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Title: Affinity Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: 1985 Language: en Topics: affinity, affinity groups, Insurrectionary Source: From *Anarchismo*, n. 45, 1985. English Translation in *Insurrectionalist Anarchism* — Part One, published by Elephant Editions. Retrieved from https://tabularasa.anarhija.net/library/affinity
Anarchists have an ambivalent relationship with the question of
organisation.
On the one hand there are those who accept a permanent structure with a
well-defined programme and means at their disposal (even if only a few),
that is divided up into commissions, while on the other there is a
refusal of any stable relationship, even in the short term.
Classical anarchist federations and individualists are the two extremes
of an escape from the reality of the clash. The comrade that belongs to
an organised structure hopes that a revolutionary transformation will
result from a growth in numbers, so he holds the cheap illusion that the
structure is capable of controlling any authoritarian involution or any
concession to the logic of the party. The individualist comrade is
solicitous of his own ego and fears any form of contamination, any
concession to others or any active collaboration, believing such things
to be giving in and compromising.
This turns out to be the natural consequence, even for comrades who
consider the problem of specific organisation and the federation of
groups critically.
The organisation is thus born before any struggles take place and ends
up adapting to the perspective of a certain kind of struggle which—at
least one supposes—is to make the organisation itself grow. In this way
the structure has a vicarious relationship with the repressive decisions
of power, which for various reasons dominate the scene of the class
struggle. Resistance and the self-organisation of the exploited are seen
as molecular elements to be grasped here and there, but only become
meaningful on entering and becoming part of the specific structure or
allow themselves to be regrouped into mass organisms under the (more or
less direct) leadership of the latter.
In this way, one is always waiting. It is as though we are all in
provisional liberty. We scrutinise the attitudes of power and keep ready
to react (always within the limits of the possible) against the
repression that strikes us, hardly ever taking the initiative, setting
out our interventions in first person, overturning the logic of the
loser. Anybody that recognises themselves in structured organisations
expects to see their number of members increase. Anyone that works
within mass structures (for example in the anarcho-syndicalist optic) is
waiting for today’s small demands to turn into great revolutionary
results in the future. Those who deny all that but also spend their time
waiting, who knows what for, are often stuck in resentment against all
and everything, sure of their own ideas without realising that they are
no more than the flip side of the organisational and programmatical
stance.
We believe that it is possible to do something else.
We start off from the consideration that it is necessary to establish
contact with other comrades in order to pass to action. We are not in a
condition to act alone as long as our struggle is reduced to platonic
protest, as bloody and terrible as you like, but still platonic. If we
want to act on reality incisively there must be many of us.
How can we find our comrades? We have cast aside any question of
programmes and platforms in advance, throwing them out once and for all.
So what is left?
Affinity.
Affinities and divergence exist among anarchists. I am not talking about
personal affinity here, i.e. sentimental aspects that often bring
comrades together (in the first place love, friendship, sympathy, etc.),
I am talking about a deepening of reciprocal knowledge. The more this
deepening grows, the greater the affinity can become. In the case of the
contrary, divergences can turn out to be so great as to make any action
impossible. So the solution lies in a growth in reciprocal knowledge,
developed through a projectual examination of the various problems that
the class struggle presents us with.
There are a whole range of problems that we want to face, and usually
care is taken not examine them in their entirety. We often limit
ourselves to questions that are close at hand because they are the ones
that affect us most (repression, prison, etc.).
But it is precisely our capacity to examine the problem that we want to
face that leads to the best way to create conditions for affinity. This
can obviously never be absolute or total (except in very rare cases),
but can be sufficient to create relations disposed to acting.
If we restrict our intervention to the most obvious and superficial
aspects of what we consider the essential problems to be, we will never
be able to discover the affinity we desire. We will constantly be
wandering around at the mercy of sudden, unsuspected contradictions that
could upset any project of intervention in reality. I insist on pointing
out that affinity should not be confused with sentiment. We can
recognise affinity with comrades that we do not particularly like and on
the other hand like comrades with whom we do not have any affinity.
Among other things, it is important not to let oneself be hindered in
one’s action by false problems such as a presumed differentiation
between feelings and political motivations. From what has been said
above it might seem that feelings should be kept separate from political
analysis, so we could, for example, love someone and not share their
ideas at all and vice versa. That is roughly possible, no matter how
lacerating it might be. The personal aspect (or that of feelings if you
like) must be included in the above concept of going into the range of
problems, as instinctively succumbing to our impulses often signifies a
lack of reflection and analysis, or not being able to admit to simply
being possessed by god.
From what we have said there now starts to emerge, even nebulously, a
first approximation of our way of considering the anarchist group: a
number of comrades linked by a common affinity.
The more the project that these comrades build together is gone into,
the greater their affinity will be. It follows that real organisation,
the effective (and not fictitious) capacity to act together, i.e. to
find each other, make analyses and pass to action, is in relation to the
affinity reached and has nothing to do with more or less camouflaged
monograms, programmes, platforms, flags or parties.
The affinity group is therefore a specific organisation that comes
together around common affinities. These cannot be identical for all,
but different comrades will have infinite affinity structures, all the
more varied the wider the effort of analytical quest reached.
It follows that all these comrades will also tend towards quantitative
growth, which is however limited and not the main aim of the activity.
Numerical development is indispensable for action and it is also a test
of the breadth of the analyses that one is developing and its capacity
to gradually discover affinity with a greater number of comrades.
It follows that the organism thus born will end up giving itself means
of intervention in common. First, an instrument of debate necessary for
analysis that is capable, as far as possible, of supplying indications
on a wide range of problems and, at the same time, of constituting a
point of reference for the verification—at a personal or collective
level—of the affinities or divergencies that arise.
Lastly it should be said that although the element that holds a group of
this kind together is undoubtedly affinity, its propulsive aspect is
action. To limit oneself to the first element and leave the other in
second place would result in relationships withering in Byzantian
perfectionism.