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Title: To the Customers Author: Anonymous Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: critique, insurrection, tiqqun, invisible committee Notes: It's not hard to grasp that for common mortals intent on making themselves pass for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is only one sure method for making their words infallible: saying everything and its contrary. Flip through the pages of the Invisible Committee and you remain certain that every one of its statements, peremptory as befits a piece of evidence, will know a few pages later an equally peremptory denial. In this way, what it maintains will always be true and those who criticize it will support, by force of circumstance, the false.
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know
and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling
carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which
cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of
them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying
claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party
was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to
forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was
needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all to apply the
same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety:
consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become
unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to
understand the word âdoublethinkâ involved the use of doublethink.
George Orwell, 1984
And Masters themselves allow, that if a Servant comes when he is called,
it is sufficient.
Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants
On the night between October 25 and 26, 2014, in Sivens, the police use
a grenade to kill Remy Fraisse, a 21-year old activist who is
demonstrating against the construction of a dam. In the days that
follow, rage flares up in the streets of many French cities, and almost
daily conflicts between the forces of order and demonstrators are
reported. But Remy Fraisse died a few weeks too late. If he had been
blown up a bit earlier, he would surely have been included in the
dedications of the new book by the Invisible Committee, already the
authors, in 2007, of the best-seller, The Coming Insurrection. Just four
days before his death, in fact, the new and awaited title, To Our
Friends, was beautifully displayed in all the book stores. It opens with
a dedication to three dead people and a prisoner, from various
countries. And so, an international dedication; and so, aiming to
provoke an international commotion; and so, aiming to draw international
acclaim.
And, not being able to exploit the emotions aroused by the tragic death
of Remy Fraisse on paper, some vulture has thought well of doing it on
television. The night of October 31, on the national channel France 2, a
debate was held on âEcology, the new battlefield?â during the program Ce
soir ou Jamais (This Evening or Never). One participant was Mathieu
Burnel â one of the grocers of Tarnac investigated by the magistrature
at the end of 2008 for a sabotage attack on a railroad line â ,
suspected of being part of the Invisible Committee (whose members are
unknown) because of the deep similarity of language and content between
The Coming Insurrection and the magazine Tiqqun (whose editors instead
were known), whose final legacy before disappearing in 2003 was the
pamphlet Appel (Call) patently recycled in the first work of the I.C. Of
course, this doesnât necessarily mean that the old animators of the
magazine are now members of the I.C. But we can state without fear of
denial that the members of the I.C. have read and appreciated the
writings of Tiqqun, and that the editors of Tiqqun have read and
appreciated those of the I.C. â now published, not by chance, by the
same editor â as the theses supported by both follow upon each other,
interweave, and are based in the same harmonic milieu. And since the
âcommuneâ of Tarnac was also founded by the main animator of Tiqqun,
Julien Coupat, this explains why many think that the headquarters of the
Invisible Committee is in the backshop of the grocery store of the
French village. Be that as it may, Burnel is a fanatical supporter of
the I.C.
Letâs return to the night of October 31, when the death of Remy, the
thought of his body mangled by the cops, caused the blood to boil in
veins. If there were those who did back down before the police, Burnel
was so daring that he did not back down before the television cameras of
the journalists, because he wanted to publicly compare his opinions with
those of the excellent people invited to share the same bed [1]: Corrine
Lepage (former environmental minister, former candidate for the French
presidency and member of the current European parliament), Christian de
Perthuis (economy professor, member of the Economic Council for
Sustainable Development, as well as the author of Green Capital: a New
Perspective on Growth), Fabrice Flipo (engineer and philosopher,
lecturer on sustainable development at the Télécom Ecole de Management),
Christian GĂ©rondeau (engineer, expert in transportation and road system
safety, lobbyist for the automobile industry, current mission chief for
the Brussels Commission and the World Bank), Juliette MĂ©adel
(spokesperson for the Socialist Party), Philippe Raynaud (professor of
political science) and Pascal Bruckner (philosopher who passed from the
exegesis of Fourierâs utopia to support for NATOâs wars).
As to Mathieu Burnel, he was invited as a member of the âTarnac group âŠ
that supports struggles like that in which Remy Fraisse met deathâ.
This, at least, was how the programâs host introduced him. The host
recalled how the Tarnac group was often thought to be the âfamous
Invisible Committeeâ who in 2007 published The Coming Insurrection and
âwho last week published a new book entitled To Our Friendsâ (as the
covers of the two books stood out on the screen). Interrupted frequently
by his opinionist colleagues invited to attract an audience, Burnel
didnât miss opportunity to evoke the emotion aroused years earlier by
the appearance of The Coming Insurrection by later decreeing that âthe
insurrection has arrived!â. Therefore he openly abandoned the broadcast,
declaring that he was bored with the other peopleâs interventions.
But who did he think he would be facing? Did he believe he would hear
impassioned arguments about the battle front opening up for carrying out
the war against civilization? Obviously not. It is a genuine banality to
discover how it is impossible to discuss in freedom inside a television
studio, in the midst of reactionaries of every stripe. Representatives
of the party of order and the party of insurrection, sitting side by
side, to discuss in a more or less calm manner the needs of the state
and the desires of revolt before a public television audience in a
post-dinner digestive condition; what else could such a staged set-up
be, if not buffoonery of the spectacle? If Burnel accepted it, it is
clearly because he had his priorities: as the infamous scumbag Timothy
Leary would have said, âit is necessary to sell the new thing to the
kidsâ. Completely calculated. Once the advertisement spot for the
Invisible Committeeâs new merchandise had ended, it would no long make
sense to remain in those television studios.
Accepting dialogue with those in power under the spotlights of its
limelight is a strategic choice of pure marketing. It appears that in
these miserable times publicity is not only the spirit of commerce, but
also of subversion; or rather of the commerce of subversion. Besides,
itâs a choice that has a logic of its own in Burnelâs environment:
werenât his grocer comrades who were also charged in Tarnac, Benjamin
Rosoux and Manon Glibert, elected municipal councilors of the small
French hamlet in March 2014, after being candidates on a local ballot?
And recently hasnât Julien Coupat himself granted interviews to official
information media like the weekly LâObs or France Inter radio?
Itâs a dirty job, representing the insurrection, acting as its
spokesperson with institutions, mass media and the market â holding
discussions, granting interviews, getting photographed, signing
contracts, clasping hands â but someone has to do it! And it is
fortunate that there are revolutionaries with noble and generous hearts
who are willing to submit to such a sacrifice.
By spreading his tail this bird so fair,
Whose plumage drags the forest floor,
Appears more lovely than before,
But thus unveils his derriĂšre.
Guillaume Apollinaire, The Peacock
The Invisible Committeeâs second book, like the first, was published in
France by the same publishing house, La Fabrique, whose name is a homage
to workerist ideology. Its animator is Eric Hazan, a real character of
an editor, as well as a historian and philosopher. Beyond being, of
course, a bitter enemy of the constituted order, although his First
Revolutionary Measures (the title of one of his books written together
with the zombie of Kamo, who, some whisper, was also dug up on the
plateau of Millevaches near Tarnac) has not completely managed to make
people forget his latest counter-revolutionary measures (his electoral
propaganda in favor of the socialist François Hollande, now president of
France). Like the preceding work, To Our Friends is also part of the
battle series of La Fabrique editions, the same series that includes
works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Blanqui, Gramsci, Robespierre, as
well as three titles from Tiqqun ⊠But Hazan doesnât only have eyes for
the grandpas and grandsons of authoritarian revolutionary thought: his
2010 catalog can also brag of Les Mauvais Jours Finiront: 40 ans de
combats pour la justice et les libertés (The Bad Days Will End: 40 Years
of Fighting for Justice and Liberty), the title that, with the piquant
communard-situ flavor, serves to spice up a hot dish from an author as
insipid as the Judiciary Union. Well? Whatâs strange about this?
Nothing, considering that in 2003, Hazan had already distinguished
himself for the publication of the diary of the founder of the National
Police union, who spent twenty years doing this âgood job in which one
helps people and protects societyâ, while in 2005 he published the book
of an auxiliary doctor of the police who desired to let the public know
what it takes to care for the health of the arrested in the police
station.
In short, as youâve understood, Eric Hazan is a revolutionary, well-read
and lacking prejudice.
The back cover of the Invisible Committeeâs new book, along with listing
to whom it is addressed, concludes with the by now inevitable
affectation of humility, a genuine trademark of certain movement areas.
This new editorial effort is simperingly presented by its authors as a
âmodest contribution to an understanding of our timeâ. Now, it is
already annoying to hear a scholar complimenting himself for his
erudition, or a muse bragging about her beauty, or a strong man
asserting his strength. But modesty? To flaunt oneâs modesty is to fall
into the most flagrant hypocrisy, it is bellowing out oneâs conceit.
But, as we will see, the Invisible Committee is the supreme master of
contradiction.
Starting with an ostentatious humility, the I.C. is announced with great
fanfare. In the original promotional press release for the book in
France, we actually read: âIn 2007, we published The Coming Insurrection
⊠A book that has now ended up being associated with the âTarnac caseâ,
forgetting that it was already a success in bookstores ⊠Because it
isnât enough that a book be included in its totality in a file of an
anti-terrorist investigation for it to sell, it is also necessary that
the truths it articulates touch that readers due to a certain
correctness. It must be acknowledged that a number of assertions by the
Invisible Committee have since been confirmed, starting with the first
and most essential: the sensational return of the insurrectionary
phenomenon. Starting in 2008, a half-year has not passed without a mass
revolt or an uprising taking place to the removal of the powers in
charge ⊠If it has been the sequence of events that has conferred its
subversive character to The Coming Insurrection, it is the intensity of
the present that makes To Our Friends an eminently more scandalous text.
We cannot content ourselves with celebrating the insurrectional wave
that currently passes through the world, also congratulating ourselves
on having noticed its birth before others ⊠To Our Friends is thus
written at the peak of this general movement, at the peak of the
experience. Its words come from the heart of disorders and are addressed
to all those who still believe sufficiently in life to fight. To Our
Friends wants to be a report on the condition of the world and of the
movement, an essentially strategic and openly partisan writing. Its
political ambition is boundless: to produce a shared understanding of
the times, at the expense of the extreme confusion of the present.â
Advertising language knows only the absolute superlative. The words of
this presentation sound so lacking in modesty as to be inappropriate if
addressed to potential friends, usually not so inclined to welcome such
arrogance. But perfect if one intends to address potential customers
luring them with the promise of strong emotions. Isnât it true that
every new product that gets put on the market is presented as if it were
a âmasterpieceâ, an âexperience you donât want to missâ, a âunique
sensationâ? In 2006, an essay on the propaganda of daily life that
appeared in France, published by Raisons dâagir editions, also pointed
this out, declaring that âAnother symptom of the influence of
advertising is the inflation of hyperbole, particularly in ⊠book and
film reviews (âŠ) Journalists make the jobs of the copywriters of the
advertising agencies easier, littering their articles with enthusiastic
formulas, rich with adjectives ⊠The incestuous relationship with
advertising contributes to making [of language] a tool of programmed
emotion, an impulsive language, just as on describes âan impulsive
purchaseâ.â Curious â but we are not at all surprise â that the author
of this essay, entitled LQR, is precisely Mr. Eric Hazan, who in the
costume of the essayist lashes out against this invasion of advertising
into the language that in the costume of editor he welcomes with the aim
of programming readers to the impulsive purchase of his products.
Putting aside the poverty of self-promotional gimmicks, such a conceit
brings to our minds some considerations of an old and well-known Italian
anarchist, who mocked the âsweet mania of all idolaters. Thus, marxists
attribute everything to Marx, and one passes for a marxist even if one
says that bosses rob the workers (ah! so you admit the theory of surplus
value, they shout at you in a triumphant tone) or if one affirms the
millennia-old truth that to assert reason force is required. If you say
that the sun shines, the mazzinians will say that Mazzini said it, and
the marxists will answer that Marx said it. Idolaters are made this
way.â The Invisible Committee is also made this way, it is an idolater
of itself. It only remembers the disorders that broke out after its book
was blessed by FNAC or Amazon â not even the insurrections and
rebellions that exploded starting from 2007 were due to it, not even the
rebels who rose up throughout the planet, did so because they were
aroused by reading its text. And what about what happened, for example,
in Oaxaca or Kurdistan in 2006, in France or Iran in 2005, in Manipur
(in India) or Syria in 2004, in Iraq and Bolivia in 2003, in Argentina
in 2002, in Algeria in 2001, in Ecuador in 2000, in Iran in 1999, in
Indonesia in 1998, in Albania in 1997 ⊠not to mention the ongoing
revolts that break out in countries impenetrable to western information
like China?
Let the low-down scoundrels of the Invisible Committee resign
themselves. They have predicted nothing, they have not discovered and
announced anything new. Storms donât break out to confirm the words of
the meteorologist. There have been insurrections throughout history, and
they have no need of anyone to theorize them in order to explode.
Neither revolutionaries who discuss them in their autonomous
publications, nor intellectuals who transform them into logos of success
on the publishing market. So if the I.C. brag about being aware of the
insurrectional phenomenon before others, then one has to ask who these
others are: their competitors in the climb in sales ratings for titles
of political critique? Toni Negri who obsesses them so much in the
competition for theoretical hegemony of the extreme left, or Stéphane
Hessel who incites to the civic insurrection of consciences, or Naomi
Klein, icon of the anti-globalization movement, whose books have all
sold many more than them, clearly because ... they have articulated even
more correct truths?
However it may be, we admit it, the Invisible Committee has achieved a
first. Before others, it has commodified insurrection.
But in case advertising hyperbole isnât successful, emotional
participation intervenes. In the bookâs preface, the rugged members of
the Invisible Committee enthrall their readers with their personal
confidences, making the readers participants in their adventurous life:
âSince The Coming Insurrection, weâve gone to the places where the epoch
was inflamed. Weâve read, weâve fought, weâve discussed with comrades of
every country and every tendency. Together with them, weâve come up
against the invisible obstacles of the times. Some of us have died,
others have seen prison. Weâve kept going. We havenât given up on
constructing worlds or attacking this one.â
It is here that that sensation of deep embarrassment, almost shame, for
someone else comes out.
The strength of anonymity is in its ability to unburden the meaning of
an idea or an action from the identity of the one who formulates it or
carries it out, returning it in this way to a full availability in its
universal essence. But what is there to say when it gets used only to
take the license of claiming or boasting about who knows what
undertakings? Who is the Invisible Committee out to impress when â
certain that no one could refute it â it evokes its omnipresence in
disorders, death and prison suffered by its members, along with its
irreducible tenacity? Such boastfulness might impress its customers, but
it provokes everyone else to savage sarcasm. We also take for granted
that the collection of authorâs rights has allowed it to make
insurrectional tourism, or rather to compete with pacifists and
leftists, the police and journalists in rushing headlong to wherever
there were outbreaks of revolt. But we still doubt that the I.C. has
discussed with comrades of every tendency (okay, letâs not be too
persnickety: âand every tendencyâ except for those who donât adore
them). Finally, who among its initiates is dead and how? It doesnât say,
this way making fantasy fly. Is the Committee speaking of those fallen
on the field during insurrections? Or more simply of the dedicatees of
this new book? Maybe Billy and Guccio and Alexis were all part of the
Committee? And which of its members ended up in prison? The hacker
Jeremy Hammond?
We strongly doubt it, but it is completely useless to dwell on such
questions. After having been the self-proclaimed spokespeople of the
âhistorical partyâ of insurrection, nothing remains to the Invisible
Committee but to inspect its properties, coopting the revolt of others
through the use of the royal âweâ that makes it reflect on âglobal
action by our partyâ, or to recall that on âMay 10, 2010, five hundred
thousand of us flooded into the center of Athens.â Just as in the past
the intellectuals of the Situationist International bragged of
expressing the revolutionary theory, maintaining in defiance of ridicule
that their ideas were âin everyoneâs heads â it is well-knownâ, in the
same way the intellectuals of the Invisible Committee brag in the
present of expressing the insurrectional event, maintaining â in equal
defiance of ridicule and feeding off of the slogan of Anonymous â that
they are legion and are everywhere on the barricades erected over the
planet. It is well-known!
Here it is: the last peacock of the zoo of the extreme left, utterly
intent on opening its tail with phosphorescent feathers to put itself on
display before its public.
One of the common traits of LQR, the idiom of advertising and the
language of the Third Reich â a parallel that obviously does not imply
any equating of neoliberalism to nazism â is the pursuit of
effectiveness even at the expense of plausibility âŠ
Of nazi language, Jean-Pierre Faye writes, âthe most surprising thing is
that its inconsequentialities are practical for it: since they also play
in the field that produced them, one would say that they tend to
recharge it.â Even LQR does not fear inconsequenciality.
Eric Hazan, âLQR. La propagande du quotidienâ (LQR: The Propaganda of
Everyday Life)
The language of the Invisible Committee fears it that much less. The
aspect that most leaps out before its writings is precisely the lack of
a consequential logic underlying its affirmations. It seems to be a
characteristic of this entire milieu, since already in 2003 the last
editors of Tiqqun announced in their (announcement for enlistment and so
called) Appel (Call): âThe question is not to demonstrate, to argue, to
convince. We will go straight to the evident. The evident is not
primarily an affair of logic or reasoning. It attaches to the sensible,
to worlds.â [2] One already starts to smile over the curious and
self-interested mixture of terms. In general, the sensible is as far as
can be from an evident. The sensible is subjective, individual, obscure
as a riddle that is interpreted by each one individually. The evident,
instead, is objective, common, clear as a certainty clarified for all
collectively. The sensible is controversial, the evident, no, it is
verified. If both are not âaffairs of logicâ, it is for diametrically
opposed reasons. Reason doesnât have the capacity of making an affair of
what lies beyond its range (like the elusive sensible), while it has no
need to do it with what is right here (like the evident already taken
for granted at a discount). But what interests the authors of Appel,
what makes them drool before the evocation of the sensible as evident,
is that both are recognized, accepted in any case, and, above all, are
not debated. Each one has her own inaccessible sensibility, all yield
before the undeniable evident.
Itâs the same worry that afflicts the Invisible Committee: not to be
called into question. So in order not to incur the risk that its words
are examined, pondered, maybe refuted, indeed, in order to make it that
they are also immediately conceded and accepted as they are, it feigns a
superior indifference for the substance of the contents â a tedious
waste of time â preferring to make the readers quiver with thrilling
sensations, like silk: intensity, consistency, finesse. In its debut of
2007, it was quick to present itself in the guise not of the responsible
author, but rather of the âscribeâ who bears no blame, which limits
itself to reporting âcommonplacesâ, âtruthsâ and âobservationsâ of the
times. In this way, The Coming Insurrection did not become a book on
which to reflect and debate, but rather a book to acknowledge. In short,
a sacred text.
Along the same line, To Our Friends is presented as a commentary on some
slogans drawn on walls during the revolts that broke out around the
world. Every chapter, in fact, takes a bit of graffiti, the image of
which is recopied on its opening page, as the title. Through this
pathetic expedient the customers are directed to observe the same
inferred evidence â it isnât the Invisible Committee speaking, it is the
global insurrection; hey, have you seen? the global insurrections say
exactly what the Invisible Committee says! Well, of course, after all,
the walls of this planet agree with everyone from democrats to fascists,
from religious fanatics to sports fans, even sex maniacs. You just have
to choose the right photograph.
Itâs not hard to grasp that for common mortals intent on making
themselves pass for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is only one
sure method for making their words infallible: saying everything and its
contrary. Flip through the pages of the Invisible Committee and you
remain certain that every one of its statements, peremptory as befits a
piece of evidence, will know a few pages later an equally peremptory
denial. In this way, what it maintains will always be true and those who
criticize it will support, by force of circumstance the false. Its
intention to untangle the âgreatest confusionâ, to âuntangle the skein
of the present, and in places to settle accounts with ancient
falsehoodsâ, through a hurricane of contradictions, sophisms and
absurdities, is curious, but we fear that such confusions and such
falsehoods can only increase after the reading of its books in which
every least bit of logic and consequentiality are literally demolished.
The examples that one might make on the matter risk being endless. We
have already seen how the Invisible Committee shows off its modesty to
satisfy its vanity. It doesnât miss any opportunity to insult the left,
by which however it gets published and with whom it theorizes having
relationships. It denounces the recuperation and impotence of radical
ideas when put in the service of the commerce of publishing, but they
donât hesitate to practice it. It thunders about wanting to desert this
world, but doesnât tolerate those who abandon it (unlike these latter,
to secede from the world, it seizes it in order to grasp its position!).
It complains of the human being alienated by the technological trinkets,
then exhorts people to use them after having revealed the ethic of the
technique. With regards to ethics, it considers them adorable but only
in the service of politics. It admits that insurrection depends on
qualitative criteria, while it explains why one cannot do without the
quantitative. It cites outlaws who deny the existence of another world,
then announces that it creates worlds. It sees war everywhere and wants
to make it in such a devastating way that it does not designate the
enemy, but rather seeks to makes friends with it. It is interested in
any demand-based struggle, originating with any pretext, but then blames
those who raise the question of austerity. It critiques time and again
the myth of assemblyism and the anxiety over legitimacy present in many
struggles, while it exalts the great merit of those that are most
infected with them. It throws the self-organizational capacities people
put into action when they are suddenly deprived of state services in the
face of realists, and then becomes realistic in its turn and prescribes
courses that prevent/preempt self-organization for all. It invites the
forgetful to remember the ancient insurrectional origin of the term
âpopularâ (populor = devastate) but deliberately omit explaining that
the devastation was that carried out by soldiers in war (populus =
army). It wants life to put roots into the earth, but it doesnât
tolerate ideas putting roots into life. While it sets forth its critique
of the areas of the movement if accuses those subversives who criticize
the areas of the movement of âauto-phagyâ. It reproaches revolutionaries
for not understanding that power is found in the infrastructures, that
it is therefore necessary to strike there, but then warn against taking
action. Since everything organizing itself requires attention and
everything being organized requires management, it invites
becoming-revolutionaries to be organized. It proclaims the end of
civilization, by warning that its technical complexity makes it
immortal. It mocks the divisions that weaken the movement, but
acknowledges that fragmentation could make it indomitable. It goes into
ecstasy over the impulse of spontaneism, but itâs best if it is not
completely spontaneist. Along with âcomrade Deleuzeâ, it supports the
need to be the most centralist of the centralists, but then, along with
an Egyptian comrade, supports not wanting leaders, so that the
centrality, in order not to be too oppressive, must be transversal.
These are just a few examples to explain the nausea that assails us
after a few ups and downs on the theoretical roller-coaster of those who
in 2007 announced The Coming Insurrection and in 2014 revealed that the
aim of every prophecy is to âimpose here and now waiting, passivity,
submissionâ.
Now when one runs into someone who can habitually stoop to contradictory
claims, a doubt spontaneously and immediately arises: is she aware of
the absurdities she maintains? If he doesnât notice them, perhaps his
intelligence is quite limited. If, on the other hand, she is aware of
it, why does she do it? There would be some not very clear motivation
behind it, which escapes us. In short, the conclusion which one reaches
in these cases is that there are only two alternatives. Either one is
dealing with an aware person, who is then an opportunist. Or, otherwise,
one is dealing with an imbecile.
But the Invisible Committee, as one can easily see, is certainly not
imbecilic. The other, much more reliable theory remains. This explains
the reason for the deep disgust that pervades us in reading its texts
(the same that we felt on reading that Appel (Call) which, in whatever
way and whoever its authors were, anticipated them inside the movement).
Could it be that we are victims of that revolutionary romanticism that
loves to see in every enemy of the constituted order a Warrior for the
Idea; could it be that, like Winston Smith, we also have not managed
very well to detach ourselves from the conventions of oldspeak: but
could we not feel disgusted before those who would like to make
revolutions through the contortions of doublethink? This may all be
commercially and politically convenient â as the editorial success of
the invisible Committee and the electoral success of its first Fan Club
indicate â but it remains ethically appalling.
In the tremors of the uprisings,
I held, as anchors for every storm,
ten to twelve party badges in my pocket.
Giuseppe Giusti, A Toast to Turncoats
In Latin, it seems it had origins in a dig at the master of rhetoric,
Cicero, who was accustomed âduabus sellis sedereâ (to sit on two
thrones). In French today they say âjouer sur les deux tableauxâ (to
play on two gameboards). In German, it becomes âzwischen Baum und Borke
lebenâ (to live between the tree and the bark). In Spanish it sounds
like ânadar entre dos aguasâ (to swim in two waters). In Italian it is
âtenere i piedi in piĂč scarpeâ (to have oneâs feet in many shoes). While
in English it is âto run with the hare and hunt with the houndsâ.
Every language has a colorful expression of its own to point out the
attitude of one who doesnât hesitate to change opinion and behavior
according to the moment and the situation, to describe the oscillations
of turncoats, of chameleons, of double-crossers. Opportunism is an old
defect that afflicts politics, whether reformist or revolutionary. Like
the Calls, it becomes manifest above all in periods of manifest crisis.
When events go along at a more or less regular rhythm, it is easy to
keep theory and practice, means and ends, together. But when that rhythm
gets disrupted, when urgency takes over the mind, that is when people
are transformed into acrobats of Tactics. From the search for what one
considers right (an ethical question), one turns to the search for what
one considers functional and convenient (techno-political questions),
closing oneâs eyes to possible incongruities. Some of those Spanish
anarchists who would become government ministers knew about this, for
example, Garcia Oliver who â going in the course of a few months from
robbing banks to drawing up decreed laws â began to demand âusing the
same methods as the enemy, and especially discipline and unityâ.
The characteristic of the Invisible Committee is not that of putting
into action a practice that contradicts any of its theory, since from
the start it maintains opposing theories, flinging open the door to any
practice whatsoever. It is so full of contradictions as to no longer
even appears contradictory. On the contrary. In fact, if one can say
everything and its opposite, then one can also do everything and its
opposite. This is the secret of its success: giving a semblance of
coherence to incoherence. This is what has affected its editor Hazan,
theoretical critic of advertising, which he utilizes in practice, as
well as a revolutionary editor of judges and cops and supporter of
presidential candidates. And this also seems to excite its admirers in
Tarnac, who, after having learned yesterday that âvisibility must be
avoidedâ and that it is necessary âget organizedâ coherently, and before
repeating today that âdisgust, pure negativity, and absolute refusal are
the only discernable [sic] political forces of the momentâ, have thought
it good to come into the political and media limelight. But donât
suppose that the editor and Fan Club are not in agreement with the
observation that âfor two whole centuries elections have been the most
widely used instrument after the army for suppressing insurrectionsâ,
they had simply already learned in 2007 that âThose who still vote seem
to have no other intention than to desecrate the ballot box by voting as
a pure act of protest. Weâre beginning to suspect that itâs only against
voting itself that people continue to vote.â A wasted effort since it is
well-known, except in Tarnac, that capital ever since âthe
revolutionaries of the years 1960-1970 were quite clear that they wanted
nothing to do with it ⊠selects its people ⊠territory by territoryâ.
Everything clear, true?
Naturally this absolute lack of coherence is also and above all what
attracts the Committeeâs customers, the thing for which they are doubly
grateful. First of all for producing goods at an essentially affordable
price that allow them to enter into the virtual reality of insurrection,
of living a thousand adventures âas if they were trueâ without taking
the risk of getting scratched. To the readers it is enough to leaf
through its books to see oneself seated at the table of the Strategic
Committee for Global Insurrection, the words of the insurgents of Tharir
square in oneâs ears, the streets of Exarchia before oneâs eyes, Edward
Snowden on the run from the CIA sitting on the right and sub-comandante
Marcos on the left. Because, ultimately, according to the Invisible
Committee itself, everything is reduced to being a mere question of
perception and sensibility. A hit of adrenaline that is extended even
after the reading of the book, since at that point the readers feel
stirred up and gratified and free to do anything whatever, even if he
was a nuclear technician in the service of the army. Police and fascists
excluded (in anticipation of the firing squad, or of some future
tactical utilization?), everyone else now knows that they can one day
unite with the revolutionaries, the true revolutionaries, those who look
neither at intentions nor at individual responsibilities, but only at
technical competence.
Such a practical eclecticism is not just the implicit consequence of the
contemporary formulation of more opposing thoughts, or of the lack of a
coherent and consistent theory, since it is explicitly theorized by the
Committee itself. After and as Tiqqun, it repeats like a mantra the need
of an action based on a situational ethic. Or rather on the relaxed
availability, capacity, ability to adapt oneself to circumstances, to
merge into the environment, to be â to say it in the I.C.âs way â âat
the height of the situationâ. Here one might refer to the ancient
sophist relativism of Gorgia, but it better to leave it in the vulgar
oldspeak of the ends that justify the means. If already in Call one
could read that âTo get organised means: to start from the situation and
not dismiss it. To take sides within it. Weaving the necessary material,
affective and political solidarities ⊠The position within a situation
determines the need to forge alliances, and for that purpose to
establish some lines of communication, some wider circulation. In turn
those new links reconfigure the situationâ, in To Our Friends, the I.C.
maintains that, âConflict is the very stuff of what exists. So the thing
to do is to acquire an art of conducting it, which is an art of living
on a situational footing, and which requires a finesse and an
existential mobility instead of a readiness to crush whatever is not usâ
managing in this way âin the complexity of the movements, to discern the
shared friends, the possible alliances, the necessary conflicts.
According to a logic of strategy, and not of dialecticsâ.
Even though the Invisible Committee sometimes opportunistically invoked
it, the refusal of the world â what incites to desertion, to secession â
is not at all considered a basis for sedition, but rather for
renunciation. The I.C. sees deserting this world, staying outside of it,
as the first step toward the rancorous impotence of the hermitage. This
is why the I.C. doesnât at all exhort to breaking ranks, but to taking
oneâs side inside, or rather reconfiguring them. In fact, the true
crisis gets defined as âthat of presenceâ and to come out of it, it is
necessary to heed the admonition of a member of Telecomix: âWhat is
certain is that the territory youâre living in is defended by persons
you would do well to meet. Because theyâre changing the world and they
wonât wait for you.â If it is the state defending the territory, if it
is the state changing the world, if it is the state not waiting for
subversives ⊠well, let the latter hurry to catch up with the state, to
go meet with it. They might give it some good advice.
But this is not desertion at all: deserters are those who no longer obey
orders, who abandon the spaces in which they are restricted, throw off
the uniforms, and go into hiding. What the I.C. propose instead in To
Our Friends is an infiltration starting from the bottom. A nearly
impossible tactic to put into practice (except in films dear to the
Committee like Fight Club), but very easy to theorize about on paper (as
the early situationists well knew). A tactic that requires a
predisposition to falsehood, an inclination to hypocrisy, complicity in
abjection, tolerance for infamy, and that has always accompanied the
worst betrayals. But when itâs a question of tightening necessary
political solidarities, there are those who donât get lost in operative
doubts or in ethical scruples.
In this regard, To Our Friends contains intoxicating passages. According
to the Committee, âinsurrections no longer base themselves on political
ideologies, but on ethical truths. Here we have two words that, to a
modern sensibility, sound like an oxymoron when theyâre brought
together. Establishing what is true is the role of science, is it not? â
science having nothing to do with moral norms and other contingent
values.â When it has to approach the words truth and ethics, the
Committee excuses itself with embarrassment as if it had belched in
public. To such hyper-modern eyes, such an approach can only seem like
an oxymoron. Ultimately, itâs understandable. Ethics dies on contact
with politics, politics weakens on contact with ethics. This is why
anyone who is obsessed with the search for what is convenient can do
nothing less than recall how their values are âcontingentâ (or rather
accidental, random, incidental, conditional). For every outdated spirit,
the ethical truths wielded by the Invisible Committee make them roll on
the floor laughing as these truths are fickle, synonymous with
convenient opinions. An ethical truth takes hold of an entire life, 24
hours out of 24, not the time of a situation with the sole aim of
tightening a strategic alliance.
But the moment the ethical ballast is jettisoned, according to the I.C.
it goes without saying that âWe have an absolutely clear field for any
decision, any initiative, as long as theyâre linked to a careful reading
of the situation ⊠Our range of action is boundless.â Boundless, clear?
However little the situation requires it, it is possible to do anything.
Itâs what Nechaev thought in the past, or Bin Laden in the present. So
one understands the reason why the I.C. regrets that âSince the
catastrophic defeat of the 1970s, the moral question of radicality has
gradually replaced the strategic question of revolution.â To be
strategic, the revolutionary has to be as subtle and mobile as a rubber
band, she must be able to easily go from the balaclava to the suit and
tie, from conflicts with the police in the streets to handshakes with
colleagues in the government buildings. One must be capable of spitting
on those in power and kissing subversives today, and tomorrow kissing
those in power and spitting on subversives. To achieve this result it is
necessary to have done with those individuals and those groups so stupid
and presumptuous as to get impeded by values that the believe to be
their own and autonomous, which they follow like the dog follows its
master. It is necessary instead to make way for the âhistorical partyâ,
phantasm invested with a higher mission â leading to the revolution â in
a position to justify every base act carried out by its human militants
in flesh and blood in the course of their intelligent and modest slalom
between the sensible weathercocks of situations.
But where do all these considerations come to? To Tarnac, for example.
It was hard for Invisible Committee to swallow that in 2008-2009 its
most enthusiastic fans (or members, according to some points of view)
were mocked, taunted, sometimes even pushed out of movement situations,
after having clearly shown what their conflict is made of, when, to
these admirers of Blanqui who spent more than thirty years behind bars,
a few weeks in prison seemed to be enough to send them running under the
skirts of the disparaged Left in search of protection. Which is why,
after years of meditation weighing things up, here is the tactical
defense of such behavior: âWhen repression strikes us, letâs begin by
not taking ourselves for ourselves. Letâs dissolve the fantastical
terrorist subject âŠâ. It isnât the claim of innocence, no. It isnât
panic, no. It isnât the absence of the least bit of dignity, no. It is a
winning strategic move. In effect, in this life of the daily repression
of desires, it seems to us precisely that the whole lesson of the I.C.
is reduced to this: no longer take yourself for yourself.
In the same way, it is always in defense of its Tarnac fans â since
March 2014 neo-municipal-council-members, then mass media
opinion-makers, and more recently even admonishers of police
investigators to whom they suggest which investigative trails to follow
â that the Committee emphasizes the imperious tactical necessity of
establishing contacts with the other side, with all those who might
prove useful tomorrow: âWe need to go look in every sector, in all the
territories we inhabit, for those who possess strategic technical
knowledge ⊠This process of knowledge accumulation, of establishing
collusions in every domain, is a prerequisite for a serious and massive
return of the revolutionary question.â This is why recently the most
revolutionary grocers in France have gone to knock on the doors of a
pair of embassies in London to pay homage to two of the great victims of
persecution for telematic Free Information. One is an Australian hacker
who aided the police of his country in the hunt for âpedophilesâ (those
monsters who, behind the closed doors of their habitation, collect and
look at obscene photographs of children and who therefore, not being
19th century celebrities like Lewis Carroll or Pierre LouĂżs, deserve
only prison), the other is an American information technician in the
service of the CIA since 2006, after an accident that happened to him
during his training shattered his dream of fighting with the Special
Forces in Iraq. Here absolutely are two people to know, because they
defend the territory, change the world and possess necessary knowledge.
And so, two precious allies of revolutionaries, as the condition of both
objectively shows since they find themselves targeted by the United
States government. After all, as the I.C. puts it: âA gesture is
revolutionary not by its own content but by the sequence of effects it
engenders. The situation is what determines the meaning of the act, not
the intention of its authors.â Which means that individual intentions
donât count for anything, only the results count and it is up to the
future to establish who is or isnât revolutionary. A Marinus Van der
Lubbe, to give a name, you can forget him. What did he do that was
revolutionary? Nothing, the loser. Considering it well, indeed, now
there is no more doubt: there is hope even for cops and fascists. A hope
of redemption, of atonement, in short, of âtiqqunâ.
In case it isnât sufficiently clear, after the passage of the Invisible
Committee nothing is left intact but a political idea; and that is, for
example, that one can be a state functionary and a revolutionary at the
same time.
A system of terror reached its peak when the victim is no longer aware
of the chasm that exists between himself and his butchers. In the
inhuman atmosphere of totalitarianism, and as a consequence of the
collapse of the personality, the archaic mechanism of imitation gains
the forestage without any inhibition ⊠For any system of power, there is
no greater success in acceptance, by its powerless victims, of the
values and modes of behavior it postulates.
Leo Löwenthal, Individual and Terror
The one who poses as a free spirit without ethical obligations is not
afraid to have recourse to continuous contradictions, which she
considers only a series of easy solutions. Setting aside every ethical
concern, the practical problem is that in this way one does nothing more
than consent and contribute to the decomposition of reality in course.
The confusion is not disentangled by any clarity; it is only replaced by
a kind of opacity â a term favored by the Invisible Committee â useful
to the ruling order. To understand this, it is enough to reflect on the
abyss that divides the effects caused by the use of contradiction, on
the one hand in poetic language that abandons itself to the wild frenzy
of the imagination, on the other hand in discursive language aiming to
describe the contours of reality.
Constituting itself precisely as the refusal of the functional language
of logic, poetry wants to be a form of expression free from utilitarian
and projectual intentions. As someone maintained, it is a perversion of
words capable of destroying the things that it names. The invention of
surprising images through the mixing of words that donât fit together
implies the immediate exclusion of the acquired knowledge and rules
connected to words. In this way poetry subverts the order of discourse
and throws open the entrance to the unknown. As journalist in Moscow
wrote about the avant-garde zaum poetry of KruÄenych, who in 1912
announce the World-Backwards that would be seen throughout the Russian
streets a few years later, âwhoever undermines language, undermines
social structures, that are based precisely on linguistic
communicationâ. It is due to this conviction that in the past â before
everything was overwhelmed by the indistinct mud of commerce â there was
no lack of subversives convinced that poetry could even materially
undermine the order of things. Between a Nicolas Boileau (protected by
King Louis XIV) who decreed, âI cannot name anything except by its name.
I call a cat a catâ and Jean-Paul Sartre (enlightened by Stalin) who
repeated, âThe function of a writer is to call a cat a cat,â Benjamin
PĂ©ret, furious in revolt, burst in to launch his challenge â âI call
tobacco the thing which is earâ â and take up arms in the Spanish
revolution.
But what happens if contradiction, abandoning the language of the
unknown, invades that of reality, or rather discursive, philosophical,
rational language itself? The perception of reality is not subverted or
threatened, but gets neutralized by becoming undifferentiated. In this
way, reality itself is sheltered from critique, form being called into
question, since all possible points of reference are lacking. This is
exactly the goal for which the spread of oxymorons in common, everyday
language aims. When Rimbaud evoked the âdrunken boatâ it was an
invitation to the derangement of the senses, whereas the âclean atomâ
dear to scientists justifies nuclear technology, âhumanitarian warâ in
mouth of generals legitimizes slaughter, the âethical bankâ instituted
by entrepreneurs polishes up speculation. In discursive language, the
mixing of words that donât fit together does not evoke the unknown, it
perpetuates the known. Unlike what happens in poetry, it does not incite
to the overcoming of the existent, it does not open extraordinary
horizons; it does exactly the opposite. It makes what now exists safe,
undermining critical thought. That even the enemies of this social order
have set out along this path, the ones who take part in Critical Mass
dates and the ones who sign the associative pact of an Informal
Federation, doesnât arouse astonishment. It is yet another demonstration
of the widespread incapacity to avoid the symmetrically critiqued curse
â but hey, not so serious! â on To Our Friends.
While contemplating the Angel of History in the company of Walter
Benjamin, the man who pushed his absence from the world to the point of
not even being able to make himself a cup of coffee, itâs a shame that
the Invisible Committee hasnât even noted that âcriticism is a matter of
the right distanceâ, the reason why it finds itself âat home in a world
where perspectives and prospects countedâ. An excessive nearness can
make one see otherwise imperceptible details that are often useful and
important, but it doesnât allow one to grasp the horizon in oneâs gaze,
and at the same time takes away meaning and movement. The particular
becomes significant when it enriches and perfects the picture of the
whole, when it allows one to grasp its aspects in depth, otherwise it is
reduced to a mere quirk. In the same way, excessive distance leads to
catching sight of a much too hazy and incomprehensible panorama. If one
loses the right distance, impossible to calculate with precision but
sufficiently clear to approach it in order to explore, critique becomes
civic reproach or ideological condemnation.
The same can be said of hatred. This feeling of peremptory hostility is
made possible by the distance from its object. The enemy is considered
other than oneself, an indispensable condition for going to war against
him. If he were considered oneâs like, if he breathed the same air, if
she spoke the same language, if she had the same desires, if one shared
the same existence with the enemy (perhaps sitting at the same table in
a popular diner or in a television studio or in a municipal council to
discuss the same problems), he would cease to be perceived as such,
becoming if need be an interlocutor and possible ally. The aversion in
her presence, granting that it still exists, would assume the traits of
mere annoyance. The best way to stop hating an enemy is to start to
spend time with him. From day to day, he would become at most an
acquaintance with whom to disagree, or a rival with whom to compete. The
closeness would banish the hatred, but not the suffering, the
uneasiness, the anxiety of living. And then the only war that could
break out, after having long brooded in secret grumbling, is another:
civil war, in the worst sense of the term, blind and undifferentiated
rancor.
Now, this may be the worst aspect of the Invisible Committeeâs
storytelling. With its defense of the situation as the sole criterion of
behavior, it does away with perspective by eradicating distances. But in
this way it annihilates all hostility. Immersed in the whirlpool of
doublethink, tied to a moment without past or future, the I.C. no longer
knows who it needs to fight against, whether Eurasia, Eastasia or
Oceania. Who are they? Who are we? They, are they always they? We, are
we always we? But then, is it necessary to fight? One only has to
consider what it writes when it is out to identify power: it isnât in
the state, it is in the government; but government is no long in the
government, it is in the infrastructure; but it is necessary not to
strike the infrastructure if first one hasnât formed a competent
technical force! Whatâs left? Nothing, itâs like a game of three card
monte. If a totality no longer exists but only distinct fragments
separated from each other, that are ceaselessly interweave in a whirling
spiral, it is clear that before us there are only flashes, situations,
reconfigurations of the present elements. Yesterdays enemy can calmly
become todayâs political friend, and vice versa. And this is an
awareness that leads to developing a particular âsensibilityâ, that of
avoiding points of rupture with no return.
In short, all the refrains about the âsituationâ, about âsharingâ or
about ânecessary alliancesâ, aim to spread the need of putting an end to
absolute differences. But the end of differences leads to the end of
hostilities. And this is why today, within the revolutionary movement
itself, people are no longer able to hate even the snitches whose
presence is tolerated no only in magazines (as happens in the United
States with the well-known theorist of the abolition of work), but also
as the head of movements of struggle (as happened in Italy with the No
Tav struggle). Why not, at bottom what did they do that was so bad? If
they situation required it, they could do anything whatever. And the
subversive in England who taught the police how to control the crowd
during demonstration, or the other one in Greece who became a government
functionary? Why not, they have gone to meet those who defend the
territory. It is not surprising that the figure of the recuperator, for
whose head many subversives would call up until not so many years ago,
has disappeared completely from every revolutionary critique; not
because there is any lack of those who would like to act as mediators
between the Institutions and the Movement, whose numbers, on the
contrary increase as far as the eye can see, but because such a role is
now recognized and appreciated by (almost) everyone.
âThe âremoval of oppositesâ constituted of western metaphysics,â
Cesarano wrote. Heir of Tiqqun, a publication literally infested with
metaphysics, the Invisible Committee becomes the champion of a single
idea: the idea that truth is the play of many small, reconcilable
truths, an idea that is based on the cancellation of the possibility
that an irreducible deviation exists. The end of otherness, the end of
critique, the end of hatred. It is about an aspiration that, besides
being indicative, is nothing new.
In noting these contradictions, we can also mark how unseemly, if not
old-fashioned it appears to recall the accusation of incompatibility,
which was formerly an inescapable aspect of the term contradiction
before this term became a synonym for juxtaposition. But it seems
essential to draw attention to the inevitable reduction of meaning that
has led gradually to a change of meaning â which has led to todayâs
world that, far from being threatened by this new form of contradiction,
seeks only its proliferation, as much for the purpose of avoiding any
confrontations as for installing the most alarming kind of uniformity
under the appearance of pluralism.
Annie Le Brun, Reality Overload
In 1999, Gallimard Editions in France published the work of Luc
Boltanski and Ăve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism. This tome of
more than 800 pages examines the historical relationship that exists
between capitalism and the critique of capitalism (which the two
sociologists clumsily divide into âsocial critiqueâ â born and raised in
the revolutionary left and nourished by the reading of party lecture
notes â and âartistic critiqueâ â given birth to by bohemia and brought
into the limelight only with May 68, desirous of âliberationâ and of a
âtruly authentic liveâ), observing how the progress of the first has
happened by integrating elements of the second. Rich in illusory
promises but poor in ethical contents, to impose itself, capitalism
needs a spirit, in the sense of an ideology that justifies it. It is not
enough for the human being to enrich himself because it is useful and
comfortable, she must also think that it is just and beautiful. Only in
this way can capitalism become invincible. Nowadays, to a critique that
maintained values such as autonomy and freedom, capitalism has responded
by introducing mobility in the labor market understood as âemancipationâ
that allows one to become what one wants when one wants (change of
activity, a break with every link and affiliation seen as a source of
rigidity). In the same way, to a critique that noted how industrial
production led to a massification of human beings and thought capitalism
has responded with an unbridled commodification characterized by a
diversification of offers and products. How can one maintain that the
market homogenizes human beings, when one is free to choose between
McDonaldâs and Burger King, or between a pay-tv that specializes in
historical documentaries and one that is concerned with sports?
Comparing the changes that have happened in the administrative field
over the course of the years, the authors observe that, while a half
century ago a rigid structure capable of giving some security for the
future was maintained, today it is preferred to gamble on risk and
flexibility, or rather on an elastic network. The new spirit of
capitalism, taking leave from the hard boss, is embodied today in a new
figure: âthe connexionist [3] manâ, âthe streamlined human beingâ
capable of passing with agility from one project to another, weaving his
network of relations. The manager doesnât give orders like the boss; he
imposes through his charisma, motivates his collaborators without
barking at them, spurring them to be creative and not repetitive like on
an assembly line. Boltanski-Chiapello linger over the idea according to
which âThe image of the chameleon is a tempting one for describing the
pro, who knows how to conduct his relationships in order to reach other
people more easilyâ insofar as âadaptability is the key to the network
spiritâ, reaching the inevitable conclusion: âIn a network world, it is
thus realistic to be ambivalent âŠ, because the situations people have to
confront are themselves complex and uncertain.â This malleability
require the âsacrifice ⊠of personality in the sense of a manner of
being that expresses itself in similar attitudes and conduct whatever
the circumstance.â
Facing this new spirit of a capitalism that pursues profit by flaunting
the values of creativity, autonomy, adventure, freedom, its critics find
themselves mute and disarmed, deprived of the old points of reference.
They can only surrender before the âmorphological homology between the
new protest movements and the forms of capitalism that have been
established over the last twenty yearsâ. The two professors reach a very
self-interested and interesting conclusion: critique possesses an
âinherent ambiguityâ that always causes it to share ââsomethingâ with
what it seeks to criticizeâ. But since the âartistic critiqueâ is what
flowed from May â68, the responsibility for having taught capitalism to
live without dead time and to enjoy without constraints belongs most of
all to it. Therefore, capitalismâs adversaries would do better to return
to fighting for a âresponsible public policyâ and the âconstitution of
new rightsâ.
Among the acknowledgements in the notes of the book is found the name of
one of Boltanskiâs young students at the Ăcole des Hautes Ătudes en
Sciences Sociales, one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in
the world, frequented by the future elite of knowledge: Julien Coupat.
Unknown at the time, he would give life that same year to the experiment
of the magazine Tiqqun that ended with the writing of Appel (Call),
later ending up in the grocery store in Tarnac and in the sights of the
police (then very young, Mathieu Burnel would draw profit from his
residence in the same exclusive cultural institution by awakening the
public of France 2). The least that one can say is that the
characteristics with which the Boltanski-Chiapello pair described the
new spirit of capitalism â flexibility, ambivalence, adaptability to
changing situations, renunciation of personality â are exactly the same
ones that are now preached by the known and unknown supporters of the
âhistorical partyâ to express the new spirit of revolution.
Assimilation, integration, recuperation change sides and an âartisticâ
radical critique that is by now squeezed dry gets thrown away in order
to bring back a reformist âsocialâ critique inspired by the overwhelming
successes of the market.
In her book against the tyranny of reality and its âsystem of
cretinization from which our era draws its consensual strengthâ, that
appeared just one year later, in 2000, Annie Le Brun cites the work of
Boltanski-Chiapello, recalling how the recuperation of social critique
by the ruling order had already been describes in its characteristics in
way back 1964. In fact, in that year a work was published that was
destined to become a classic of protest, a book that some â consider the
millions of copies sold throughout the world â wouldnât hesitate to
describe as Divine, an Incarnation of History, the Mouth of Truth. Weâre
referring to One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse. It is quite
instructive to read it again today, especially the chapter on the
âclosing of the universe of discourseâ, where the author denounces how
this society â âif it assimilates everything it touches, if it absorbs
the opposition, if it plays with the contradictionâ â manages to impose
its cultural superiority, its power over man. The advent of
technological rationality has promoted and spread a Happy Conscience
that has no need for conflict. Its âpublicity agentsâ create a language
that testifies to âidentification and unification, to the systematic
promotion of positive thinking and doing, to the concerted attack on
transcendent, critical notionsâ, a language in which âthe elements of
autonomy, discovery, demonstration, and critique recede before
designation, assertion, and imitationâ. The language of one-dimensional
thought is functionalized, abbreviated, unified.
Marcuse observes how the principle characteristic of this language is
the neutralization of contradiction, the prerequisite for smoothing out
every conflict, to implement with a profusion of oxymorons. He notes
that in the language used by the one-dimensional man âthe contradictions
[of society] ... are reproduced without exploding the social system. And
it is the outspoken, blatant contradiction which is made into a device
of speech and publicityâ. He recalls that âonce considered the principle
offense against logic, the contradiction now appears as a principle of
the logic of manipulation â realistic caricature of dialecticsâ. And in
doing so, he shows us the logical somersaults of the Invisible
Committee.
Marcuse affirms that âThis language no longer lends itself to
"discourse" at all. It pronounces and, by virtue of the power of the
apparatus, establishes facts â it is self-validating enunciation. The
closed language does not demonstrate and explain-it communicates
decision, dictum, command.â In doing so he merely forecasts the
âobviousâ and the observations reported by the Invisible Committee.
Marcuse maintains that âsuch language is at one and the same time
âintimidation and glorification.â Propositions assume the form of
suggestive commands â they are evocative rather than demonstrative.
Predication becomes prescription; the whole communication has a hypnotic
character. At the same time it is tinged with a false familiarity-the
result of constant repetition, and of the skillfully managed popular
directness of the communication.â In doing so, he describes the I.C.âs
method of storytelling capable of winding around with that spiral of
short phrases made for effect.
Marcuse notes how the language of operational rationality suppresses
history, âpoliticalâ issues, because âIt is suppression of the society's
own past-and of its future, inasmuch as this future invokes the
qualitative change, the negation of the presentâ. He warns about those
who oppose âconcepts which comprehended a historical situationâ. Here,
he is again tracing out the I.C. and its emphasis on announcing the
disintegration of old concepts. (Society? âa definitive abstractionâ.
The city? âhas finally disappearedâ. Government? âIs no longer in
governmentâ. Technique? âUntruthâ. Nature? âThere is no ânatureââ).
Marcuse write that âThe new touch of the magic-ritual language rather is
that people don't believe it, or don't care, and yet act accordingly.
One does not âbelieveâ the statement of an operational concept but it
justifies itself in action â in getting the job done, in selling and
buying, in refusal to listen to others, etc.â And here he illustrates
the glamor to which the Invisible Committeeâs admirers are subjected,
much more willing to learn the common techniques reputed to be necessary
(for example, how to build a barricade) so as not to be forced to
exhaust themselves in a single reflection (for example, on the meaning
and on the perspective of a struggle).
It is the same ominous effect described by Victor Klemperer in his
diaries compiled under the nazi regime (and utilized by Eric Hazan for
his hypocritical reflections on propaganda), according to which âthe
invasion of technical languageâ wanted by Hitler and Goebbels pushed the
Germans to pay attention only to organization, transforming human beings
into functional and efficient automatons ready for everything.
âHow quick the mediocre natures are to adapt themselves to the
environment!â Klemperer observed, and no one could say that he was a
âradicalâ in need of âideological coherenceâ.
The alienation produced by capitalism can count on fifty years of
progress since Marcuse wrote: âThe unification of opposites which
characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways
in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the
expression of protest and refusal ⊠In exhibiting its contradictions as
the token of its truth, this universe of discourse closes itself against
any other discourse which is not on its own terms. And, by its capacity
to assimilate all other terms to its own, it offers the prospect of
combining the greatest possible tolerance with the greatest possible
unity.â As the most advance industry and the most functional technology
teaches, itâs therefore a matter of marketing a reduced and simplified
product starting from complex and diverse elements, put together through
a process â if not of synthesis, of juxtaposition â and rendered
digestible to the great public. It is what the I.C. does by looting both
the authoritarian and the anti-authoritarian arsenals, to give life to a
transversal potential that is able to make all agree.
âThis style is of an overwhelming concreteness,â Marcuse continues. âThe
âthing identified with its functionâ is more real than the thing
distinguished from its function, and the linguistic expression of this
identification ⊠creates a basic vocabulary and syntax which stand in
the way of differentiation, separation, and distinction. This language,
which constantly imposes images, militates against the development and
expression of concepts. In its immediacy and directness, it impedes
conceptual thinking; thus, it impedes thinking.â So in the midst of
thousands of images of streets in revolt and armed communes, the
Invisible Committee evokes the transformation of a factory in Saloniki
whose activity has been reconverted by the workers into the production
of disinfectant gels made available to the movement: âthe resumption of
factory production was conceived from the beginning as a political
offensiveâ. It is one of the few commonplaces of the time that the I.C.
forgets to correct: it is not work that ennobles the man, it is
revolution that ennobles work. Even Vittorio Vidali â infamous stalinist
killer who during a speech in revolutionary Spain lashed out against the
anarcho-syndicalists because they wanted to lower the hours of work,
whereas he promised the workers that with the revolution they would have
more work â thought this. Needless to say material needs have to be
satisfied, no doubt about it. But speaking of productive reappropriation
means introducing a language that impedes thinking, for example, about
the destruction of the factories and the end of production.
Acrobat of âconsensual contradictionâ, the I.C. is only a product of the
historical process that aims to garble every difference between freedom
and slavery. When it proposes to its âfriendsâ on four continents the
âsharingâ of situations, that is of fragments of experience, furthermore
accompanied by an appropriate iconography, it only fills the lungs with
the air already pumped by Facebook (that social network that âis not so
much the model of a new form of government, as its reality already in
operationâ). When it churns out its concise phrases for effect, it only
obeys the rule of 140 characters demanded by Twitter (whose subversive
origin it likes to recall), monument to that reduction of language that
goes hand-in-hand with the reduction of thought. When it announced its
intention of contributing to the shared intelligence of the times, it
does no more than rehash the dismal joke already told by Wikipedia,
supposed source of universal knowledge that as it continually
reconfigures itself makes all of us stupider.
What sense can there be in speaking of âshared intelligenceâ?
Intelligence is not a cake that one can divide into slices to distribute
more or less equally among all. It is not an accumulation of cold facts
made available, from which everyone can draw through consultation.
Intelligence is the ability to read these facts, gather their meaning,
put them in relation to each other, divide causes from effects,
understand their origins, uses, and destination. As such, it is an
individual capacity and quality that is not inherited and is not gotten
with a click. But it isnât at all a gift of nature reserved for the
fortunate few; it is a conquest. Intelligence is within anyoneâs reach
through reading, reflection, study, curiosity, discussion, even
sensitivity. Intelligence can stimulate and can be stimulated, but it
cannot be shared. Because it is unique, and differs from individual to
individual.
Those who speaks of âshared intelligenceâ are speaking of power. When
everyone starts to go to Wikipedia to know who, what, where and when â
and no one any longer makes the effort to read dictionaries,
encyclopedias, books, to confront the various versions and try to
understand â that day (and it doesnât seem distant) Wikipedia will be
dictating Law, univocal and equal for all. Its successive
reconfigurations will not be able to change in any way this totalitarian
effect, but rather will consolidate it. Shared intelligence can only be
an enormous project of standardization and control. Aspiring to a shared
intelligence means hoping for the advent of a single modern thought. So
when the Invisible Committee offers its âmodest contributionâ in this
regard, what do you think it is doing? From the height of its commercial
success it is offering its thought as the basis on which to standardize
everyoneâs thoughts in relation to insurrection. As its beloved Gramsci
affirmed, cultural hegemony precedes and establishes political hegemony.
All things considered, it is risky to write a book of more than 240
pages. By speaking too much, one incurs the risk of no long being able
to remain in an unstable balance. One incurs the risk of having to, here
and there, be explicit. One incurs the risk that the more libertarian
mask will drop, putting the authoritarian snout on full display. This is
what the I.C. runs up against, for example when in dealing with the
reasons why the revolution gets systematically betrayed ends up writing:
âperhaps itâs a sign that some hidden flaws in our idea of revolution
condemn it to such an inevitability. One of those flaws is in the fact
that we still tend to conceive of revolution as a dialectic between the
constituent and the constituted.â Considering that the fairy tale of the
dialectic between constituent power and constituted power is Toni
Negriâs strong suit, considering that immediately after this the I.C.
addresses its critique precisely at the Paduan professor, it seems clear
who it is referring to when it says âweâ: to the extreme left, the
I.C.âs true and only comrades. And if there was any doubt about this,
the I.C. itself thinks to clear it up: âObsessed as we are with a
political idea of the revolution, we have neglected its technical
dimension. A revolutionary perspective no longer focuses on an
institutional reorganization of society, but on the technical
configuration of worlds.â The emphasis is not ours, it is the work of
the I.C. itself who keeps it here to emphasize which is its party. The
one for which revolution has always been a political obsession; the one
for which institutions get reorganized; but above all the one that must
no longer neglect the fact that now the revolution is a mere technical
problem, being a question of giving a hand in a configuration of worlds.
These three points make us go backwards in time. Who maintained a
century ago: âcommunism is the power of the soviets plus electrification
throughout the countryâ? It is the same one evoked indirectly by the
I.C. when it salutes the quality of the connection and the manner of
being in the world obtained âfrom the movement of soviet communesâ which
was the forgotten spearhead of the Bolshevik revolutionâ.
State and Revolution or State or Revolution?
On the one hand, we want to live communism; on the other, to spread
anarchy
Call
It is instead probable ⊠that as in other revolutionary epochs anarchism
and communism, in new forms, are moving closer and closer together again
in the struggles that pass through our century.
Antonio Negri, The Sacred Dilemma of the Idle
Aside from customers on the hunt for novelty in bookstores, good only
for raising its bank account and its fame, who is the Invisible
Committee addressing in its new text? Among the enemies of this world,
who are the ones it is interacting with? Since historically the
subversive movement is divided into authoritarians who need the Party
and anti-authoritarians who desire insurrection, the I.C. thought it
good to unite these two spirits, to carry out at their interior a
strategic surpassing taking back and partially realizing both demands.
With the intention of appearing to be the millimetric milieu of the
movement â or rather, literally, what is equidistant from the extremes,
what is always in the middle â it has decided to draw inspiration more
from the authoritarians for the theoretical side, and more from the
anarchist for the practical side. This is why Blanqui is its hero,
because he is the historical banner of the Party of Insurrection.
The intention of acting as a valuable bridge inside the revolutionary
movement has led the I.C. to avoid in the most absolute way dealing with
the classic points of friction and contrast â written off as ideological
and identitarian disputes â feigning having overcome them thanks to an
effluvium of banalities of the kind âit is necessary to organize
ourselvesâ with which it tries to butter up both sides, holding together
militant sacrifice and extremist thrills. As to the rest, the Committee
has cheerfully drawn from all sources, with an acrobatics that allows it
to be appreciated by many palates. But itâs all water under the bridge
since 2007. The initial circumspection has given space today to a
greater ambition, as well as to the desire to settle accounts with those
who insist on blocking its path. On the one hand, this means starting to
directly confront the main competitor in the conquest for theoretical
hegemony in the extreme left. On the other hand, it must bring to its
conclusion the transition in course inside the anarchist movement has
revealed itself to be a good reservoir of unskilled labor, clasping the
most accomodating to itself with a caress and definitively getting rid
of everyone else. Snatching the rudder of the extreme left, on the one
hand. Digesting the most soluble anarchism and spitting out the harshest
anarchism, on the other hand.
As we have seen, the I.C. has its bogeyman, the rival that obsesses its
thoughts: Toni Negri. He is like an umbilical chord that links the young
French intellectuals to the old Italian intellectual, and their
animosity toward him almost has the connotation of generational
conflict. This is because Toni Negri has been and has done everything
that the I.C. would like to be and do.
Unlike Mike Davis who sociologically discussed American criminal gangs
without having ever been part of one, Toni Negri isnât a mere armchair
intellectual theorizing about the barricades. Founder and animator of
some Italian extreme left groups in the 1960s, principle theoretician of
the area of Autonomia Operaia in the 1970s, Toni Negri was arrested in
April of 1979 with the charge of being the mind behind the Red Brigades,
the evil mastermind who guided the movement to armed insurrection
against the state. Unlike the grocers of Tarnac, the professor of Padua
was kept behind bars for more than four years also taking part in a
revolt that broke out in the Trani prison during which the prison guard
broke one of his legs.
While behind bars, Negri had already put into practice what the I.C
would theorize more than twenty years later: he adapted himself to the
situation, he sought and formed the necessary political alliances,
reconfiguring it strategically. Ending up in the hands of the
repression, he also stopped taking himself for himself. He proposed
dissociation as the way for closing the conflict between the state and
the movement, and he accepted the protest-candidature offered to him by
the Radical Party for the elections of 1983. Elected as a member of
parliament (no mere municipal councilperson!) and now enjoying
parliamentary immunity, he was released from prison and took advantage
of it by taking refuge in France. Here he pursued his studies and his
activity as professor of the extreme left, of the left completely
devoted to advising the state about how to make the Revolution. In 1997,
he finally returned to Italy and made use of the benefits derived from
his plea bargaining, serving a reduced sentence. His most successful
book, Empire, written together with Michael Hardt and published in 2000,
got notable global recognition, selling more than half a million copies.
Toni Negri embodies everything that the I.C. aspires to become: the
intellectual guiding the real movement, the Machiavelli in the service
of the anti-Prince, the dark spirit behind the insurrection, all
seasoned with an editorial and social success that never spoils. It is
the so-called Syracuse syndrome, a defect that afflicts every
philosopher whoâs grown tired of words and thirsty for power, whose
conceit pushes him to want to seduce those who hold power with the spell
of their knowledge. The metaphor originates with the Platoâs comings and
goings between Athens and Syracuse; he spent a long time sucking up to
the tyrant Denis with the intent of educating him. Uselessly. In France
this defect is accompanied by a predilection for military metaphors fed
by the cultural avant-garde, a predilection already stigmatized by
Baudelaire according to whom recourse to bellicose expression is typical
of spirits âmade for discipline, i.e., for conformity: minds born as
slaves, that can think only in societyâ. The Situationist International
was already not immune to such rhetoric; the Invisible Committee then
wallows in it completely. As aspiring generals of state insurrection,
they are continuously intent on drawing maps, opening fronts, making
pacts, erecting barricades, making maneuvers. If the word strategy comes
so frequently to their lips it is because their âmodest contributionâ is
to offer themselves in the capacity of strategists of the movement: âA
thing is revolutionary that actually causes revolutions. While this can
only be determined after the event, a certain sensitivity to the
situation plus a dose of historical knowledge helps one intuit the
matter.â And who possesses this situational sensitivity and this
erudition, who therefore deserves to be the strategist of the historical
party, capable of âgetting two steps ahead of global governanceâ?
Strategists, or rather military leaders. Exactly what the Italian
judiciary imputed to Toni Negri at the end of the 1970s.
But though it is clear what unites Toni Negri and the I.C., we have some
difficulty grasping what divides them. Formal quirks aside. In fact,
both share the same theoretical references. And it isnât just a question
of the passion for authoritarian thought revised in the light of
post-structuralist French Theory (Foucault, Deleuze and yawning away),
it is a question of the same deterministic vision of history. For both,
the world created by the ruling order does nothing more than reflect and
prepare the revolution. For Marx âThe mode of production of material
life conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines
their existence, but their social existence that determines their
consciousness.â For Engels, â... after its victory the sole organisation
which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the
state.â For Lenin, âour task is to study the state capitalism of the
Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting
dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it.â In the same way, in
the 1970s, Toni Negri was capable of writing âcommunism is imposed first
and foremost by capital as a condition of production ⊠only the
construction of capitalism can give us truly revolutionary conditions âŠ
the most advanced capitalist form, the factory form, must be assumed
within the working class organization itselfâ. Where is the difference
with an I.C. which makes its own the new winning spirit on and of the
market, strong from the fact that âItâs generally when they reach their
maximum degree of sophistication that civilizations fall apart.â, or
that writes: âWhat distinguishes [the worker] in a positive sense is his
embodied technical mastery of a particular world of productionâ? If
already in 2007 on the trail of the Communist Manifesto (ânot only has
the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itselfâ), it
maintained that âthe metropolis also produces the means of its own
destructionâ, today it repeats the same concept assuring us that
âEventually however ⊠the path towards presence paradoxically reopens.
By detaching ourselves from everything, weâll end up detaching ourselves
even from our detachment. The technological beat-down will ultimately
restore our capacity to be moved by the bare, pixelless existence ⊠The
poverty of cybernetics is what will bring it down in the end.â
Even though the I.C. mocks Toni Negri for his conviction that âbeneath
the constitution in force there always exists another constitution, an
order thatâs underlying and transcendent at once, silent normally, but
capable at certain moments of flashing into presenceâ, this irony does
not prevent them from nourishing an analogous conviction. Itâs really no
use for the I.C. to clarify that it is necessary instead âto reconceive
the idea of revolution as pure removalâ [4]. What else is concealed
behind itâs exhortation to a âremovalâ or a âtechnical configurationâ,
if not the blanquist idea of assigning a new form to the same thing
through insurrectional lightning? Reconfiguration, a term which is
employed above all in computer science, is only a different ordering of
elements already given. In the same way, removal is a
juridical-institutional term that indicates a dismissal from office,
prerequisite for a replacement. In the cycle of renewal of the life of
the state, the potential to remove and the power to constitute are like
the sunrise followed by the dawn. If the I.C. lingers only on the
sunrise, it is not to deny the exercise of power, but to draw in those
who want its definitive destruction, inducing them to believe that it is
the same thing with the aim of enlisting them. There is no pure removal
to oppose to a corrupt one, it is the looking glass onto which one
climbs in order to give oneself an insurrectionary air, the fig-leaf
over the shame of oneâs hypocrisy. One removes a sovereign when one
throws him down from the throne leaving it empty for a changing of the
guard. In fact that poor asshole Giorgio Agamben (Italian philosopher,
Tiqqunâs teacher, admired both by the I.C. that paraphrases his titles
and by Toni Negri who writes reviews adulating him), who went to Athens
at the end of 2013 to teach democracy to Greeks and to invoke the
âpotential to removeâ, has not failed to express the hope that âthe
leftist government of Syriza could be the spark of a progressive turn in
Europeâ. If it is true that âFar from serving to describe the world,
language helps us rather to construct a worldâ, well there is no doubt
about what the world constructed by this language is â the same one that
Toni Negri inhabits.
And then itâs no accident if in Italy Tiqqunâs first title has appeared
through a publishing house in Tuta bianca (Derive e Approdi), and today
in the United States the same publishing house, Semiotext(e), publishes
both Negriâs works and those of the Invisible Committee (and Tiqqun).
Furthermore, the I.C, isnât even the first collective editorial
ectoplasm of international fame, having been preceded by that Wu Ming
whose principle animator described himself years ago as âcommunist, or
rather worse, negrianâ. Both the Committee and Wu Ming are committed to
the plot construction, the mythopoeisis of revolts and insurrections.
But while the Italians reduce them to literary novels (so appreciated as
to get debated at M.I.T.), the French transform them into philosophical
essays (so appreciated as to be distributed by M.I.T.). âOmnia Sunt
Communiaâ, beyond being Thomas MĂŒnzerâs last words, is not only the
title of the second to the last chapter of To our Friends, it is also
the title of a feature of Euronomade, the site that more than any other
depends on Toni Negri. And, since both abhor the individual above all
else, the I.C. drools over the commune and Toni Negri salivates over the
commons. Whatâs so strange if in 2000 Toni Negri wrote that anarchism
competes in âpowerlessnessâ with the most reactionary capitalism, while
in 2014 the I.C. writes that nihilist anarchists are only among the
âpowerlessâ? Aside from discrepancies in linguistic tics, the praises
that the I.C. has woven in 2014 around the struggle against the High
Speed Train (TAV) in Val Susa do not differ much from those formulated
in 2008 by its negrian competitors. If the former note that âAlternating
family-style demonstrations with attacks on the TAV construction site,
resorting to sabotage at one moment and partnership with the valleyâs
mayors the next, associating anarchists and Catholic grandmas, this
struggle is revolutionary at least insofar as it has been able to
deactivate the infernal coupling of pacifism and radicalismâ â
furthermore following such observations with praise for the politics of
those who passed from damned poetry to stalinist propaganda
complimenting the purging prefect of Paris [5] â for the latter âit is
well-known how the cohesive coexistence of the institutional dimension
and that of the movement has been one of the main reasons for the
effectiveness of the Valsusan opposition ⊠This intense sharing of
objectives and strategies has contributed to the creation of a virtuous
circle between administrative action and participation from the bottom
that has marked the highest point of the experience of the
reappropriation of decisional power that has taken place in the Susa
Valleyâ. Amen.
And what distinguishes the admirers of the Invisible Committee from
Negriâs admirers? The latter have been active for decades in the
institutional and media entryism that is only now gets taken up by the
former: participation on the ballots, roles as public administrators,
newspaper interviews, television appearances. And itâs a good thing that
âradicalsâ would make of the revolution âan opportunity for personal
validationâ! Benjamin Rosoux and Manon Glibertâs Italian colleague, a
Negri-fan municipal councilor in Veneto bragged years ago about being a
subversive who makes âincursionsâ into the institutions â another lovely
word camouflage that shouldnât be missing from the shelves of the Tarnac
grocery store. Other readers of the Paduan professor have certainly not
waited for the I.C. to discover the revolutionary profit of establishing
roots in the neighborhoods and the villages in order to contribute to
opening peopleâs medical clinics and be present throughout Italy in
housing struggles, in strikes and whatever else. It is âpolitical work
in the territoryâ, beauty, strong suit of generations of militants
coming out of the bosom of the Communist Party that doesnât prevent the
students of the Italian professor from curating a site always rich in
direct correspondences from barricades all over the world. So they also
go where the epoch is inflamed. Therefore, Negriâs most activist
admirers theorize the necessity of institutional entryism (above all in
order to take advantage of the funds allocated), but then also practice
insurrection. On the other hand, the admirers of the I.C. theorize the
necessity of insurrection, but then also practice institutional entryism
(above all to take advantage of the funds allocated). Inverting the
order of the factors does not change the final outcome.
All this to make readers understand how the cantankerous critiques in To
Our Friends addressed to the âideologueâ Toni Negri have all the flavor
of venom reserved for the main competitor or rival in cultural-political
hegemony. I.C almost sounds tender when it writes: âThose who propose,
like Antonio Negri, to âgovern the revolutionâ only see âconstituent
strugglesâ everywhere, from the banlieue riots to the uprisings in the
Arab worldâ, considering that those who propose to command the
insurrection see only âcommunesâ everywhere, from the riots in the
suburbs to the uprisings in the Arab world. The only thing that changes
is the saddle to put on the tiger to ride. Besides, if the enraged
French kids lash out against the Italian parent, the latter seems to
bear them with affection. Recently one of his students even gave a
borrowed salute to their âstrategic intelligenceâ. Who knows if she will
also follow the track of the one who years ago abandoned the court of
Negri and, as chance would have it, entered into the catalog of La
Fabrique editions, and is today the theorist of that âwidespread
autonomyâ whose zealots in Italy play on the Invisible Committee to win.
And so then, you find the differences. Come on, the apple never falls to
far from the tree.
The task of revolutionary critique is certainly not that of leading
people to believe that revolution has become impossible
Guy Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos, December 19, 1986
This is what the famous situationist said in astonishment about his
anemic anti-industrial encyclopedist students, according to whom it
wasnât worth the effort to strive much since âit is useless to destroy
mercantile society: it is collapsing before our eyes. Letâs leave it to
sinkâ. One of these, the Spaniard Miguel AmorĂłs, is the author of a text
again the greatest present-day anarchist insurrectionalist theorist, who
he describes as âthe first agitator since Blanqui to proclaim the
possibility of an offensive against Power during a period when the
working class was in full retreat. This evidently involved an attempt to
escape from historical determinations by way of the decisive actions of
minorities.â Here is the other worry of the Invisible Committee:
anarchists. It canât be concealed that, if in the last few decades of
social pacification, the insurrectional idea has remained alive â alive
in the movement and in struggles, not in the publishing market â it is
due, above all, to the anarchists, or better, to a few of them who have
always maintained it, against each and all, facing both state repression
and the sarcasm of a movement perpetually waiting for the times to
ripen. This is so widely known that in France critics of the
insurrectionalist temptation, sitting at the peak of radical theory to
wait for the course of history to carry away the corpse of capitalism,
make no distinction at all between soldiers under the command of
revolutionary generals and impassioned evokers of the demons of revolt,
uniting them in a single indistinct and execrable mishmash.
It is irritating for the I.C. to have to share its logo; it thought it
had registered it and possessed the prerogative to it. Much more
irritating considering that in the last few years the most
insurrectional country in Europe is Greece, where the anarchist presence
is strongest. Besides, from where have the fiercest critiques that
rained down on them come, if not from anti-authoritarians? But the I.C.
finds itself facing a rather delicate situation, since many of those who
have translated, published and spread its works are anarchists. It is
one of the consequences of its commercial success. Thanks to the FNAC
and to Amazon, to quote a contemporary of Dante, âfor this reason his
reputation rose so much that some become his partners; hence in a few
month he made a great fortune. Having multiplied peoples and
possessions, he started to go from country to countryâ (in the United
States, Italy and Germany, above all). So, on the one hand it would like
to be done with these silly enemies of the state, so politically naĂŻve,
on the other hand, it is not convenient to go so far as to do it with
all of them. And, needless to say, it finds them more lovable when
âpartnersâ.
It is a problem that it has confronted strategically. How? By strewing a
bit of everything in its book â just for a change â both critiques
anarchists can share and critiques of what anarchists maintain. In the
attempt to avoid any possible explicit reference so as not to offend
those who are wooing it (having finally understood that to become
winners it is necessary to stop being anarchists), the I.C. prefer to
thrash hackers or âradicalsâ. What a ridiculous term! Useful for not
mussing up the remnants of pride of its libertarian suitors, as well as
for avoiding dealing with the substance of anarchism, its critique of
all authoritarianism.
We have already seen how in To Our Friends, the defense of insurrection
is interspersed with invitations to a tactical entryism and how the
calls for ethics are submerged by a ceaseless exhortation to political
opportunism. In fact, how could the I.C. ever accept abstentionism,
except to support it in the most adverse situations? As to the
consistency between means and ends, it considers it not only an error,
but an authentic horror. In this regard, more than with anarchists or
surrealists or situationists, the I.C. could find itself in agreement
with Bernard-Henri LĂ©vy according to whom ethical invariance is the
stuff of âthe choppers off of headsâ.
But with regard to the more anti-authoritarian side of To Our Friends.
Beyond the lyrical defense of uprisings, it is manifested in a forceful
critique of any governability, of any claim of constitutional
legitimacy. A critique we could share if it were not, besides being
contradicted by the desire for removal, accompanied by contempt for
individual freedom. It is one of the cornerstones of anarchism, but the
I.C. prefers to attribute it to the hacker mentality, so that it can go
on the attack, aiming however elsewhere: âFreedom and surveillance,
freedom and the panopticon belong to the same paradigm of government.
Historically, the endless expansion of control procedures is the
corollary of a form of power that is realized through the freedom of
individualsâ, âIndividual freedom is not something that can be
brandished against the government, for it is the very mechanism on which
government depends, the one it regulates as closely as possible in order
to obtain, from the amalgamation of all these freedoms, the anticipated
mass effectâ, âThe cause of individual freedom is what prevents them
from forming strong groups capable of laying down a real strategy,
beyond a series of attacks; itâs also what explains their inability to
form ties beyond themselves, their incapacity for becoming a historical
forceâ. Makes you shudder, doesnât it? You need to be ungovernable, but
not in order to do what you want, but rather to do what ⊠who? the
situation? the commune? the insurrection? the historical party? or its
invisible strategists? ⊠want?
Strategists who also make themselves strong with another argument
favored by the friends of the state, the one that is presumed to make
this institution materially inevitable. As good adults, they bring the
delicate situation generated by the technical complexity reached by the
current world, where nuclear technology has reached a point of no
return, to weigh upon infantile revolt: âso long as we canât do without
nuclear power plants and dismantling them remains a business for people
who want them to last forever, aspiring to abolish the state will
continue to draw smiles; so long as the prospect of a popular uprising
will signify a guaranteed fall into scarcity, of health care, food, or
energy, there will be no strong mass movementâ.
Aside from the fact that the abolition of the state will always draw
smiles, given that its end gets imposed with force from below since it
is impossible that it would be resolved from above (because abolition is
such a resolution, it is the same misunderstanding present in the
concept of removal), but then wasnât revolution the emergency brake of a
train heading towards the cliff? Before pulling it, is it truly
necessary to âassemble all the technical intelligenceâ [6], or rather to
confide with experts present on board and with conductors with the aim
of precisely knowing the control panel, the speed of movement, the
friction on the tracks, the inclination of the curves, the force of the
wind, the humidity in the air, the composition of the surrounding
terrain, the presence of ambulances and hospitals nearby ⊠and if there
is enough food, water and toilet paper for everyone? Perpetually in
balance, the I.C. first extols in lyrical tones the immediacy of the
deed, and then recommends its studied survey. From the barricades here
and now it goes back into Benjaminâs waiting room. To emerge, the
revolutionary question must balance the accounts, and if it wants to
cook the books, it must propose, if not a political program, at least a
satisfactory technical program: âFor a revolutionary force there is no
sense in its knowing how to block the opponentâs infrastructure if it
canât make such facilities operate for its benefit if thereâs a need.â
But how does the insurrection, that was not able to break out anywhere,
at any moment, with any opportunity, being the unforeseen that grabs by
the throat, upset normality with its intensity, etc., etc.? Yes, but
that is rhetoric for attracting libertarian fools. In reality, without
the correct knowledge and competence, that are found only on the top,
the insurrection is condemned to fail: âwithout a concrete idea of what
a victory would be, we canât help but be defeated. Insurrectionary
determination is not enough; our confusion is still too thick.â After
having thrown the necessity of favorable historical conditions claimed
by marxist dinosaurs out the door, here it is coming back in again
through the window.
Blanqui does well as a rag to wave in battle, but Marx is the blanket
that warms one up every night. May insurrection be, therefore, but only
after the nuclear engineers, computer technicians and other such trash
have been seduced by the chatter of the Invisible Committee and help it
to make the adversaryâs infrastructure â the place where it says itself
âpower now residesâ â function to its advantage.
The I.C. targets social war, because the despised anarchists âmouth offâ
about it. According to the Committee the defect of that social war âis
that by lumping the offensives carried out by âthe State and Capitalâ
and those of their adversaries under the same rubric, it places
subversives in a relation of symmetrical warfare ⊠The idea of social
war is actually just an unsuccessful updating of âclass war,â
maintaining that each oneâs position in the relations of production no
longer has the formal clarity of the Fordist factoryâ. With a certain
embarrassment â considering that the symmetry of those who fight power
is always less worrisome than the syntony of those who stand by it â we
allow ourselves to note that it is flatly impossible that these
well-educated French revolutionaries truly think that the concept of
âsocial warâ is an amalgam linked to the end of fordism. Leaving out
antiquity, the first revolutionary to evoke this phrase was probably
their fellow-countrywoman, the communard André Léo, who so entitled her
speech given in Lausanne in September 1871 during a Peace Conference.
Lashing out against pacifist neutrality that remains blind and
defenseless before every social massacre, André Léo however seemed to
attribute only to those in power the sole agency in the social war. In
her words, indeed, it took a heavy toll among the poor and proletarians.
The subversives who in Brussels in 1886 used the same term as the
masthead of their periodical, âanarchist-communist organâ must have had
quite a different opinion. And those who in 1906 in France, or in Italy
in 1915, published other papers with the same title, were not at all
orphans of workerism: the former brought together revolutionary
socialist and anarchist anti-militarists, the latter on the contrary
gave voice to anarchist interventionists.
So the concept of social war, in its origins and despite the differences
existing among its supporters, has never amalgamated anything and has
never had an interest in whether factories were opened or closed,
central of marginal in capitalist production. Its significance for a
long time can be summarized in the simple negation of social peace, a
phrase commonly used to point to a peaceful coexistence between
governors and governed, exploiters and exploited, oppressors and
oppressed, or however one wants to say it. In the same way, âsocialâ is
meant to exclude the political and institutional dimension of this
conflictual situation, which doesnât at all aim at opening a ministerial
crisis by abrupt means. So itâs not surprising that those who donât want
to point out the enemy for reason of political opportunity prefer to use
strategy (inflected in its various forms more than 40 times in the text)
as their mouthwash. Just as itâs not surprising that those who sneeze at
old anarchist concepts then fill their mouths with a term like party
thinking to save it from the dust mites that cover it by adding the
adjective historical.
Its critique of the anarchist concept of revolution is then simply
pathetic. To make it easier and more convenient, do you know what the
Committee does? It draws inferences from a phrase written in 1892 by the
twenty-year-old Ămile Henry in a polemic with Malatesta: âThe radical
defining himself as a producer of actions and discourses has ended up
fabricating a purely quantitative idea of revolutionâas a kind of crisis
of overproduction of acts of individual revolt. âLetâs not lose sight of
the fact,â wrote Emile Henry back then already, âthat revolution will
simply be the resultant of all these particular revolts.â History is
there to contradict that notion: whether itâs the French, Russian, or
Tunisian revolution, in every instance revolution results from the shock
encounter between a particular act â the storming of a prison, a
military defeat, the suicide of a mobile fruit vendor â and the general
situation, and not the arithmetical addition of separate acts of revolt.
Meanwhile, that absurd definition of revolution is doing its foreseeable
damage ...â
Now, aside from the fact that an act of revolt could very well become
one of those particular acts that triggers off an insurrection â and
precisely in this sense were carried out by both the anarchist Bresci
and the communist Van der Lubbe â , aside from the fact that in this
same text Henry recognized both the necessity of communism and the
diversity of attitudes that other revolutionaries brought in wanting to
organize proletarians, where would this arithmetical idea of revolution
be in circulation today? The view of a tree does not announce a forest,
just as a photo does not confirm an international truth. The ruling
order has already thought to the load the air of the general situation
with black powder, forcing everyone to drag along in an existence
lacking not only happiness, but now even security in any survival. So it
is not strange if anarchists are concerned with going in search of the
spark and, not believing that it is manifested by applying an exact
science, take matches in hand and incite to striking them as much as
possible. For the I.C., this is not strange, but it is wrong. Perhaps
because in this way one falls into the âtyranny of the informalâ against
which it is necessary give attention to raising the shield of joyous
âdisciplineâ.
To crush âradicalismâ, in its speech synonymous with anarchism, the
Invisible Committee doesnât hesitate to make use of manipulation. It
seems that âthe radical only lived to make the pacifist shudder inside,
and vice versa. Itâs fitting that the bible of American citizen
struggles since the 1970s is titled Rules for Radicals âby Saul
Alinsky.â In fact, it is fitting. But not because radical and citizen
are two sides of the same coin taken out of circulation, but because in
English âradicalâ refers generically to anyone who wants to change
society. Communists, socialists, syndicalists, anarchists, fascists,
nazis, âŠ, get called this without distinction. Now, Saul Alinsky was a
leftist âradicalâ and with his last book (with the subtitle âA Pragmatic
Primer for Realistic Radicalsâ) intended to leave a useful guide for
community organizers so that they would be in a position to unite people
who lived in the same territory in a collective action against power. It
is fitting that this is the same objective pursued by the I.C., who have
recourse here to the most shameful of expedients: attributing oneâs own
bible to others. A bible that, after having inspired mercantile thought
itself thanks to the ânew spirit of capitalismâ, has come back to
dictate its commandments among subversives attracted to quotations in
the Stock Exchange. In fact, the Committee itself is selling on the
market what âan entrepreneur whoâs in fashionâ explains: âOne has to get
organized, find other people, get to know each other, work together,
recruit other motivated persons, form networks, shake up the status
quo...â
The Invisible Committeeâs critique doesnât raise the veil on the misery
of anarchists, but rather on its own. Also because the quantitative idea
of revolution much more shapes those who donât want to remain isolated
from the population, a nagging worry that in the craving to arrive at
the arithmetical sum of separated politicians and technicians is
producing the predictable damage of a quite cheerful rather than
depressive collaborationism.
Build bridges, not walls.
Pope Francis I
But the Invisible Committee doesnât just stay in the realm of ideas, it
also goes down into the field, into the midst of flesh and blood
anarchists. It does so with suffering, considering it incomprehensible
that there could be individuals who consider freedom incompatible with
authority. Doubly incomprehensible, both because it doesnât acknowledge
individuals, and because it is convinced that freedom rhymes with
institution. Its inability to even just accept their existence is such
that to its eyes anarchists appear as an enigma in bad taste: a social
category to list between pensioners and functionaries or a political
identity foisted on rebels to separate them from the population (that
healthy, normal, balanced population that is therefore convinced that
freedom is produced and protected by authority).
Prey to the itch that anti-authoritarianism provokes in it, the I.C.
starts to scratch itself by dividing the good-ones-to-cure from the
bad-ones-to-extirpate. The good one are the anarchists who, for example
in Italy, have learned that âIn the current period, tact should be
considered the cardinal revolutionary virtue, and not abstract
radicality â and by âtactâ we mean the art of nurturing revolutionary
becomings. Among the miracles of the Susa Valley struggle, one has to
include the way it succeeded in tearing a good number of radicals away
from their painfully constructed identity. It brought them back down to
earth. In contact again with a real situation, they were able to shed
most of their ideological spacesuit â not without incurring the
inexhaustible resentment of those still confined in their interstellar
radicality where breathing is such a problem.â In fact, many old Italian
deserters have responded to the Call and have enlisted so they can roam
about in the agora â half assembly, half market â of an earth-to-earth
citizenism with sterilized air, earning in this way the unfailing esteem
of mayors, members of parliament, priests, union leaders, journalists,
television personalities. Whatâs more, they have pushed their tact to
the point of performing the further miracle of not even bothering
snitches. Evidently, these are the people that they love, âthat
previously were lackingâ.
No one is any longer aware that they are anarchists, not even they
themselves. They have gotten a new wardrobe not only in the clothes
closet, but also in their heads, in their mouths and in their hearts.
Journalists can no longer complain about their autism, their barbarous
babbling, since they have finally understood that âThe revolutionary
task has partly become a task of translation. There is no Esperanto of
revolt. Itâs not up to the rebels to learn to speak anarchist; itâs up
to the anarchists to become polyglotâ. Esperanto is the international
language constructed by drawing cues from already existing idioms, which
contribute everything to its composition. The intentions of its
inventors was that it was supposed to allow all human beings to
communicate and understand each other, without linguistic hegemony and
keeping alive the different original idioms, including those otherwise
at risk of extinction, crushed by the more widespread languages.
Wouldnât an Esperanto of revolt be magnificent? Not at all, those who
want to organize their leader-becomings demand that the anarchist
language disappears and that anarchists finally learn to express
themselves in authoritarian politickese.
Tired of always being alone on the outside and repressed in their
ambition for popularity, not a few anarchists have stopped taking
themselves for themselves. It has happened in the past, and continues to
happen now. There is in fact a long tradition of (ex)anarchists willing
to put themselves in the service of othersâ authoritarian aspirations.
It is only thanks to the misery of these times that in the past the
authoritarians had to pull off a revolutionary triumph in the streets in
order to be able to enlist their servants among the libertarians (just
think of Victor Serge who went from following the path of Albert
Libertad to following the orders of Leon Trotsky), whereas today a
publishing success in a bookstore is enough.
If, in fact, for the I.C., with regards to anarchists, Val Susa is a
blessing, Athens, on the contrary, is a curse. âAnyone who lived through
the days of December 2008 in Athens knows what the word âinsurrectionâ
signifies in a Western metropolis.â and also knows that over there âits
anarchist movement [is] stronger than anywhere elseâ. But the logical
conclusion that one might draw from these two observations is
catastrophic for the I.C., which put itself in the midst to disarm it:
âThe truth is that the anarchists were overrun by this faceless
outpouring of rage. Their monopoly on wild, masked action, inspired
tags, and even Molotov cocktails had been taken from them
unceremoniously. The general uprising they no longer dared to imagine
was there, but it didnât resemble the idea of it they had in their
minds.â But anarchists, unlike the authoritarians dear to the Committee,
have never aspired to any monopoly of revolt, but rather to its
generalization. This why the only thing that overcame them was the joy
in seeing that rage spread.
It is all too clear what âin truthâ leads the Committee to minimize the
anarchist presence as it exalts the Greek insurrection, and on the other
hand to emphasize it when it evokes the counter-insurrection that
followed. The anarchists must disappear. This is why the Committee
doesnât hesitate to shamefully speculate on the death of three bank
employees that occurred during a demonstration â struck by a molotov
thrown ritually and not strategically? â recalling the devastating
effect it had on the Greek anarchist movement. And this is still why
first it gets excited about the âgroupsâ that âtried to stay faithful to
the breach which the month of December had openedâ, for example by
carrying âthe attack to a higher levelâ, and then it spits on those it
makes out to be âa fraction of the anarchists [that] declare themselves
nihilists [sic]â, since ânihilism is the incapacity to believe in what
one does believe inâin our context, revolutionâ. Therefore, according to
the I.C., the anarchists who identify the enemy and go into action are
nothing but powerless individuals. Idiots, even clumsy oafs, who seek to
plug âthe gap between their discourse and their practice, between their
ambitions and their isolationâ. If they were shrewd, they wouldnât go to
meet the people in power with weapon in hand. They would act like those
Italian anarchist who were embarrassed about being so, who know well how
to make discourses and practices match without stumbling into a gap: on
the one hand, by launching citizenist reproaches, and on the other hand,
struggling in the company of bureaucrats and priests and snitches (a
service rewarded now and again with the concession of some binge).
When the I.C. criticize the âinfernal coupleâ, radicalism-pacifism, it
places under accusation the dichotomy, the separation, preferring to
support their possible coexistence. Once and for all, revolutionaries
have to learn to stand with reformists, reformists have to learn to
stand with revolutionaries. Again, its obsession is to emphasize the
need of bringing about the end of contrast and incompatibility. In the
final pages of the book it repeats this yet again, this time, for
vicarious celebrity, speaking in the voice of the philosopher of
institutional anti-institutionalism who is a theoretical father-in-law
of sorts to Toni Negri. Now, over to Michel Foucault: âDialectical logic
brings contradictory terms into play in a homogeneous context. I suggest
replacing this dialectical logic with what I would call strategic logic.
A logic of strategy doesnât stress contradictory terms operating within
a homogeneity that promises their resolution into a unity. The function
of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between
disparate terms that remain disparate. The logic of strategy is the
logic of connections between the heterogeneous and not the logic of the
homogenization of the contradictory.â
The I.C. doesnât love dialectical logic because it annuls
contradictions, conforming them in a unity. It prefers strategic logic
that seeks to keep their connections alive. Foucault and Mao, Foucault
and the communist party, Foucault and the socialist party, Foucault and
Khomeini... were different but were still united â by the willingness of
the former to become a supporter of the latter. Linked. Connected. The
connection is the intimate union between two or more different elements
, the link of close interdependence between facts and ideas. The thing
that puts what is separated into contact. A bridge, not a blender or a
wall. But this strategic logic doesnât get put into action only with the
aim of obtaining âunificationâ within the revolutionary movement, not
from the identification of the enemy but rather âfrom the effort made to
enter one anotherâs geographyâ â that is, when anti-authoritarians
connect with authoritarians to become the dirty black hand in the red
kid glove, black-clad unskilled labor in the service of the red flag. It
is theorized and applied even in the face of the enemy, an enemy that
possesses secret techniques about how to make the world function and
that we therefore have to go to meet. Not to become all one, but
interdependent. In one anotherâs geography?
For the Invisible Committee authority and freedom are indeed
heterogeneous elements, but not in absolute opposition. So, here and
there, they have to be put in contact. On the other hand, for us these
two elements are not only different, they are also contrasting and
incompatible. These bridges have to be undermined.
Here lies the nightmare of the founders of the modern state: a section
of collectivity detaches itself from the whole, thus ruining the idea of
social unity. Two things that society cannot bear: that a thought may be
incorporated, in other words that it may have an effect on an existence
[in terms of conduct of life or way of life] [7]; that this
incorporation may be not only transmitted, but also shared, communized.
All this is enough to discredit as a âsectâ any collective experience
beyond control.
Anonymous, Call
Here lies the nightmare of the strategists of the coup dâetat: a section
of the movement detaches itself from the whole, ruining the idea of
class unity, of community to share. Two things that politics cannot
tolerate: that a thought may be incorporated, in other words that it may
have an effect on oneâs own existence in terms of conduct of life or way
of life (such is ethics); that this incorporation may be not only
experienced privately, but also theorized in an open manner (to be
rendered imaginable and therefore generalizable). All this is enough to
usually accuse of âisolationâ or disqualify as a âsectâ any individual
or collective experience beyond control.
GĂŒnther Anders has already noted how this society describes those who
want to protect their individuality from a more and more intrusive
modernity as introverts and those who, having nothing to protect because
they are empty of thoughts and values, accept with good grace the
consumption of any merchandise and fetish as extroverts. Today these
introverted individuals also appear âdogmaticâ and ârancorousâ in their
refusal to learn how it is in the world. The human being in flesh and
blood is not supposed to have any individuality anymore, she is not
supposed to have her own ideas, tastes, attitudes, desires, values, that
distinguish her and make her unique and singular. No, from the figure of
the unique, one is supposed to go on to that of being anyone, which
according to the Invisible Committee is only the âlocus of a conflictual
play of forces whose successive configurations only form temporary
equilibriumsâ. After reading such repugnant words â a defense of the
human-amoeba, of the multiform Zelig modeled and molded by the external
situation â we can do no less than consider what Georges Henein wrote
long ago in 1947: âThe human being is everything he wants to be, except
anyone. One of the sad successes of society is that it has convinced him
of being anyone and, in doing so, has persuaded him to become this. The
Anyone Man (the novelty found only in the upper case) is not an
inheritance from fascism â it is a creation of the French Revolution.
All being citizens, and all being equal citizens, an extraordinary
bureaucracy becomes necessary to administer this equality, to measure
the portions, to rein in the violations. Now, every bureaucracy needs
people to resemble each other. Anxious to write: âDistinguishing marks:
noneâ, the bureaucrat persuades his victim not only that there is
nothing in himself that distinguishes him, but above all that he must
not distinguish himself.â It is the same conviction that the bureaucrats
of insurrection would like to inculcate in their friends-customers.
If it were not lost in the labyrinth of doublethink, the I.C. would
notice the contradictions that make its thought reactionary. That is,
that one canât serve and subvert at the same time. One canât incite to
deserting this world, mock the âinfantile or senile refusal to recognize
the existence of othernessâ recalling the âthe underground connection
between the pure [political] [8] intensity of street combat and the
unalloyed self-presence of the lonerâ, but then, prey to panic over the
consequent isolation, lash out against this desertion branding it as the
âpurely ideological apologyâ [9] of the âradicalâ who âabsolve[s]
himself of participation in the âexisting state of thingsâ.â
The one thing is the negation of the other. It would have to make a
choice and in fact limits itself to supporting desertion or secession
only in words. In events, its entire discourse is an endless invitation
to enlistment and to the military career. This is why anarchists, at
least those who are not repentant about being so, are so unbearable to
it. Because, not being moved by political ambition but by an ethical
tension, they have no fear of solitude, of being banished. They arenât
at the margins of society in order to lay claim to a radicality on the
political market, but because that is where the conflict between the
order of this world and the disorder of their passions hurls them. When
they express what they think they donât first weigh it on the scale of
expediency in terms of consensus. And not being at all attracted by
solitary hermitages, more forced to put up with them than intentionally
choosing them, they donât limit themselves to abandoning this world with
its siren songs but also invite others to go outside (the alternative
being that of remaining trapped inside the institutions). And from here,
from this elsewhere with regard to the institutions, they seek to
organize themselves to go to the attack. Desertion, not aiming at an
alternative bucolic commune, is the first step toward revolt.
As we have already said, desertion is abandonment: no more uniforms,
orders marches, training, salutes to the flag. No more barracks, no more
snapping to attention. Ranks break and donât come back together. Where
do deserters go? Into the forests, into the spaces where the enemy
doesnât set foot. And they donât carry anything with them from their
previous life, nothing except a few useful tools if necessary. Unlike
the past, when there was still the possibility of finding an unknown
physical space in which to find refuge and organize not just a different
way of living, but also a counter-attack â from the Sherwood Forest of
legend to the Brazilian quilombo of history â now the entire planet is
under the watchful eye of those in power. There are no longer any
impenetrable territories, no longer any terra incognita populated by
fierce savages, as Theodore Kaczynski well knows. Even in the big
cities, there are fewer and fewer neighborhoods where the police donât
dare to enter. So the forest of the deserter is no longer so much within
reach physically as within oneâs frame of mind. It is an imagination
that, in the face of a reality totally produced by the economy and by
politics, can react only with a âcreative indifferenceâ. It demands
nothing of what is, because it wants to give life to what has never
been. An imagination that was once widespread, that cultivated a
visceral hatred toward every uniform and perceived the ruling values as
alien, utterly different from the modern day imagination with its civic
tolerance.
From what is it thought that the thing that western idiots call mal
dâAfrique originates? After traveling for a period of time in a place
where the laws, the usages, the costumes, the rhythms to which we are
accustomed, by which we are domesticated, doesnât rule â and having
discovered that one doesnât just live the same, but that one lives much
better! â how could one not feel an acute nostalgia for it? Better to
walk down a path or sit in a traffic jam on the expressway? Better to
play and laugh with people one knows and loves or spend the day in front
of a screen?
If the exotic folklore organized by the tourist agencies can already
upset those who have a wallet instead of a heart, imagine the nomads and
the savage tribes. The beauty and the ferocity and the good health of
those âred menâ of the Amazon jungle, of those âblue menâ of the Sahara
desert, born and raised thanks to their isolation from the civilization
of the gray men of money. When members of the primitive tribes of the
Amazon see a journalist, they donât try to get interviewed, they shoot
their arrows at him or turn their back on him. For the Tuaregs life is
the struggle against the dogma of death, and their aim is not to
overthrow the king (who represents death) in order to take his place,
but instead to replace the king with life. If an individualist anarchist
poet at the start of the 1900s, proud to live on the margins of society,
lashed out against the mediocrity of the demands âof the bellyâ, a
tuareg poet of the 2000s affirms that his rage-filled verses fight
âagainst the unthinkable, against the belly, against the logic of the
stomachâ, since âI donât give a damn at all about giving people a dose
of aestheticism, nor of claiming that others think the same thoughts as
me or dream the same dreams as me. I have no need for subjects or
slaves. In the Act I supply the tools for understanding my thought, but
in a way that everyone can go it alone in building their own thinking.â
Not the political ambition of achieving a shared intelligence through
consensus, but rather the utopian tension of opening other and endless
horizons through revolt â a tension that when it appears in such
different contexts cannot be written off as faithfulness to an
ideological tradition.
Considering ethics as a tool in the hands of politics, the I.C. holds
that the ethical fabric of the Spanish anarchist movement at the
beginning of the 20th century (in order to celebrate it, the I.C.
describes it hypocritically as âworking classâ) was given by the bond,
by the life that by spreading in all its activities united the
participants. But where did this link come from, what pushed these men
and women to lead that life if not an idea, a common vision of the
world? They didnât fight to feel intense or significant or dense or fine
feelings, but to build a world that reflected what they had in their
heads and hearts. It was the sharing of an idea, in their case the idea
of a world without relationships of power, an idea that became throbbing
flesh and blood, it was affinity. The I.C. would like to recreate that
link, but without the encumbrance of an idea so intrusive as to
embarrass the I.C. in its becoming-business. It has such a horror of
this that from the start it takes care to clarify that now a widespread
critical awareness is not at all lacking, but rather âa shared
perception of the situationâ. As if perception had nothing at all to do
with awareness but only with what a shared intelligence has established,
as if a situation could be unlinked from a perspective.
Here one can grasp the utter difference between an action that is born
from the bottom pushed by a vital ethic, and one that has its origin
from the top, as a strategic politics. In the first instance, each
unique individual, each human being in flesh and blood, is confronting
life on the basis of her own ideas, values and desires. And the clearer
and more deeply explored these are, the more fruitful his action can be.
In the latter case, instead, the maneuvers, the machinations, the
intrigues of the enlightened few, for whom the many are only unskilled
labor, pawns to move on the chessboard of their strategy. Reflection and
critique are avoided because the aim is not to act in a way that
everyone becomes responsible for himself. On the contrary, pawns are
moved with the most ease when they are deprived of awareness; itâs
enough that they have a common âperceptionâ, that they learn by heart
the refrain of the âshared understandingâ.
Of course, for the I.C. all this is just âideological coherenceâ,
âpolitical identityâ, that leads to self-isolation, losing: âThrowing a
rock is never just ârock-throwing.â It can freeze a situation or touch
off an intifada. The idea that a struggle can be âradicalizedâ by
injecting a whole passel of allegedly radical practices and discourses
into it is the politics of an extraterrestrial.â As a good inhabitant of
this planet organized and administered by the powerful, the I.C. has
only the realpolitik in mind. And being persuaded to carry the
revolutions watch on its wrist, it thinks that the stone must be thrown
at the right moment, the triggering one. When it says so, in short. But
if insurrection doesnât wait to break out until the times are ripe,
stone donât at all wait to fly until the erudite strategists give the
green light. History doesnât make appointments, the revolution is not a
program, everything is always possible. What else should anarchists who
take part in a struggle do, if not shoot at clocks and throw gasoline on
the fire? It isnât politics, it never has been and it has never claimed
to be: it is life, the embodiment of a thought.
âOur life is an insult to the weaklings and the liars who boast of an
idea that they never put into practiceâ, said Albert Libertad and Anna
Mahé while they loved each other in the joy of life and fought together
in the pleasure of revolt.
Here again, it is necessary to decide. One cannot on the one hand praise
the poetry of the voluntarist act and on the other hand prescribe the
science of the deterministic process. This world is built, forged,
organized by and on authority, which it reflects in all of its aspects.
It is present in the morning alarm clock, in the traffic lights that
keep us in line, in the money that we carry over our hearts and our
asses, in all the permissions we have to ask and in the obligations to
fulfill. Authority is in the cities in which we live, in the food that
we eat, in the air that we breathe. It flows in our blood passed down by
centuries of voluntary servitude. As Fredy Perlman said, the practical
daily activity of the members of a tribe reproduces and perpetuates the
tribe, that of slaves reproduces and perpetuates slavery, and that of
wage workers reproduces and perpetuates capital. What reproduces and
perpetuates this hell on earth if not the daily activity of those
condemned to it? This is why, unless one believes that the world in
which we live is the natural outcome of human existence â or thinks like
Marx that âthis ship full of fools driven by the windâ will âstill go to
meet its destinyâ, since its âdestiny is the revolution that looms over
usâ â it is necessary to decide to face the fact that the condition for
its reproduction is the willingness of individuals to continue to
alienate their existence.
Destroy, for all creation comes from destruction...
Construct nothing in nights past. Set what you build adrift.
Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle
To do away with that willingness is to undermine this alienation. This
is desertion. What does it mean? That anyone who considers it necessary
to get rid of obedience and power would do well to stop obeying and
commanding, and to start inciting others to do likewise (âbut we canât,
social relations always function this way!â). Anyone who thinks that
parties are harmful would do well to stop voting for them and applauding
their initiatives (âbut we canât, we have to become their friends or to
enter them and participate in order to exploit their influence!â).
Anyone who thinks that mass media are tools for dulling the mind would
do well not to tread on their stage (âbut we canât, we would lose good
opportunities for propaganda!â). Anyone who thinks that language is not
neutral and is modeled on the grammar of power would do well to rub it
the wrong way, to drain it of its commonplaces (âbut one canât, the
people are not accustomed to it and wouldnât understand us!â).
There are many reasons not to desert, as the Invisible Committee tries
to convince us with its suggestions: âThe world doesnât environ us, it
passes through us. What we inhabit inhabits us. What surrounds us
constitutes us. We donât belong to ourselves. We are always-already
spread through whatever we attach ourselves to. Itâs not a question of
forming a void from which we could finally manage to catch hold of all
that escapes us, but of learning to better inhabit what is thereâ. We
donât belong to ourselves and it is better to learn to inhabit want is
here and forms us? Is this the barracks, with its hierarchy, its
discipline, its orders, all its sadness? No, thanks.
We start from precisely the opposite. That we need to give life to our
world, which, if it is a void it is devoid only of power; that we need
to make our world grow, defend it, extend it. When imbeciles hear talk
of the creative nothing, with a snicker they ignore the first word â
âhow boring, so you want to go nowhere!â They think that this world just
as we know it is all that we have available to us, that it contains all
possible worlds, which is why the only problem is how to reconfigure it,
how to participate in it in a strategic way. The I.C., for example,
maintains that the void draws power and should be avoided, without
realizing that it is precisely because power has no grip on the void
that it rushes to occupy it. In the one-way world in which we live,
where different conditions are subjected to a single law, that of power
and money, it is not necessary to fear the void, it is necessary to
multiply it. If anarchists have always thought of anarchy as a gigantic
archipelago of communes, it is precisely because in the midst there is a
void, guarantee of freedom. Anyone can change communes, found another
one, live by herself. There is no longer the state, continent under the
domination of the One, there is the archipelago of the Many, of infinite
difference. This is why ruptures with imposed normality, cracks in the
homogeneity of this world, are so important, because these are what
create the possibility for the completely other to emerge. This is the
great work of insubordination and sabotage that we need to try to carry
out, starting here and now.
Dispossession and exploitation go hand in hand, one aspect is the
premise and guarantee of the other. The more an individual is deprived
of her world, the more he becomes easily maneuverable labor. At the same
time, the more he gets exploited, dedicating all her time and energy to
solving the problems of others, the more she becomes incapable of
thinking and acting to build his own world. To critique only
exploitation is as idiotic as it is to deny it. Human unhappiness
doesnât arise from too low a wage, or from the lack of property in the
means of production, but it also doesnât come from a phantasmic boredom
or alienation. We live in a world that is not ours, and we get exploited
to perpetuate it. Its values impose work on the muscles, just like its
efforts order opinions in the brains. Ceasing to make oneâs contribution
to the reproduction of the existent then means starting to give life to
the completely other.
What would have to provoke ruptures capable of undermining passivity,
what could rouse a fantasy capable of imagination a life without
permissions: politics? The constituent power of those who adore
proletarian sweat and accuse one of myopia and naivety if he doesnât
have the far-sightedness and the acumen to begin working for the
electoral victory of the left, the same left that, as soon as it begins
deliberating, gets accused of having disappointed and betrayed? The
removing potential of those who cultivate both the fetishism of violence
in the streets and the passion for the negotiation table, and accuse one
of impotence and paralysis if she doesnât have the virility of a
municipal councilor and the dynamism of a sales representative?
Pathetic buffoons, one and all. They are always there, with eyes focused
on high to probe into an infamous power in order to try to understand
how to make it function, how to constitute a new one (after having
removed the old one from office), how to remove the old one (in order to
then constitute a new one), getting excited before every man with the
answers who appears on the horizon. But in the meantime, next to them,
in this world in decomposition where, in order to survive, human beings
devastate the planet and exterminate each other, one who rebels cries
that all of them have to get out! A war cry that has not at all become
popular wisdom; it has been there for centuries, but only now explodes
in all its thunder. It is true that âThe cleverest of the politicians
have made it into a campaign promiseâ, indeed from Africa to Tarnac,
passing through Val Susa, there are ânew puppetsâ coming to shout âmake
way, we are coming!â But it is the visceral hatred of authority, of any
authority, that incites to insurrection. Certainly not the dialectic or
the metaphysics of ambitious philosophers with or without university
pedigrees, who invest in that hatred only to make it productive, or
rather to exploit it. âAgitate the people well before using itâ said
Talleyrand, a strategic tactic that led him to serve first the monarchy,
then the revolution, and finally the monarchy again.
And this visceral hatred is precisely what the Invisible Committee would
like to domesticate. In the past, the intellectuals who would have liked
to all be the patient subjects of the Empire, desirous of passing
through it in order to better realize it, get defined as its
âemissariesâ. Today, how would the intellectuals who strive to make
disorder meet with order, after having rendered the former inoffensive,
be treated? This civilization does not have to be realized, it does not
have to be completed. Useless to cheat on the words, it does not have to
be concluded in the sense of being brought to its conclusion. Because
there is no happy ending after its battle fields and its superstores,
after its elections and its television shows. The more one takes
position inside it, the more one participates in fooling himself that he
is correcting it, and the more one prolongs it.
This civilization has to be stopped. It has to be abandoned, thwarted,
damaged, blocked, demolished. Starting from desertion
(non-participation, non-collaboration on all fronts), continuing with
sabotage (meant as theoretical and practical attack against the
structures and persons of power), up to seizing the moment and exploding
with the insurrection that is, always has been and always will be the
demolition of power.
â âAnd how can these two feelings be reconciled? And what does the
FĂŒhrer say concerning your former boss Walzel, the teacher you admired
so much? And how can you reconcile this with the humanitarianism of
Lessing and all the others about whom you had essays written? And how âŠ
but itâs pointless asking any more questions.â
She had in fact simply shaken her head in response to every sentence I
uttered and had tears in her eyes. âNo, it really does seem to be
pointless, because everything you are asking is based on reason and the
accompanying feelings stem from bitterness about insignificant details.â
â âAnd what are my questions supposed to be based on if not reason? And
what is significant?â
âIâve told you already: that weâve really come home! Itâs something you
have to feel, and you must abandon yourself to your feelings, ...â
Victor Klemperer, LTI. The Language of the Third Reich
This is perhaps one of the most horrifying passages in the diaries kept
by the Jewish philologist chased from the Dresden university, who from
1933 to 1945 chronicled the modifications of the German language under
the nazi regime and the change in mentality and daily behavior that he
discovered in the population. The meeting with a university assistant,
whose intelligence he admired but who he now found as a teacher and nazi
sympathizer, had made him aware that no reasoning, no logical
demonstration, no word could affect the Zeitgeist, not even its obvious
falseness. Those who believed in it were so infatuated by it as to
remain deaf to any argumentation.
It is the same awareness that one notices facing the present-day world.
Here also, everywhere, every two minutes, every two lines, one reaches
the same conclusion; everything totters, everything reels, wherever one
goes, one flounders. And we arenât referring to To Our Friends, which,
as we have seen, is only a reflection, a product, and is rightly
presented as such under the neon lights of the market. We are referring
to the life that they force us to drag ourselves through, to how the
merciless mechanisms of the destruction of meaning are able to crush all
utopian tension. To how the blackmail of reality, in the form of
instructions for use, is able to occupy every dream and desire contrary
to the reproduction of the existent. And how everything urges and
exhorts to be there, to participate in what is, to make it function, and
not to be. To how the prospect has been canceled by the one-sidedness of
the situation and by the contradiction, a thing that indeed allows an
increase of experience, but at the same time delimits its
potentialities. To how power, once it has dematerialized and become
fluid or gaseous, has been able to make itself safe; since one drinks it
and breathes it, one canât seize it by the throat.
And yet one has to ask if this awareness is truly a distinctive trait of
this epoch spent in front of and in the middle of screens. If we want to
look behind, at those who came before us in the attempt to float off
into the unknown; at those who wanted damned poetry to become true and
life to escape from the representations that crucify it (because they
had no interest in revolving around its corpse asking themselves how to
make the infrastructures of power function); to those who wanted a world
in flames whirling into the infinite and for this reason aimed to
dynamite electric power stations and railroad lines... â what do we see?
Donât we perhaps see the same rage, anguish and desperation before a
dawn that announces only a new day of work?
But at nightfall, luckily, the most marvelous dreams return to keep us
company. Sarcasm from those who pursue a career, incomprehension from
those who aspire to products without logos, exclusion from those who use
public funds ... the absence of all these cards to certify, in order to
ensure our presence, is of no concern. It leaves us utterly indifferent.
Because desertion from the daily toils imposed allows for thousands of
conspiracies. We have something else to which to dedicate ourselves as
compared to those who want to make themselves a name, those who want to
get a place of their own in the world. In its totalitarian arrogance,
power has unified and interconnected to such a point as to make itself
even more vulnerable. A small accident can be transformed into a
catastrophe. A local uprising can flare up into a continental
insurrection. Having good ideas is more important than having
reputation; with the former we self-organize, with the latter they
organize others.
When the Egyptian insurgents found themselves enraged in front of the
office of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, in the summer of 2013, they
found the entrance impregnably barricaded. Their assault would have
ended immediately there if someone had not sprung out with a ladder in
hand. He had thought well to bring it with him, and the integralists
hadnât thought to barricade the windows on the higher floor. And the
office of the Muslim Brotherhood was devastated from top to bottom.
Never confusing the furious wind of the unforeseen or of insurrection
with the gentle breeze of politics.
The desert wind, as you can see, has a force capable of stopping the
greatest powers. Cambise II, the Persian king who wanted to conquer
Egypt, became aware of it when he lost an army composed of 50,000
selected soldiers marching toward the Siwa Oasis. The khamsin, a wind
that raises enormous sandstorms and dehydrates the body, offered no
escape. Swallowed up into nothing. When one thinks about the subversive
ghibli that has blown in the last few years in Egypt, the mind goes
immediately to the hot Tahrir square (and to the acquaintances to cite).
On the other hand, not being anyoneâs friends â or rather, perfect in
the role of killers in some conspiracy â three men, arrested at the end
of March 2013 by the coast guard on the open seas of Alexandria when
they were found aboard a small boat, have been forgotten by all. It
seems that they were about to cut one of the undersea cables that ensure
international and internet communications, sabotage that already
happened in those waters damaging the SMW-4 cable.
A suggestion that goes beyond any motivation one might stand behind,
good or bad as they may be. Of course, it is easier to applaud those
Palestinians who cut down some Israeli pylons near Ramallah in the
summer of 2014, or at most that group of armed men who in April 2013
opened fire on the transformers of a Californian electric power station,
causing $15,000,000 in damages. But why insist on reducing the
possibilities of what to the identity of who?
Nothing is ever lost, not as long as a ladder appears in the middle of
the streets in turmoil and a small boat on the quiet open sea (or a
chainsaw in some lost hill, or a rifle...). Nothing is lost, not so long
as all these tools come out from the fantasy of the ethics, and not from
the toolbox of politics. There is no more time for sadness. The glow of
dawn could still open on a life without masters and godfathers. The
emergency brake is next to us. Instead of sacrificing our life for this
world, letâs start to sacrifice this world for our lives.
Letâs leave pessimism for when we are dead.
(All footnotes in this text are the translatorâs footnotes)
Perhaps nothing is able to help us grasp, to make palpable, the negative
active in the course of an insurrections like the testimony of two men
who experienced the Paris Commune of 1871 from opposite sides of the
barricades.
Written with a hand trembling with horror, the words of the man of
letters, Théophile Gautier (to whom the flowers of evil of disciple
Baudelaire had clearly taught nothing) despite themselves were one of
the most moving homages to the Parisian insurgents:
âBeneath all great cities there are lionâs dens, caverns closed with
solid bars where wild beasts, smelly beasts, venomous beasts, all the
refractory perversities that civilization has not been able to
domesticate, crowd together: those who love blood, those who are amused
by a fire as if it were a firework, those who get excited by theft,
those for whom the attack against modesty is love, all the monsters of
the heart, all the deformed of the spirit. Foul population, unknown to
the light of the sun, that grimly swarms in the underground shadows. One
day it happens that the distracted tamer forgets the keys to the
menagerie door, and the fierce beasts spread out through the terrorized
city with savage roars. From the opened cages the hyenas of 1793 and the
gorillas of the Commune leap out.â
On the other hand, the profession of ethnologist (empassioned,
furthermore, precisely by wild peoples) should not be alien to the
calmness with which ĂlisĂ©e Reclus starts the list of his description.
But the coldness of the scholar gives way to the voluptuousness of the
rebel:
âLetâs stop a moment and look at the event: itâs worth the effort; it is
perhaps unique in history. It is the most serious realization of anarchy
that any utopian has ever been able to dream. Legally, we no longer have
government, neither police forces nor police officers, neither judges
not trials, neither judiciary officials nor writs, landlords flee in
mass abandoning the buildings to the tenants, neither soldiers nor
generals, neither letters nor telegrams, neither customs officers, nor
excisemen, nor tax collectors. Neither Academies nor Universities, the
great professors, doctors and surgeons have left. Emigration in mass of
the âParty of Order and of Honest Personsâ, followed by spies and
prostitutes. Paris, vast Paris, is abandoned to the orgies of the low
multitude, to the frenzies of the impure mass, to the furies of the
rogue, to the appetites of the filthy proletariat.â
No legitimacy,
no demands,
no reconfiguration.
Between these incompatible worlds,
may there only be relentless hostility.
(back cover)
To those who...
To those who see the end of civilization as a bookstore or grocery
business;
To those who consider insurrection as a breach in the monopoly of
falsehood, representation, power;
To those who are able to sense that behind the dense fog of the âcrisisâ
there is a theater of operations, maneuvers, strategies and therefore
the possibility for self-promotion;
To those who launch âattacksâ in order occupy seats in the municipal
council;
To those who seize the propitious moment to display themselves in the
mass media;
To those who donât seek accomplices, but political friends;
To those who donât desert, but who infiltrate;
To those who mock the refusal to participate in this world;
To those who organize others into a party, perhaps â why not â into a
historical party;
To those who intend to give life to a revolutionary force, as long as
itâs institutional.
A contribution to a debate that has need of a single way of thinking
shared by all...
[1] As in âstrange bedfellowsâ.
[2] There are at least two English translations of Appel. Here I
followed the one that is closer to what the writers of this critique
used, but also changed âmatterâ to âaffairâ, because the French word
here is âaffaireâ which can be translated as âaffairâ, âbusinessâ,
âdealâ, âbargainâ, etc. This critique plays on these multiple meanings,
and so my choice here brings out the significance and sarcasm in the
critique more clearly.
[3] This odd spelling is the one chosen by Gregory Elliott, the person
who translated Boltanski and Chiapelloâs book into English. The word is
more commonly spelled âconnectionistâ.
[4] I have chosen to translate this phrase directly from the French
myself, because Robert Hurley, perhaps out of laziness, perhaps
considering it more important to keep what in French is a wordplay even
though it changes the meaning of the text, or maybe intentionally to
hide what the Invisible Committee actually says here. The French word
âdestitutionâ does not translate into English as âdestitutionâ (which,
in English, means âimpoverishmentâ, âindigenceâ), but as âdismissalâ,
âremoval from officeâ, âdeposal (as of a king)â â in other words, the
removal of someone in power from their office through official means.
The correct translation is necessary both to understand the critique of
the I.C. the authors of this book are making here and to understand what
the I.C. is actually proposing.
[5] This is a reference to Roger Vailland, who was involved with Le
Grand Jeu. He embraced stalinist politics and wrote a defense of the
Prefect of Paris, leading the surrealists to break with him.
[6] I have had to again make my own translation from the original
French, because in his English translation of Ă nos amis (To Our
Friends), Hurley chose to gloss over this phrase. The sentence in the
original is: âConstruire une force rĂ©volutionnaire, aujourdâhui, câest
justement cela: articuler tous les mondes et toutes les techniques
rĂ©volutionnairement nĂ©cessaires, agrĂ©ger toute lâintelligence technique
en une force historique et non en un systĂšme de gouvernement.â (emphasis
added to show the phrase I translated). Hurley translates this sentence:
âThis is exactly what it means to construct a revolutionary force today:
linking together all the worlds and all the revolutionarily necessary
techniques, shaping these into a historical force and not a system of
governmentâ, leaving out the phrase that has a pretty clear implication
that, for the Invisible Committee, the construction of a revolutionary
force requires dependence on technical expertise â the 21st century
version of the dependence on specialists in marxist theory that
leninists upheld 100 years ago.
[7] This phrase isnât found in the English translation I have of Appel
(Call), though it is there quite clearly in the original: âen termes de
conduite de vie ou de maniĂšre de vivreâ.
[8] Once again Robert Hurley left out a word significant to
understanding the actual ideas of the Invisible Committee and their
milieu. The original reads: âla connexion souterraine entre la pure
intensité politique du combat de rue et la présence à soi sans fard du
solitaire.â (emphasis added to point out the word left untranslated).
[9] The original French word âapologieâ refers specifically to the
English definition of âapologyâ that is rarely used outside of
philosophical and theological realms, which is not an expression of
being sorry for something, but is rather a justification or defense of
something.