Willful Disobedience
to you in some
syllable like a bent dry branch.
Today we can only tell you what we are not,
what we don’t want.—E. Montale
Life cannot simply be something to cling
to. This thought skims through everyone
at least once. We have a possibility that makes us freer than the gods: we can
quit. This is an idea to be savoured to the end. Nothing and no one is obliging
us to live. Not even death. For that reason our life is a tabula rasa, a slate on which nothing
has been written, so contains all the words possible. With such freedom, we
cannot live as slaves. Slavery is for those who are condemned to live, those constrained to eternity, not for us. For
us there is the unknown – the unknown of spheres to be ventured into,
unexplored thoughts, guarantees that explode, strangers to whom to offer a gift
of life. The unknown of a world where one might finally be
able to give away one’s excess self love. Risk too. The
risk of brutality and fear. The risk of finally
staring mal de vivre in the
face. All this is encountered by anyone who decides to put an end to the
job of existing.
Our contemporaries seem to live by jobbing,
desperately juggling with a thousand obligations including the saddest of them
all – enjoying themselves. They cover up the incapacity to determine their own
lives with detailed frenetic activity, the speed that accompanies increasingly
passive ways of behaving. They are unaware of the lightness of the negative.
We can choose not to live. That is the most
beautiful reason for opening oneself up to life with joy. ‘There is always time
to put an end to things; one might as well rebel and play’ – is how the
materialism of joy talks.
We
can choose not to act, and that is the most beautiful reason for acting. We
bear within ourselves the potency of all the acts we are capable of, and no
boss will ever be able to deprive us of the possibility of saying no. What we
are and what we want begins with a no.
From it is born the only reason for going armed to the assault of an order that
is suffocating us.
On the one hand there is the existent with
its habits and certainties. And of certainty, that social poison, one can die.
On the other hand there is insurrection,
the unknown bursting into the
life of all. The possible beginning of an exaggerated
practice of freedom.
From At Daggers Drawn
A FEW WORDS:
On the Mystical Basis of the
“Neutrality” of Technology
There is an assumption popular among
leftists and other radicals who still feel some attachment to the concept of
progress or even to Marxian theoretical constructions that technology, as such,
is neutral. The assumption is particularly amusing because those who hold it
will accuse the critics of technology of having a mystical and ahistorical
conception of it. What these apologists for technology claim is that the
critics of technology promote “technological determinism”, making technology
the central determining factor in social development, and thus losing sight of
the social factor. They end up by proclaiming that the problems do not lie in
the technological systems as such but in who manages them and in how they
choose to utilize them.
Doubtless, there have been those who have attributed essential
determining powers to technology. One of the greatest proponents of this view
was Marx, whose economism was decidedly a technological economism. In his
perspective, economic necessity created technological developments (such as the
early industrial factory) that then created the basis for the supersession of
the dominant economic system. Thus, Marx’s economism incorporated a kind of
technological determinism as well.
Marx’s fault lies precisely in his determinism (an unavoidable consequence of the fact that his
critique of Hegel was limited to turning Hegel – a historical determinist –
“right side up” rather than rejecting his fundamental constructs). A truly
historical, as opposed to a mystical, approach to social struggle and all the
factors involved in it has to reject any form of determinism, because it begins
from the idea of history as human activity rather than as an expression of any
overarching metaphysical value or conception. Thus, any product of history has
to be viewed as a product of its contexts in terms of the concrete social
relationships in which it developed. From such a perspective, there can be no
such thing as a “neutral” technology.
Technology always develops within a social context with the explicit aim
of reproducing that context. Its form, its purpose and its possibilities are
determined by that context, and this is precisely why no technology is neutral. If we understand technology as
large-scale systems of techniques (such as industrialism, cybernetics, etc.),
then we do not know of any technological system that was not developed within
the context of domination, class rule and exploitation. If Marx, in his myopic
Hegelian vision, could somehow see communism in the industrial system, it is
only because his vision of communism was the negation of individual freedom,
the absorption of the individual into the “species being” that was manifested
in the compulsory collective productive process of the factory. In fact, the
industrial system was developed for one purpose – to maximize the amount of
profit that could be gotten from each moment of labor by increasing the level
of control over each and every movement of the worker on the job. Each new
technological development within the industrial capitalist system simply
increased the level of control over the processes to the point where now they
are mostly automated, and nanotechnology and biotechnology are creating the
basis for bringing this control directly into our bodies on a molecular level.
Just as the ideologies of any epoch are the expression of the ruling
system of that epoch, so the technologies of any epoch also reflect the ruling
systems. The conception that technologies are neutral, that we could simply
reappropriate the technological systems and use them for our ends, is a
mystical conception granting an ahistorical innocence to technology. Like
ideology, those systems of reified ideas through which
the ruling order enforces its domination, technology is a product of the ruling
order, created to reinforce its rule. The destruction of the ruling order will
involve the destruction of its technology, of the
system of techniques it developed to enforce its rule.
At this point the technological systems
developed by the ruling order are so intrusive and so harmful that to even
pretend that they could be used for any liberatory purpose is absurd. If Marx,
following Hegel, wanted history to have a final, determined end, we now know
such a view is far too Christian to ever be truly revolutionary. Revolution is
a wager, and that wager is precisely that the unknown, which
offers the possibility of the end of domination and exploitation, is worth
risking, and that taking this risk involves the destruction of the totality of
this civilization of domination and exploitation – including its technological
systems – that has been all we have ever known.
THE TINIEST
MONSTROSITIES:
In the pursuit of full control over every aspect of existence, the
ruling order has begun to push the development of technologies that manipulate
matter on the scale of the nano-meter, that is to say a millionth of a
millimeter. At this level, the level of atoms and molecules, and thus of
proteins, carbon compounds, DNA and the like, the distinction between living
and non-living can begin to get hazy and many of the proposals relating to this
technology stem from this haziness. Nanotechnology creates new products through
the manipulation of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. While biotechnology
manipulates the structure of DNA to create new organisms through the
recombination of genes, nanotechnology goes further, “breaking down” matter
into atoms which can then be put back together to form new materials, literally
created atom by atom. At present, attention is focused on the carbon atom, but
scientists would like to have control over the every element of the Periodic
Table to use at will. This would allow them to combine characteristics (such as
color, resistance, melting point, etc.) in ways previously unknown.
Much of the research in nanotechnology is also connected to
biotechnological research, looking into the possibility of manipulation of
atoms on the biomolecular level. This is the origin of nano-biotechnology. The
proponents of this research speak publicly of a myriad of possibilities that
this toying with the borderline between living and non-living matter on the
atomic level could provide: self-cleaning plastics in which enzymes feed on the
dirt, airplane wings full of proteins that function as adhesives if the wing is
damaged and thus repair it, ensembles of atoms intended to be used as food or
drink that are capable of combining in varieties of ways to create the desired
food or beverage, ultra-fast computers with circuits based on a “framework” of
DNA, electric conductors of dimensions on a nano-scale in a protein base –
i.e., the “living plastic” built upon a genetically manipulated bacterium
capable of producing an enzyme that scientists claim can polymerize.
But these are just the worthless knick-knacks displayed before the
public to provoke infantile desires in the consumer who will then crave their
satisfaction. These gadgets are little more than public relations activity.
Much more significant are the miniaturized information processors to be found
in each of these gadgets. This miniaturization opens the door to the presence
of intelligent micro chips on any product on the market. Already, certain
manufacturers are having chips placed on products that permit their movements
to be traced. Miniaturized to the nano-scale such chips would be impossible for
the consumer to detect.
As with every technological development of recent years, the proponents
of nanotechnology also publicly proclaim the “humanitarian” uses of this
technology – in medicine, in food production, in the general “improvement” of
our way of life. But the real interests of the rulers of this
world in developing this technology lies elsewhere (as was hinted at
above).
Nanotechnology, like nearly every technological system developed in the
past sixty years, has been largely developed in the framework of military
studies. A clear example is that of the MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical
systems), the first generation of nano-machines. These are miniature receivers
and motors the size of a grain of dust, the prototypes of which are already
coming into use in industry. The application currently being studied is that of
a surveillance powder that would be sprayed onto a battlefield or into an area
under observation in order to gather certain kinds of information.
In fact, this is much like the “smart dust” the proponents of which
present it as a “convenience” that could be spread on walls of buildings,
connected to heating, air conditioning and electrical systems and switch on or
off heat, air conditioning, lights, etc. as needed. But experiments have also
been going on with possible uses of the “smart dust” as a means of police
surveillance.
The robo-cop or robo-soldier of the future is
likely to be a micro- or nano-robot, versatile, relatively inexpensive, nearly
impossible to detect, capable of intruding into almost any space.
Nano-technology is an ideal medium for vastly
extending social control. Consider the Veri-Chip, a product of the
In fact, in
The fear for the safety of children already provides another are for the
broadening of this monitoring. Experts and parents’ associations in
The importance of nanotechnological research to those in power is made
evident by the huge appropriation of funds for this research. The
These chips demonstrate only one of the ways in which micro- and
nanotechnology blur the distinction between living and non-living beings
through the penetration of the machine into the living body – the cyborg of
science fiction. But nano-biotechnology takes things further, with the actual
creation of organic machines through atomic manipulation. It is here with the
creation of machines that seem to carry out biological functions (proponents of
nanotechnology have talked of machines capable of reproducing themselves using
methods similar to that of the asexual reproduction of cells), that the fear of
the “grey goo” arises, the fear that these microscopic machines capable of
reproducing themselves could eventually penetrate into everything, tearing down
molecules to carry out their programmed functions and in the process melt
everything down.
Of course, this fear is of the most extreme and apocalyptic sort. But in
the name of “progress” even the most legitimate fears – like the fear of the
total monitoring of existence, or the fear of possible
infection from nano-biotechnological developments – are to be set aside. The
misdeeds of techno-science and the disasters it causes are always attributed to
“bad use”, because technology, of course, is neutral. That these disasters seem
to follow one right after another somehow does not raise any questions about
this alleged neutrality, about whether any “good use” is possible.
The role of the experts has always been to justify the technological
system, to explain how the ongoing parade of disasters are
mere separate incidents, aberrations that do not reflect at all on the system
itself. We can no longer let them be the ones to make the decisions about these
matters. And taking back the capacity to decide for ourselves on this matter
can take only one road, that of attack against the system of domination and
exploitation in all of its aspects. By the time the scientific experts are
telling us about these technologies, they are describing a decision that has
already been made over our heads. To seek any dialogue with them or with the
ruling powers they serve at this point about them is useless. We need to
recognize these developments for what they are – a further stealing away of our
lives, an attack upon any capacity for self-determination that may be left to
us.
The opposition to these latest technological developments cannot go the
path of so many past movements of opposition, that of attempting to dialogue
with the masters of this world. In such dialogue, the masters always win.
Perhaps in a few places, the monstrosities produced by these technologies have
to be labeled, so that we have a “choice”, But the
monstrosities still become a normal part of our existence.
Nanotechnology creates the tiniest monstrosities capable of the greatest
horrors, because they are capable of carrying the systems of social control
directly into our bodies. We cannot even pretend that there is any room for
dialogue here any longer. This is a blatant display by the rulers of this world
that the maintenance of social peace is an act of war against all the exploited
and dispossessed. It is necessary for those of us who desire the freedom to
create our lives on our terms, who desire to remain human individuals capable
of any sort of autonomous action, to act destructively against the entire
system of social control, the totality of this civilization in which machines
ride people and people slowly transform into machines. Here and now.
THE BACK SIDE OF HISTORY
By
Massimo Passamani
Putting the past back in play in order to make an adventure of the
future. I believe that the reasons for keeping past theoretical and practical
experiences from becoming material for historians are contained in this
perspective.
History is always the history of the masters, and this is not just
because, as is well known, they are the ones who write it, but also because
this world, their world, forces us to look at it through its own eyes. The
organizers of obedience have always used the past for police and propaganda
purposes, but this did not keep them from knowing it. On the contrary,
precisely this knowledge has allowed power to unite events in the coherence of
control, sacrifice and repression. For the past to carry out its function as an
argument for the current society, it is necessary, as a minimum, to know what
to remove, which is to say, the most significant reasons and episodes of the
struggles of the exploited – everything that history presents merely as
defeats. The exploited, on the contrary, have rarely been able to rescue history
from a dull chronology – or a calendar vision with so many dates to celebrate –
in order to find another coherence for it, that of revolt, and so to understand
the motives, the most radical moments, the limits of the latter.
The apologists for domination have obviously not given up rewriting the
past, but they are increasingly unfamiliar with it. In a world where one
responds to every cause for malaise with a remedy that is even worse and that
guarantees only the complete irresponsibility of the one who applies it; where
the passivity of work is extended into “free time” through the contemplation of
a screen (television or the computer); in which the masters themselves –
powerful because of the submission that is conceded to them in the hope that they,
at least, know where this world is going – are that much more self-assured
because they have increasingly made the law “as long as it lasts” their own –
in such an idiotic world that desires eternity, the past has no meaning. Now,
if, on the one hand, this reinforces the totalitarianism of the present society
(outside of me there is nothing), on the other hand, it renders its
administrators more stupid. For the moment, since they can allow it. The
intelligence – even historical – of a strategy of preservation is proportional
to the dangers of revolt.
On the same level (here is why I said that one looks at history with the
eyes of the masters), even subversives have felt
“freer” once relieved of the weight of knowledge of the past. This is the idea that
history (not just that of specialists, but even that which does not separate
ideas and actions, that is written out of desire and that arms the
intelligence) ends up imprisoning life. What goes unnoticed is just how
historical this idea is. (What is the difference whether a reflection
originates from reading what someone has said or whether it originates in
knowing what someone has done? Let’s think of it as so many individuals
together. Why is the first reflection considered, for example “philosophy”,
while the second is considered “history”? In my opinion, there is no
distinction.) Paraphrasing a well known aphorism, one can only say that the
present ignorance has retroactive value. Now, this ignorance has many faces,
if, as is evident, its distributors are, above all, the historians (including
those “of the movement”).
So as not to go on for too long, it is enough to
consider all the advertising noise with regard to a film on the Spanish
revolution. To many anarchists this did not seem right. At last, the
black and red banner, the revolutionary union, the collectives,
self-management, Durutti. Now, to tell the truth, we ourselves are speaking.
Personally, to make myself clear, I have nothing against the discussions
and books about the Spanish revolution. But has all this talk about it
contributed to making us understand this distant event better (and this
“better”, for anarchists, would have to be in the sense of a current
perspective)? Frankly, I don’t think so. It seems to me, on the contrary, to
contribute more to mummification, to testimonial, to monumental history. As
often occurs, the occasion predetermined the contents. Books on libertarian
revolution have increased. And yet, what does one say about a revolutionary
movement – not just Spanish – like that of the 1930’s? What would
self-management of the factories mean now? What do we do about unions? To which
places of capital could an insurrectional conception now be linked? How do we
create the possibilities so that in the revolutionary moment it passes
suddenly, without transition, to the destruction or radical transformation of
these places? What does it mean, in reality, to overthrow authority, what does
it mean to abolish the market? Only by posing questions like these does
discussion of revolutionary
A few pages of history says more than an entire
encyclopedia when the theoretical suggestion for a practice of reinventing it
is read into the events themselves. One need only read in this way to know it.
It would then be interesting to really reflect on the dirty tricks and the
mistakes (and also on the splendid, joyous strengths) of those days. To connect those days to other insurrections and to other errors.
To connect them to the present. To give an example,
one could reread the history of insurrectional movements through the fracture –
moral rather than police-related – represented by money (one thinks of the
refusal to attack banks, starting from the Paris Commune, passing through
revolutionary Spain, ending up at the French May [1968]; or, on the other hand,
of the expropriations by workers in insurgent Patagonia in the 1930’s). Just as
one can read it under the subterranean sign of gratuity and of the festival, or
of amorous relationships. Or, or…
But those who
attack property, silence leaders and shake up current social relationships
without any aims, what might they tell us about individuals who tried to do
this yesterday, the day before, or seventy years ago?
Different Aims, Different
Methods:
—Yves Delhoysie
I have always contended that reform and
revolution are incompatible. But the full significance of this statement
requires a deep examination of what one means by these terms. First of all, in
order to be clear from the beginning, when I speak of revolution I mean social
revolution, i.e., the overturning of all social relationships. But here the
fundamental question of the relationship of reform to revolution still remains.
Within progressive ideology, reform and
revolution are simply matters of degree. A revolutionary perspective is
supposedly just more extreme than a reformist perspective but has the same
aims, and could thus use reformist methods alongside its revolutionary methods.
The extent to which even some of the most extreme anarchists buy into this
perspective is made evident by the extent to which they address so much of
their communication to activists, progressives and reformists, seeking
acceptance of their own practice within these circle, and the extent to which
they will find justifications for a variety of reformist practices they carry
out, from litigation on various issues to allowing themselves to be represented
in the mass media.
Yet it should be quite clear that social
revolution as described above has nothing to do with progress. I believe it was
Apollinaire who said “…the new does exist apart from the consideration of progress.
It is implied in surprise.” And in this statement we can see the basic
difference between reform and revolution. Reform has as its basis the
continuation of the present order and simply seeks to make progress toward
lessening its misery or rather the extent to which we feel it. Social
revolution, on the other hand, is as destructive as it is creative, seeking to
completely overturn current social relationships in order to make way for the
creation of something new, something utterly unlike what existed before.
Revolution stems from the recognition that our present existence does not offer
us anything that can really make up for the impoverishment that it imposes on
us and that it is thus in our best interest to stake our lives on destroying
this society and leaping into the unknown.
So a social revolutionary position is not
simply a more extreme position on the same spectrum on which reform lies. It is
something absolutely other than reform, something as opposed to reform as it is
to reaction, conservatism or any other part of the political spectrum. The
revolutionary critique is thus not essentially extreme, but rather radical.
In other words, it goes to the roots; it asks the fundamental questions, and in
doing so comes to recognize that what appear to be separate problems and issues
of this society are in fact deeply connected, and that the real problem is this
society itself. And this cannot be reformed away.
Since social revolution is something
absolutely other than reform in its aims and in its critique, it must also be
absolutely other in its methodology of practice. Reformists have accused
revolutionary anarchists of being “negative” for as long as there have been
revolutionary anarchists. Bakunin’s calls for destruction and praise of the
“wicked passions” of insurgent populations even frightened those
revolutionaries who desired a more orderly insurgence, one they could control.
The reformists and the proponents of orderly revolution are not wrong in their
assessment of a truly revolutionary anarchist perspective. It is utterly
negative in relation to this society, rejecting its most fundamental
categories. And even that which is creative in the anarchist perspective –
individual freedom, autonomy, self-organization – is a
negation of all authority, all hierarchy, all representation, all delegation of
responsibility.
The
methodology of anarchist practice aimed toward social revolution stems from a
few basic principles. The first is direct action in its original and most basic
meaning: acting directly to accomplish whatever task one wishes to accomplish,
from the publication of a flyer to the destruction of some aspect or instrument
of the system of domination and exploitation. Implied in this is the necessity
of the autonomy of struggle. This means the rejection of all organizations or
structures such as parties, unions or formal federations that seek to represent
the struggle. In addition it means the rejection of every ideology and every
role, because these too, in their own way, become representatives of struggle,
defining its contours and limits. Direct action and autonomy cannot function in
any practice involving dialogue with the rulers of this society, in any context
of compromise or negotiation with the enemy. Thus, to maintain autonomous
direct action in practice requires that we remain in permanent conflict with
the ruling order as we go about our struggle, and that we express this in
active ongoing attack against that order as we encounter it in our daily lives.
Behind these principles of practice is the most basic principle – that if we,
as anarchists and revolutionaries, are ever to have any chance of accomplishing
our aims, our ends must exist already in our means.
What is
perhaps most interesting about the methodology of autonomous direct action
attacking the institutions that comprise this order and refusing to back down
or negotiate is that it is a methodology that can be used in intermediate
struggles as well. Any careful look at the history of uprisings and revolutions
will show that no uprising began with a fully worked out total critique of the
social order. Rather they were born when frustration over specific conditions
combined with a loss of faith in the capacity of the ruling order to deal with
those conditions. Often in these situations, people will organize themselves in
order to deal with the specific struggle at hand, and in the process put into
practice a methodology very much like that described. Thus, there is no reason
why anarchists should not pursue the application of these methods to specific
struggles where they are at, in this way practically undermining the
methodologies of reform that so frequently recuperate the anger of people over
the conditions of their daily existence.
But the very basic principle, that the end
must already exist in the means used to achieve it has further implications.
Even in the most revolutionary anarchist circles, reformism raises its head in
relation to specific forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, hetero-sexism
and the like, though in a mostly negative form as rejection of the implications
of a fully revolutionary anarchist perspective. As I said earlier, social
revolution is the complete overturning of existing social relationships. Just
as in the struggle against domination and exploitation, it is necessary to
reject all hierarchical, authoritarian and representative relationships, so in
the struggles against racism, sexism, hetero-sexism and the like, it is
necessary to reject the social constructs of race, gender, sexual identity,
along with every form of nationalism. I understand that these categories and
identities can be useful for improving one’s conditions within this
society. But this is precisely why clinging to these identities is a reformist
practice. What many people fear in the revolutionary rejection of these
categories is that it will lead to the refusal to recognize the reality of
racism, sexism, etc. But just as a revolutionary rejection of hierarchy,
authority and delegation is a practical confrontation with these social
relationships aimed at their destruction, so also the rejection of race,
gender, sexual preference, etc., is a practical confrontation aimed at the
destruction of these social constructions. It is thus not an attempt to run away
from the very real problems of racism, sexism, hetero-sexism, ethno-centrism
and so on, but rather to confront them in a revolutionary manner – a manner
aimed at the destruction of this entire social order and the overturning of all
social relationships – rather than in a reformist manner that seeks to
guarantee every social category its rights.
Ultimately, an anarchist social
revolutionary perspective is completely incompatible with a reformist
perspective, because it is born from revolt. Reform assumes that the present
social order can be improved and brought to the point of accommodating the
needs of all by recognizing their rights. Revolt is born when one recognizes
that this society can never recognize her or him on that most basic level, as a
concrete (as opposed to abstract) individual. It is thus a total rejection of
this society, its methods, its roles and its rules. Reform seeks to justify the
existence of each category within society (and these categories are already
socially defined). Revolt cannot be justified within the terminology or
categories of this society, because revolt is an act of hostility against this
society and all of its categories. And revolution is the conscious extension of
this hostility with the aim of completely destroying the present society in
order to open the way for something completely new. It has nothing to do with
reform, because it is not a question of progress, but of surprise, of launching
into the unknown of freedom.
YES, IT CAN BE DONE
Since April 2001 in
We cannot say such a thing, since the rebel ferocity of the people here
is lost in the shadow of history. We can only state: “To vote is to betray our
possibilities.” Because in the face of profiteers and bureaucrats, hired pens
and anesthetized awareness, in the face of transgenic “well-being” and misery
with a cell-phone, one can live differently.
The pleasure of direct action – this is what we need to discover very
quickly. The pleasure of confronting our individual and
collective problems in the first person, without delegation, without alibis,
without the continuous search for scapegoats. Rather than voting and in
exchange demanding the right to complain (about increasingly low wages or
increasingly high rents, pensions that don’t come or an environment that is
more polluted and unlivable every day), let’s start to decide for ourselves
about our lives. Let’s start to collectively take what we need, let’s start to
discuss face to face without mediators or professional politicians.
There are empty houses and public spaces, left in the past to
speculation, and
there are many of them. It is possible to occupy them for our own uses and
bring them to life.
Living environments should be to the measure of living beings, not
commodities. If the destruction of the Earth is an inevitable consequence of
this society, this society is not, in fact, inevitable. Polluters and poisoners
are not invincible. Overturning an upside-down world is possible.
They terrorize us with surveillance cameras, police and repression, or
else with the extortion of work. But the real problem is our fear. We can learn
courage. The masters and their servants are few, we are infinitely more.
Rebellion is possible.
Those in power become more arrogant; they institute increasingly
repressive measures while carrying on wars to impose their will overseas. Their
power is a network spread across the social terrain. One fights against it
every day in the streets, not at the polls every few years. Responding to the
violence is possible.
The mass media falsify and slander the reasons for every revolt. But when the necessities. But when the exigencies are real,
their smokescreen of silence and falsehood thins out and disappears.
Communicating without filters is possible.
Our greatest enemy is resignation. But here no heroes will free us like
in the TV movies. From amorous relationships to the education of children, from
the job that we endure to the society that we desire, it is up to each one of
us to choose, without waiting for the party, the masses, public opinion or the
super-lotto. To each one of us, contemptuous of profit, the
law, morality. Because yes, one can.
“I hate all those who, by ceding through fear and
resignation, a part of their potential as human beings to others, not only
crush themselves, but also me and those I love, with the weight of their
fearful complicity or with their idiotic inertia.”
—Albert Libertad, I Hate the Resigned
(Slightly revised from an article in Adesso #17)
GIUSEPPI CIANCABILLA:
a
biographical note
Giuseppe Ciancabilla was born in 1872 in
At
the age of 18, he went to
In
October 1897, he met Malatesta to do interview for Avanti!.
This meeting and the response of the PSI (Italian Socialist Party) leadership
to the discussion led Ciancabilla to leave the socialist party in disgust and
declare himself an anarchist. This “Declaration” appeared in Malatesta’s paper,
L’Agitazione on
The
choice of becoming an anarchist forced Ciacabilla and his companion, Ersilia
Cavedagni, to flee
In
1898, when the Italian authorities pointed him out as a “dangerous anarchist”,
Ciancabilla was expelled from
After a short time in
The
final period of Ciancabilla’s life was spent between
Ciancabilla was always explicit about being
an anarchist-communist, but was equally explicit (like Galleani, another
Italian anarchist immigrant active in the US at that time) about his critique
of formal organization and his support for those who took individual action
against the masters of this world such as Michele Angiolillo, Gaetano Bresci
and Leon Czolgosz.
On
The following article briefly expresses his
ideas on organization.
Against
organization
We cannot conceive that anarchists
establish points to follow systemically as fixed dogmas. Because, even if a
uniformity of views on the general lines of tactics to follow is assumed, these
tactics are carried out in a hundred different forms of applications, with a
thousand varying particulars.
Therefore, we don’t want tactical programs,
and consequently we don’t want organization. Having established the aim, the
goal to which we hold, we leave every anarchist free to choose from the means
that his sense, his education, his temperament, his fighting spirit suggest to
him as best. We don’t form fixed programs and we don’t form small or great
parties. But we come together spontaneously, and not with permanent criteria,
according to momentary affinities for a specific purpose, and we constantly
change these groups as soon as the purpose for which we had associated ceases
to be, and other aims and needs arise and develop in us and push us to seek new
collaborators, people who think as we do in the specific circumstance.
When any of us no longer preoccupies
himself with creating a fictitious movement of individual sympathizers and
those weak of conscience, but rather creates an active ferment of ideas that
makes one think, like blows from a whip, he often hears his friends respond
that for many years they have been accustomed to another method of struggle, or
that he is an individualist, or a pure theoretician of anarchism.
It is not true that we are individualists
if one tries to define this word in terms of isolating elements, shunning any
association within the social community, and supposing that the individual
could be sufficient to himself. But ourselves supporting the development of the
free initiatives of the individual, where is the anarchist that does not want
to be guilty of this kind of individualism? If the anarchist is one who aspires
to emancipation from every form of moral and material authority, how could he
not agree that the affirmation of one’s individuality, free from all
obligations and external authoritarian influence, is utterly benevolent, is the
surest indication of anarchist consciousness? Nor are we pure
theoreticians because we believe in the efficacy of the idea, more than in that
if the individual. How are actions decided, if not through thought? Now,
producing and sustaining
a movement of ideas is, for us, the most effective means for
determining the flow of anarchist actions, both in practical struggle and in
the struggle for the realization of the ideal.
We do not oppose the organizers. They will
continue, if they like, in their tactic. If, as I think, it will not do any
great good, it will not do any great harm either. But it seems to me that they
have writhed throwing their cry of alarm and blacklisting us either as savages
or as theoretical dreamers.
ON SEXUAL
POVERTY
A society
based upon concentrated power and economic exchange impoverishes every area of
life, even those that are most intimate. We hear a great deal of talk about
women’s liberation, gay liberation and even sexual liberation within anarchist
circles. And analyses of male domination, patriarchy and hetero-sexism are not
so hard to find, but the reality of sexual impoverishment seems to be largely
ignored, questions of sexual expression being largely limited to those
surrounding monogamy, non-monogamy, poly-amory and
other such issues of the mechanics of loving relationships. This limitation is
itself, in my opinion, a reflection of our sexual impoverishment – let’s limit
ourselves to speaking of such relational mechanics so that we can avoid the
question of the quality of these relationships.
There are several factors that play into
the sexual impoverishment we experience in this society. If we look into its
origins, of course, the institutions of marriage and the family and the
imposition of patriarchal social structures are significant, and their role
cannot be ignored. But in the present at least here in the so-called West, the
strength of these institutions has greatly diminished over the past several
decades. Yet sexual impoverishment has not. If anything, it has become more
intense and desperately felt.
The same process that has led to the weakening and gradual
disintegration of the family is what now upholds sexual impoverishment: the
process of commodification. The commodification
of sexuality is, of course, as old as prostitution (and so nearly as old as
civilization), but in the past five decades, advertising and the media have commodified the conception of sexuality. Advertisements
offer us charismatic sexiness, bound to lead to spontaneous passion in
deodorant sticks, toothpaste dispensers, perfume bottles and cars. Movies and
TV shows sell us images of the ease with which one can get beautiful people
into one’s bed. Of course, if one is gorgeous and charismatic oneself – and so
the deodorants, perfumes, gyms, diets and hair gels sell. We are taught to
desire plastic images of “beauty” that are unattainable because they are
largely fictitious. This creation of unattainable, artificial desires serves
the needs of capital perfectly, because it guarantees an ongoing subconscious
dissatisfaction that can be played on to keep people buying in the desperate
attempt to ease their longing.
The commodification
of sexuality has led to a kind of “liberation” within the schema of market
relationships. Not only does one frequently see sexual relations between
unmarried people on the big screen, but increasingly homosexuality, bisexuality
and even a bit of kinkiness are achieving some level of acceptability in
society. Of course, in a way that suits the needs of the market. In fact, these
practices are transformed into identities to which one more or less strictly
conforms. Thus, they come to require much more than the practice of a
particular sexual act. An entire “lifestyle” comes to be associated with them,
involving conformity, predictability, specific places to go, specific
products to buy. In this way, gay, lesbian, bi, leather, s/m and b/d
subcultures develop which function as target markets outside of traditional
family and generational contexts.
In fact,
the commodification of sexuality places all forms of
sexual practice in a context of products for sale at a price. In the sexual
marketplace, everyone is trying to sell himself to the highest bidder while
trying to purchase those who attract her at the lowest price. Thus, the
association of sexuality with conquest, competition, struggles for power. Thus, the absurd games of playing hard to get or of trying to
pressure the other into having sex. And thus, the possessiveness that so
often develops in ongoing “love” relationships – after all, in the market
regime, doesn’t one own what one has purchased?
In this context, the sexual act itself
tends to take on a more measured, quantifiable form in keeping with this commodification. Within a capitalist society it should be
no surprise that the “liberation” of sexual frankness would predominantly mean
an increasing discussion of the mechanics of sex. The joy of the sexual act is
reduced not just to physical pleasure, but more
specifically to the orgasm, and sexual discourse centers around the mechanics
for most effectively achieving orgasm. I do not want to be misunderstood. An
ecstatic orgasm is a marvelous thing. But centering a sexual encounter around achieving an orgasm leads one to lose touch with the
joy of being lost in the other here and now. Rather than being an immersion
into each other, sex centered around achieving orgasm
becomes a task aimed at a future goal, a manipulation of certain mechanisms to
achieve an end. As I see it, this transforms all sex into basically
masturbatory activity – two people using each other to achieve a desired end,
exchanging (in the most economic sense) pleasure without giving anything of oneself. In such
calculated interactions, there is no place for spontaneity, passion beyond
measure, or abandoning oneself in the other.
This is the social context of sexuality in
which we currently live. Within this context there are several other factors
that further reinforce the impoverishment of sexuality. Capitalism needs
partial liberation movements of all sorts both to recuperate revolt and to
spread the stultifying rule of the market into more and more aspects of life.
Thus, capitalism needs feminism, racial and national liberation movements, gay
liberation and, yes, sexual liberation. But capitalism never immediately sheds
the old ways of domination and exploitation, and not just because it is a slow
and cumbersome system. Partial liberation struggles retain their recuperative
use precisely by continuing to have the old oppressions as a counterpart to
prevent those involved in the liberation struggles from seeing the poverty of
their “liberation” within the present social order. Thus, if puritanism and sexual oppression were truly eradicated
within capitalism, the poverty of the supposedly more feminist conscious,
gay-friendly sex shops would be obvious.
And so puritanism
continues and not just as an out-dated holdover from earlier times. This is manifested in the obvious ways, such as the continued
pressure to get married (or at least establish an identity as a couple) and
have a family. But it also manifests in ways most people would not
notice, because they have never considered other possibilities. Adolescence is
the time when sexual urges are strongest due to the changes in the body that
are taking place. In a healthy society, it seems to me that adolescents would
have every opportunity to explore their desires without fear or censure, but
rather with openness and advice, if they want it, from adults. While the
intense sexual desires of adolescents are clearly recognized (how much TV and
movie humor is based on the intensity of this desire and the near impossibility
of exploring it in a free and open way?) in this society, rather than creating
means for these desires to be explored freely, this society censures them,
calling for abstinence, leaving adolescents to either ignore their desires,
limit themselves to masturbating or accept often hurried sex in high pressure
situations and uncomfortable environments in order to avoid detection. It’s
hard not to wonder how any sort of healthy sexuality could develop from this.
Because the only sort of sexual
“liberation” of use to capitalism is one that continues to rest in sexual
scarcity, every tool for maintaining sexual repression in the midst of the
fictitious liberation is used. Since the old religious justifications for
sexual repression no longer hold much water for large portions of the populace,
a material fear of sex now acts as a catalyst for a repressive sexual
environment. This fear is promoted mainly on two fronts. First of all there is
the fear of the sexual predator. Child molestation, sexual stalking and rape
are very real occurrences. But the media exaggerates the reality with lurid
accounts and speculation. The handling of these matters by the authorities and
the media are clearly not aimed at dealing with the very real problems, but at
promoting a specific fear. In reality, the instances of non-sexual violence
against children and women (and I am specifically referring to those acts of
violence based on the fact that the victims are children or women) are many
times more frequent than acts of sexual violence. But sex has been invested
with a strong social value which gives acts of sexual violence a far more
frightening image.* And the fear promoted in the media in relation to these acts helps to
reinforce a general social attitude that sex is dangerous and needs to be
repressed or at least publicly controlled. Secondly, there is the fear of STDs
and particularly AIDS. In fact, by the early ‘80’s the fear of STDs had largely
ceased to function as a way of scaring people away from sex. Most STDs are
fairly easily treated, and the more thoughtful people were already aware of the
usefulness of condoms in preventing the spread of gonorrhea, syphilis and a
number of other diseases. Then AIDS was discovered. There is a great deal that
can be said about AIDS, many questions that can be raised, a whole lot of shady
business (in the most literal sense of the term) relating to this phenomenon,
but in relation to my present subject, it provided a basis for using the fear
of STDs once again to promote sexual abstinence or, at least, less spontaneous,
less abandoned, more sterile sexual encounters.
In the midst of such an utterly distorted
sexual environment, another factor develops that seems almost inevitable. A tendency
grows to cling desperately to those with who we have made some connection no
matter how impoverished. The fear of being alone, without a lover, leads one to
cling to a “lover” whom one has long since ceased to really love. Even when sex
continues within such a relationship, it is likely to be purely mechanical and
ritualistic, certainly not a moment of abandon in the other.
And of course, there are those who simply
feel that they cannot maneuver through this sad, impoverished climate, this
destitute environment of artificial and fear-ridden relationships, and so do
not even try. It is not a lack of desire that compels their “abstinence”, but
an unwillingness to sell themselves and a despair at
the possibility of real loving sexual encounters. Often these are individuals
who have, in the past, put themselves on the line in the search for intense,
passionate erotic encounters and have found themselves rejected as a lesser
commodity. They were wagering themselves, the others were buying and selling. And
they have lost the will to keep wagering themselves.
In any case, we are, indeed, living in a
society that impoverishes all it touches, and thus the
sexual as well. Sexual liberation – in the real sense, that
is our liberation to explore the fullness of physical erotic abandon in another
(or others) – can never be fully realized within this society, because this
society requires impoverished, commodified sexual
encounters, just as it requires all interactions to be commodified,
measured, calculated. So free sexual encounters, like every free encounter, can
only exist against this society. But this is not a cause for despair (despair,
after all, is only the reverse side of hope), but rather for subversive
exploration. The realms of love are vast, and there are infinite paths to
explore. The tendency among anarchists (at least in the
* The extremely important matter of the ideology of childhood innocence – an ideology that only serves in keeping children in their place in this society – also relates to this. But that would require an article of its own just to begin to touch on the matter.
* I say “indigenist” as opposed to “indigenous” because I am referring at least as much to the support movements of non-indigenous radicals as to the movements of indigenous people themselves.
An Anarchist Concept of Value
The insurrectionary anarchist struggle puts
forward certain positive values. The freedom of the individual and the equality
of the oppressed class could be described as the most basic of these, along
with solidarity and mutual aid, which form the connecting link between
individual freedom and class equality and make revolutionary struggle possible.
Anarchists also value self-organization, creativity, joy and autonomous action,
but none of these positive elements can be artificially isolated from the
completely negative orientation anarchists have towards the class of exploiters
and their system of domination. The interrelation of elements should be
obvious, as should be the positive contribution to our struggle that the
various assaults on the property of the exploiters and their guards have in
terms of opening up social space in which we can act more freely.
We are not scientists of revolution incapable
of seeing the subjective value of struggles that do not necessarily lead to
victory for our entire class. We do not accept that there is a guaranteed
formula, a political program that can carry us through the struggle from
beginning to end without error, without adapting to changing circumstances.
Anarchists are simply individuals who desire
freedom and equality and are consequently propelled to fight alongside the
exploited masses, as accomplices rather than guides.
We are in favour of
immediate, destructive attacks on the structures of the capitalist State,
because we see these as indispensable elements of an insurrectionary social
movement. It is very easy for an individual or group to initiate actions
against the many visible institutions of the class enemy. The simpler the means
used the more the potential exists for the practice of sabotage to spread
across a social territory, as every small act becomes a point of reference that
can be put to use by anyone.
Anarchists place value in the will to rebel
against oppression and the autonomous initiative of individuals who are not
content to sit and wait for the revolution to come like a gift from the sky. We
do not agree with those who say that sabotage is useless or detracts from our
struggle. We are not priests of the Protestant work ethic who maintain that
everything must be “productive”, that capitalism is part of a progressive
historical evolution.
No, it is necessary to begin to destroy all the
means of exploitation controlled by the enemy, and the decision to move in this
direction cannot come from anyone but ourselves. We
can find comrades with who we share a personal affinity in relation to
revolutionary action, and we can even contribute to larger informal
organizations used to coordinate the efforts of various autonomous groups, but
ultimately, the will to resist must come from within each one of us.
As insurrectionary anarchists, we can’t agree
with those who think that it is possible to oppose capitalism with productive
projects alone, that we can merely replace our enemies
institutions with our own, all without attracting the attention of their police
forces, the forces of political repression.
Our idea of anarchist communism contains within
it many beautiful and positive values, but we want to fight for them, and not
limit ourselves to simply advocating our views. In autonomous struggle opposed
to the capitalist State we see not only a positive value, but also a material
necessity.
Insurrectionary Anarchists of
the
SOCIETY, HUMAN
INTERCOURSE
AND PRISON:
Prison creates a society, a sort of
community, and this society is not merely based on the sharing of a space.
Prison is a specific sort of space defined in reference to its inhabitants,
since it is only a prison because it is destined for prisoners, without whom it
would be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to those who are brought
together within its walls? Obviously the prison, since it is only by means of
the prison that they are prisoners. What, then, determines the manner of life
of the prison society? The prison! What determines the prisoners’ intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly, they can enter into
intercourse only as prisoners, only as far as the prison laws permit it; but
that they themselves have intercourse, I with you, the prison cannot bring this
to pass. On the contrary, it must have an eye to guarding against such
egoistic, purely personal intercourse (and only in this form is it really
intercourse between you and me). That we communally execute a job, run a
machine, carry out any general task – the prison will indeed provide for this;
but when I forget that I am a prisoner and engage in personal intercourse with
you who likewise disregard it, this endangers the prison, and not only cannot
be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason, the saintly
and moral prison officials institute solitary confinement in order to cut off
“demoralizing intercourse”. Imprisonment is the established and sacred
condition, which one must not attempt to harm. The slightest push in that
direction is punishable, as is every uprising against a sacred thing by which
human beings are to be charmed and chained.
So the prison forms a society, a community
(as in a community of labor), but no intercourse, no mutuality, no union. On
the contrary, any real union between individuals within the prison bears within
it the dangerous seeds of a “plot”, which under favorable circumstances might
bear fruit.
One does not enter the prison voluntarily,
nor does one remain in it voluntarily, but rather one cherishes the egoistic
desire for freedom. Thus, it quickly becomes manifest here that personal
intercourse is in a hostile relationship to prison society and tends toward
WAITING FOR THE APOCALYPSE:
The Ideology of Collapse and the Avoidance of Revolutionary
Responsibility
If the question is not that of how to make revolution,
it becomes that of how to avoid
it.
There
can be little doubt that we are living in frightening times, times in which it
is easier for those who can to simply bury their heads in the sand and go on as
if everything is fine. Environmental degradation, social disintegration,
increasing impoverishment in every area of life – the entire array of the
consequences of a social order that is monstrously out of balance – can easily
lead those who think about it to believe that an end of some sort is on the
horizon. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that apocalyptic perspectives
have arisen on many sides and are certainly no longer limited to religious
fanatics. One of the versions of this apocalyptic ideology is that which
foresees the collapse of civilization within the next few decades, brought on
by ecological, social and/or economic breakdown. It is this particular form of
apocalyptic thought that I want to deal with here, because it is in this form that one most often encounters it in anarchist circles.
Those who hold to any apocalyptic view may look upon the coming end with
either hope or despair, and this is true of the ideology of collapse as well.
Some of the anarcho-primitivists who adhere to this
belief look at the collapse as a great opportunity for reinventing primitive
ways of living free of the institutions of civilization. A few even seem to
take delight in the suffering and death that would inevitably accompany such a
collapse, apparently forgetting that this suffering and death would not be
likely to recognize distinctions between rulers and ruled, between domesticated
and wild, between civilized and “primitive”. Furthermore, they seem to ignore
the fact that those who have controlled power and resources up to now would
certainly continue to try to do so as the world collapsed around them, most
likely resorting to the same sort of techniques as warlords in
Some radical environmentalists seem to have a somewhat more realistic
conception of what this collapse would mean. Recognizing that a collapse of
civilization at his point would certainly be brought on to a large extent
through a major ecological breakdown involving large-scale devastation of the
fabric of life on earth, the apocalyptic vision tends to move them to despair,
and thus to desperate action. The attempt to preserve the fabric of life as
civilization goes down becomes the primary motive of their activity. It must be
preserved at any cost – even that of our principles, even that of our dreams…
But the problem with apocalyptic thinking
is that it is always an act of faith. It assumes the inevitability of the
impending end, and makes its decisions on the basis of this belief. In making a
prediction about the future the basis for action rather than the present
reality that one confronts and one’s own desires about
how one wants to live, such thinking gives the struggle against this world an
ideological basis. Of course, such a basis has one advantage,
it makes it much easier to make decisions regarding how to go about one’s
struggle, because this ideological limiting of possibilities basically already
makes these decisions for us. But this deserves a little more examination.
Placing one’s faith in an inevitable future, whether positive or
negative, makes it very easy to make some sort of accommodation with the
present. If Marx’s belief in the inevitability of communism led him to justify
industrialism and capitalist exploitation as necessary steps on the road to
this end, the ideology of inevitable collapse ends up justifying a defensive practice in response to the
devastations caused by the ruling order on the one hand, and an escapist
practice which largely ignores the reality we presently face on the other.
The
defensive practice that develops from this perspective springs from the
recognition that if the trajectory of industrial civilization is left unchecked
it’s collapse would probably lead to such
environmental devastation that life itself would be threatened. So the sort of
action to be pursued is that which will protect the few remaining wild places
and non-civilized people that currently exist and to limit the damages that the
operation of the industrial/post-industrial technological systems can cause in
order to lessen the devastation of the collapse. Such a logic
of defense tends to push toward a reformist practice involving litigation,
negotiation with the masters of this world, proposals for legislation and the
acceptance of representation in the mass media in order to appeal to the
masses. This tendency can be seen both in the radical environmental movement
and in indigenist* movements. Of
course, the defensive nature of the struggles of indigenous people is quite
understandable, considering that as cultures, they really are facing their end.
Nonetheless, the tendency of defensive struggle to fall into reformism is very
clearly manifested here as indigenous struggles so often fall into the demand
for rights, official recognition, property (in the form of land rights) and the
like. And for anarchists who claim to want a revolutionary break with the
present, uncritical support for these struggles is itself a compromise, an
embrace of what is merely the latest, most fashionable version of third-worldism.
The
escapist tendency sees in the predicted collapse liberation from civilization. Since this collapse is supposedly
inevitable, there is no need to take specific action against the institutions
of domination and exploitation that form this civilization; there is no need to
strive for a break with the present world, for insurrection and revolution.
Instead one can simply go off into the wilds and give oneself over to
developing “primitive” skills in order to prepare oneself for the coming
collapse and let the rest take care of itself. Of course, I support people
learning any sort of skill that can enhance their capacities for
self-determination and self-enjoyment. The problem with this perspective is not
in choosing to learn the skills, but in giving up a practice aimed toward the
revolutionary destruction of the present social order based on a faith in its
inevitable collapse.
As
I have already said: the apocalypse is a matter of faith, not a proven fact;
the collapse of civilization is merely a prediction, one possibility among
many, not a certainty. What we are facing now is an ongoing train of disasters that impoverish and
devastate our lives and the earth. Assuming the inevitability of collapse is an
easy way out. It permits one not to face the present reality, not to place oneself in conflict with the
existence we are living here and now. If one sees civilization as the enemy, as
the source of all of our problems, by assuming its inevitable collapse in the
near future, one relieves oneself of any responsibility for attacking it and
attempting to create a revolutionary rupture to bring about its destruction
while opening new possibilities for living – a responsibility that would
require one to hone one’s critique so as to know where, when, why and how to
effectively attack it.
A
belief in an inevitable collapse not only legitimates defensive reformism and
survivalist escapism, it actually makes them the most logical practice. But
since this collapse is not present reality, but a mere prediction – which is to
say nothing, or at least
nothing more than a thought in some people’s heads –, then we have to ask
ourselves if we want to base our practice on this nothing, if we want wager our
lives on this.
If
we recognize history as the activity of people in the world, rather than as the
use of the past or the future to justify the present, then it becomes clear
that every break with the present, every new beginning, transforms all time.
Thus our struggle happens now, and it is a struggle against the present. It is, in fact, a game
in which we place our lives on the line, putting ourselves at stake, and this
is the essence of revolutionary responsibility – taking responsibility for
one’s life here and now in open conflict with this society. In this
perspective, the potential for an economic, social or ecological collapse is
part of the challenge we face, part of what we are staking ourselves against.
But since it is our lives, our selves, that we are staking, the
way we choose to face life – our desires, our passions, our principles, our
personal ethic, all that makes each of us unique – cannot simply be laid aside
in order to “save the world” from a predicted collapse. (Nor can we simply hide
from it.) The wager is precisely that we will overturn this social order that
may be heading for collapse by living and fighting against it on our own terms, refusing to
compromise. The moment we turn to petition, negotiation, litigation,
legislation or even mediation (i.e., accepting representation of ourselves in
the mass media), we have already lost the bet, because we have ceased to act on
our own terms, we have allowed a “higher” value, a moral valorization of
Humanity, of Life or of the Earth, to take precedence over our own lives, our
own humanity that resides precisely in our individuality. It is precisely this moralism, based in an ideology of despair that leads us to
sacrifice ourselves, our own dreams and our own principles, and thus transforms
us from insurgents and revolutionaries into reformists, into voters,
petitioners, litigators… pathetic beggars.
In
speaking of revolutionary responsibility, I am speaking precisely of this
willingness to place oneself on the line, to stake one’s life on the
possibility of a revolutionary rupture that we create. This perspective stands
in absolute opposition to any form of apocalyptic faith including the ideology
of collapse. It means that our practice of revolt starts from our own dream of
the world we desire and our own understanding of how the present world stands
in our way, an understanding that we sharpen through analysis and critique in
order to better attack this world. Because if we start in this way, from
ourselves and our most revolutionary desires, we will see the need to stretch
out our hand, grasp every weapon that we can truly make our own and go to the
attack against this civilization based on domination and exploitation. Because
there is no guarantee that this monster will collapse on its own. Because even if it eventually does so, in the meantime we would be
living in mediocrity and misery. Because only by learning to actively
create our lives for ourselves, developing ways of living that are absolutely
different from those that we have experienced up to now – something that can
only be learned in revolt – will we be able to guarantee that the end of this
civilization will not lead to even worse horrors. Because this is the meaning
of taking responsibility for one’s own life here and now, this is the meaning
of revolutionary responsibility.
ILLNESS AND CAPITAL
by
Alfredo M. Bonanno
Illness, i.e., a faulty functioning of the organism, is not peculiar to
man. Animals get ill, and even things in their own way present defects in
functioning. The idea of illness as abnormality is the classic one that was
developed by medical science.
The response to illness, mainly thanks to the positivist ideology which
still dominates medicine today, is that of the cure, that is to say, an
external intervention chosen from specific practices, aimed at restoring the
conditions of a given idea of normality.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that the search for the causes of
illness has always run parallel to this scientific need to restore normality.
For centuries remedies did not go hand in hand with the study of causes, which
at times were absolutely fantastical. Remedies had their own logic, especially
when based on empirical knowledge of the forced of nature.
In more recent times a critique of the sectarianism of science,
including medicine, has based itself on the idea of man’s totality: an entity
made up of various elements – intellectual, economic, social, cultural,
political and so on. It is in this new perspective that the materialist and
dialectical hypothesis of Marxism inserted itself. The variously described
totality of the new, real man no longer divided up into the sectors tat the old
positivism had got us used to, was again encapsulated in a one-way determinism
by the Marxists. The cause of illness was thus considered to be due exclusively
to capitalism which, by alienating man through work, exposed him to a distorted
relationship with nature and ‘normality’, the other side of illness.
In our opinion neither the positivist thesis that sees illness as being
due to faulty functioning of the organism, nor the Marxist one that sees
everything as being due to the misdeeds of capitalism is sufficient.
Things are a little more complicated than that.
Basically, we cannot say that there would no longer be such a thing as
illness in a liberated society. Nor can we say that in that happy event illness
would reduce itself to a simple weakening of some hypothetical force that is
still to be discovered. We think that illness is part of the nature of man’s
state of living in society, i.e., it corresponds to a certain price to be paid
for correcting a little of nature’s optimal conditions in order to obtain the
artificiality necessary to build even the freest of societies.
Certainly, the exponential growth of illness in a free society where
artificiality between individuals would be reduced to the strictly indispensable, would not be comparable to that in a society
based on exploitation, such as the one in which we are living now. It follows
from this that the struggle against illness is an integral part of the class
conflict. Not so much because illness is caused by capital – which would be a
determinist, therefore unacceptable, statement – but because a freer society
would be different. Even in its negativity it would be closer to life, to being
human. So illness would be an expression of our humanity just as it is an
expression of our terrifying inhumanity today. This is why we have never agreed
with the somewhat simplistic thesis summed up in the phrase “make illness a
weapon”, even though it is one that deserves respect, especially as far as
mental illness is concerned. It is not really possible to propose to the
patient a cure that is based exclusively on the struggle against the class
enemy. Here the simplification would be absurd. Illness also means suffering,
pain, confusion, uncertainty, doubt, solitude, and these negative elements do
not limit themselves to the body, but also attack the consciousness and the
will. To draw up programs of struggle on such a basis would be quite unreal and
terrifyingly inhuman.
But illness can become a weapon if one understands it both in its causes and effects.
It can be important for me to understand what the external causes of my illness
are: capitalists and exploiters, State and capital. But that is not enough. I
also need to clarify my relationship with MY ILLNESS, which might not only be
suffering, pain and death. It might also be a means by which to understand
myself and others better, as well as the reality that surrounds me and what
needs to be done to transform it, and also get a better grasp of revolutionary
outlets.
The mistakes that have been made in the past on this subject come from a
lack of clarity due to the Marxist interpretation. That was based on the claim
to establish a DIRECT relationship between illness and capital. We think today
that this relationship should be INDIRECT, i.e., by becoming aware of illness,
not of illness in general as a condition of ABNORMALITY, but of my illness as a component
of my life, an element of MY NORMALITY.
And then the struggle against this illness. Even if not all struggles end in victory.
THE WAR
CONTINUES
Despite
the proclamations of victory last May, the war in
By this time, even the
Bush administration doesn’t talk of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as a reason
for the war. The deception behind those claims has become far to evident, and it is in the best interest of the ruling
regime to sweep them under the rug as best it can. The rhetoric that the
president has been using recently is much more reminiscent of those 19th
century American politicians who saw in the
What is interesting
about this rhetoric though, for those with any knowledge of history and any
capacity to read between the lines is that it does reveal the true aims of the
This abstract
equivalence hides very real difference, particularly differences in wealth and
power. The owners of the world are merely citizens like you and I; the rulers
are just our representatives. These are the swindles that blind us to the fact
that our lives are not our own and never can be in the framework of democracy
and the social system it upholds. For even if we were to “self-manage” the
current order of things through “direct democracy”, the system itself, with its
abstract equivalence and its reified community would continue to define our
existence on its terms, in order to guarantee its reproduction.
Although there are
democratic regimes all over the world at this point, the
In fact,
So the
And so the
Taking this into
consideration while also looking at the way in which the proclaimed reasons for
which this war was begun – to find and destroy the supposed Weapons of Mass
Destruction and to bring an end to the alleged connections between Saddam
Hussein and Al-Qaeda – have proven to be swindles,
one is left to wonder what morale could possibly be left among American troops.
Certainly, sharing a bit of turkey with the Turkey in the white house isn’t
enough to overcome the ongoing reality that these soldiers are facing in Iraq
everyday, not just in terms of the dangers they face, but also in terms of the
atrocities they are constrained to carry out in the name of those capitalist
ideals of humanity and democracy. Certainly, mutiny and desertion seem like the
most reasonable response, but in this world reason generally serves power, and
the reasons that contradict power are labeled crime or madness.
The people of
Ultimately, the war in
And yet, the war of the
rulers against the poor has never stopped taking its toll. As soldiers are sent
off to
So indeed, on all
fronts, the American ruling class is fighting for democracy, because democracy
is perhaps the most effective swindle that any ruling class has ever come up
with to keep those they rule in line. Abstract equality, the ideology of
rights, the myth of the “common good” and the work ethic all work together to
blind the exploited to the real conditions of their existence, to create false
hopes for changing those conditions within the context of this society and to
allow the masters of this world to present their interests as the interests of
all. Our liberation depends on our rejection of the democratic swindle, not in
favor of some other form of rule, but as an aspect of the rejection of all
rule, of every form of domination and exploitation. If the most reasonable
response the American soldiers in
Social Struggle, Social
War
The struggle
that insurrectionary anarchists engage in is social, rather than political or
economic. Insurrectionary anarchists attack institutions of the political State
and the capitalist economy as part of a project to completely demolish all
forms of exploitation and control. We attempt to make a total and up-to-date
critique of society, and this means that we reject limited viewpoints that
privilege one form of oppression over another or one sector of the excluded
class over another.
The ranks of
today’s excluded are immigrants, the indigenous, the
employed and unemployed, and there is no reason why any one of these sectors
should be considered the advanced guard of the struggle.
The
capitalist economy depends not only on production, but also distribution and
consumption of commodities. So the old Marxist analysis that says only the
workers in the manufacturing sector can be revolutionary does not make sense.
Agricultural workers, indigenous peasants and the unemployed can attack
capitalism at the point of distribution by blocking roads, and at the point of
consumption through theft and looting. Sabotage is a flexible tool that can be
put to use by any excluded or exploited individual. For those employed in the
capitalist marketplace there are various techniques of self-organized direct
action possible at the individual, group and mass levels. Absenteeism,
destruction of machinery, theft and information tampering occur regularly in
all workplaces.
Politics is
alien to the exploited. There is mass abstention from the electoral process.
Unionization is declining, and extra-union activity on the part of union
members is growing through the use of sabotage and flying squad
self-organization – with varying degrees of real autonomy.
A purely
economic view of the class struggle is useless. Capitalism does not just
control the world of work, but also the home and the entire social territory in
which the exploited live. The enemy class uses to its advantage systems of oppression
such as patriarchy and racism that predate capitalism and industry, and which
divide the excluded amongst themselves.
There are
many social problems inherent to the class struggle that the action of
anarchists can be useful in confronting. The moral value system passed down by
the exploiters to the exploited. The democratic ideals of
tolerance and dialogue. The religious tendency of the
workers and unemployed to look for a guide to bring them vengeance. The bigotry and irrationality that cause the exploited to battle
each other, leaving the class enemy unscathed. These are the subjective
elements of class society that can’t be ignored by those who really want to
destroy this rotten system.
Refusing the
role of the vanguard, the elitist group that is supposed to educate and guide
the masses, anarchists above all act for themselves,
in their own interests, not claiming to represent their entire class. But for
the anarchist struggle to become revolutionary it must become social, expanding
through solidarity in action. Our relationship with the mass must be informal
and direct. We must recognize the mass as individuals, avoiding the danger of
falling into generic perspectives and ideology.
To limit
ourselves to spreading counter-information and declaring our convictions to the
masses would not make sense, and would be just another form of elitism. We must
always re-evaluate our analysis and attempt to advance through discussion and
the gathering of information, but we must also act.
Our
organizational forms should be fluid and adaptable, capable of destructuring when necessary, based on simple principles
that can be used by anyone; self-organization, direct action and permanent
struggle. We must reject the political party and activist organizational model
of the power centre that is supposed to manage and control everything. We
should proceed to action immediately, not waiting for orders or signals from
anywhere.
We should
fight in intermediate struggles alongside the excluded, for housing, food,
shelter, wages, against police repression, against social control. But always
trying to push these struggle further, helping them expand into the unknown of
insurrection.
In the social war for freedom the
participation of anarchists can be of great importance.
Insurrectionary Anarchists of the
TEN BLOWS
AGAINST POLITICS
Politics is the art of separation. Where
life has lost its fullness, where the thoughts and actions of individuals have
been dissected, catalogued and enclosed in detached spheres – there politics
begins. Having distanced some of the activities of individuals (discussion,
conflict, common decision, agreement) into a zone by itself that claims to
govern everything else, sure of its independence, politics is at the same time
separation between the separations and the hierarchical management of
separateness. Thus, it reveals itself as specialization, forced to transform
the unresolved problem of its function into the necessary presupposition for
resolving all problems. For this reason, the role of professionals in politics
is indisputable – and all that can be done is to replace them from time to
time. Every time subversives accept separating the various moments of life and
changing specific conditions starting from that separation, they become the
best allies of the world order. In fact, while it aspires to be a sort of
precondition of life itself, politics blows its deadly breath everywhere.
Politics is the art of representation.
In order to govern the mutilations inflicted on life, it constrains individuals
to passivity, to the contemplation of the spectacle prepared upon the
impossibility of their acting, upon the irresponsible delegation of their
decisions. Then, while the abdication of the will to determine oneself
transforms individuals into appendages of the state machine, politics
recomposes the totality of the fragments in a false unity. Power and ideology
thus celebrate their deadly wedding. If representation is that which takes the
capacity to act away from individuals, replacing it with the illusion of being
participants rather than spectators, this dimension of the political always
reappears wherever any organization supplants individuals and any program keeps
them in passivity. It always reappears wherever an ideology unites what is
separated in life.
Politics is the art of mediation. Between the so-called totality and individuals and between
individual and individual. Just as the divine will has need of its
earthly interpreters, so the collectivity has need of its delegates. Just as in
religion, there are no relationships between humans but only between believers,
so in politics it is not individuals who come together, but citizens. The links
of membership impede union because separation disappears only in union.
Politics renders us all equal because there are no differences in slavery –
equality before god, equality before the law. This is why politics replaces
real dialogue, which refuses mediation, with its ideology. Racism is the sense
of belonging that prevents direct relationships between individuals. All
politics is participatory simulation. All politics is racist. Only by
demolishing its barriers in revolt could everyone meet each other in their
individuality. I revolt, therefore, we are. But if we are,
farewell revolt.
Politics is the art of impersonality.
Every action is like the instant of a spark that escapes the order of
generality. Politics is the administration of that order. “What sort of action
do you want in the face of the complexity of the world?” This is what those who
have been benumbed by the dual somnolence of a Yes that is no and a More later
that is never. Bureaucracy, the faithful maidservant of politics, is the
nothing administered so that no one can act, so that no one recognizes their
responsibility in the generalized irresponsibility. Power no longer says that
every thing is under control, it says the opposite: “If I don’t ever manage to
find the remedies for it, let’s imagine it as something else.” Democratic
politics is now based on the catastrophic ideology of the emergency (“either us
or fascism, either us or terrorism, either us or the unknown”). Even when
oppositional, generality is always an event that never happens and that cancels
all those that happen. Politics invites everyone to participate in the
spectacle of this motionless movement.
Politics is the art of deferment.
Its time is the future, which is why it imprisons everyone in a miserable
present. All together, but tomorrow. Anyone who says
“I and now” ruins the order of waiting with the impatience that is the
exuberance of desire. Waiting for an objective that escapes
from the curse of the particular. Waiting for an
adequate quantitative growth. Waiting for measurable
results. Waiting for death. Politics is the
constant attempt to transform adventure into future. But only if I resolve “I
and now” could there ever be an us that is not the
space of a mutual renunciation, the lie that renders each of us the controller
of the other. Anyone who wants to act immediately is always looked upon with
suspicion. If she is not a provocateur, it is said, she can certainly be used
as such. But it is the moment of an action and of a joy without tomorrows that
carries us to the morning after. Without the eye fixed on the hand of the
clock.
Politics is the art of accommodation.
Always waiting for conditions to ripen, one ends up sooner or later forming an
alliance with the masters of waiting. At bottom, reason, which is the organ of
deferment, always provides some good reason for coming to an agreement, for
limiting damages, for salvaging some detail from a whole that one despises.
Politics has sharp eyes for discovering alliances. It is not all the same, they
tell us. The Reformed Communist party is certainly not like the rampant and
dangerous right. (We don’t vote for it in elections – we are abstentionists, ourselves – but the citizens’ committees,
the initiatives in the plazas are another thing). Public health is always
better than private assistance. A guaranteed minimum wage is still always
preferable to unemployment. Politics is the world of the lesser evil. And
resigning oneself to the lesser evil, little by little one accepts the totality
in which only partialities are granted. Anyone who contrarily wants to have
nothing to do with this lesser evil is an adventurer. Or an
aristocrat.
Politics is the art of calculation.
In order to make alliances profitable, it is necessary to learn the secrets of
allies. Political calculation is the first secret. It is necessary to know
where to put one’s feet. It is necessary to draw up detailed inventories of
efforts and outcomes. And by dint of measuring what one has, one ends up
gaining everything except the will to lay it on the line and lose it. So one is always taken up with oneself, attentive and quick to
demand the count. With the eye fixed on that which surrounds one, one
never forgets oneself. Vigilant as military police.
When love of oneself becomes excessive it demands to give itself. And this
overabundance of life makes us forget ourselves. In the tension of the rush, it
makes us lose count. But the forgetfulness of ourselves
is the desire for a world in which it is worth the effort of losing oneself, a
world that merits our forgetfulness. And this is why the world as it is,
administered by jailers and accountants, is destroyed
– to make space for the spending of ourselves. Insurrection begins here. Overcoming calculation, but not through lack, as the
humanitarianism that, perfectly still and silent, allies itself with the
executioner, recommends, but rather through excess. Here politics ends.
Politics is the art of control. So
that human activity is not freed from the fetters of obligation and work
revealing itself in all its potential. So that workers do not encounter each
other as individuals and put an end to being exploited. So that students do not
decide to destroy the schools in order to choose how when and what to learn. So
that intimate friends and relatives do not fall in love and leave off being
little servants of a little state. So that children are nothing more than
imperfect copies of adults. So that the distinction between good (anarchists)
and bad (anarchists) is not gotten rid of. So that
individuals are not the ones that have relationships, but commodities.
So that no one disobeys authority. So that if anyone attacks the structures of
exploitation of the state, someone hurries to say, “It was not the work of
comrades.” So that banks courts, barracks don’t blow up. In short, so that life
does not manifest itself.
Politics is the art of recuperation.
The most effective way to discourage all rebellion, all desire for real change,
is to present a man or woman of state as subversive, or – better yet – to
transform a subversive into a man or woman of state. Not all people of state
are paid by the government. There are functionaries who are not found in
parliament or even in the neighboring rooms. Rather, they frequent the social
centers and sufficiently know the principle revolutionary theories. They debate
over the liberatory potential of technology; they
theorize about non-state public spheres and the surpassing of the subject.
Reality – they know it well – is always more complex than any action. So if
they hope for a total theory, it is only in order to totally neglect it in
daily life. Power needs them because – as they themselves explain to us – when
no one criticizes it, power is criticized by itself.
Politics is the art of repression.
Of anyone who does not separate the moments of her/his life and who wants to
change given conditions starting from the totality of their desires. Of anyone
who wants to set fire to passivity, contemplation and delegation. Of anyone who
does not want to let themselves be supplanted by any organization or
immobilized by any program. Of anyone who wants to have direct relationships
between individuals and make difference the very space of equality. Of anyone
who does not have any we on which to swear. Of anyone who
disturbs the order of waiting because s/he wants to rise up immediately, not
tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Of anyone who
gives her/himself without compensation and forgets her/himself in excess.
Of any one who defends her comrades with love and resoluteness.
Of anyone who offers recuperators only one
possibility: that of disappearing. Of anyone who refuses to take a place in the
numerous groups of rogues and of the anaesthetized. Of
anyone who neither wants to govern nor to control. Of anyone who wants to
transform the future into a fascinating adventure.
or it will not be
at all.
Despite
nearly two centuries of theoretical and practical experience and several
decades of critique specifically aimed against them, christianity and its pallid offspring, bourgeois morality,
continue to rear their ugly heads in revolutionary anarchist circles. New
ideologies continue to arise calling for self-sacrifice and renunciation.
Whether they wrap themselves in the cloak
of anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-speciesism, the
refusal of privilege, radical environmentalism or any of the myriad of
disguises available to them, these calls to limit oneself in the name of social
transformation must be recognized as counter-revolutionary, because they are
chains placed upon revolt.
Calls for self-limitation
are always presented in the fine-sounding rhetoric of compassion or in the stronger
language of obligation. In either case, it is the language of morality, and as
revolutionaries, we need to recognize that the limits imposed by morality are
always limits placed upon our capacity to fight against this society. This may
be more fully understood if we remember that the society in which we live – the
society of domination and exploitation, of property and social control, of
domestication and measurement – is based precisely upon limitation and its
acceptance.
Power and property have gone hand in hand since the beginning of
civilization and exist through the imposition of limits. The power to rule
requires the existence of methods for controlling the activity of those ruled.
These methods involve limiting the activity of others through varying
combinations of coercion and manipulation. If one of the main reasons to
establish one’s rule is that of controlling property, property is equally one
of the means of extorting compliance from those ruled. This is because property
itself is perhaps the fundamental limitation. Property exists only through the
exclusion of all except the so-called owner and the power (i.e., the state)
that grants and enforces property rights from access to that which has been
defined as “property”. This exclusion, of course, depends on the capacity that
exists for enforcing it. But to the extent to which it can be enforced, it is a
limitation through which the rulers of this society are able to control those
they rule.
And
from these combined limitations of political power and property spring further
limitations: work, domestication, technological systems, industrialism… Work is
coerced activity. No one denies that it is necessary to carry out some sort of
activity, to make exertions, in order to create our lives and weave them
together in a way that pleases us, but this is not the some as work. Work is
forced upon us when those things that we need to create our lives are made
inaccessible to us by others – the owners or controllers of social wealth. In
order to get back some of that which has been taken from us (transformed into a
product for sale), we have to give over the greater part of our time to the
projects of those who rule us, projects that have as their ultimate purpose the
continuation of the social relationships of power and exploitation.
From the moment civilization began, it has been developing technological
systems for expanding its control. Control, of course, operates through the
limitation of the capacity of that which is controlled to act or function on
its own terms. Thus, contrary to the way in which they are frequently
perceived, technological systems have not developed in order to broaden human
capacities, but in order to limit the autonomy of both the wild world and human
individuals (who as such are always potentially “wild”) and thus enforce power.
Technological development ends up practically limiting the relationships
possible among living beings and between living beings and their environment by
channeling these into increasingly homogenized and rationalized modes of
activity and interaction.
The
chatter about bourgeois society placing great value upon the individual is
ridiculous. The “individual” of bourgeois society has always been a mere cipher
with nothing individual about it. In fact, bourgeois society placed its
greatest value – it least in the ideological realm – upon reified Reason.
Beginning in the Renaissance, the ideology that nature and society, and
therefore also the individual, should be subjected by every means necessary to
the dictates of Reason began to dominate. Individuals such as Giordano Bruno,
who saw a universe permeated with passionate life that flowed and surged beyond
the limits of Reason and Religion, were looked upon as heretics and sometimes
faced the stake. For this reified Reason, no longer a tool of living
individuals but rather a power over them, was essentially mechanistic and its
aim was precisely to limit the wild surging experienced by Bruno and other
so-called heretics, to bring it under control of the newly rising capitalist
order. Here we find the justification for ever-increasing technological
development leading to industrialization, Taylorism, cybernetization and on to the latest intrusions of
technology directly into our bodies.
If
it is an error to think of bourgeois ideology as centering around
the individual, it is equally wrong to see the central problem of capitalism as
being that of excessiveness, of a lack of limits. This is an example of a very
common error in analysis, mistaking a symptom for the source. It is certainly
true that capital expands itself into every corner of the world, but it is
necessary to recognize what this system is in order to understand the
significance of this expansion and recognize what needs to be attacked.
Capital, and in fact civilization in its totality, is an ever-expanding system of limitations, an attempt
to bring everything that exists under control.
Thus, the revolt against this system is a refusal of all limitations.
And the refusal of limitations is also the refusal of renunciation,
self-sacrifice and obligation. Marx and many other early communists wanted a
scientific revolution that occurred in accordance with a rational historical
development. Many present-day “radicals” want a revolution based upon the
renunciation of “privilege” on the part of those who are supposedly less
oppressed and the sacrifice of their energy to the causes of those supposedly
most oppressed. Bakunin, however, recognized that
only the unleashing of the wildest passions of the oppressed and exploited
could truly create a force capable of tearing this society down.
But
the unleashing of our wildest passions requires the rejection of every vestige
of christian and bourgeois
morality, of every limitation imposed upon us by external and internal
ideological police. In the struggle against domination and exploitation here
and now, we are facing a global order that grants no quarter in its insistence
upon conforming everything to its mechanized, measured rule. To place any
limits on ourselves, to renounce anything, is to lose everything. Once again,
the principle that the means must contain the end applies. Against
civilization’s greeting card sentimentality, channeled and commodified
wants and measured calculations, it is necessary to unleash passions, desires
and reasons that know no measure and recognize no limits and, thus, cannot be
bought off.
There are those whose lives center around lost and
vapid fairy tales. They need an ancient dream to justify the breaths they steal
– their crime of being alive. But for this crime there is no forgiveness. It
can only be the ultimate act of defiance, spitting in authority’s face,
shouting “I AM!” against every constraint society has invented. I wish to
state, once and for all, I do not want to be civilized.