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Title: Towards a Modern Expropriative Strategy Author: GusselSprouts Date: August 13, 2013 Language: en Topics: expropriation, strategy, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, insurrectionary Source: Retrieved on 9th December 2021 from https://theexpropriationist.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/towards-a-modern-expropriative-strategy/
Part of my belief in Anarchist-Communism is that I believe we can
achieve communization through direct expropriation. Anyone can destroy
private property (and this is not a critique of that tactic) but our
attempts at expropriating it prove much more difficult. It is not
through the destruction of private property that we will abolish it, but
the complete and final expropriation of it. Sometimes we feel so
hopeless and defeated that only destruction can serve to boost morale,
in the “propaganda of the deed”. I understand and sympathize with that
sentiment, so I will not dismiss it. However, I am obliged to say that
expropriation is the purist and highest expression of direct action, in
the way that it is so much more than expression, unlike many other
attempts which struggle to materialize into more.
Expropriation is not Syndicalist nor Insurrectionist. It is neither
Platformist or Anti-organizational. It is not some agenda of Communists
that post-leftists don’t concern themselves with. Expropriation is the
duty of every revolutionary. In many ways, Expropriation is the
revolution in pure essence. Everything we do to attack the system is
hope that we may reclaim the capital accumulated and controlled
violently by the capitalist, and that we may return such to the commons
until it is in surplus.
Kroprotkin in his essay Expropriation:
“The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the
wealth of the capitalists comes from the same source.”
The syndicalist does not have to be told that expropriation is at the
core of their strategy. Their devotion and fearless attempts to seize
production from the capitalist and claim it for the workers, is the
goal. A syndicalist will tell you that in a class-war, whomever controls
production gets the goods. Best that be the workers, obviously!
Gregori Maximov, a Russian anarcho-syndicalist during the 1917 Russian
Revolution, says of expropriation, in Programme of Anarcho-Syndicalism:
“In manufacturing and in some branches of the primary industries,
capitalism has thus already prepared the ground for Communism and the
syndicalisation of industry by the expropriation of capitalists and the
State — today the imperative and the only feasible solution to the
workingman’s problem. Socialised labour facilitates this transition to
communist ownership by way of syndicalisation.”
He then goes on to talk about differences in the expropriation of
agricultural property vs. industrial production. There is obviously
differences there and there will subsequently be a different strategy
for that front of expropriation. I am an urbanite however, and any
expropriation done around agriculture will be building new permaculture
on urban land which had been previously owned (usually owned by the city
or real-estate capitalists, and usually serving as the jumping blocks
for gentrification). I live in one of the few larger cities that is very
lawn-heavy, even in the most densely populated areas.
The syndicalist knows that class war becomes reality whenever the time
comes for the defense of that which has been expropriated. Where in
which agitation has become attack, and revolutionary self-defense
becomes war, syndicalism calls for workers to defend what is theirs
until the bloody end.
The mode of organization employed by syndicalists also ensures that
expropriation is done in such a way that it involves those who have the
highest stake in it. There is no agenda of an intellectual vanguard far
away, who has their own plan for that which you have expropriated.
Syndicalists are fighting for theirs, and defend it in such ways. When I
say “theirs”, I know we are talking about the only legitimate property,
that of use and possession by workers and not the capitalist in
absentia.
Luigi Galleani, in The End of Anarchism?:
“The anarchists, like the socialists, want and urge the expropriation of
the bourgeoisie, but they do not hope at all for its generosity nor its
philanthropy and justice. Confronted with the violent pressure of the
masses trying to overthrow it, the bourgeoisie throws out each day a
little of its ballast; it gives up some of its arrogance or it makes
some inane concession — paid holidays, laws protecting women and working
children, state medicine, etc, but only for the purpose of saving its
bankrupt privileges.
That is their business: reforms remain — and should remain — a concern
and a function of the ruling class, not of the anarchists, nor of the
socialists either, if they are sincerely convinced that the
expropriation of the ruling class is an inevitable condition of their
economic emancipation.”
Say what you will about the Galleanists, the man himself had some good
stuff to say about expropriation. We cannot expect for the ruling class
to simply relinquish their power. We mean war when we say class warfare.
We cannot afford to concern ourselves the liberal-bourgeois morality
(the form of morality that makes one have human sympathy with private
property, and to see violence in it’s destruction or expropriation)
Traditionally, Insurrectionists have engaged in forms of expropriation
of a slightly more direct nature. Galleani outlines dozens of bank
robberies and check frauds, done by insurrectionists to further the
causes of the movements. Unfortunately, there are few English resources
on the subject, but anyone who has read a biography of Buenaventura
Durruti knows that he and several groups (Los Solidarios included)
engaged in mass-scale expropriations for decades before the Spanish
Civil War. This was not unique to Spain. From Argentina to Western
Europe, we found no more appropriate sponsors for our revolution than
those whom we call enemy. A personal favorite essay called “Illegal
Anarchism” by Illegalist Gustavo Rodriguez, mentions such expropriations
at least 2 dozen times.
It goes without saying that our modern movement is not what it was when
we performed such mass-scale armed expropriations. We are not positioned
for such things, and given the police state currently deployed in the
First-World we have largely assembled today, we need new strategy at the
time being for Insurrectionists regarding expropriation.
Many other forms of expropriation do fit into this praxis however. The
idea that someone, outside of an organization, can steal something for
the ruling classes and return it to the people, is something rather
limitless.
We find ourselves in a very interesting development with the recent
establishment of Solidarity Networks. This unique mode of worker’s
organization attacks issues of housing, labour and poverty with a more
direct action approach with an emphasis on both mutual-aid but also
attack and agitation. Remember that carry out expropriations is not as
difficult as defending them against reaction. These Solidarity Networks
provide an amazing resource for defense of this. They get to the
nitty-gritty of grassroots neighborhood organizing.
The popularity of illegalism (and therefore expropriation) can be seen
throughout modern Anarchist culture rather ubiquitously. The good
Anarchist always thinks of the resources they can steal for their
project first. This is important. We know we cannot win by playing by
the rules of the ruling class, or by appealing to their morality
(propertarian humanization). The Anarchist strategy around housing
(known by many as squatting) and also urban gardening on
unused/abandoned property (guerrilla gardening) are a very good examples
of resource expropriation.
I don’t need to remind anyone that we have 22 empty houses for every
homeless person in America. It goes without saying that even in the
first world we have a huge disparity of wealth, as well as a world ripe
for expropriation. Every Anarchist organization could potentially have a
headquarters, which can also serve as something to help the community.
Squatters laws are complicated indeed, but you would be surprised to
find they aren’t as difficult to work with. Also, expropriation of this
sort is quite the attack even if eviction is served in the end. Making
the state waste a ton of resources (dozens of work hours for Lawyers,
amongst other things) in order to carry out the eviction, you have the
state rushing to keep their end of the deal with the capitalist. Pit
them against eachother and you’ll find much of our work being done for
us. For every squat that falls, we find victory in such defeat, and also
expropriate 2 more.
The strategy of Expropriation is something that ideally should fit into
any Anarchist Praxis. It should be a part of every agenda, there should
be a campaign in every neighbourhood. Our enemies are vastly skilled at
stealing from the working class, and accumulating wealth. We should
employ the same vigor.
It goes without saying that when we expropriate, we are playing for
keeps. This seems to be well understood, but let me explain what I mean
by such and why I think it’s important. Nothing can be considered fully
expropriated until it has not only been seized from the capitalist, and
not only given to the people for free and common use. Something that has
reached the final stage of expropriation cannot be taken by force and
re-privatized. When something has reached the final stage of
expropriation, it no longer needs defense from counter-revolution or
reaction.
Kropotkin, once again, in his essay Expropriation:
“We found not have the revolutionary impulse arrested in mid-career, to
exhaust itself in half measures, which would content no-one, and which
while producing a tremendous upheaval of society, and stopping its
customary activities, would have no power of life in themselves, and
would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the way
for triumph of reaction.”
This is why expropriation demands strategy and science within the
Anarchist praxis. We all too often come under attack for our lack of
this. Some will say Anarchism can never have such qualities. Some are
very intent that it doesn’t. Some would call such people privileged and
naĂŻve. One thing is true and quite evident, we will never build a
revolution on idealistic dreams and well-wishes. I do think, with new
modes of organization and the modern elasticity of Anarchism (some would
say that has had consequences, which I am liable to agree with) such
science and strategy is within our reach.
So let us embrace the place Anarchism has given us loose ends, the
places where other revolutionary ideologies have reach dead ends. These
are our gift!