💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-without-victory-nor-defeat.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:50:42. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Without Victory, Nor Defeat Author: Anonymous Date: Autumn 2018 Language: en Topics: despair, hope, anarchist tension, insurrectionary, Avis de Tempêtes, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #2 Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 2 Notes: First appeared as Sans victoire, ni défaite in Avis de tempêtes (bulletin anarchiste pour la guerre sociale), Issue 7, July 2018
“Anarchists have always lost, they never won anything.” It is not seldom
one hears these words, even amongst the enemies of authority, with great
reluctance or remorse. These kind of final sentences even sometimes
interrupt the discussions on recent struggles, if they don’t interfere
with certainty in the discussions about the contributions of anarchists
during uprisings, insurrections and revolutions of a past already
bygone. Musing about proud columns of joyful anarchist militiamen –
brandishing weapons, flags and striking up songs to arouse the heart –
leaving Barcelona during that July 1936. One heaves a sigh of nostalgia
that takes us straight to melancholia, very characteristic to many
anarchists – according to a famous singer – to conclude fatally: “We
always lose, we are the black sheep of history.”
Nevertheless, even if hope can sometimes inflame the tender hearts of
anarchists, we cannot forget that despair has also been an agony that
has gone with many of their journeys. Lovers of the idea, they hated
equally the oppressors. So it is that a passionate love that inflamed
their lives of desires went alongside a ferocious hate that could strike
ruthlessly and spill the blood of tyrants, their minions and their
worshippers. But why talk in the past tense? That universe, that
vocabulary, that inner world of anarchists, did it really change? Are
the hopes not inflamed when hundreds of thousands of people have risen
up against the ruling regimes in many countries some years ago, during
the so-called “Arab Spring”? The despair of seeing these uprising
liquidated by a multifaceted reaction, did it not arm the hands of
several of them to strike, once more? Nevertheless, no fatalism in that.
That is elsewhere, as we will see…
If the anarchist idea proposes the destruction of authority and the
social relations it induces, that doesn’t forcefully imply a belief in
the famous “dawning of liberty”, final and irreversible. Actually,
contrary to the logic of victory and defeat, anarchy is above all a
tension, a practical idea that seeks evermore the destruction of all
power. “Belief” hasn’t got anything to do with that. If the horizon of
anarchy doesn’t stop at revolt, but also opens up towards social
revolution, it is to destroy from top to bottom power. An addition of
individual revolts is not enough. Certainly, the one who talks about
“social revolution” while denying individual revolt that is its base,
has a corpse in his mouth. And will probably be between the first to cry
foul when an individual – or a fistful of individuals – combine ideas
and action. But, on the other hand also, thinking that the perspective
of a social revolution amounts to nourishing a blind faith in a final
solution, only reintroduces the notions of victory and defeat, while
deleting all tension or adopting the dreadful Marxist determinism (that
made the communist proletarians of the past century accept the worst in
the name of “inevitable historical necessity”).
If an uprising, an insurrection allows the tension towards freedom to
accentuate, deepen or possibly generalize, why would we not strive to
hasten, to trigger it? Faced with historical amnesia, with technological
stupor, with the flattening of the minds and hearts, can we not defend
that insurrection is maybe even more necessary, more desirable than ever
to be able to put things in perspective? The same refrains on the
material and social conditions that are not similar to those of the
beginning of the previous century or on the fact that the state is now
over-equipped, rather sometimes tire the discussion instead of bringing
it forward. Melancholic indeed would the anarchists be until a point of
only seeing the many obstacles on the path, even ending up forgetting
that the question is how to confront them ourselves, right here and now
in an anarchic perspective. If not, it would not be called struggle or
revolt or nothing at all, but – borrowing Marxist jargon – only the
observation of the mole that digs; and is dying [Marx used the metaphor
of the “old mole” to symbolize the necessary maturation of social forces
beneath the surface of society that will eventually erupt in
revolution].
Lets return to the initial problem: are the anarchists, with their idea
of freedom and destruction of authority, doomed to lose? Meaning to see
all their efforts, sacrifices, initiatives being wiped out, during
relative peaceful times as well as during massive revolutions? “It has
always been like that in history”, the pragmatics say. “Shouldn’t
believe in the revolution and the masses”, the cynics say. Nevertheless,
an other possibility may be closer to anarchists. Contrary to cats, we
indeed only have one life, and we dare to say that it is during this
life – the only one we have – what matters is to fight, to live that
tension towards the destruction of authority. It’s by moving, moving on
the path we have chosen, that we realize ourselves, that we become what
we are. It is the quality that bursts into our life, the quality of the
action and the idea that go together. Victory or defeat have nothing to
do where there is only persisting or abandoning, perseverance or
resignation, passionate love and hate or political obliteration.
Irredeemable dreamers, yes, a lot of anarchists are. “To act is to not
only think with the brain, it is to make the whole being think. To act
is to close in the dream, in order to open up in the reality, the most
profound sources of thinking.” , said Maeterlinck. Effectively,
anarchists are dreaming with their eyes wide open. Which means to arm
their desires, convictions, choices to realize them. It may be that
other exploited, once their thirst for destructive rage is quenched,
turn back to admiring a leader, to bow down for a god, strengthening a
new power. It is possible, and the reaction will do everything to make
it happen. But that doesn’t render null and void the initial attempt,
that doesn’t invalidate the efforts of anarchists to deepen the rupture,
to destroy authority at its root. Even if it would only be some days,
weeks or months. But such an opportunity to taste, feel the thrill, live
to the full the quality, cannot but passionately attract all the lovers
of freedom.
On the contrary, when anarchists give up this quality, this tension
towards freedom against all authority, to replace it with a logic of
victory and defeat borrowed from politics, then the fatal descent has
begun. That all the foundations of the anarchist idea erode, collapse
and dissipate. That the first to come, dressed in more or less
libertarian clothes (and who doesn’t give himself that adjective
today?), takes it all by flaunting a strong organization, a massive work
of the masses, an alleged formidable military efficacy, the end of
“isolation”. That the anarchist weary of going to prison “for nothing”
or so little, tired of an unfulfilled love that burns his heart,
exhausted by the hate that nourishes him and that encounters so little
complicity, disappointed the lack of understanding of his fellows in
misery, takes the poisoned hand extended to him. Thinking that –
finally! - the old rigidity and ideological blockage have been overcome.
There resides the only fatalism that is: the anarchist who renounces
anarchy while trying to make it rhyme with the concept of victory and
defeat. The love for the idea is thus seen and rejected as youthful
folly, beautiful and passionate, but far from practical.
On the other hand, the life of anarchists also doesn’t have to
necessarily look like the passing of a comet that is consumed upon few
seconds in the atmosphere. Certainly, each to his or her own. It is
without doubt better to go up in flames than waste away waiting for the
Revolution. But let’s not erect absolute oppositions where none have to
be there necessarily. If in the past certain anarchists have gone in
head first, we doubt if their plan was that it would be for as short a
time as possible. Why hope for a rapid end to hostilities when we can
try to prolong them without disavowing oneself? If the time has closed
in rather fast for certain anarchists in the past, it was because what
have surrounded them – notably the repressive forces – have struck fast,
too fast. Not because they had the desire to finish the fastest possible
or because they seek a tragic ending on principle.
The passion for life can collide, including too fast, with forces that
want to annihilate it: the hate for oppression can lead us to come close
to a death that prowls. It is the consequence of putting your life at
stake, of living instead of surviving. Rebels par excellence, anarchists
shouldn’t however develop a cult of blindfolds. We have a brain to
think, a heart to feel, arms to act. Why to go without one of those
faculties? Between living in the moment and longing for a brighter
future, there is a sea of possibilities. When we throw ourselves into
battle, ferociously if needed, it is not blindfolded but with the world
we want to destroy in our sights. Ferocity is not to be measured by
blindness, but by the perspectives that drive our lives, that we insert
in our efforts. If we have to be comets, very well, but let’s not
precipitate their end. Our passage on this earth is short; let’s satisfy
it by exhausting all possibilities, all potentials. What is fatal, is
not to bump into rocks, but to realize that you don’t have a compass in
your pocket when the storm breaks. Against the logic of victory and
defeat, against the fatalism of an alleged efficacy that cancels all
anarchist tension, it is still possible to think about our steps, to
orientate our explorations, to project our efforts. The love for the
idea and the hate for authority go perfectly together with a
projectuality, a reflection in the middle- and long-term to give a more
sufficient, greater,, more daring breath to our passage on the surface
of this planet.
At the turn of a past century, an anarchist with some accomplices
developed a formidable plan. After some more or less successful thefts,
Alexandre Marius Jacob looked to a farther horizon. A crazy idea came to
his mind: rather than being content with a nice bit of thievery here and
there (not bad already), why not work out a massive project of
expropriation through the whole country (even better)? In the end these
workers of the night were hundreds and burgled hundreds of houses of
bourgeois. They planned meticulously their hits, logistics, means (even
setting up a silver and gold foundry, an antiques shop and a hardware
store to order legally the latest of safes to study them in peace).
Alexandre Jacob could have been content with some occasional thefts, and
that would have maybe spared him a deportation to Guyana. But he wanted
to fly higher, to shine brighter and longer. Nothing has been easy on
this journey, no effort was spared, certain hopes were frustrated and
the generalized expropriation has not happened as he had wished for so
fervently. So what?
Let’s not step back in front of what is difficult, let’s confront them
guided by our perspectives. Let’s dare to embark on the most limitless
projects, let’s live anarchy.