent history of the term "self-management" has not been definitively resolved, as this depends on the class struggle and the class perspective of those who use and sets. Discussions continued with criticism of the Bolsheviks and others, on the one hand, and on the other, with the deformations and adjustments to the capital and the privileged classes needs. It is thanks to these appropriations of the term "self-management" by the reformist conceptions that makes Claude Berger, in his excellent comparison of the book of communism design on Marx and Lenin, deny the term "self-management" and try to rescue a more abstract and less exact term used widely by the author of Capital: Association (Berger, 1977). However, this discussion refers to the problem of signs and reasons to use them. No doubt it would be possible to abandon the use of the term self-management and instead use association, self-government, or any other, the same way that the terms "socialism" and "communism" were relatively abandoned by those affiliated with the authentic Marxism.

In addition to these French who kept the true meaning of self-management, there are others who held this view, such as Mauritius Tragtenberg (1986), in Brazil, in his introductory book that offers a self-managed design at its core, as well as others. So why keep the term self as meaning the communist society, anarchy, council system, etc., is due to the very class struggle process.

The terms "socialism" and "communism" were totally deformed, but not only that, but such deformation (carried out by the Social Democrats, Bolsheviks, bourgeois ideologists, etc.) became widely hegemonic, with a tradition, history, intellectual production whose weight makes almost impossible to dispute its meaning. Similarly, for the working class (proletariat, peasantry, etc.) the equivalence of these terms to the parties and countries supposedly "socialist" and "communist" is something obvious and hegemonic, and would be an uphill struggle trying to undo it now.

Likewise, the term anarchy is connected to anarchistic tradition and this is divided into several streams, including giving it different meanings. The current anarcho-syndicalism, for example, still think of anarchy as a society managed by unions (without realizing that unions are organizations of civil society that no longer exist in the self-managed society). Other terms, such as "advice systems" and "association" are not as suitable, because besides the deformation of these words already exists, end up with other problems, such as the use of a word that points to something closed ("System" ) and a single form of organization (councils), and the workers' councils are from Pannekoek (1977), another organizing principle (self-organization, self-management) than a specific and always ready to form. The word "association" in turn, is rather abstract and carries numerous other meanings as well as poses difficulties to generate derivatives, important in the proletarian struggle.

The deformation of the term self-management, which begins with the Social Democracy and Eurocommunism in Europe and is gaining ground with the emergence of preventive cultural counterrevolution of post-structuralism (VIANA, 2009) and its ideologues, reinforced by the generalization of neoliberalism and proliferation of cooperatives and ideologies as the "solidarity economy" is much weaker than in the case of socialism and communism terms as well as the novelty of the word still exists for large parts of the population. In this sense, the struggle over the term self-management and its meaning is fundamental to the very self-managed project of radical transformation of all social relations. And so the struggle for self-management is also a cultural struggle for the true meaning of this word.

Final considerations

The objective of this paper was to analyze the relationship between sign and be in the case of self-management. The word self (the sign) can express different meanings (beings). The intention here was to discuss the relationship between sign and be to regain be that the word self means, express and demonstrate that this process is part of the class struggle. The bourgeois cultural struggle (and its helper classes, especially the bureaucracy and intelligentsia) seeks, at first, silence and omit the authentic use of the term self-management and, subsequently, to deform its true meaning. The fight proletarian culture is to emphasize and publicize the concept of self and regain its true meaning.

Thus, the use of the term self-management is justified and must effect a cultural struggle to regain its true meaning and to combat distortion and appropriation of this term by prevailing ideologies and the past. No doubt to make the distinction between its genuine meaning and its deformations, we sometimes use "social ownership", which is a truism, such as using "Libertarian Marxism" or "self-managed Marxism", as were the deformities that concealed his libertarian and self-managed essence. This text is just another chapter in this long struggle and certainly not its epilogue.

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