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Title: Dissonances Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Language: en Topics: anti-fascist, anti-racist, chaos theory, identity, language Source: Retrieved on April 22, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/dissonances.html Notes: Original titles: *Che ne facciamo dellâantifascismo?*, Anarchismo 74, September 1994; *InattualitĂ sulla droga,* ProvocAzione 17, November 1988; *InattualitĂ * sul razzismo, ProvocAzione 24, June 1990; *Come giocarsi la vita e perchĂ©,* ProvocAzione 21, June 1990; *Mal di âComunitĂ â*, ProvocAzione 5, May 1987. Translated by Jean Weir, in collaboration with John Moore and Leigh Starcross. Elephant Editions. BM Elephant London WC1N 3XX
...The dissonance lies in the content of these arguments. But by
remaining in the content, crystallising itself in the place for saying
(and even doing) they could also become elements of recuperation, food
for future conservative thought, new uniforms (of a different colour),
new âidolsâ (in a more agreeable format). There are no definitive
recipes, not even dissonances, capable of breaking the rhythm that
constantly envelops us.
Yet dissonance has something else to offer.
Something meaningful appears in the crossroads of rhythms between
re-evoked facts, the time of writing and the time of fruition, that is,
in the task freely taken on by the reader. One perceives a content which
is something other than the single arguments, the ways of saying and the
saying of ways. In letting oneself be struck by dissonance one is not
illuminated, one does not fall prostrate on the road to Damascus but
simply creates air around oneâs thoughts, that is, one lets inadvertence
enter the field of codification. The range of arguments itself opens the
way to unpredictable unions that were not intended during the phase of
writing, and were probably not problems as such even in the factual
phase. Dissonance therefore acts like a catalyst for casual openings
that cannot be controlled. Just one warning: do not let yourself get
panicky about meaning. If dissonance is an integral part of harmony and
constitutes the other outcome, one that is always foreseeable and even
desirable, its free coagulation in processes of aleatory fruition
produces something else, a rupture that is not easily amendable. May
others respect the complete cycle in the reassuring riverbed of meaning,
with which the water carriers quench our fears, but elsewhere. Here one
is proposing a reading that is itself a risk: a chance, a journey open
to other possibilities.
Chance is yet to be discovered, if nothing else in its connection with
chaos. But even that is yet to be discovered, at least in connection
with spontaneous order. See you elsewhere.
AMB
The fox knows many things.
The porcupine only one, but it is great.
Archilochus
Fascism is a seven-letter word beginning with F. Human beings like
playing with words which, by partly concealing reality, absolve them
from personal reflection or having to make decisions. The symbol acts in
our place, supplying us with a flag and an alibi.
And when we put âanti-â in front of the symbol it is not simply a
question of being against what absolutely disgusts us. We feel safe that
we are on the other side and have done our duty. Having recourse to that
âanti-â gives us a clear conscience, enclosing us in a well-guarded and
much frequented field.
Meanwhile things move on. The years go by and so do power relations. New
bosses take the place of the old and the tragic coffin of power is
passed from one hand to the next. The fascists of yesteryear have
complied with the democratic game and handed over their flags and
swastikas to a few madmen. And why not? That is the way of men of power.
The chit-chat comes and goes, political realism is eternal. But we, who
know little or nothing of politics, are embarrassedly asking ourselves
whatever has happened given that the black-shirted, club-bearing
fascists we once fought so resolutely are disappearing from the scene.
So, like headless chickens we are looking for a new scapegoat against
which we can unleash our all-too-ready hatred, while everything around
us is becoming more subtle and mellow and power is calling on us to
enter into dialogue: But please step forward, say what you have to say,
itâs not a problem! Donât forget, weâre living in a democracy, everyone
has the right to say what they like. Others listen, agree or disagree,
then sheer numbers decide the game. The majority win and the minority
are left with the right to continue to disagree. So long as everything
remains within the dialectic of taking sides.
If we were to reduce the question of fascism to words, we would be
forced to admit it had all been a game. Perhaps a dream: âMussolini, an
honest man, a great politician. He made mistakes. But who didnât? Then
he got out of control. He was betrayed. We were all betrayed. Fascist
mythology? Leave it at that! Thereâs no point in thinking about such
relics of the past.â
âHitlerâ, Klausmann recounts, sarcastically portraying the mentality of
Gerhart Hauptmann, the old theoretician of political realism, âin the
last analysis... my dear friends!... no bad feelings!... letâs try to
be... no, if you donât mind,... allow me... objective... can I get you
another drink? This champagne... really extraordinaryâHitler the man, I
mean... the champagne as well, for that matter... an absolutely
extraordinary evolution... German youth... about seven million votes...
as I have often said to my Jewish friends... these Germans... incredible
nation... truly mysterious... cosmic impulses... Goethe... the saga of
dynamic... elementary irresistible tendencies...â
No, not at the level of small talk. Differences get hazy over a glass of
good wine and everything becomes a matter of opinion. Because, and this
is the important thing, there are differences, not between fascism and
antifascism but between those who want power and those who fight against
it and refuse it. But at what level are the foundations of these
differences to be found?
By having recourse to historical analysis? I donât think so. Historians
are the most useful category of idiots in the service of power. They
think they know a lot but the more they furiously study documents, the
more that is all they know: documents which incontrovertibly attest what
happened, the will of the individual imprisoned in the rationality of
the event. The equivalent of truth and fact. To consider anything else
possible is a mere literary pastime. If the historian has the faintest
glimmer of intelligence, he moves over to philosophy immediately,
immersing himself in common anguish and such like. Tales of deeds,
fairy-tale gnomes and enchanted castles. Meanwhile the world around us
settles into the hands of the powerful and their revision-book culture,
unable to tell the difference between a document and a baked potato. âIf
manâs will were freeâ, writes Tolstoy in War and Peace, âthe whole of
history would be a series of fortuitous events... if instead there is
one single law governing manâs actions, free will cannot exist, because
manâs will must be subject to those laws.â
The fact is that historians are useful, especially for supplying us with
elements of comfort, alibis and psychological crutches. How courageous
the Communards of 1871 were! They died like brave men against the wall
at PĂšre Lachaise! And the reader gets excited and prepares to die as
well if necessary, against the next wall of the Communards. Waiting for
social forces to put us in the condition of dying as heroes gets us
through everyday life, usually to the threshold of death without this
occasion ever presenting itself. Historical trends are not all that
exact. Give or take a decade, we might miss this opportunity and find
ourselves empty handed.
If you ever want to measure a historianâs imbecility, get him to reason
on things that are in the making rather than on the past. It will be a
mind-opener!
No, not historical analysis. Perhaps political or
political-philosophical discussion, the kind we have become accustomed
to reading in recent years. Fascism is something one minute, and
something else the next. The technique for making these analyses is soon
told. They take the Hegelian mechanism of asserting and contradicting at
the same time (something similar to the critique of arms that becomes an
arm of criticism), and extract a seemingly clear affirmation about
anything that comes to mind at the time. Itâs like that feeling of
disillusionment you get when, after running to catch a bus you realise
that the driver, although he saw you, has accelerated instead of
stopping.
Well, in that case one can demonstrate, and I think Adorno has done,
that it is precisely a vague unconscious frustrationâcaused by the life
that is escaping us which we cannot graspâwhich surges up, making us
want to kill the driver. Such are the mysteries of Hegelian logic! So,
fascism gradually becomes less contemptible. Because inside us, lurking
in some dark corner of our animal instinct, it makes our pulse quicken.
Unknown to ourselves, a fascist lurks within us. And it is in the name
of this potential fascist that we come to justify all the others. No
extremists, of course! Did so many really die? Seriously, in the name of
a misunderstood sense of justice people worthy of great respect put
Faurissonâs nonsense into circulation. No, it is better not to venture
along this road.
When knowledge is scarce and the few notions we have seem to dance about
in a stormy sea, it is easy to fall prey to the stories invented by
those who are cleverer with words than we are. In order to avoid such an
eventuality the Marxists, goodly programmers of othersâ minds that they
are (particularly those of the herded proletariat), maintained that
fascism is equivalent to the truncheon. On the opposite side even
philosophers like Gentile suggested that the truncheon, by acting on the
will, is also an ethical means in that it constructs the future
symbiosis between State and individual in that superior unity wherein
the individual act becomes collective. Here we see how Marxists and
fascists originate from the same ideological stock, with all the ensuing
practical consequences, concentration camps included. But let us
continue. No, fascism is not just the truncheon, nor is it even just
Pound, CĂ©line, Mishima or Cioran. It is not one of these elements, or
any other taken individually, but is all of them put together. Nor is it
the rebellion of one isolated individual who chooses his own personal
struggle against all others, at times including the State, and could
even attract that human sympathy we feel towards all rebels, even
uncomfortable ones. No, that is not what fascism is.
For power, crude fascism such as has existed at various times in history
under dictatorships, is no longer a practicable political project. New
instruments are appearing along with the new managerial forms of power.
So let us leave it for the historians to chew away on as much as they
like. Fascism is out of fashion even as a political insult or
accusation. When a word comes to be used disparagingly by those in
power, we cannot make use of it as well. And because this word and
related concept disgusts us, it would be well to put one and the other
away in the attic along with all the other horrors of history and forget
it.
Forget the word and the concept, but not what is concealed under it. We
must keep this in mind in order to prepare ourselves to act. Hunting
fascists might be a pleasant sport today but it could represent an
unconscious desire to avoid a deeper analysis of reality, to avoid
getting behind that dense scheme of power which is getting more and more
complicated and difficult to decipher.
I can understand anti-fascism. I am an antifascist too, but my reasons
are not the same as those of the many I heard in the past and still hear
today who define themselves as such. For many, fascism had to be fought
twenty years ago when it was in power in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile,
etc. When the new democratic regimes took their places in these
countries, the anti-fascism of so many ferocious opponents extinguished
itself. It was then that I realised the anti-fascism of my old comrades
in struggle was different to mine. For me nothing had changed. What we
did in Greece, Spain, the Portuguese colonies and in other places could
have continued even after the democratic State had taken over and
inherited the past successes of the old fascism. But everyone did not
agree. It is necessary to know how to listen to old comrades who tell of
their adventures and the tragedies they have known, of the many murdered
by the fascists, the violence and everything else. âButâ, as Tolstoy
again said, âthe individual who plays a part in historical events never
really understands the significance of them. If he tries to understand
them he becomes a sterile component.â I understand less those who, not
having lived these experiences, and therefore donât find themselves
prisoners of such emotions half a century later, borrow explanations
that no longer have any reason to exist, and which are often no more
than a simple smokescreen to hide behind.
âI am an antifascist!â, they throw at you like a declaration of war,
âand you?â
In such cases my almost spontaneous reply isâno, I am not an
antifascist. I am not an antifascist in the way that you are. I am not
an antifascist because I went to fight the fascists in their countries
while you stayed in the warmth of Italian democracy which nevertheless
put mafiosi like Scelba, Andreotti and Cossiga in government. I am not
an antifascist because I have continued to fight against the democracy
that replaced these soap opera versions of fascism. It uses more up to
date means of repression and so is, if you like, more fascist than the
fascists before them. I am not an antifascist because I am still trying
to identify those who hold power today and do not let myself be blinded
by labels and symbols, while you continue to call yourself an
antifascist in order to have a justification for coming out into the
streets to hide behind your âDown with fascism!â banners. Of course, if
I had been older than eight at the time of the âresistanceâ, perhaps I
too would be overwhelmed by youthful memories and ancient passions and
would not be so lucid. But I donât think so. Because, if one examines
the facts carefully, even between the confused and anonymous
conglomeration of the anti-fascism of political formations, there were
those who did not conform, but went beyond it, continued, and carried on
well beyond the âceasefireâ! Because the struggle, the life and death
struggle, is not only against the fascists of past and present, those in
the black shirts, but is also and fundamentally against the power that
oppresses us, with all the elements of support that make it possible,
even when it wears the permissive and tolerant guise of democracy.
âWell then, you might have said so right away!ââsomeone could replyââyou
are an antifascist too.â
âAnd how else could it be? You are an anarchist, so you are an
antifascist! Donât tire us by splitting hairs.â
But I think it is useful to draw distinctions. I have never liked
fascists, nor consequently fascism as a project. For other reasons (but
which when carefully examined turn out to be the same), I have never
liked the democratic, the liberal, the republican, the Gaullist, the
labour, the Marxist, the communist, the socialist or any other of those
projects. Against them I have always opposed not so much my being
anarchist as my being different, therefore anarchist. First of all my
individuality, my own personal way of understanding life and nobody
elseâs, of understanding it and therefore of living it, of feeling
emotions, searching, discovering, experimenting, and loving. I only
allow entry into this world of mine to the ideas and people who appeal
to me; the rest I hold far off, politely or otherwise.
I donât defend, I attack. I am not a pacifist, and donât wait until
things go beyond the safety level. I try to take the initiative against
all those who might even potentially constitute a danger to my way of
living life. And part of this way is also the need and desire for
othersânot as metaphysical entities, but clearly identified others,
those who have an affinity with my way of living and being. And this
affinity is not something static and determined once and for all. It is
a dynamic fact which changes and continues to grow and widen, revealing
yet other people and ideas, and weaving a web of immense and varied
relations, but where the constant always remains my way of being and
living, with all its variations and evolution.
I have traversed the realm of man in every sense and have not yet found
where I might quench my thirst for knowledge, diversity, passion,
dreams, a lover in love with love. Everywhere I have seen enormous
potential let itself be crushed by ineptitude, and meagre capacity
blossom in the sun of constancy and commitment. But as long as the
opening towards what is different flourishes, the receptiveness to let
oneself be penetrated and to penetrate to the point that there is not a
fear of the other, but rather an awareness of oneâs limitations and
capabilitiesâand so also of the limits and capabilities of the
otherâaffinity is possible; it is possible to dream of a common,
perpetual undertaking beyond the contingent, human approach. The further
we move away from all this, affinities begin to weaken and finally
disappear. And so we find those outside, those who wear their feelings
like medals, who flex their muscles and do everything in their power to
appear fascinating. And beyond that, the mark of power, its places and
its men, the forced vitality, the false idolatry, the fire without heat,
the monologue, the chit chat, the uproar, the usable, everything that
can be weighed and measured.
That is what I want to avoid. That is my anti-fascism.
There are at least two ways to make music. The negative one and the
positive one. We can screech as long as we like on the strings of a
violin and still not succeed in making what comes out music. But a whole
portfolio of scores of the great composers still does not make a
musician. It follows that one should not pay attention to how things are
said as much as to what is being said.
There is as much violining about drugs today as there is about
everything else. Each plays their own way, with their own purposes.
There are those who talk with an air of personal authority, although
when it comes down to it, all they know is hearsay. This science reaches
them through othersâ experience, it is an outside affair. They have
observed matters that are not their own, gathering âeye-witness
accountsâ that are mere signals, not reality. It matters little then in
my opinion whether one adopts a permissive attitude or makes apocalyptic
forecasts.
Then there are the usual scoundrels who call for politically
opportunistic projects great or small, but here again the difference is
irrelevant.
And there are those who are disarmingly in good faith, those âin good
faithâ by profession, who almost make a shield of their state of grace
to hide behind, timidly insisting that âsomething must be doneâ (which
usually results in no more than a worthy refurbishment of some of the
more antiquated forms of social services).
Not forgetting the anti-mafia violinists who combine their prolific
activity with the âdrugs problemââthe two are clearly interdependentâand
it becomes a point of honour to repeat the paradoxical rubbish that is
said about the âmafiaâ when talking about âdrugsâ word for word.
And finally there are the more advanced ârevolutionariesâ who can be
divided into roughly two positions, each one comical, but for different
reasons. The first is permissive, but only up to a point. They are for
the use of âlightâ, not âheavyâ âdrugsâ. They are broad-minded to the
point of becoming consumers themselves at times. With revolutionary
asceticism of course, using small amounts of âlight drugsâ, taking care
to have only a little close at hand so as not to have problems with the
law, as that would be out of keeping for a revolutionary. The second
position is the absolute condemnation of all drugs, âlightâ or âheavyâ,
it makes no difference: they all âdull your facultiesâ. These
ârevolutionaryâ positions are clearly lacking in something. The
difference between âlightâ and âheavyâ drugs has always seemed spurious
to me, partly because the difference is defined by the legal
laboratories of the system. And it seems to me to be too hasty to
establish once and for all that drug addicts are idiots with no
backbone, incapable of self-managing their lives and so are like lumps
of wood at the mercy of the whirling river of power relations.
The stupid and superficial, the weak and uncertain, those desirous of
uniformity at any price, will rally under any flag, including the
revolutionary one. Next to me under the same flag I have heard them gasp
in situations that were too strong for their humanitarian palates or
whatever lies under their lionâs disguise. I have even seen them hide
their weaknesses behind attitudes worthy of mountain-crushing judges. We
nearly all need some kind of prop, Iâm not saying that I do not include
myself in this. If nothing else, I take a sleeping pill when I canât
sleep, I eat too much when I am nervous, or other such things. But we
are not talking about our weaknesses but of our attitudes towards what
we consider to be the weaknesses of others.
That is why, if I consider my position carefully, I find the âdrugs
problemâ to be ânon-newsâ. I do not feel like subscribing to any of the
positions cited above. Nor to the positions of superiority from which
some regard âdrug addictsâ (but itâs more âhipâ to call them âjunkiesâ).
I see things differently.
Once again we must start from something obvious: freedom. Of course
someone could reply that the young person with very little perspective
on choices for gaining knowledge or points of reference, does not have
the possibility to start from freedom. So? what should I do? It would be
like saying that I am sorry that the exploited have little chance of
rebelling because the power structure has been clever enough to sew
everything up. In actual fact I am not sorry about such a thing. They
have asked for it, with their miserable and petty suggestions of how to
force the State to satisfy their needs. And so needs go on being
satisfied or postponed, allowing a re-organisation of control and a
restructuring of the economy. To such a point that, if not today, then
sometime in the near future, the space for rebellion will be reduced to
the point of becoming almost nonexistent.
If the individual wants to establish a relationship with drugs he is
free to do so, but donât tell me that only one kind of relationship is
possible. For a long time now I have considered the situations in which
one lived during the Fifties to be different. At the time we were
âseekers of fireâ. Today we can look for a long time, but all we find
are zombies crying for a âfixâ. But Iâm not taken in by this kind of
whining, which is the same as what can be heard outside any
proletarianâs door or any hovel of the most repellent and shameful
poverty, without anyone lifting a finger when they walk past the
armoured windows of a bank where the safe is open and waiting to be
emptied. Of course a âsocialâ problem of poverty and exploitation
exists. But there is also a social problem of submission,
respectability, piety, acceptance, sacrifice. If the exploited really is
a rebel he will certainly not begin by resolving the social problem of
âallâ the exploited, but will at least try to solve his own without
dwelling on the wickedness of capitalism. In the case of his not being
physically capable, he must still evaluate what to do with his life
himself, before reaching the abjection of simply denouncing his poverty.
In saying this I am not saying that I am against the exploited or the
poor things who take drugs and stagger about prey to their own ghosts. I
feel sorry for them, yes. After all I am a human being too. But I am not
prepared to do anything for them. What should I do? Address them to the
same old struggle for housing, water, lighting or a pension, just so
they can move on to new levels of poverty and discouragement? And what
should one do with those larvae in a trance? Give them methadone? Or
build them a libertarian and humanitarian hospice? Donât even mention it
to me.
I know for certain that the exploited proletarian can rebel, and that if
he doesnât he is also responsible, at least as much as those that
exploit him. I know for certain that drug addicts can rebel, and that if
they donât they are also responsible, just as much as those who get rich
on their misery. It is not true that privation, work, poverty, drugs,
take away oneâs will power. On the contrary, they can make it greater.
It is not true, as many people without any experience of their own
maintain, that heroin (to dwell on the âheavyâ stuff for a moment) takes
away oneâs will power or makes us incapable of acting with a determined
project and an awareness of class reality, i.e. of the functioning of
the mechanisms that produce, among other things, the drugs market.
Anyone who says otherwise either lacks competence or is a mystifier.
There is always an awareness of self and self-projectuality in the drug
addict, even in those supposedly in the final stages (but what are the
final stages?). If the individual is weak, a poor stick with a character
already marked by a life of privation or ease (at this point it does not
make much difference), he reacts weakly, but he would have done the same
thing in any other situation in which he happened to find himself. One
could reply that drugs as a prop tend to be sought more by weak
subjects. I must admit that this is true. But that does not alter the
reasoning (ânon-newsâ) that I made at the outset, that of pointing out
the responsibility of the weak concerning their own weakness.
I consider the time has come to say things without mincing words.
Racism can be defined in many ways, most of which tend to justify an
attitude of defence and attack against other persons who, it is thought,
might damage our interests in the immediate or near future. At the root
of racism, under its disguise of myths linked to various fantasies and
irrationalities, there is always a precise economic cause, in defence of
which the fears and fantasies we all have concerning the different are
addressed or opportunely solicited.
I read a number of articles recently concerning the growth of racism in
Italy, in which incredible falsehoods are stated. It seems to me
therefore that it would be useful to begin these uncomfortable pieces of
ânon-newsâ with a few precise remarks, bearing in mind the context in
which I am writing [Bergamo prison] and the consequent impossibility of
obtaining precise historical documentation.
Racism has existed throughout the history of mankind and has always been
linked to a fear of the âdifferentâ which has been depicted in the most
incredible and fantastical ways. Without going back too far, we can see
that for centuries the Catholic church was an instrument both of violent
racism and destruction, well before the racist theories of the last two
hundred years. It developed the racial theory of blood for the first
time, applying it against the Spanish Jews and their desperate attempts
to convert to Catholicism in order to survive.
In the struggle against the Church and its doctrines last century,
scientific theory incongruously introduced a theoretical stream from
Chamberlain to Gobineau which took up the blood theory again and used it
as a weapon against the Jews. It was placed within a kind of
deterministic evolutionism which the modern orthodox racist theory
founded by the Nazis based itself upon.
But, from the âreconquestâ of Spain to our time, these theories would
have remained in the locker of the historical horrors of human thought,
had they not occasionally found an economic base on which to exercise
themselves, common interests to protect, and fears of possible
expropriation to be exorcised. The Catholic crusade against the Jews was
a consequence of the fear that it would not be possible to control the
extremely wealthy Spanish provinces left by the Arabs unless they
proceeded to their immediate persecution. Their ghettoisation and
consequent control was due to the fact that, having been left almost
completely free by the Arabs, they had the levers of the Spanish economy
in hand.
The vicissitudes of the repression and genocide of the Jews by the Nazis
are well known, along with the economic justifications where concrete
events were mixed with mythical elements. It is in fact true that with
the inflation of the markâdecided mainly under the influence of Jewish
managerial groupsâthe German government had damaged the small savers and
salaried workers following their defeat in the first world war. But
there was no justification in the subsequent deduction that this was
because the Jews acted as a âforeign nationâ en bloc, which led to their
being condemned to extermination. In this way a significant number of
industrialists met their deaths, and along with them, millions of poor
souls whose only fault was that they were Jewish.
In the same way the problem of the Jamaicans in Great Britain is based
on the fact that they have now become a burden to the State. Brought
over in tens of thousands immediately after the second world war to bear
the brunt of rebuilding the country, the British State would now like
them to go back from whence they came, without taking into account the
fact that most of the youth, those who make up the most restless
element, were born in Britain and have no intention of going off to a
place that is quite unknown to them, and from which they never came.
Israeli racism against the Palestinians has the same economic basis.
Zionist interests can no longer tolerate a reduction in territory, or
even a cohabitation which might turn out to be destructive in the long
run, possibly resulting in a Palestinian State that is capable of
becoming the economic cutting edge of a potentially wealthy Arab world.
We should not forget that the Arab intelligentsia is nearly all
Palestinian and this scares the Israelis, providing them with a far more
powerful motivation to fight than the mythical symbol of the great
Israel that was to extend between the two historic rivers.
Arab racism, manifested in its continual declarations of âholy warâ,
although never all that solid, also has an economic foundation and is
aimed at preventing political isolation and exploitation by other
nations during the favourable and limited period of petroleum
extraction.
Italian racism has also known significant periods which have not limited
themselves to theory. Nothing compared to the âTeutonic orderâ of
course, but it reached a considerable level all the same. During its
years of publication, the Italian review Difesa della razza, (Defence of
Race) edited by Almirante, included many names from the official
anti-fascist democratic culture at the time. But never mind. That is
trivia compared to the massacres perpetrated by the Italian army in
Libya, Ethiopia and Yugoslavia. Each according to their own
capabilities.
Now the âblack manâ is making his appearance in the sacred territory of
our [Italian] homeland and is starting to become âvisibleâ. So long as
it was a question of a few dozen âblacksâ, things could be tolerated. In
fact, it excited the superficial democratic sentiments of some,
prompting heroic declarations of anti-racism. The same went for the
occasional âgypsyâ camp and the communities of Chinese, Philippinos,
Slavs, Poles, and so on. One continually hears, âVery well, these
people, even if their skin is a different colour, eat different food,
move differently, speak another language, are just like us. But only as
long as they stay in their place.â There, that sums up our anti-racism:
the black man, who embodies the most extreme characteristics of racial
difference, is just like us, a man, not a beast. But he must understand
the âgoodâ we are doing him by giving him the chance to eat the crumbs
that fall from our tables laden with every imaginable consumer product.
He must learn to work long and unflaggingly and put up with the hardest
of labour, be nice and polite, pretend not to understand, get accustomed
to putting up with exploitation in the black economy (not because he
himself is black), doing temporary work in very small enterprises, pay
extortionate prices for a single bed in a rat-infested room, learn our
languageâgiven that we are all so ignorant that we do not know how to
speak any language other than this useless, peripheral Italian oneâand
so on.
But the ten commandments of anti-racism were valid before the great,
more or less rationally planned influx became as consistent as it is
now, without any prospect of reduction or regulation. Now it is not just
a question of economic damage, but of a real fear of the black man.
Although it might sound strange, I have an idea that the real danger at
the moment is not some group of Nazi-skins, but comes from a far more
profound, deep-rooted feeling that is being experienced irrationally by
vast social strata. It is not simply a question of shop-keepers seeing
their trade damaged by illegal street sellers, but is also the
middle-class white collar workers (among whom you find practically the
whole police structure of every order and grade, including the
professional military one) and even some salaried but insecure parts of
the old factory proletariat who have been leading a trade union battle
over the past few years to safeguard the few jobs that are left.
The fact that fascist action squads have been recruited in Florence is
just a sign, a dangerous one, certainly, but still a sign. More serious
still is the consistently racist behaviour of those who possibly
consider themselves to be anti-racist. It is this behaviour that is
capable of transforming itself within seconds into real conscious racism
at some time in the future, and precipitating a catastrophe. The danger
comes from the millions of racists who believe themselves to be
democratic and anti-racist. This is the ânon-newsâ that we are proposing
to comrades to reflect upon. I am from the South, so I am different, and
have felt, not only at skin level, how this âdiversityâ of mine came to
be noticed by, and almost disturbed, those used to living in ânorthernâ
circles therefore feel superior and even upholders of a âlanguageâ they
consider superior.
I perceived this latent hostility at the end of the Fifties, in the
mittel-European cultural circle in Turin, where my stubbornness in
continuing to underline my Sicilian accent was considered inaptitude and
provincialism. I have participated in conferences and outdoor meetings
both in and beyond the anarchist movement, more or less all over Italy,
and most of the difficulties I encountered were in Florence and the rest
of Tuscany. I am not saying that the Tuscans are worse than others. I
have Tuscan friends and comrades who are among the best people in the
world, but there is in them, in all of them, the conviction that they
âspeak Italianâ, that they are the recipients of the mother tongue
without having had to face the obstacle of getting rid of their dialect.
This mistaken starting point, which makes them not only speak badly but
write even worse (always with the obvious exceptions), is an element of
latent racism. Knowledge is acquired by study, not from the natural gift
of being born in a given place. This is a dangerous concept. Italian is
an artificial language that is composed of many elements which, like all
other languages, are still in the course of transformation. This goes
for dialects too of course, but the lesser capacity of dialects and
languages reduced to such a range, to âbuildâ their own literature and
make it known, encloses them within a fairly circumscribed territorial
space.
I have always refused to ârefineâ my accent in a âcorrectâ way,
precisely so as not to be colonised like most of those who breathe the
so-called âair of the continentâ. After a period in Milan they sound
like pure-blooded Milanese when they return to their native Canicatti.
Defence of oneâs identity, along with anâintellectual and
practicalâconsistency, always gives rise to a reaction of annoyance and
fear.
This happens with the homosexual, whom our democratic antifascist
culture considers âdifferentâ and tolerates so long as he is
recognisable, i.e. assumes the attitude of a âwould-be womanâ that
allows us to identify him and keep him at a distance, naturally with
great tolerance. But the homosexual who to all appearances is âa man
like usâ puts us in difficulty, scares us, is the one we fear most.
Basically, we have all built a well-ordered world with our certainties
and reassurances, and we cannot accept someone âdifferentâ turning up
and upsetting everything in just a few seconds. In the same way there is
latent, therefore unconscious, racism in any attempt at defence that
demonstrates the importance and validity of one ethnic reality without
linking it to another and pointing out their intrinsic diversity as well
as the profound community of interests that exists between them. When I
took up the subject of the national liberation struggle many years ago,
there were two reactions, both wrong in my opinion. On the one hand,
there were those who said right away that such a thematic was
right-wing, with goodbye to all the work of Bakunin and comrades and
almost the whole of the international anarchist movement. On the other,
there were those who took it up, turning it into a local affair aimed at
going into its social characteristics, ethical or otherwise, without
linking it to the international context as a whole.
Another undercurrent of racism, which runs through the whole of
present-day anti-racism, is that of the political verbalism in favour of
this or that struggle for the liberation of the South African blacks,
the Palestinians, the British blacks, the Kanaks and so on.
International solidarity in words alone is a form of latent racism, in
fact it is even subscribed to by illuminated governments and respectable
groups who spread the good word throughout the world. But when it comes
to examining what could be done to support that solidarity concretely,
what could be done to damage the economic interests of those responsible
for the repression, then things change, and a respectable distance is
taken from them immediately. It is another aspect of the anti-racism
that tolerates the black man so long as he stays in his place, a
different way of keeping a distance, of putting oneâs conscience at rest
and have racism carry on at a safe distance from oneâs own doorstep.
So, here in this country, we have reached the point of believing it
possible for police and carabinieri to become the paladins and defenders
of the blacks, in other words the supporters of the anti-racist politics
of the Italian government. But is such a thing possible? Anyone who has
seen these murderers in uniform at work even once can have no illusions
on the subject. These armed corps, for the most part composed of people
from southern Italy, once their âbread and butterâ is safe, become the
most ferocious jailers of other people from the south, those who dream
of the possible clash that could bring about changes capable of putting
the old ideals of their fathersâa piece of breadâin question once again.
And if that is what they thought and continue to think as far as the
South is concerned, imagine what their attitude will be concerning
blacks, Philippinos, gypsies, Poles and so on. Anything but democratic
tolerance. The other day, in their haste to beat up their victims
(quickly and well do not go together), they did not realise that they
were also beating up one of their (parliamentary) colleagues who
unfortunately has a black face. Here the racism is anything but latent,
but let us put it all in the same category of possible, not certain,
danger.
But even workers can be convinced of a âblackâ danger from the
immigrants who have arrived to take what little work is left from them.
Massive shifts in this direction find the trades unions and political
representatives, who have always worked out their strategy on the
element of economic and normative safeguard alone, disarmed. Any
humanitarian discourse would rebound on them. In a short time they would
be obliged to become the defenders of an institutionally separate
working strata, underpaid and guaranteed in a different way, with lower
wages and fewer protective measures, in short a kind of apartheid. Such
a logic is applied in the United States regularly without half terms,
and differentiated conditions have only begun to be reduced in recent
years parallel to an unprecedented growth in the rage, not only of the
blacks, but mainly of other immigrants such as Puerto Ricans, Cubans,
Mexicans and so on.
At the root of this problem, which can supposedly be resolved by power,
there is one great obstacle: real, concrete anti-racism, should start
from real equality between everyone, men and women, of any race
whatsoever, wherever they come from, whatever their culture and
religion. But no State could ever bring about, or even consider,
concrete equality, so all States are destined to become hotbeds of
racial conflicts that no verbal respectability will succeed in
camouflaging very well. Explosions of violence, in the one and the other
sense, will always be possible unless the social and economic conditions
that produce class stratification and differences are eliminated. Racism
is an economic problem, and like all economic problems it can only be
resolved with a revolutionary break.
One concludes that it is indispensable for revolutionaries to
differentiate themselves from all thoseâand they are numerousâwho say
they are anti-racist, starting from democratic governments of half the
world to the so-called governments of the ex-real socialist States,
where racism has also always existed, just as inequality has. It is
necessary to differentiate oneself in practical terms from the
scoundrels who say they are anti-racist, by attacking with precise
actions all the symbols of racism and its supporters as they develop and
emerge. At the same time it is necessary to work out a critique of the
fears and irrational impulses that lurk inside us all concerning
everything that is different, in order to reduce the subsoil where the
most stupid, visible, racism finds its inexhaustible fuel.
One of the projects that capital is putting into effect is the reduction
of language. By language we mean all forms of expression, particularly
those that allow us to articulate complex concepts about feelings and
things.
Power needs this reduction because it is replacing straightforward
repression with control, where consensus plays a fundamental part. And
uniform consensus is impossible in the presence of multiform creativity.
The old revolutionary problem of propaganda has also changed
considerably in recent years, showing up the limitations of a realism
that claimed to show the distortions of the world to the exploited
clearly, putting them in the condition to become aware of their
situation.
Still in the historical sphere of anarchism, we have the quite
exceptional example of Malatestaâs literary capacity based on a language
that was essentialised to the maximum degree, constituting a model
unique for its time. Malatesta did not use rhetoric or shock effects. He
used elementary deductive logic, starting off from simple points based
on common sense and ending up with complex conclusions that were easily
understood by the reader.
Galleani worked at quite a different linguistic level. He used vast
rhetorical constructions, attaching a great deal of importance to the
musicality of the phrase and to the use of outdated words chosen to
create an atmosphere that in his opinion would move spirits to action.
Neither of the above examples can be proposed as models of a
revolutionary language fit for the present time. Not Malatesta, because
there is less to âdemonstrateâ today, nor Galleani, because there are
fewer and fewer spirits to be âmovedâ.
Perhaps a wider range of revolutionary literature can be found in France
due to that countryâs great tradition that has no equal in Italy, Spain
or Britain, and due to the particular French spirit of language and
culture. At about the same time as the Italian examples mentioned above,
we have Faure, Grave and Armand for clarity and exposition, while for
research and in some aspects rhetoric, there are Libertad and Zo dâAxa.
We should not forget that France already had the example of Proudhon,
whose style even surprised the Academy, then Faure who was considered to
be a continuation of this great school along with the methodical,
asphyxiating Grave. Self-taught, he was an enthusiastic pupil of
Kropotkin. The latterâs French was good and basic precisely because,
like Bakuninâs, it was the French of a Russian.
One could go on forever, from the linguistic, literary and journalistic
experiments of Libertad, Zo dâAxa and others, as well as their
predecessor Coeurderoy. But although they represent some of the best
examples of revolutionary journalism, none of these models is valid
today.
The fact is that reality has changed, while revolutionaries continue to
produce language in the same way, or rather worse. To see this it would
suffice to compare a leaflet such as the Endehors by Zo dâAxa with its
huge Daumier drawing on one side and his writing on the other, to some
of the lapidary leaflets we produce todayâlooking at our own
situationâsuch as the one we did for the meeting with the comrades from
Eastern Europe in Trieste.
But the problem has gone beyond that. Not only are our privileged
interlocutors losing their language, we are losing ours too. And because
we must necessarily meet on common ground if we want to communicate, the
loss is turning out to be irreversible.
This process of diffused flattening is striking all languages, lowering
the heterogeneity of expression to the uniformity of the means. The
mechanism is more or less the following, and could be compared to
television. The increase in quantity (of new items) reduces the time
available for the transmission of each one of them. This is leading to a
progressive, spontaneous selection of image and word, so on the one hand
these elements are being essentialised, while on the other the amount of
transmittable data is increasing.
The much desired clarity bemoaned by so many generations of
revolutionaries desirous to explain reality to the people, has finally
been reached in the only way possible: by not making reality clear
(something that is impossible in any case), but making clarity real,
i.e. showing the reality that has been built by technology.
This is happening to all linguistic expression including desperate
attempts to save human activity through art, which is also letting past
fewer and fewer possibilities. Moreover, this endeavour is finding
itself having to struggle on two fronts: first, against being swallowed
up by the flattening that is turning creativity into uniformity, and
second, against the opposite problem, but which has the same roots, that
of the market and its prices.
My old theses on poor art and art as destruction are still close to my
heart.
Let us give an example: all language, in that it is an instrument, can
be used in many ways. It can be used to transmit a code aimed at
maintaining or perfecting consensus, or it can be used to stimulate
transgression. Music is no exception here, although because of its
particular characteristics the road to transgression is even more
difficult. Although it seems more direct, it is actually further from
it. Rock is a music of recuperation and contributed to extinguishing
much of the revolutionary energy of the Seventies. According to
Nietzscheâs intuition, the same thing happened with the innovation of
Wagnerian music in his time. Think of the great thematic and cultural
differences that exist between these two kinds of musical production.
Wagner had to build a vast cultural edifice and completely discompose
the linguistic instrument in order to captivate the revolutionary youth
of his time. Today rock has done the same thing on a much wider scale
with a cultural effort that is ridiculous in comparison. The
massification of music has favoured the work of recuperation.
So we could say revolutionary action operates in two ways, first
according to the instrument, which is undergoing a process of
simplification and stripping down, then in the sense of its use, which
has become standardised, producing effects that cannot always be reduced
to a common denominator that is acceptable to all or nearly all. That
happens in so-called literature (poetry, narrative, theatre, etc.) as
well as in that restricted microcosm, the revolutionary activity of
examining social problems. Whether this takes the form of articles in
anarchist papers, or leaflets, pamphlets, books, etc., the risks are
fairly similar. The revolutionary is a product of his time and uses the
instruments and occasions it produces.
The chances of reading about the actual conditions of society and
production have been reduced, because there is far less to be brought to
the surface, and because interpretative instruments have undergone a
recession. In a society that was polarised in two clearly opposing
classes the task of counter-information was to bring the reality of the
exploitation that the power structure had every interest in hiding, out
into the open. The latter included the mechanisms for extracting surplus
value, repressive stratagems, authoritarian regressions of the State and
so on. Now, in a society that is moving further and further towards a
democratic form of management and production based on information
technology, capital is becoming more and more comprehensible. This is
precisely because it is more important for it to be seen, and less
important for it to discover new methods of exploitation.
Today we need to interpret society with cultural instruments that are
not merely capable of interpreting facts that are unknown or treated
superficially. We also need to identify an unconscious conflictuality
that is far from the old extremely visible class conflict, to avoid
being drawn into a simplistic refusal that is incapable of evaluating
the mechanisms of recuperation, consensus and globalisation. More than
documentation we need active participation, including writing, in what
must be a comprehensive project. We cannot limit ourselves to denouncing
exploitation but must bring our analyses to within a precise project
which will become comprehensible during the course of the analysis
itself.
Documentation and denunciation are no longer enough. We need something
more, so long as we still have tongues to speak with, so long as we have
not had them all cut off.
It is this new interaction between ways of expressing oneself and oneâs
project that is the strength of this way of using linguistic
instruments, but also leads to the discovery of its limitations. If
language has been allowed to become impoverished, adapting to the
tendency to its reduction that has been studied and applied by power,
then this is inevitable.
I have always fought against a kind of detached objectivity in writing
that looks at revolutionary questions. Precisely because it is an
instrument, linguistic expression always has a social dimension that is
summed up in its style. It is not just âthe manâ as Buffon says, but is
âman in a given societyâ. And it is the style that solves the problem,
certainly a difficult one, of supplying the so-called deeds of the event
along with the indispensable content, their insertion within a project.
If this project is alive and up to the conditions of the conflict, the
style could be livened up, whereas if the latter is not suitable or is
lost in the illusion of objectivity, even the best project will run the
risk of losing itself in a ghost-like forest of impressions.
Our language must therefore take a form that is capable of supporting
our revolutionary content and have a provocatory thrust that is capable
of violating and upsetting normal ways of communicating. It must be able
to represent the reality we feel in our hearts without letting ourselves
get wrapped up in a shroud of logic and only understood with great
difficulty. The project and the language used to illustrate it must meet
and recognise each other in the style used.
Without wanting to take things to the logical extreme of this well-worn
thesis, we know today that the instrument constitutes a considerable
part of the message.
We need to look out for these processes, not let a new pragmatic
ideology submerge us in throwaway phrases where there is no relationship
between the project and the way of saying it.
So, advancing linguistic impoverishment is also reflected in the
instruments of communication that we use as revolutionaries. First of
all because we are men and women of our time, participants in the
reductive cultural processes that characterise it. We are losing
instruments like everyone else. This is normal. But we need to make more
of an effort to get better results and acquire the capacity to resist
these reductive projects.
This reduction in stylistic ability is a consequence of the lowering of
content. It is also capable of producing further impoverishment, leading
to the inability to express the essential part of the project that
necessarily remains tied to the means of expression. It is therefore not
the âgenreâ that saves the content, but above all the way this content
takes form. Some people make out a schema and never manage to free
themselves from it. They filter everything they come to know through
this schema, believing it to be âtheir way of expressing themselvesâ,
like having a limp or brown eyes. But it is not like that. One must free
oneself from this prison sooner or later, if one wants to make what one
is communicating come alive.
There are those who choose irony to transmit the urgency they feel, for
example. Very well, but irony has its own peculiarities, i.e. it is
pleasant, light, a dance, a joke, an allusive metaphor. It cannot become
a system without turning out to be repetitive or pathetic like the
satirical inserts in the daily papers, or comic strips where we know
beforehand how the story is going to end otherwise we wouldnât be able
to understand it, like barrack-room jokes. In the same way, for opposite
reasons, the call of realityâthe attempt to make reality visible and
palpable through communication, starting from the supposition that there
can be no immediate fruition from anything that does not seem realâends
up becoming tedious, is unrealisable. We get lost in the constant need
to insist, losing the conceptuality that is at the basis of true
communication.
One of the hackneyed phrases in the museum of everyday stupidity is that
we do not know how to say something, whereas the problem really is that
we do not know what to say. This is not necessarily so. The
communication flux is not unidimensional, but multidimensional: we do
not only communicate, we also receive communications. And we have the
same problem in communicating with others as we have in receiving from
others. There is also a problem of style in reception. Identical
difficulties, identical illusions. Again, limiting ourselves to written
language, we find that when we read newspaper articles we can
reconstruct the way the writer of the article receives communications
from the outside. The style is the same, we can see it in the same
articles, the same mistakes, the same short-cuts. And that is because
these incidents and limits are not just questions of style but are
essential components of the writerâs project, of his very life.
We can see that the less the revolutionaryâs capacity to grasp the
meaning of incoming communication, even when it reaches us directly from
events, the poorer and more repetitive the interpretation of the latter.
The result is, in word and unfortunately also in deed, approximation,
uncertainty, a low level of ideas that does justice neither to the
complexities of the enemyâs capacity, or to our own revolutionary
intentions.
If things were otherwise, socialist realism, with its good working class
always ready to mobilise itself, would have been the only possible
solution. The latest aberration dictated by such ignorance and refusal
to consider reality differently was the intervention of the good
Rumanian miners to re-establish Illiescuâs new order.
Powerâs attempts to generalise the flattening of linguistic expression
is one of the essential components of the insurmountable wall that is
being built between the included and the excluded. If we have identified
direct, immediate attack as one instrument in the struggle, parallel to
it we must also develop an optimal use of the other instrument at our
disposal and take, whatever the cost, what we do not possess. The two
are inseparable.
Illness, i.e.a faulty functioning of the organism, is not peculiar to
man. Animals also get ill, and even things can in their own way present
defects in functioning. The idea of illness as abnormality is the
classic one that was developed by medical science.
The response to illness, mainly thanks to the positivist ideology which
still dominates medicine today, is that of the cure, that is to say, an
external intervention chosen from specific practices, aimed at restoring
the conditions of a given idea of normality.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that the search for the causes of
illness has always run parallel to this scientific need to restore
normality. For centuries remedies did not go hand in hand with the study
of causes, which at times were absolutely fantastical. Remedies had
their own logic, especially when based on empirical knowledge of the
forces of nature.
In more recent times a critique of the sectarianism of science,
including medicine, has based itself on the idea of manâs totality: an
entity made up of various natural elementsâintellectual, economic,
social, cultural, political and so on. It is in this new perspective
that the materialist and dialectical hypothesis of Marxism inserted
itself. The variously described totality of the new, real man no longer
divided up into the sectors that the old positivism had got us used to,
was again encapsulated in a one-way determinism by the Marxists. The
cause of illness was thus considered to be due exclusively to capitalism
which, by alienating man through work, exposed him to a distorted
relationship with nature and ânormalityâ, the other side of illness.
In our opinion neither the positivist thesis that sees illness as being
due to a faulty functioning of the organism, nor the Marxist one that
sees everything as being due to the misdeeds of capitalism is
sufficient.
Things are a little more complicated than that.
Basically, we cannot say that there would no longer be such a thing as
illness in a liberated society. Nor can we say that in that happy event
illness would reduce itself to a simple weakening of some hypothetical
force that is still to be discovered. We think that illness is part of
the nature of manâs state of living in society, i.e. corresponds to a
certain price to be paid for correcting a little of natureâs optimal
conditions in order to obtain the artificiality necessary to build even
the freest of societies.
Certainly, the exponential growth of illness in a free society where
artificiality between individuals would be reduced to the strictly
indispensable, would not be comparable to that in a society based on
exploitation, such as the one in which we are living now. It follows
from this that the struggle against illness is an integral part of the
class conflict. Not so much because illness is caused by capitalâwhich
would be a deterministic, therefore unacceptable, statementâbut because
a freer society would be different. Even in its negativity it would be
closer to life, to being human. So illness would be an expression of our
humanity just as it is the expression of our terrifying inhumanity
today. This is why we have never agreed with the somewhat simplistic
thesis that could be summed up in the phrase âmake illness a weaponâ,
even though it is one that deserves respect, especially as far as mental
illness is concerned. It is not really possible to propose to the
patient a cure that is based exclusively on the struggle against the
class enemy. Here the simplification would be absurd. Illness also means
suffering, pain, confusion, uncertainty, doubt, solitude, and these
negative elements do not limit themselves to the body, but also attack
consciousness and the will. To draw up programmes of struggle on such a
basis would be quite unreal and terrifyingly inhuman.
But illness can become a weapon if one understands it both in its causes
and effects. It can be important for me to understand what the external
causes of my illness are: capitalists and exploiters, State and capital.
But that is not enough. I also need to clarify my relationship with my
illness, which might not only be suffering, pain and death. It might
also be a means by which to understand myself and others better, as well
as the reality that surrounds me and what needs to be done to transform
it, and also get a better grasp of revolutionary outlets. The mistakes
that have been made in the past on this subject come from lack of
clarity due to the Marxist interpretation. That was based on the claim
to establish a direct relationship between illness and capital. We think
today that this relationship should be indirect, i.e. by becoming aware
of illness, not of illness in general as a condition of abnormality, but
of my illness as a component of my life, an element of my normality.
And then, the struggle against this illness. Even if not all struggles
end in victory.
Man has had a taste for risk and adventure and distorted forms of play
such as duels and hunting since the beginning of time. Games that put
the playerâs life on the line also date back to ancient times. But to
avoid going too far back in history, it is enough to think of Russian
roulette, which everyone remembers from the pages of a great Russian
novel, or from scenes in a fairly recent American film. In the Fifties a
film about violence in rural America depicted a game called the ârabbit
jumpâ, a race between youths, each at the wheel of a car heading towards
a cliff edge. The one who jumped out last was the winner. In recent
months there have been reports in the news of a âmotorway rouletteâ,
which consists of driving along a stretch of motorway the wrong way:
whoever gets furthest wins. Another game in fashion with Israeli boys,
some under ten, consists of placing a schoolbag in the middle of the
road and snatching it back when a car approaches. The one who retrieves
his last wins. According to news reports a number of children have died
playing this game.
So why put oneâs life on the line?
The answer might simply be that it is due to the âcrisis in valuesâ of
an advanced post-industrial society which has no future to offer young
people. Another recent American film showing gang warfare in Los Angeles
ended up with a youth who, rather than let himself be arrested, shot a
policeman shouting âThereâs no future!â And that might be a good answer.
The everyday experiences that form the personality have been seriously
affected by the profound changes that have taken place in the social and
economic structures of advanced industrialised countries over recent
years. The thoughts, emotions and actions of individuals are immersed in
a situation that has no pre-existing categories to put them in any kind
of order and give them any sense of security.
This is leading the younger strata, those not able to cope with such a
situation or who are not yet in possession of well-rooted interests and
ideas, to feel âvalue-deprivedâ and unable to âgive any meaning to
lifeâ.
Why is this too simple an answer? First, because it does not seem right
to me to relegate everything to an underlying social mechanism that
explains everything. Behind this mental attitude lurks a kind of
neo-determinism that prevents us from grasping the real motivations at
the root of things which, if brought out into the open, might give us a
better indication of what to do.
The social disintegration resulting from economic restructuring in the
Eighties is certainly one of the reasons for the chipping away at the
values that emerged in the postwar period and remained more or less
intact until the end of the Seventies. An institution such as the
family, which is turning out to be less and less solid or capable of
resolving the important task assigned to it by the bourgeois capitalist
society of the last century, is being hit not only by the changing
conditions of the world of work and production, but also by the
circulation of different ideas, culture, concepts of time and space, and
so on. Each of these elements, which it would be simplistic to group
together under the term economy, has produced conditions that need to be
examined individually. They are of great importance and make up the
connective tissue onto which emotions are grafted the thoughts and
actions of so many of the young people who come face to face in todayâs
football stadia and play with their lives in a thousand ways, finding
themselves as they do with no future, certainties or hope.
Here we are not simply looking at the marginal phenomenon of the late
integration of young people into the conditions imposed by social life.
This has always existed. What we can see now is a phenomenon of a
consistency and extension unknown in the past. And if we want to
understand it we must also look at our own thinking patterns. We once
thought, and rightly so, that working conditions were central to
comprehending the reasons as to why the proletariat engaged in the class
struggle, including the revolutionary perspective. But objective
conditions are changing. We used to think that the struggles of the
working class could at any moment transform themselves into
revolutionary consciousness, precisely due to the defects in the system
of production as a whole. We can no longer think in such an automatic
way.
We used to say that one thing that put a brake on the class struggle was
the educational integration of young people through the family, the
foundation stone of the uniformity of judgement that was completed at
school, in the army and at work. Many of these things have now changed.
Various concepts have entered the family since its disintegration set
in, leading it to breathe an air of paternalism, when not downright
puerocracy. Information reaches households directly through television,
so the censuring filter of parents no longer functions. The latter have
also lost some of the authority that once came from simple physical
strength, as there are stricter controls by the State concerning
violence towards the under-aged. The old affection, the stuff of
seventeenth century oil paintings upon which the family was supposed to
be basedâfor the most part a fantasy of writers and poetsâis no longer
able to cover up the real lack of feeling that exists within this
institution. And we anarchists were among the first to put forward a
serious critique of the family as the origin of many of the horrors of
the class society.
The same goes for school, where, with far-sighted clarity, we saw its
limitations and defects in the nineteenth century, proposing a
libertarian form of education that has now been taken over by the
intellectuals of the regime. I donât known if we are capable of
understanding what is really happening in school today, but it does not
seem to me to be a sector in which we are any further behind than
others. The level of anarchist analysis today does not seem to be up to
comprehending the rapid changes that are taking place in society and the
economy. This is demonstrated by what is being said about the problem of
production, and, with a constancy worthy of greater things, the
insistence on the validity of more or less revolutionary syndicalism.
In our opinion, new problems are presenting themselves on the social
scene that cannot be faced by using old analyses, even though they might
have been correct at one time. In a way, we have not been able to take
what we ourselves formulated to its logical conclusion. The example of
the family is significant. We were among the first to denounce the
repressive functions of this institution but are nowhere near first,
today, in drawing the relevant conclusions.
The general loss of traditional values does not see us capable of
proposing, I would not say substitutes for, but even critiques of other
peopleâs proposals. In the face of the many young people who are asking
for a good reason not to put their lives on the line, we do not know
what to say. Others have given what we know are not real answers, but
the young take them to be such, extinguishing their liberatory
aggressiveness and reducing themselves to passive instruments in the
hands of power. Others tell them life has a value in itself, because God
gave it to us, because it serves pleasure, the Revolution, the
continuation of the species, and so on. We know that, taken
individually, these statements are not right, but we do not know what to
propose as a valid alternative to the game of risk for its own sake.
Anarchist practice has fallen sharply in recent years, with few actions
either at mass level or at the level of specific groups. As a result we
see a revival of the issue of how to get closer to âcommunismâ or to
building situations that not only express our ideas and ethical and
cultural values but are also capable of satisfying our fundamental
personal and collective need for freedom. In other words, there is a
proposal to create points of reference that go beyond the classical
division between the personal and the political.
This corresponds to a growing need within the whole movement against
capital today, not just the anarchist one. As hopes of profound changes
in the social structure vanished with the spreading of desistance from
the struggle, the concern with not letting oneself be engulfed by
increasing restructuring has become greater: âWe must continue to
struggle for our own essential needs, because in any case it is not the
time to talk of great macroscopic changes.â
The problem is that these impulses end up taking two roads which, if
examined closely, both lead to the same dead end in the same ghetto. The
first, more direct, road is that of desistance: nothing can be done, the
enemy is too powerful. We might as well just rely on spreading our ideas
(which are superior anyway) and not insist on attack, which only leads
to repression, creating more difficulties for the movement in its
fundamental activity of propaganda and spreading anarchist theory. The
second, more tortuous, road is that of an organisational proposal linked
to the idea of community.
Many comrades talk of âcommunityâ, although not always as something
confined to one geographical area or in order to satisfy (or try to
satisfy) certain needs, even basic ones. It should mean a different way
of seeing life, culture, novelty, diversity. âCommunityâ thus escapes
the dangers of conservatism or of becoming a mere repetition of empty
slogans.
But very little is said about this âcommunityâ in terms of its
structural or other arrangement that could give some idea of its
âoperativeâ side. It is seen in terms of a sense of participation, an
awareness of the specific contradictions of anarchism (in truth never
clear), and the desire for freedom and equality, without the former
being realised at the cost of the latter, or vice versa.
Why do we believe that this road is equal to the first, that of declared
and open desistance? It is easily said. Because the revolutionary
struggle is an organisational fact, here and now, not simply a âcultural
revolutionâ (by the use of this term I am not referring to Maoâs
cultural revolution, which has nothing to do with us, and which was
âculturalâ in name only). Because the clash between classes leaves no
room for âmarginsâ or free spaces that can be reached through operations
carried out within the somewhat polluted currents of philosophical
thought. Because the revolutionary always pays in first person, so is
aware he will also have to face âsacrificeâ, i.e. the postponement of
projects, delay in the satisfaction of needs. Because anyone who really
decides to attack the power of the oppressors cannot reasonably think
that the latter will leave them in peace with their âidealâ tensions of
freedom and equality. Because if they really want these places of
âcommunitarianâ living to be at all tangible in practical terms (and not
just a cerebral exercise), they must also give some sign of good will,
i.e. pronounce themselves to be against violence, against expropriation,
especially in the individual sense, and against active solidarity with
those who are really struggling and facing death every day, either at
the workplace or in the other places where opposing interests clash.
At this point the provocation needs to be put in these terms, or so it
seems to me:
We can talk about the idea of âcommunityâ and limit ourselves to that.
Very well. Then we should be clear about it.
Or we can try to put the idea of community into practice. All right. In
that case we should be more specific about communitarian structures,
activities, limitations and possibilities.
As far as the second point is concerned, we have only a vague critique
of self-managed attempts within capitalist situations today, which do
not take the many other problems into account.
I must say when one finds oneself faced with a myriad of not always
edifying historical examples, it is always best to take a step back from
an idea, no matter how important, useful or pleasant the latter might
be. And the problem of âcommunityâ is undoubtedly of this kind.
Let us take a look at it. The idea of âcommunityâ is not specific to
anarchists. On the contrary it has been developed throughout
philosophical thought (the academic codification of the ideas of the
dominant class) in opposition to the concept of âsocietyâ.
Leaving aside the specific use that Plato, Fichte and Hegel made of the
idea of âcommunityâ, one example that needs to be borne in mind is Marx
and Engelâs analysis of the primitive community in which the history of
humanity began. This was to become a final community where the history
of the proletariat and the class struggle were to resolve themselves.
Such philosophical determinism reaches its full tragi-comic expression
in Stalinâs theories of âcommunityâ that stand up well alongside the
theories of the National Socialists, who were not just theoreticians but
âalmostâ architects of a âcommunity of a sacred culture and peopleâ (by
force, of course).
So far we are clearly within the area of a supra-national interpretation
of the concept of âcommunityâ.
But another elaboration of this concept has been realised in the
workshops of academia, one that comes closest to the ideas that are
being discussed in the anarchist movement today. This sees âcommunityâ
not as a supranational entity, but as a particular link between
individuals, in other words as a âsocial relationâ. According to this
way of seeing things, individual relations are brought about by common
interest, creating interaction that serves to amalgamate the
âcommunityâ.
This concept was first formulated by the German Romantic school, by a
theoretician of religion (Schleiermacher) to be precise, in 1799, and
his ideas are undoubtedly linked to his concept of âreligionâ which
means âto bind togetherâ or âtie togetherâ.
Then in 1887 Tönnies, in a more detailed formulation, described
community as a natural organism within a kind of collective will aimed
at satisfying prevalently collective interests. In this organism,
individual urges and interests atrophy to a maximum degree, while the
cultural orientation tends to reach an almost sacred dimension. There is
global solidarity between all members. Property is held in common. Power
(at least as it is understood today) is absent.
The model presented by Tönnies for his analysis is that of European
rural society, in the peasant villages. Kropotkin, for his part, drew on
other realities (that of the Russian âmirâ) and from other
anthropological literature (in the English language), but had a fairly
similar model in mind.
In my opinion the error lies in believing that it is natural to act in a
way that is both specific to certain communitarian situations, and to
the historical course of a communitarian feeling that existed among
certain peoples before the disintegration of the social order. In other
words it was thought that some communitarian institutions had survived
destruction by the modern State and continue to exist in incomplete
forms that are still visible today, such as the family (or extended
family), neighbourhood groups, co-operatives, etc. This is all really
quite naive. Less naive, but just as mistaken (therefore dangerous), is
the point of view of those who say that community is a âunionâ that is
felt âsubjectivelyâ by its members, whereas society is only understood
through an objective arrangement.
None of this detracts from the feelings of solidarity, equality and the
refusal of individual power and property that the exploited have been
capable of realising in quite well-defined forms. Just as it does not
detract from the concept of self-organisation, spontaneous creativity
and projectuality of those who are against power.
What I want to question here is the validity and possible use of the
concept of âcommunityâ, if only for the following reasons:
community to indicate a value that is superior to that of society;
cultural heritage of progress against reaction;
movements alsoâin their own wayâmade reference to the concept of
community;
bearer-of-truth. This has a distorting effect on the undeniable
solidarity that spreads within it, a solidarity that often extends
acritically under a flag or slogan;
its original rural and peasant base with all the implications that are
now far off in time and certainly in contrast to a general situation of
profound technological change.
It seems to me that we can wind up by simply saying that there is no
need to have recourse to concepts such as âcommunityâ, which carry
pollutants that are not easy to filter out, in order to point to the
effective capacity for self-organisation that the exploited possess.
When this concept is used to refer to a possible organisational form,
deceiving oneself that it would overcome the limits and contradictions,
dangers and traumas that revolutionary anarchist activity inevitably
carries with it in a situation of profound social laceration such as the
present, I must stress my disagreement.