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Title: Capitalism & Electrification
Author: anonymous
Language: en
Topics: capitalism, Return Fire, technology, crisis, COVID-19, insurrection, ideology, the End of History, technical rationality, anarchist history, democracy, totalitarianism, Green New Deal, extractivism, electric cars, Italy, fascism, repression, Europe
Notes: Taken from Return Fire vol.6 chap.3, winter 2021–2022. To read the articles referenced throughout this text in [square brackets], PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by visiting returnfire.noblogs.org or emailing returnfire@riseup.net – articles referenced by title which do not appear in the released chapters appear in forthcoming chapters of this volume.

anonymous

Capitalism & Electrification

“In the current organization, as monopolists of science who remain such

beyond social life, scientists certainly form a caste of its own which

presents many similarities with the caste of priests. Scientific

abstraction is their God, living and real individualities are the

victims and scientists are their consecrated and licensed sacrificers”

– A. Bakunin [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg97]

They Say “Ideology” Too Soon

For at least thirty years the dominant narrative has fobbed us with “the

end of ideologies”. According to the “thinkers” of the palace, the

collapse of countries under State Capitalism would have inaugurated a

new era, the one that the philosopher Francis Fukuyama (1992) calls “the

end of history”. Therefore history would be to be intended as a linear

development where the democratic and liberal State represents its telos,

the ultimate Goal of evolution beyond which it is impossible to go. It

is the principles of liberalism that dictate evolution, marked and

pushed by the force of rationality.

As this state of “perfection” is attained, ideologies make no sense

either. The clash between opposed and alternative visions of the world

is irrational and counterproductive, technical reason decides what is

right and what is wrong, the only thing we can do is to follow

rationality. Therefore any deviation would be absurd.

In a contradictory way, Fukuyama thinks that this final stage of human

evolution is the democratic State. What he couldn’t foresee is that

precisely by virtue of the rational domination of technique,[1] the very

democratic constitution would soon become obsolete.[2] If there is

nothing to choose, if the best thing to do is the most rational one…

Another world is impossible!

It is a strong idea of immobility. Not only has the thought of being

able to overturn the State, of taking over political power (let alone

destroying it!) become synonym of an imminent psychotic crisis, but even

the direction has become untouchable, up to its smallest detail: not

only did capitalism become the only possible world, but within it, the

neo-liberal variable was the only economic form necessary in the years

between the two millennia. Hence the excess of the democratic regime

[ed. – see Return Fire vol.5 pg61]. It increasingly demonstrated to be a

theatre of the shadows, whose director, however, is a copy, a duplicate

of the one and only ideology.

It is particularly necessary to distinguish between plural “ideologies”

and singular “ideology”. What has happened in recent years is not at all

the end of ideology but the end of ideologies. Ideology is stronger than

ever: it has become the one and only thought. After all the affirmation

“ideologies are dead” is an ideological affirmation itself. The thesis

of the end of ideologies is an eminently ideological thesis. It is a

thesis which by closing the debate and declaring any possible

confutation defeated, founds itself as necessary ideology: so much

necessary that it doesn’t even need to declare itself as such, doesn’t

need to boast the word either – it is intangible like the Holy Ghost. If

you ask it “what are you?” it will reply like God with Moses: “Ego sum

qui sum” [I am who I am].

Ideologies make sense only if they are thought to be resolutely opposing

one another, the one armed against the other. From a certain point of

view, in this sense it is correct to say that ideologies are over. The

dominant ideology is therefore a paradoxical, monstrous

Super-Anti-Ideology. Today the most radical move, the one really

revolutionary on a theoretical level, is the denunciation of the

mystified ideological nature of technical thought.[3] But to affirm that

what commands us is still an ideology, also the most radical one and for

this reason mystified, is not yet enough. What we have to do regarding

this new religion, rather, is: not believe in it.

Here the difficulties begin for the anarchist movement. Revolutionary

anarchism of the new millennium has had the incalculable historical

merit of placing itself as the only negation (at least in the West) of

the new dominant ideology. Released from the scientific myth that

permeated Marxism, besides not having been knocked out by the fall of

the Berlin wall, anarchism could be, and in many aspects has been, the

revolutionary force of the century. Let’s just try to think: what would

the anti-globalisation movement [ed. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg80] have

been without anarchism, what would the Greek crisis [ed. – see Return

Fire vol.1 pg17] have been without anarchism, what would the struggle

against eco-catastrophe have been without radical environmentalism [ed.

– see Return Fire vol.4 pg78] for the most part anarchist, what would

our era have been without the endless string of attacks against

politicians, economists, scientists, carried out by anarchists?

Therefore, if on the one hand anarchism hasn’t naturally met with any

difficulty in spontaneously setting itself as negation of the dominant

ideology; on the other, as we will see further on, some components of

the movement have expressed a substantial limit: they believed in some

of the theses of the dominant ideology. Sometimes, even if we overturn

its judgment of value, we excessively tend to believe all the lies that

the ideologues of the State foist on us. The dominant ideology affirms

it can submit and control all corners of the world with technique? Then

we believe it and talk about resistance to a “mega-machine” with

totalitarian characteristics, apparently almost invincible. The dominant

ideology affirms that class struggle is over? Then we believe it and

talk about new oppressions, about an indistinct multiplicity of

privileges. Our action has certainly always been in good faith

(obviously here we are interested in talking only about comrades in good

faith), our acting has always aimed at attacking the mega-machine and

privilege. But as we tend to believe in the theses of the dominant

ideology, even if we overturn its values, our analysis remains

nevertheless tainted with a hermeneutic horizon which is that chosen by

the State.

The Afghan Variant

But are things really like this? Is history really over? Are ideologies

really dead?

The September 11^(th) anniversary occurs right as we are meeting up. Not

even ten years after Fukuyama made his appearance, history

overwhelmingly came back. What followed is well known. The Bush

administration declared war on the Taliban and invaded Afghanistan. Two

years later it was Iraq’s turn. Twenty years after we can see how it all

ended. For a long time now Iraq is actually a State controlled by

pro-Iran governments, Americans’ worst enemies. As for Afghanistan,

after twenty years of economic and literal bleeding, the USA were

compelled to withdraw and the Taliban conquered the country again. A

defeat which reminds the West of Vietnam, with the Americans and their

allies (including the Italians) forced to flee from embassies by

helicopters!

The most powerful and armed army in the world was defeated by a

guerrilla of shepherds armed only with a myth. The same shepherds who

destroyed the Red Army [ed. – of Soviet Russia] forty years ago. The

clumsiest army in the planet defeated two world superpowers in the space

of half a century. Certainly the most irreducible economists will find a

multiplicity of supporters who backed the Taliban in recent years in the

name of the most ignoble economic interests. Surely these are not forces

that can compete with the USA, Russia and China together, all of them

terrorized for different reasons at the Islamic expansion in central

Asia.

The truth is that the Taliban defeated NATO and before that the Red Army

because they were not afraid to die. They have a God and a pre-modern

religious practice in the name of which they absurdly believe heaven

will be there for them the more enemies they manage to kill. The myth,

martyrs and heroes versus placid super-paid westerners who want to kill

some savages and go back home with their bank accounts full of

mercenaries’ lavish wages. The myth of Allah versus the myth of Messi

and Michael Jordan. Who else could have won? A revival of the myth that

defeated the two most important ideologies of modernity in the space of

four decades.

What does this have to do with our discourse? Quite a lot.

The dominant ideology (which claims it is not) thinks it is invincible.

It preaches technical rationality as an unbeaten and unbeatable form of

historical evolution. As we mentioned, the opposition to this Moloch has

sometimes accepted its contents, even if it has also overthrown its

values. But not only do we anarchists need to oppose the dominant

ideology we also need not to believe in it.

The dominant ideology affirms the overcoming of the human being and

their limitations in favour of machines. It occurs that its opponents

firmly believe in it, even if they declare they are disgusted. Faith in

this fate is so strong that it ends up cheating the swindlers

themselves. Not having opposition, the ideology ends up cheating itself.

Doesn’t the Afghan variant also talk to us about the failure of this

dystopia? You can bomb villages with drones for twenty years, but then

you need humans to control the territory. Forget about advanced

technologies, forget about cyborgs to be used in wars! Without boots

worn by human feet, when drones go back to the base after their death

flights, humans retake control.[4]

Think how many say that a sort of “health dictatorship” was established

by Big Pharma because of the pandemic. Perhaps they should reckon with

the “Afghan variant” more than they do with the English or Indian

variant. Don’t you think it was a hard blow for Big Pharma to have lost

the biggest supplier of opium on the planet? Obviously the point is not

to stop fighting Big Pharma, put oneself at the service of the

pro-vaccine leftists and of general Figliuolo [an Italian army corps

general appointed by Prime Minister Mario Draghi as Extraordinary

Commissioner for the Implementation of Health Measures to Contain the

COVID-19 pandemic, to lead the vaccination campaign]. The point is

always that of not believing their ideological theses, not believing

that theirs is the only possible fate. Their science is not the only

possible science [ed. – see Return Fire vol.5 pg33], the domination of

technical rationality at the service of capitalism is not a

technologically necessary fate.

After all, wasn’t precisely general Figliuolo the leader of the war

mission in Afghanistan on behalf of the Italian troops of occupation?

There, the so-called “military-vaccination campaign” is in the hands of

the general who along with others lost Afghanistan. Generals in power?

Yes but which generals?

Figliuolo is a loser!

The “Afghan variant” brings us to another thought, a much more

disturbing one: modernity as a parenthesis. What if the occupation

armies of the capitalist States of the planet “withdrew their troops”

one fine day? And what if the Sun of the Future didn’t rise that fine

day but medieval reaction, religious obscurantism, human barbarity,

oppression of women? It must have been this thought, so disturbing that

it was pushed into the deepest subconscious, that pushed so many

ex-comrades towards a now exquisitely reformist terrain. In the face of

the collapse, many could show they are not all that revolutionary. Fear

of death or of something much worse could drive many to say that yes,

after all our government is not that bad. After all, don’t a certain

opposition to fascism, a certain social-democratic rhetoric of defence

of the vulnerable, a certain neo-liberal vision on the role of

minorities also talk of this to us [ed. – see ‘Something Different Than

the Reflection of This World’]?

What do we need to do? Espouse obscurantism? Shout “Allah is great” or

to take to the streets along with conspiracy theorists? No, we need to

oppose our myth to their war gods. We need to oppose what Alfredo

Cospito [ed. – see ‘Our Anarchy Lives’] calls “the myth of avenging

anarchy” against the divinities of technique and reaction. The Idea that

the rich who have reduced us to these conditions will pay one fine day.

And it won’t be due to some miraculous divine assistance, the chance to

do justice is in our hands alone!

From “Technological Totalitarianism” to the Chip Crisis

Another way with which some are opposing the dominant ideology of our

age is that of denouncing the danger of an imminent technological

totalitarianism. Again, while rightly opposing the ongoing trends, these

comrades end up nevertheless with accepting their beliefs. The idea that

technological progress won’t know limits and will conquer the entire

planet is only the umpteenth ideological delusion. Not only are we

against the projects of reorganization of capitalism, we are also

sceptical about the lies being told to us by its mouthpieces.

On 17^(th) July economy newspapers spread a disconcerting piece of news,

well concealed by the mainstream media. This is an item from the agency

LaPresse:

Audi and Volvo will stop their plants in Brussel and Gent, Belgium, this

week due to shortage of microchips. It is what is being reported by

several local media including The Brussels Times. Shortage of microchips

has slowed down production of about half a million vehicles all over the

world, according to the European Association of Car Suppliers (Clepa),

and it is believed that its effects will be felt until 2022. It is not

the first time that both plants have had to stop production due to

shortage of microchips, which can be present in their dozens in the

newest car models. ‘The second trimester of 2021 was very difficult and

we are still witnessing delays in production’, Clepa president Thorsten

Muschal affirmed. Audi explained that the supply of chips will remain

limited in the coming months – and therefore it is not possible to

exclude further adjustments to production – even if the situation is

expected to improve. ‘It seems that the lowest point of the crisis has

been reached’, Peter D’Hoore, the plant spokesperson, said. ‘We expect

an improvement in the second half of the year’, he continued.

But what, you want to make the digital revolution and you don’t have

chips for cars?!

The effects of the chip crisis will be felt until 2022, they say. At the

time of the press release (June 2021), they mentioned half a million

vehicles not being produced due to shortage of raw material. But they

were confident that “the lowest point of the crisis” had been reached.

On the contrary, the chip crisis keeps on expanding, affecting all

technological sectors and not only these. We publish extended passages

of an article of Il Sole 24 Ore which you can read entirely at this

link: ilsole24ore.com

After Audi and Volvo, it was the turn of Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car

[ed. – see ‘Let’s Destroy Everything That Is Called Tesla!’], which had

to stop due to shortages of lithium and cobalt:

Problems are also there for Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric car titan. Costs

are increasing due to shortage of raw materials. The CEO himself

explained the situation in a tweet: ‘Prices are increasing due to the

pressure of costs, especially those of raw materials, in the supply

chain all over the industry’. In this case prices of raw materials such

as lithium and cobalt are at stake, both increasing (according to the

International Energy Agency), demand for minerals for electric vehicles

and batteries will grow at least 30 times by 2040).

Inevitably these problems also concern electrical appliances:

Things are no better in the sector of electrical appliances. According

to the president of Whirlpool in China, the same global shortage of raw

materials (in particular chips) which has shaken production lines in car

companies, is now striking producers of electrical appliances, unable to

meet demands. Whirlpool itself, one of the biggest companies of

electrical appliances in the world, has seen its deliveries of chips

reduced by 10% in proportion to its orders in the month of March.

Hangzhou Robam Appliances Co Ltd, a Chinese producer of electrical

appliances with over 26 thousand employees, had a four-month delay in

the production of a new fan for high range heaters because they couldn’t

procure a sufficient number of chips.

And videogames: “Unfortunately we are coming up against a great shortage

of semiconductors and other components”. These are the words of the

Chief Financial Officer at Sony, Hiroki Totoki, talking about Play

Station 5. What was not expected, however, is that the chip crisis could

cause serious troubles also to other sectors such as construction,

coffee and even toilet paper!

It seems absolutely absurd, but one of the sectors put in crisis by the

chaos of raw materials is that of toilet paper. Suzano SA, the biggest

producer of wood paste – the raw material for products including toilet

paper – has made it known that logistics problems triggered by the raw

material crisis (containers requested by other sectors, transport in an

uncertain state, etc.) could create supply problems.

Finally, right in these first days of September the chips crisis is

starting to pop up in national news bulletins, which are trying to limit

it to the economic pages: Stellantis (the old FIAT) in now writing to

workers to announce an extension of mid-August holidays to part of

September in several sites where they produce Panda and Fiorino, due to

chronic shortage of semiconductors.

In an electrified world, the electrification crisis is a general crisis.

Not only because robotization affects all sectors but also because the

chips crisis is a crisis of extraction, speaking in strictly material

terms: materials for computers are lacking, but trees for paper

production are also beginning to be scarce!

Naturally the chip crisis is not an impromptu one, but a deep sign of

the times. From the one hand increasing demand of conductors,

semi-conductors and superconductors, on the other the inability of

African mines to keep up with this ever increasing demand of raw

materials.

The result of the imbalance between demand of conductor metals and the

weakness of the offer will very likely have important consequences not

only on the volume of production but also on costs. The great strength

of digitalization has been the progressive deflation of its products.

Computers, cell phones, devices of various kinds have been costing less

and less for many years, making them goods affordable by everybody –

even those who can’t feed themselves or pay the rent. An increase in the

price of these devices will certainly reflect on the speed of the

propagation of their global spread. But the finite nature of the planet

also applies to the raw materials which smartphones and PCs are made of,

it talks to us about objective limits of technological expansion.

By saying this we don’t want to spread the easy illusion of a

spontaneous depletion of resources useful to the technological

authoritarian turn. In the past we used to deceive ourselves too easily

on the end of oil production, except that they found new oilfields

deep-down and the way to reach them precisely thanks to new extraction

technologies. Capitalism won’t switch itself off spontaneously for lack

of fuel, it is us who must blow it up!

Capitalism always finds new areas to be exploited and new technologies

to do it. The spreading of mines in search of metals such as coltan

outside the Congo is part of these attempts. The point is not to believe

the reputation of invincibility of the capitalist machine. These

researches also produce struggles of resistance, and also workforce

surely more costly than the slaves used in Africa. Again, therefore,

price increases and a more and more excluding availability of

technological applications.

What we are supposing, therefore, is not technological totalitarianism,

but a condition of technological specificity in a context of general

recession. There will be hyper-developed “citadels” (the word is not to

be intended literally), outside which the big mass of humanity will

abound, more and more excluded from the poles of wealth [ed. – see

‘Something Different Than the Reflection of This World’]. This picture

is not to be represented “geographically”, as the developing world was

pictured once upon a time. This excluding dynamic will cross vertically

all societies. In this context, the image of the worker with a chip in

his overall which spies all his movements at work will go hand in hand

with that of the said worker who, once he is back home, will

increasingly experience a condition of cultural barbarism – with the

addition of problems in the supply of coffee and toilet paper.

Technological revolution will continue to be based on the exploitation

of humans. This will be the case as long as capitalism exists [ed. – see

Return Fire vol.5 pg9]. Human flesh remains the real gold mine for

exploiters. If anything, new technologies will serve to control it

better.

They Write “Green Deal” & You Read “Sacking”

While in the IT market the prices of the chip crisis are not yet to be

seen, this is not the case for so called electric cars. To purchase an

electric car with “decent” performance – we are not talking about rust

buckets running 50 km per hour – you need to pay at least 18 thousand

euros and this only thanks to public contributions otherwise the bill

would be another 3–4 thousands exorbitant. It is not by chance that

Panda continues to be the most popular car in Italy, as it costs less

than 10 thousands. In other words, the “green revolution” remains a

class privilege.

It is not by chance that Greta [ed. – Greta Thunberg, influential – and

reformist – teen climate activist] followers and environmentalists of

the regime repeatedly say to us that along with electric cars, our

habits in moving have to change. With electric cars, people will mainly

move with car sharing [ed. – see ‘A New Relation with Social

Conflicts’]. “The future? Electric, but connected and shared”, Diego

Colombo for example writes in Eco di Bergamo. The reason? Simple: not

everybody will be able to afford it!

This is an example of what we call “citadels” of the technological

civilization surrounded by misery. Even the car, distinctive sign of the

consumeristic society of the Seventies, becomes a privilege for the few.

Naturally here the point is not the environment because everything

depends on what you produce energy with. If electricity is produced with

fuel, it is evident that electric cars will cause more CO2 emissions on

the planet than traditional cars running with petrol. Okay, but this

will happen “outside” in the regions where there are coal-fired power

plants. Once again we can suppose a dynamic which is not totalitarian

but “citadel”-like of the next techno-capitalist regime: historical

centres will have less smog, my lady!

And obviously all this frenzy for electrification will only nourish the

nuclear power impulse of the scientists of death [ed. – see Indigenous

Anarchist Covergence – Report Back].

Therefore the point is not to save the environment, as the ideologists

of the palace tell us. The point is a global restructuring of society,

with a more restricted fortress of inclusion and a bigger human mass of

marginalized. The impoverishment of the “middle class”, as magnificent

as it is metaphysical, tells us something about this overall process.

This impoverishment can be linked to the “Afghan variant” in the broad

sense, to the reactionary forces of many impoverished small bosses.

This impoverishment is a necessary consequence, demanded by the new

course. Still on the question of electric cars, it is estimated that

between 30% and 60% of jobs are at risk in the car sector because of the

production change from combustion engines to the electric ones. The

ecological transition rhymes with digital transition; not by chance the

Draghi government [of Italy] – a regime of National Unity in the name of

capitalist redevelopment – invented the Ministry of Ecological

Transition and reinvented the Ministry of Technological Innovation and

Digital Transition. As Roberto Cingolani, the Minister of Ecological

Transition claims in Mephistophelian style [ed. – see Return Fire vol.2

pg52], the transition will have an enormous social cost. Cingolani’s

armoured vehicles are marching on, mimicking Stalin’s: capitalism and

electrification are fluttering on the banners of new purges.

Never was the saying more real: you wanted a bicycle, now you pedal.

National Unity from Cremaschi to Bonomi

For this project to go on, for this huge redevelopment self-named Great

Reset to be realized, mass impoverishment all over the West is therefore

necessary. As we’ve seen, this goes through the loss of millions of jobs

due to robotization and robotics. Electrification demands human flesh!

The Italian government took care of this by unblocking bans on

dismissals, the actual measure for which the Renzi operation was kicked

off to unseat the previous government and install Mario Draghi’s

government. Now that there are no more bans on dismissals, all pretexts

are good to close down. And the global pandemic offers pretexts in

abundance.

It was on 20^(th) July when Giorgio Cremaschi, the historical leader of

FIOM [the Italian Federation of Metalworkers], the former union of

metalworkers within CGIL [the Italian General Confederation of Labour],

and a member of the “centre-left” little party Potere al Popolo!,

chirped in the grammatically wrong language of Twitter:

“Those who oppose #green pass[5] should coherently oppose: driving

licence health cards identity cards residence certificates any similar

devilry of communist dictatorships. Crazed ones certainly, but also

simply #undomesticated fascists”.

In the same day Carlo Bonomi, the president of Confindustria [general

confederation of Italian Industry], wrote a decisively less illiterate

letter to Prime Minister Mario Draghi, unveiled by the daily Il Tempo:

[The headline: You don’t get vaccinated? No salary. Confindustria’s

threat to workers]. With the purpose of protecting all workers and the

continuation of production processes in the full respect of individual

freedoms, Confindustria has proposed the extension of green certificates

– i.e. the green pass – to have access to work contexts.

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to observe that the

coincidence of dates is disquieting at the very least. But even assuming

that Cremaschi’s was “only” an unforgivable mistake and the symptom of a

geriatric left to be locked more in a care home than in a social centre,

a coincidence of this kind, however “unfortunate”, gave the sensation of

a media encircling for the security turn which would intervene a few

days later.

You need to be very careful at the substance that the word involves when

you use the expression “government of National Unity”. National Unity is

not a simple technical government or a mere political government of

“large understanding”. National Unity is a government where the Nation

is united and mobilized for a supreme emergency purpose. From a

parliamentarian point of view, it is no different from so-called “large

understanding”: many parties that vote a political government together.

But National Unity is something different. The alliance of government

goes through the whole of society, social forces, intellectuals, common

people: all are mobilized for the Homeland.

From this point of view Cremaschi’s and Confindustria’s concentric

statements suggest us substantial unity, a real patriotic front to save

the bourgeoisie from the crisis caused by Coronavirus. It is a proper

mass bourgeois government which, unlike fascism, maintains plurality of

parties and mobilizes them all in the patriotic war. With his

declarations, Cremaschi, a fake opponent, is in fact included in the

structure of National Unity, he declares himself mobilized for his

choices of social butchery.

Covid-19 is a Symptom. Yes, But a Symptom of What?

We are not giving the pandemic a central role in our analysis. Not

because what occurred wasn’t eminently historic, from all points of

view. But we think that Covid-19 wasn’t an unexpected event, a meteor

that struck the planet changing its course for ever. If anything, we

think that Coronavirus is in some way a sort of expression of the spirit

of the current times.

All right, but where are the current times heading to?

Sticking to a clinical metaphor, Covid-19 is only a symptom. Yes, but a

symptom of what?

Unquestionably it is a symptom of the health condition of the planet.

Moreover, it is a symptom of the way modern science functions: it

creates a disease and then it sells the remedy. It is a symptom of what

constant urbanization, intensive farm breeding and “natural” biological

selection through vaccines and antibiotics can cause. But even assuming

this was a plot, an obscure conspiratorial manoeuvre, it would all the

same be a symptom: the symptom of the point that military apparatuses,

big financiers, etc. have reached. And even if – an intermediate

hypothesis – it was the result of an accidental leak from a research lab

(with two variants: a) a military lab; b) a medical lab which studies

viruses for the “good” of human-kind), again it would be only a symptom:

a symptom of the social dangerousness of capitalist science, which is

running autonomous and brake-free putting us all in danger.

In other words, it is a symptom and it remains a symptom. That’s why we

need to give up the temptation to follow Covid and its dances with the

deforming lens of technical reason. As usual it would be like choosing

the battlefield and weapons imposed by the enemy. We must look beyond,

at the real evil: the real evil is a strongly unequal world social

organization, which is plundering all environments, which is protected

by a military apparatus without precedents in the history of humanity.

As it represents the spirit of the times, Coronavirus didn’t invert the

fundamental tendencies of our epoch; it simply accelerated them. The

crisis of globalization was already foreseeable before the health

emergency. Some of us, even with very poor analytical instruments and

empirical data, had foreseen it for some years. Likewise we had foreseen

we were going towards an authoritarian turn. The pandemic was the

vehicle where these phenomena finally expressed themselves. The pandemic

is the vehicle of the globalization crisis and of a new form of

authoritarian turn, but both are not passengers, they are the drivers.

We judge authoritarian devices such as the recent health passport, so

called green pass, from this point of view. We are not strictly

interested in the question of vaccination, in the technical discussion,

in scientific debate that replaces political debate. Among the authors

of these notes some are vaccinated and some are not, indifferently. A

division that plays the game of power, whereby the State has

deliberately accelerated in this direction to create further

fragmentation among the exploited and the isolation of the “hotheads”

among them. The green pass strikes first and foremost the freedom and

privacy of anyone who has it: controlled when they board a train, go to

the cinema or to the university, it is those with the green pass who are

especially spied on.

As pointed out at the beginning, the goal is an ideological goal: the

creation of a society where the horizon of subversion becomes

ontologically impossible. In this context, the ideology of technique,

impersonal and impartial as they want to describe it, becomes the only

tolerated ideology. If technique says that we all have to be spied on,

that it is the only rational solution to health problems… then we all

have to be spied on. The decision-maker is logic and impersonal: another

world is impossible – and exactly twenty years after Genoa [ed. – see

Return Fire vol.2 pg68], Cremaschi and Confindustria are marched

together on 20^(th) July.

An Authoritarian Turn, But of What Kind?

In the columns of Vetriolo [ed. – Italian anarchist periodical],

expressions such as “an authoritarian turn of a new kind” and “an

authoritarian turn of a new form” were used to describe what would

happen. It was basically a negative definition, without content. We

limited ourselves to observe that the new authoritarian society wouldn’t

have the characteristics of historical twentieth century fascism. It was

important to highlight this fact in order to avoid the danger of so

called front-ism: antifascist unity in the name of democracy.

As we were beginning to debate these categories, here and in a good part

of the world extreme right parties and so-called sovereignists were

growing. We feared what in fact happened: that antifascist alarmism

would contribute to contain this right-wing wave, yes, but with the goal

of reinstating world neo-liberal order. This was the case in Italy with

the Draghi government and in the USA with Trump’s “defeat”. Once they

achieved the result to reinstate liberalism, these movements deflated

until they almost disappeared. It is the eternal return of the cycle

fascism-antifascism-liberalism, where movements got bogged down for the

umpteenth time.

At the time, therefore, the only thing we could do was to give a warning

of the use that power would make of antifascism, trying to explain that

the upcoming authoritarian turn was not the simple return of a

totalitarian regime, but something very different. We couldn’t give more

information about the contents because we are not prophets. Reality

would show us the contents. Today we can say something more. We can give

some substance to the authoritarian turn of a new form.

The first fact is that the authoritarian turn came about in a

substantial conservation of the liberal constitutional order. Someone

might object that not even fascism in Italy suspended the Statuto

Albertino [the constitution granted by King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia to

the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1848, which later became the constitution of

the unified Kingdom of Italy]. This is true, but we can’t not observe

that the old Italian monarchical constitution was very vague and, for

example, it didn’t include guarantees for parties and unions. Fascism

suspended party plurality and union freedoms, carrying out a

constitutional change in the substance of the political order. The

current European constitutions are much more regulatory in respect to

rights and duties. The new authoritarian turn of a new form, this is

extremely important, is not changing its features. On the contrary, it

is not obviously interested in this. Berlusconi’s and Renzi’s reformist

attempts were more dangerous for reformists and leftists in effective

permanent service in defence of the Constitution. In full state of

emergency, nobody thought of changing western constitutions in an

authoritarian way.

In short the ongoing authoritarian turn, while it locks individuals up

in their homes, drives over workers on strike, demands health passports,

sets up checkpoints at every corner of the streets and makes restrictive

measures fall down like rain against anarchists and rebels; it is not at

all intervening on the institutional core.

This seems surprising only from a superficial point of view. In fact it

is strictly linked to the particular ideological, mystified nature of

the one and only thought of technical reason. If there is one and only

one compelling choice, if social, ethical, ecological questions have

only one answer and if this answer is identified by the impersonal

dynamic of problem solving, democracies don’t represent any danger for

new authoritarianism. Anyone who ascends to power will have to

necessarily adopt the same policies because the solution is one and only

and it is compelling.

Announcement of Blood

The authoritarian turn is reality. Therefore we are in a new historical

epoch, which like any revelation worth the name, needs an Announcement,

a radical symbolism, a passion of blood. In Italy this “announcement”

took form in the massacres committed in jails in March 2020.[6] Sixteen

dead over whom a veil of forgetfulness was laid too soon.

First of all a radical reaction. In the face of the unprecedented revolt

in Italian jails, a State confused by the irruption of the pandemic

reacted as it could, as it knew: with an iron fist. Certainly a message

to the rebels, but also for the whole of society: this is what those who

rebel have to expect. The State is there. These are the world of the

then Minister of Human Flesh Administration [ed. – aka, Minister of

Justice, then Alfonso Bonafede]:

I’d like to point out that in all the most serious cases the

institutions have proved to be compact: magistrates, prefects, police

and all the other forces intervened without hesitation making the face

of the State even more determined before the delinquent acts that were

being carried out.

These words were pronounced by a minister of “justice” before a

consenting Parliament. An unequivocal political and historical

responsibility: we, colleagues in parliament, along with “magistrates,

prefects, police and all the other forces of order”, are responsible for

the massacre. The 1920s of our century are being announced. A surreal

feeling, when we are almost in the situation of having to thank hangman

Bonafede for having finally shown us without veils, for what it is, “the

face of the State”.

This is the nature of the conflict we are going to face. We are all

warned, anyone who doesn’t feel up to it should perhaps take a step back

now. Even the images of the tortures in Santa Maria Capua Vetere[7] take

on an important communication value in the terrorist message of power.

In this slice of the century we learned how power wisely creates

scandals out of torture: Guantanamo, Abu Graib are places of torture

isolated from the world, if we learned something of what happened it is

because the ideology wanted to show it. A warning, a shiver of terror

for those who decide to fight arms in hand against the occupying army: I

could be there.

Therefore it can’t be by chance that the images of torture, amidst the

big indignation of fine democratic souls, came out of a jail where there

was no dead. It can’t be by chance that only in Santa Maria Capua Vetere

the screws were so stupid as to leave the cameras on. The truth is that

sometimes certain information has to come out. So that you all are

warned: the next ones could be you!

But the massacres in Italian jails were and still are a deeper test.

They are a social thermometer on our inurement. Power wanted to test the

level of reaction, of dignity left in the human flesh it wanted to

administer. It wanted to see if we were really ready for

electrification. Judging from the fact that the great majority of the

population don’t even remember the dead, and if you ask them to think of

what March 2020 was like, their memories are well different (mass house

arrest, terror of the virus), we can say that the experiment has been

successful: the patient is dead.

The Autumn We Expect

With these premises the autumn we expect will be an autumn of fear, from

anxiety over flu symptoms to anxiety over losing one’s job. It will be

an autumn of restrictions and witch hunts. Nothing makes us believe that

it will be somehow a “hot” autumn. Better to throw an unpleasant truth

in the face than continue to pretend nothing is the matter, than follow

after the umpteenth social intervention and then get frustrated at its

failure.

In spite of this sad starting set, uprisings won’t be missing. The

authoritarian turn, digital restructuration and social electrification

are already generating resistance and desperation [ed. – see How the

Left is Handing Over Protest to Fascism]. Resistance together with

desperation, the feelings of those who have their backs to the wall, can

be the next social detonator. Radical refusal of this imposed future

will be the rebels’ next move.

In this context, the most authentic expression of the class war will be

precisely nihilism, which seems a paradox. If another world is

impossible, then the only alternative you left us is precisely the lack

of alternatives, in the fury of the hunted beast. An absolute

counter-blow from this world in which we’ll be more and more crammed,

poorer and poorer, more and more ill.

However, if this reaction limits itself to this, it also risks becoming

the last backlash of humanity by now submitted to the impersonal

dynamics of electrification. In order to take this second step what is

needed is faith, a myth, an horizon of (non)sense, an horizon which is

not there, which perhaps will never be there, but only if we move

marching towards it can we overturn an already written history. A mass,

a surreal energy which can bend the linear time of capitalistic

technique. All this is profoundly human.

All this can be also done by example: by demonstrating that power is

fragile, has many weak points, can be cracked. By demonstrating through

deeds that history won’t go as they want, that there are those who are

ready to make them pay dearly.

The area of the world we are in, that governed by the Italian State, is

among other things particularly strategist in this context of

restructuration. It is not by chance that Italy is the country that

received more money in so called NextGenerationEU, not less than 210

billions over 807.

It is not a good gesture from European domination, but the conviction

that Italy is the big patient in the continent and the first country

which risks breaking the dream of a European Super State. This pile of

money is not only a help but also a chain. Europe wants to ensure that

the Italian State doesn’t collapse and at the same time to block it

firmly under its command. Today Italy’s instability is a possible,

important thorn in the side of western capitalism. Perhaps it is from

this last consideration that we should begin to act.

September 2021

[1] ed. – “The European Union constitutes a hybrid between a

technocratic and democratic model, though it cannot advocate such

hybridization, because to acknowledge a gap between democracy and

technocracy would contradict the EU’s fundamental identity. A

technocratic system leaves policy decisions to appointed experts who

climb the ranks, ostensibly based on performance; appointments are

carried out by the institution itself, as in a university, not by

consultation with the public. Most leading members of the Chinese

Communist Party, for example, are engineers and other scientists.

However, it would be naïve to ignore that they are first and foremost

politicians. They simply have to respond to internal power dynamics

rather than focusing on performing for the general public. In the United

States, the all-important Federal Reserve runs technocratically,

although it is subordinated to democratic leadership. The technocratic

elements of the European Union, such as the European Central Bank, enjoy

far more policy-making power, and are often able to dictate terms to the

democratic governments of member states. However, the EU has been

careful to take advantage of the old liberal distinction between

politics and economics: by relegating technocracy to a putatively

economic sphere, the EU maintains its obligatory commitment to

democracy” (Diagnostic of the Future).

[2] ed. – “Democracy as a governmental practice incapable of realizing

its ideals is in crisis domestically in the US and many other countries,

but democracy as a structure for interstate cooperation and capital

accumulation is also facing a crisis at the global level. Due to its

domestic crisis, democracy is failing to capture the aspirations of its

subjects. The kinds of equality it guarantees are mostly either

irrelevant or pernicious, and the benefits decrease the further down the

social ladder you go. Democratic government has failed to deliver just

societies and failed to cover up the widening gap between the haves and

the have-nots. It has ended up as another aristocratic system, no better

than the ones it replaced. This means that democracy is losing its

innovative ability to recuperate resistance. But until roughly 2008,

neoliberal elites barely cared about resistance. They thought that they

had so defeated and buried revolutionary potentials that they had no

need to pretend, no need to toss the crowd any peanuts. As the 1990s and

2000s dragged on, they became increasingly blatant in their crusade to

concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands while despoiling the

environment and marginalizing ever larger portions of the population.

Now that they have revealed their true face, it will take some time for

people to forget before they can use their siren song again, and this

lack of trust in public institutions comes at a bad time for the once

hegemonic NATO countries and their allies. This underscores why it is so

frustratingly myopic when radicals help to restore the seductive value

of democracy by talking about what “real democracy” should look like:

it’s like the story of the engineer in the French Revolution whose life

was spared at the last moment when the guillotine jammed – until he

looked up and said, “I think I see your problem” ” (Diagnostic of the

Future).

[3] ed. – “However, there is a great deal of myth around technocratic

governance. You can’t have a purely “scientific” government because

“objective interests” is a contradiction in terms. Bare empiricism

cannot recognize something as subjective as interests; this is why

scientific bodies have to fabricate discreet ideologies masquerading as

neutral presentations of fact, since there is no human activity, and

certainly no coordinated research and development, without interests.

Yet governments are nothing without interests. They are, at their most

rudimentary, the concentration of a great deal of resources, power, and

capacity for violence with the purpose of fulfilling the interests of a

specific group of people. The relationship becomes more complex as

governments become more complex, with different types of people

developing different interests with regard to the government and with

institutions producing subjectivities and therefore molding people’s

perceptions of their interests, but the centrality of interests remains,

as does the fact that hierarchical power blinds people to everything

outside of a very narrow reality, and such insensitivity combined with

such great power is a sure recipe for unprecedented stupidity. One

example of this is the Three Gorges Dam, perhaps the greatest

construction feat of the 20^(th) Century, and certainly a symbol of the

Communist Party’s ability to carry out strategic planning that

sacrifices local interests for a perceived greater good. But the dam has

caused so many demographic, environmental, and geological problems that

they may outweigh the benefits in energy production. The major

motivation for building the dam was probably hubris—the state basking in

its technocratic power—more than a measured estimation that the dam

would be worth it. […] The European Union is also experiencing problems

due to technocratic management. Aside from the temporary rebellions

caused by the heavy-handedness of the Central Bank, the EU’s number one

existential threat right now can be traced to the Dublin Regulation, an

early EU agreement, subject to little scrutiny at the time of its

signing, that stipulates that migrants can be deported back to the first

EU country they entered. The core EU states (Germany, UK, France,

Benelux [ed. – Belgium, Nederlands, Luxembourg]) habitually bully the

poorer states, protecting their key industries while dictating which

industries poorer members have to expand or abandon. And while the

Mediterranean countries were able to tolerate being turned into debt

colonies and tourist hellholes, they have not been so tolerant of the

immigration policy, which also gives leaders a scapegoat for the first

two problems. The EU’s immigration policy is an obvious dumping on

Greece, Italy, and Spain, and to a lesser extent Poland and other border

states. These are the countries that can least afford a greater burden

to their social services, as Germany siphons off better educated

immigrants and shunts the poorer ones back to the border states. This

policy has been the major cause of all the right-wing threats to the

EU’s integrity. Though it is the product of technocratic planners, it

reflects the same arrogance that accompanies all power politics. There

is also the question of resistance. The Chinese government is making the

bet that it has the technological and military power to quash all

resistance movements, permanently. If it is wrong, it risks total

political collapse and revolution. Democratic governments enjoy a

greater flexibility, because they can deflect dissident movements

towards seeking reform, which rejuvenates the system, rather than

forcing them to shut up or blow up. European democratic institutions

have proven that this pressure-valve mechanism still works, with

progressive parties forestalling the growth of revolutionary movements

in Greece, Spain, and France. […] So the technocratic model is not

clearly superior. Even if it were, Western powers would have a hard time

accepting it in more than hybrid form. This comes down to white

supremacy and its centrality to the Western paradigm. Democracy plays a

fundamental role in white supremacist mythology and the implicit claims

of white progressives to superiority. Basing the mythical roots of

democracy in ancient Greece, whites can think of themselves as the

founders of civilization and thus apt tutors to the rest of the world’s

societies. Orientalist paranoias are based on the association of Eastern

civilizations with autocracy and despotism. The Western sense of

self-worth collapses without that opposition” (Diagnostic of the

Future).

[4] ed. – “Fourth generation war, or the revolution in military affairs,

also sometimes includes reference to new types of warfare enabled by new

generations of weapons, particularly those using computers, robotics or

electronics. This is an emerging field, and hard to discuss as a result,

but it appears that the main dynamic behind such moves is the search for

a technological fix to the vulnerabilities faced by military forces:

firstly that they rely on the loyalty and at least reluctant willingness

of large numbers of soldiers to fight, and secondly that they are

vulnerable to tactics depending on the density of local social and

geographical spaces. Armies seek to get around these limits by

developing technologies which reduce the reliance on large numbers of

soldiers, which render local sites vulnerable to surveillance, and which

render popular support irrelevant to the outcome of local conflicts

(note that they seek to do so – they have not yet done so). One of the

difficulties with this discourse on technology is the nexus of interests

involved: arms companies have an interest in making new products seem

more transformative than they are, military leaders have an interest in

playing up threats and increasing military budgets, and between them,

they create a situation where political leaders are constantly urged

that they are about to fall behind without some vital new killing

machine. Supposed new breakthroughs, such as unmanned drones, heat-ray

weapons and anti-missile interception, have proved to be less effective

or less widely usable than originally intended. This qualification

aside, the state is constantly increasing its autonomy from factors of

public support and morale by relying on high-tech weaponry and

surveillance. The effect is dangerous: if the state can do what it likes

without the need to obtain popular support on the ground, it can

increasingly resort to unconstrained warfare while making fewer and

fewer concessions to local proxies or domestic populations. They also

contribute to atrocities which would not otherwise have occurred. The US

drone strikes on Pakistan, for instance, would have been technically

possible without drone technology, but probably too diplomatically risky

without Pakistani government support. The risk of an American pilot

being put on trial in the glare of the global media for violating

Pakistani airspace is the kind of demoralising image problem America

increasingly seeks to avoid. Dead villagers in isolated locales which

can be kept off CNN or passed off as dead ‘terrorists’, on the other

hand, are deemed a price worth paying.” (Behind Enemy (Thought) Lines).

[5] ed. – “The Green Pass, also known as the “European Green Passport”,

is a document gradually introduced from the summer of 2021 by the

Italian government. It is obtained only when you have obtained the

so-called “vaccination coverage”, after having received two doses of the

vaccine (or, in other and rarer cases, when you have recently recovered

from Covid-19).The document initially regulated access to public spaces,

such as bars, restaurants, cinemas or festivals, hospitals… but its

scope has gradually been extended to other aspects of social life. In

particular, starting from 15 October, the Green Pass has become

mandatory for all workers, both in the public and private sectors: under

penalty of suspension from their jobs. In his absence, workers can only,

and at their own expense, certify their condition of “negativity” using

swabs. […] Furthermore, thanks to the Green Pass, the government masks –

through an authoritarian and punitive mechanism for workers – the will

to continue its policies as in the past: cuts to healthcare, absence of

preventive and territorial medicine, absence of investments and stable

hiring in the school, no enhancement of public transport[…] It is the

very gentlemen of Confindustria who in February 2020 lobbied to keep the

factories open, who diminished the severity of the virus, who along with

the democratic mayors of Milan and Bergamo were saying that we couldn’t

stop [who] want to impose the green pass on us today” (Against the Green

Pass, against the State). Of course in parts of the UK we already have

the similar ‘Covid Pass’, but the Italian experiment could set the track

for other countries in Europe and the world.

[6] ed. – “In response to the government taking away a variety of

prisoners’ rights (including visitation and recreation), prisoners

rioted. As of March 9, more than 50 had escaped in the riots, though six

more had been killed. Criminal trials were continuing even during the

outbreak, though prisoners are prohibited from attending, supposedly out

of fear they will contract the virus and spread it to those trapped in

the prison system. Despite all the threats and risks, on the first day

of the national lockdown, a few dozen protesters converged on the empty

streets of central Rome outside the Ministry of Justice to elevate the

demands of prisoners across the country in revolt” (Against the

Coronavirus and the Opportunism of the State). In Modena and Ascoli

Piceno prisons, the guards replied with blows and gunshots, leaving

sixteen dead: hundreds of inmates from prisons all over Italy are on

trial for having risen up in those days.

[7] ed. – This prison, near Naples, saw systematic torture of hundreds

of inmates by guards (such as being made to strip, kneel and be beaten

by screws wearing helmets to conceal their identity) the day after a

riot in April 2020 as prisoners demanded face masks and COVID-19 tests.

Responsibility has been traced from the director, to the regional

director of prisons, to then Minister of Justice Bonafede. Fifty-two

prison guards have since been arrested (CCTV footage having circulated);

Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League and part of the

ruling coalition, visited the prison this June “to bring some solidarity

from the League to all prison officers”.