because of a lack of investigation of the qualitatively new elements pro per to this society (technological development, organizational, planning processes) in the face of which the concrete utopian character of self-management must be asserted without it having to undergo - as is now happening - the concentric attacks of those who use them in an attempt to mullify any such prospect. LOURAU - At present, there is no such thing as a movement for selfgovernment. As for the future, whose image is as determining for ourselves as for every possible project, it is clearly not promising, with generalization to the wholc world of the State system and of capitalism (private or of the State), and the looming threat of a third world war. This should impose totally pessimistic views. But history is not one-way street. The forms assumed by anti-State and anti-capitalistic rebellions have always tended toward self-government. The social imagination present in every institution is also the force at work in any project to renew socia! structures. lt is true that ali socia! movement of rebellion are bound to get institutionalized. Now, institutionalization is the negation of the initial project: the « Institutiqnal Revolutionary Party » is the ironica! achievement of the mexican revolution .The soviets (1917) were buried long ago by the Union of Socialist « Soviet » Republics. However, the history of self-government shows the existence of a line of resistance against institutionalization: counter institutions prove more and more to be forces engaged in the fight against State and capitalism. In order to do that, they must go further than the aestet~c stage of counter-culture communities, the pedagogic-therapeutic stage of drop-out refuges, as well as the strictly economie stage of survival groups arising from unemployment. As critica! periods in history show, it is necessary, for counterinstitutions to overcome their contradiction (they must either disappear or to be recuperated), that the whole of daily lives should be taken into account. BOOKCHIN - Self-management has rarely been explored in terms of its relationship to technical changes and their effects on libertarian forms of socia! administration. By ignoring this vital interaction, selfmanagement theorist bave in fact yielded unwittingly to the technocratic and economistic bias of modem corporate capitalism. They bave interpreted self-management primarily as « workers' contro! », « industria! democracy », and « economie participation ». The locus of self-management has been seen primarily as the factory and its constitutency primarily as the proletariat. But sel-management must be viewed as more than a libertarian system of industria! management. In the first place, the concept becomes meaningless if it ignores the need for a new « self » that will « manage » a libertarian economy. This involves a mora!, cultura!, ~nd persona! development of individuals that stands in harsh contradiction with the hierarchical nature of the factory, the « school » both to Marx and the syndicalists of the proletariat's_ socia! consciousness. This paradox cannot be resolved by traditional working class ideologies. Furthermore, 238
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