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Title: “The Coming Insurrection”?
Author: Wayne Price
Date: November 15, 2010
Language: en
Topics: insurrectionary anarchy, class struggle anarchism, the coming insurrection, book review
Source: Retrieved on 2020-06-08 from [[http://anarkismo.net/article/18041]]
Notes: This is NOT *https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/comite-invisible-the-coming-insurrection][The Coming Insurrection]]* but a review of it. [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/comite-invisible-the-coming-insurrection.

Wayne Price

“The Coming Insurrection”?

There has been a spurt of interest in a small radical book titled “The

Coming Insurrection” (“TCI”), with authorship attributed to the

“Invisible Committee” (IC). It was originally published in France in

2007. That country’s police cited it as evidence in a trial of “the

Tarnaq 9,” radicals who were accused of planning sabotage. The French

Interior Minister called it a “manual for terrorism” (quoted on p. 5). A

U.S. edition got an unlikely boost by the far-right tv talk show clown

Glen Beck. He has repeatedly identified it as a manual for a take-over

of the U.S. by the left, by which he means everyone from the mildest

liberal Democrats leftward. “This [is a] dangerous leftist book....You

should read it to know what is coming and be ready when it does” (Beck,

2009). The interest of many on the left has been piqued; Michael Moore

is reported to have read it.

From the perspective of revolutionary-libertarian socialism

(class-struggle anarchism), I believe that many things are wrong with

this pamphlet. But it is right on some very big things. That is a major

part of its attraction, despite its opague style (the authors have

studied French radical philosophy and it shows). The IC members say

that, on a world scale, our society is morally rotten and structurally

in the deepest of crises. They denounce this society in every way and

oppose all reformist programs for trying to improve it at the margins.

They say that a total change is necessary and that this can only be

achieved through some sort of revolution. Their goals are the right

goals: a classless, stateless, ecologically-balanced, decentralized, and

self-managed world. These views are well outside the usual range of

acceptable political conversation. Unfortunately, I believe that the

tactics and strategy which they propose are mistaken and unlikely to

achieve their correct goals.

In “Black Flame,” Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt review the

history of the mainstream of the anarchist movement-of what is often

referred to as anarchist-communism. They describe two main strategies

within the broad anarchist tradition. “The first strategy,

insurrectionist anarchism, argues that reforms are illusory and

organized mass movements are incompatible with anarchism, and emphasizes

armed action-propaganda by the deed-against the ruling class and its

institutions as the primary means of evoking a spontaneous revolutionary

upsurge” (2009; p. 123). Historically a minority trend in anarchism,

this is probably what most people think of as “anarchism.”

“The second strategy-what we refer to, for lack of a better term, as

mass anarchism...stresses the view that only mass movement can create a

revolutionary change in society, that such movements are typically built

through struggles around immediate issues and reforms (...) and that

anarchists must participate in such movements to radicalize and

transform them into levers of revolutionary change” (same; p. 134). I

prefer to call this second strategy by the more widely used term,

“class-struggle anarchism.” (This is a discussion of broad political

trends. Individual anarchists are not so sharply divided into

“insurrectionists” or “class-struggle” types. Whatever their labels,

their activities are likely to overlap with each other.)

Terms may be confusing. By “insurrection,” most people mean a

revolutionary uprising by the mass of people to overturn the ruling

class and smash its state. By this definition, it is the class-struggle

anarchists who are working for an insurrection. On the other hand, the

so-called insurrectionists are not clearly for an inurrection—a popular

uprising—but are mainly interested in rebellious activities beinc

carried out by themselves, a revolutionary minority. As we shall see,

“TCI” is especially ambiguous about wanting a popular insurrection.

However, I will stick with the usual political labels.

Actually the unnamed authors of this book do not explicitly identify

with “anarchism,” which they mention negatively. They prefer the label

of “communism.” Very likely they have been influenced by autonomous

trends derived from Marxism, although they do not identify with

“Marxism” either. I think that is safe to include them in the tradition

of “insurrectionist anarchism.” Their advocacy of decentralization is

typically anarchist rather than Marxist. In any case, by now there has

been so much overlap and interaction between anarchism and libertarian

trends in Marxism, that it is not possible (or relevant) to draw a sharp

line between them.

Opposition to Working Class Organizations

According to “The Coming Insurection,” the unions are the immediate

enemy. “The first obstacle every social movement faces, long before the

police proper, are the unions...” (p. 121). This view blurs distinctions

among (1) the workers, who are misdirected by the unions but who get

definite benefits from them; (2) the unions themselves as organizations

which are created by the workers; and (3) the union officialdom, which

is an agent of the capitalist class within the workers’ organizations.

In other words, the workers and unions and bureaucrats are seen as one

bloc, which is exactly how they are seen by the bureaucrats (and their

reformist supporters).

Belonging to unions generally gives workers higher wages and better

working conditions. This is something the Invisable Comittee ignores and

would not care about anyway. We might expect the IC to at least care

that striking workers can shut down society as can no other section of

society-but they do not care about this either. “...Strikes have usually

traded the prospect of revolution for a return to normalcy” (p. 107).

“Usually,” yes, except for the unusual times when strikes have been part

of revolutions. Instead of organizing among workers, the IC advises its

readers to find “hustles” and ways to scam the system outside of paid

work. “The important thing is to cultivate and spread this necessary

disposition towards fraud...” (p. 104).

At one point it was common on the far-left to deride the unions as

solely agents of the capitalists. Supposedly the unions’ only function

was to control the workers in the interests of the capitalist class.

This view has been disproven by history. The bosses turn on the unions

when times get tough—as they have since the end of the post-WWII boom

(around 1970). The capitalists now oppose the power of unions, force

givebacks and cuts in contracts, and fight tooth and nail against the

establishment of new unions. U.S. unions have gone from 33% of the

private workforce to about 6%. Clearly, the capitalist class believes

that — on balance — it is better for them to do without unions. The

capitalists find the labor bureaucracy to be useful to them, but—on

balance—the capitalists have concluded that unions bring more benefits

to the workers than to the bourgeoisie. And they are right.

The IC’s opposition to unions and, in fact, to the working class, is

supported by a theory that there is no longer much of a working class.

“...Workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity,

...mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed

that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor

necessary to the manufacture of any product...” (p. 46). This wild

exaggeration leads to seeing work as mainly imposed by the capitalists

in order to control the population, not primarily to exploit the workers

and to accumulate surplus value.

Were this true, then we no longer live under capitalism. “...Capital had

to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a

social relation” (p. 91). In Marx’s opinion, capitalism is nothing but

the capital/labor relationship (the “wage relation”); therefore this

would be the end of capitalism, while still some sort of new oppression.

Without a capitalist class which buys the workers’ labor power, there is

no modern working class (no “proletariat”). Therefore, for “TCI” there

is no longer a need to focus on working class struggles. (From my point

of view, class struggles interact with nonclass struggles, such as over

gender, race, nationality, age, etc.).

Can Reforms be Won, While Rejecting Reformism?

According to the “Black Flame” authors, “...insurrectionist anarchism is

impossiblist, in that it views reforms, however won, as futile...”

(Schmidt & van der Walt, 2009; p. 124). But class-struggle, mass,

anarchists think that impossiblism means standing apart from the rest of

working people. It means looking down on them for their desires for good

jobs, decent incomes and housing, an end to racial or sexual

discrimination, other democratic rights, ending wars, and safety from

ecological catastrophe.

“The Coming Insurrection” expresses contempt for such, limited, reform

struggles. Of struggles for jobs, it says, “Excuse us if we don’t give a

fuck” (p. 44). The danger of economic crisis and mass joblessness

“...moves us about as much as a Latin mass” (p. 63). They contemptuously

reject those who warn of coming ecological and energy disasters.

“...This whole ‘catastrophe,’ which they so noisily inform us

about...may concern us, but it doesn’t touch us” (pp. 73–74). “What

makes the [ecological] crisis desirable is that in the crisis the

environment ceases to be the environment” (p. 81). Desirable?

By contrast, “...mass anarchism is possiblist, believing that it is both

possible and desirable to force concessions from the ruling classes...”

(Schmidt & van der Walt, 2009; p. 124). We believe that reforms may be

advocated as part of a revolutionary, nonreformist, strategy. My one

qualification of this view is that these limited gains can only be won

for a brief period of time. The economy will get worse—and other

disasters will increase, such as the spread of nuclear weapons and

global warming. As a result, reforms become harder and harder to win,

harder to carry out, and harder to continue under the counterattack from

the right.

The issue is not whether some limited gains can be won for a time. They

can, and the fight for them is necesssary for building a revolutionary

movement (as Schmidt and van der Walt write). But the issue is whether

it is possible to win the kind of changes which are necessary to prevent

eventual total disaster. It is not possible. (This important point is

not made in “Black Flame.”)

Opposition to All Democratic Organizations

The Invisible Committee’s rejection of popular, mass, organization, is

not limited to a rejection of unions. They say that they often “cross

paths with organizations — political, labor, humanitarian, community

associations, etc....” (p. 99) and find good people there. “But the

promise of the encounter can only be realized outside the organization

and, unavoidably, at odds with it” (p. 100).

Similarly, they call to “abolish general assemblies” (p. 121). There is

a long history of popular insurrections which have created neighborhood

assemblies, town councils, workplace committees, factory councils,

soviets, shoras, and various forms of direct, face-to-face, forms of

communal democracy. The IC members not only reject any form of delegated

federation of such assemblies but the popular assemblies themselves.

A mass struggle requires decisions about mass actions. But the IC

especially rejects the idea of democratic decision-making through

discussion and voting. Instead they have a mystical fantasy of

individuals pooling information and then “...the decision will occur to

us rather than being made by us” (p. 124). Such a fantasy is

authoritarian, highly likely to be hijacked by cliques and charismatic

leaders.

We class-struggle anarchists usually make a distinction between two

types of organization. There are the large, popular, organizations, such

as unions, community groups, or (in revolutionary periods) workers’

and/or neighborhood assemblies. These are heterogeneous, composed of

people with many opinions. Then there are the narrower,

politically-revolutionary, type of organization, formed around a set of

ideas and goals. These are formed by the minority of the population

which has come to see the need for revolution and wishes to spread its

ideas among the as-yet-unrevolutionary majority. They include both

anarchist federations and Leninist parties—the anarchist groups are not

“parties” because they do not aim to take power, either through

elections or revolutions.

“The Coming Insurrection” rejects both mass and minority organizations.

“Organizations are obstacles to organizing ourselves” (p. 15). It does

not see the need for a dual-organizational approach, because it does not

see a problem in that only a minority is for revolution.

On the contrary, it insists, “Everyone agrees. It’s about to explode”

(p. 9). “The feeling of imminent collapse is everywhere so strong these

days...” (p. 105). Actually, everyone does not agree. Those who do are

at least as likely to be for the far-right as for the far-left. Which is

why Glen Beck promotes this book. However, in “TCI” there is no

discussion of the dangers of the far-right, not to speak of out-and-out

fascism. The closest it gets is “...we expect a surge of police work

being done by the population itself — everything from snitching to

occasional participation in citizens’ militias” (p. 115). But this is

immediately followed by a discussion of police infiltration and

provocation; the danger of attacks by armed right-wing “citizen

militias” is dropped.

The crisis of our society will lead (is leading) to a decline in the

moderate political middle and the growth of the extremes. In the U.S.,

conservative Republicans speak of the need for “Second Amendment

remedies” if they cannot take power through elections. Posing as heirs

to the U.S. Revolution, they speak of the possible need to violently

overthrow bourgeois democracy, as the “founding fathers” overthrew the

British monarchy.

To counter this, libertarian-socialist revolutionaries need to

participate in large popular organizations such as unions and community

groups. We need to organize ourselves, as part of the process of popular

self-organization. Instead of mass, democratic, self-organization, “TCI”

advocates “...a diffuse, effective, guerrilla war that restores us to

our ungovernability, our primordial unruliness....This same lack of

discipline figures so prominently among the recognized military virtues

of resistence fighters” (pp. 110–111). The members of the Invisible

Committee would do well to read accounts of Makhno’s anarchist guerrilla

army in 1918 Ukraine, or Durruti’s anarchist milita column during the

Spanish revolution, or any other account of guerilla warfare or

underground resistance, before spreading such idiocy. There is no

revolutionary process without democratic self-discipline and

self-organization.

What Does the IC Think is to be Done?

As opposed to what it is against, what does “The Coming Insurrection”

advocate positively? It rejects organization, but says, “We have to get

organized” (p. 95). This will supposedly be done through “communes.”

“Communes” are an expanded version of what has traditionally been called

“affinity groups” or “collectives.” “Communes come into being when

people find each other, get on with each other, and decide on a common

path....” (p. 101). Communes will grow everywhere and take over

everything. “In every factory, every street, every village, every

school...a multiplicity of communes...will displace the institutions of

society: family, school, union, sports club, etc.” (pp. 101–102).

Communes will stay in touch with each other (I can hardly say

“coordinate themselves”) by traveling members. To “TCI,” the revolution

essentially is the spread and integration of communes. “An

insurrectional surge may be nothing more than a multiplication of

communes...” (p. 111).

The communes will do a number of things but central to the strategy is

“sabotage.” This means “...maximum damage...breaking the machines or

hindering their functions....The technical infrastructure of the

metropolis is vulnerable...and these can be attacked....How can...an

electrical network be rendered useless? How can one find the weak points

in computer networks, or scramble radio waves and fill screens with

white noise? ...A certain use of fire....‘Fucking it all up’ will

serve...” (pp. 111–112). Roads will be blocked. Food and medicine and

other goods would cease to circulate. (As already mentioned, the

Invisible Committee does not seem interested in the power of the working

class to shut down the capitalist economy through mass strikes.)

If carried out, the widespread use of technical destruction, as

advocated in “The Coming Insurrection,” would cause great suffering.

This does not seem to bother “TCI.” If anything, this seems to be the

goal. After insurrectionists bring down capitalist society through

sabotage and chaos, it will be followed by “communism,” or so they

think. “The interruption of the flow of commodities...liberate

potentials for self-organization...” (p. 119). More likely, left-caused

mass sabotage would result in wide-spread hatred of these “communists”

who deliberately caused so much suffering. There woud be a demand for a

strong fascist state to provide “order.”

“Insurrection” without Revolution

While the French police have labelled the IC as “terrorists,” “TCI” does

not advocate assassinating public officials nor exploding bombs in

crowded places. Instead it advocates the destruction of property through

wide-spread sabotage. But, if carried out, this would cause at least as

much suffering — and possibly deaths — as any “terrorism.”

Their attitude toward violence is confusing. They declare, “There is no

such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary...” (p.

100). This is immediately followed by a call for rebels to have weapons

— but not to use the weapons! “An insurrection is more about taking up

arms and maintaining an ‘armed presence’ than it is about armed

struggle” (same). In a revolutionary situation, they expect the army to

be called out. Then the people could mingle with the army and win it

over to the insurrection, without firing a shot! “Against the army, the

only victory is political....A massive crowd would be needed to

challenge the army, invading its ranks and fraternizing with the

soliders” (pp.128 & 130). I do not dispute that the armed forces — sons

and daughters of the working class — can and should be won over through

“political” means. But there is likely to be a core of officers,

“lifers,” and rightists who will need to be physically suppressed if

they use force against the people.

Revolutionary class-struggle anarchists believe that the capitalist

class must be overthrown and the state and other capitalist institutions

need to be dismantled. They need to be replaced with federated councils.

The IC does not believe this. With all their talk of “insurrection,”

their view is closer to the gradualist-reformist view of peacefully

replacing capitalism and the state through alternative institutions.

“...Wherever the economy is blocked...it is important to invest as

little as possible in overthrowing the authorities. They must be

dismissed with the most scrupulous indifference and derision....Power is

no longer concentrated in one point....Anyone who defeats it locally

sends a planetary shock wave through the networks” (p. 131).

The “Tarnaq 9” were arrested in France and accused of planning to

sabotage the overhead electric lines of the national railroad. They had

been living in the small rural town of Tarnaq, growing their own food,

running a co-op and a store, and generally helping local people. Except

for the — alleged — attempt to sabotage the trains they were simply

following the nonviolent, reformist, strategy of dropping out of the big

cities and mainstream institutions to gradually build alternate

institutions. There is nothing bad about such activities. But they are

not a strategy for overthrowing the state, capitalism, and all other

oppressions. Power really is concentrated and it is very strong. It will

have to be confronted by the organized people — in a real insurrection.

(For further discussion of the distinction between revolutionary,

class-struggle, anarchism and gradualist, alternate-institution,

strategies, see Price 2009.)

The Greek Insurrection

These are important and very practical issues. In 2008, rebellion broke

out in Greece after a youth was shot by a cop (in the context of the

beginning of the Great Recession). There was a virtual national

insurrection among young people, from high schoolers, to college

students, to young workers and unemployed. Anarchists and other

libertarian socialists had a major influence on this youth rebellion,

especially including those of the insurrectionist trend.

Youth are the cutting edge of any revolution. But, while vitally

important, by themselves alone they do not have the leverage of the

working class. Unfortunately, Greek anarchists did not have the same

influence among unionized workers as they did among college students.

The big unions are still controlled by the Socialist Party, by the

Communist Party, and even by Conservatives. Pressure by the workers

forced the unions to engage in demonstrations and in limited, symbolic,

mass strikes, but no more. Big sections of industry had wildcat strikes.

Radicalized workers occupied the headquarters of the largest union to

protest its lack of support to the rebellion. This was good, but more

was needed.

In Greece and everywhere else, there is no alternative to

revolutionary-libertarian socialists sinking roots in the working class

and their unions. We need to spread a revolutionary program and to

organize against the reformist bureaucracies. Greek class-struggle

anarchists have been trying to do this for some time. Whether they will

succeed is the key question for whether the Greek revolution will win.

Revolutionary class-struggle anarchists agree with the insurrectionists’

rejection of capitalism and its state. They are our comrades, fighting

the same enemy, for the same goals. But we do not agree t with their

analysis and strategy. Growing food in rural alternate communities is no

replacement for a class-struggle approach, neither is having rebellions

which are limited to isolated young people. What we need is not

insurrectionism but revolution.

References

Beck, Glenn (7/1/2009). www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529784,00.html

Invisible Committee, The (2009). The Coming Insurrection. (Translated

from 2007 French ed.). Los Angeles CA: Semiotext(e).

Price, Wayne (2009). “The Two Main Trends in Anarchism.”

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13536

Schmidt, Michael, & van der Walt, Lucien (2009). Black Flame: The

Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism; vol. 1.

Oakland CA: AK Press.