Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/26

 Because of their closeness to means of production, their daily contact with society's dynamic productive forces, the producers of Capital, of society's personified power, are not in fact the ideal prototypes of modern society. These individuals cannot perfectly internalize the powers of their offices since, in the daily exercise of these powers, they are forced to transcend them.

The internalization of personified powers is best exhibited by individuals whose daily activity separates them from the social means of production, who do not have daily contact with society's productive forces. This generalization probably applies to most societies. For example, in a feudal society, it is not artisans who illustrate a stable and complete type of feudal human being. In daily contact with changing productive forces, artisans change their approaches, and therefore their behavior, their "type." It is rather the members of the feudal ideological establishment, clerics, the intellectuals of the period, who are complete feudal "types," who perfectly embody the dominant behavior of the age.

In modern society, complete types, perfect embodiments of the ruling behavior, can be found in activities which are physically separated from society's productive forces, which are geographically quarantined: the activities of artists, independent "professionals," full-time political organizers, and particularly the activities of members of the political and educational hierarchies. It is among these individuals that the internalization of personified powers takes its most acute form.

When an individual "becomes" a plumber or a lathe operator, namely when an individual internalizes the powers of the office of plumbers or lathe operators, that individual internalizes the forms of behavior characteristic of the office, but not the thoughts and feelings, the entire "self," so to speak, of the office. The thoughts and feelings, the self, are presumed to remain the individual's own, and are even required during the exercise of the powers of the office, as was shown earlier. Therefore what "we plumbers feel" or what "we lathe-operators think" cannot have authority, and is therefore irrelevant, because thoughts and feelings are not among the powers of these offices. In other words, "we plumbers" install pipes in ways pre-determined by the office of plumbers, but "we plumbers" cannot think or feel in ways pre-determined by the office of plumbers.

The limitation of the powers of an office to forms of external behavior does not encumber the offices of the ideological establishment. When an individual internalizes the powers of an ideological office, the individual's entire self is absorbed by the office. For example, what "We Economists think" is considered relevant, it is authoritative, it is licensed and certified by the office of Economists. In this realm of social activity, the powers of offices extend to thoughts and feelings. Thus, "We Sociologists think," "We Lawyers think," "We Situationists think" the thoughts of the office. Thus, "We Teachers feel," and "We Artists experience" the official emotions socially delegated to these offices. This is what makes the intellectual a complete type. The self