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Title: Random Notes on “Call” Author: Anonymous Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: critique, Tarnac 9, Tiqqun Source: Retrieved on January 3, 2011 from http://www.non-fides.fr/?Random-notes-on-Call Notes: Published in ‘325’ #7, October 2009.
My first impression after reading Call was that it really did not say
anything to me. Since the beginning of their booklet the authors use
quite an abstract language, which is perhaps intended to go beyond the
banal words that are employed in every day conversations and by the
media, but which fails to achieve its purpose. So they talk about
‘evident’ and ‘worlds’ but me, quite a humble reader, do not catch what
they mean nor do they further explain these exotic concepts.
Their Proposition I states: «Faced with the evidence of catastrophe
there are those who get indignant and those who take note, those who
denounce and those who get organised. We are among those who get
organised».
They do not mention another category: those who struggle and attack by
deeds and by words. They do not mention hundreds of comrades all over
the world who attack and sometimes are imprisoned but still continue to
attack. They do mention the Black Panthers, the German Autonomen, the
Italian Autonomists, the British neoluddites, radical feminists, the
2^(nd) June movement but they seem not to be aware of recent facts, from
the struggle against the immigration detention centres and the world
that produces them to the solidarity that expresses itself by all
possible ways every time repression hits hard.
It has to be seen, then, what kind of organisation the authors of this
booklet are into. They declare that «to get organised means: to start
from the situation and not to dismiss it. The name we give to the
situation that we are in is world civil war».
First of all I wonder why they say world civil war instead of calling it
social war, then I still don’t understand what they mean for starting
from the situation and not dismissing it.
The answer is maybe what they later call ‘secession’, secession from the
capitalist valorisations and secession from the left identified with
Tute Bianche, Attac, social forums and other species of activists.
I wonder once again why they talk about «secession» and not about
«refuse». Refusing the capitalist valorisations and the world of the
leftist activists (which is a product of the latter) means to act
according to a revolutionary project. «Secession» implies the negation
of any revolutionary break. The authors simply constitute themselves as
an «autonomous material force within the world civil war» and as such
they «set out the conditions» of their call. What is this autonomous
material force intended to do? And does not this ‘setting out the
conditions’ sound vanguardist? It does, in my opinion, and I found other
statements in Call that seems to be imposed from above.
If on the one hand their analysis of the present catastrophe and of the
way various species of leftists try to cope with it is good, on the
other hand the authors of Call do not propose anything concrete.
On the contrary they launch their «call» (from above of course): «This
is a call. That is to say it aims at those who can hear it. The question
is not to demonstrate, to argue, to convince. We will go straight to the
evident». Here are some people who propose themselves as those who know
the truth (what they call «the evident») and make a «call» at those who
can hear it.
Furthermore throughout the booklet great emphasis is made on
«community», «sect» and «collective experience». No mention is ever made
of individual action. In fact the authors of Call say clearly that they
prefer «collectivity» to the individual. In their Call the individual
disappears under the predominance of the «material collective force».
The individual is only mentioned in a derogatory way, as the «liberal
individual», the pacifist, the advocate of human rights. The existence
of individuals animated by rebellious thoughts who act according to a
revolutionary project either on their own or along with other
individuals animated by the same rebellious thoughts is not at all
contemplated. On the contrary the authors are convinced that «the end of
capitalism» will come after a link is established between what one lives
and what one thinks, and that this link is not an individual issue but
it depends on «the construction of shared worlds». I find it hard to
follow this reasoning as I think the desire to put an end to «the
catastrophe» is entirely an individual issue. It starts from individual
inner rage and its ability to find accomplices along the way. I don’t
think that the starting point is organisation and «shared worlds»: this
only leads to the production of abstract words, which can be seductive
and glamorous but which will never end up in any really revolutionary
transformation.
Finally, what on earth does it means: «On the one hand, we want to live
communism; on the other, to spread anarchy»? The authors of Call suggest
that communism is not a political or economic system, has no need of
Marx and has never had anything to do with the USSR. They say that
communism means to elaborate one’s relationship to the world, to the
beings, to oneself, and that it starts from «the experience of sharing».
They go on: «The practise of communism, as we live it, we call the
Party. When we overcome an obstacle together or when we reach a higher
level of sharing, we say that we are building the Party». If this kind
of communism needs the building of a party (exactly as Marxist
communism) it cannot be associated with «spreading anarchy».
The authors of Call are very careful in depicting their «Party» as a
captivating «formation of a sensibility as a force», in which everything
is shared on equalitarian basis and in which formalisation is minimal.
They almost succeed in presenting «the Party» as the only effective
instrument of struggle against the system, as the most wonderful
achievement of any antagonist movement, but still their association
between «anarchy» and «communism» and its «Party» is unconceivable.
As far as I know anarchy does not need any Party. And if it can express
itself also through collective activity (between two or more people) it
cannot be disconnected from the individual. It is the individual desire
for freedom, the individual disgust towards exploitation.
I wish the authors of Call all the best. May their call reach those who
«are building the Party elsewhere», but certainly it will never reach my
ears.