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Title: Illegality
Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno
Date: May 1988
Language: en
Topics: illegalism, inssurectionary, Insurrection
Source: Retrieved on 19th May 2021 from https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/rioting-illegality-insurrection-1988/
Notes: Selected article from Insurrection, an anarchist magazine edited and published by Jean Weir, Issue Four, May 1988

Alfredo M. Bonanno

Illegality

Simply spreading facts that have been distorted or concealed by the

institutional information system constitutes an “illegal” action. Not

against one precise law (except in the case of the so-called

‘State-secret’), but something that goes against the management of

social control on which the State’s very possibility of having its laws

respected is based.

A wide area of behaviour exists therefore that attracts the attention of

the State’s repressive organs just as much, if not more, than that which

clearly breaks a specific law.

It can be extremely damaging to the project of State control for certain

news to be in circulation at a given moment, at least as damaging as

actions falling into the “illegal” category.

This shows that the line between “formal” legality and that of “real”

legality fluctuates according to the repressive projects being put into

act.

It varies according to the relationship between State and capital at a

given time, and this is established less through recourse to precise

laws than through a myriad of controls and dissuasions that only evolve

into actual repressive actions in specific cases.

Relation between politics and illegality

Basically all political critique remains within the field of legality.

In fact it bolsters the social fabric and allows it to overcome certain

defects and deficiencies caused by capital’s contradictions and some

excessively rigid aspects of the State.

But no political critique can reach the total negation of State and

capital. If it did it would become a social critique – as in the case of

anarchist critique – and would cease to be a constructive contribution

to the institutional fabric, and so become “illegal”.

Periods of institutional and social equilibrium can exist that allow the

existence of a social critique of a radically anarchist nature, but that

does not alter the substantially “illegal” character of this critique.

On the other hand, even behaviour that comes heavily under the

jurisdiction of the penal code can be considered differently in the

light of a relationship of a political kind. For example, the armed

struggle of a combatant party is undoubtedly an illegal action in the

formal sense of the word, but at a given moment it can become functional

to the State and capital’s projects of recuperation and restructuring.

It ensues that an agreement between combatant party and State is not

impossible.

This is not as absurd as it seems. The combatant party puts itself

within the logic of destabilising the existing ruling power for the

construction of a future power that is different in form but identical

in substance.

In this project, as soon as it is realised that there is no outlet for a

military confrontation, they make a deal. The amnesty that is being

talked about so much in Italy today with the Red Brigades is one such

deal.

As we can see, while simple anarchist critique – radical and total in

content – always remains “illegal”, even the armed struggle of the

combatant parties can at a given moment enter the domain of “legality”.

That clearly demonstrates the “fluctuating” nature of legality and the

State’s capacity to adapt this to levels of social control.

The exercise of control

The instruments of repression only use brute force minimally. They

function preventively to a far greater extent as instruments of social

control.

This is applied through a series of provisions for all the forms of

potential illegality and deviant behaviour.

Potential illegality comes within the law today, but the farseeing eye

of the censor looks ahead to foresee its possible outcome. In the same

way social deviance today might be a possible object of study or

surprise, tomorrow it could become a concrete manifestation of social

subversion.