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Title: The moral fracture Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: Mars 1988 Language: en Topics: Insurrection, morality, moralism, insurrectionary anarchism, Edizioni Anarchismo Source: https://neph.substack.com/p/the-moral-fracture-bonanno Notes: Translated by @antihornyneph. Original italian text, La frattura morale, was retrieved from the collection A mano armata, Edizioni Anarchismo.
That an action is considered “just" is not a sufficient element of
judgment for it to be put in action, executed. For this to happen other
elements are necessary, some of which, like the final moral
consideration, are completely alien to the objective basis and justice
of the action in itself. This can be seen in the difficulty that every
comrade comes across in the moment they find themselves undertaking
actions that at the light of sole logic seem exemplary. It is, like I
will try to demonstrate here, of a moral obstacle that must be overcome,
an obstacle that leads to the creation of a real moral "fracture", with
consequences not always easy to foresee.
We have been sustaining for a long time, with multiple other comrades,
the uselessness of mass movements, pacific and demonstrative. Instead,
alongside movements of mass, organized in an insurrectionary fashion, we
advocate for the possibility (the necessity, even), of small destructive
actions, direct attacks against the structures of capital responsible
for the current situation of exploitation and genocide at a global
scale. Putting aside discussions on method and political validity, it
seems useful to reflect a little on the diverse personal disposition of
said actions.
Deep down, in each and every one of us, no matter how many theoretical
analyses we've done, ghosts remain: someone's property belongs to them.
Others could be the someone's life, God, civilization of behaviors, sex,
tollerance for other's opinion, and so on. We all are, to limit
ourselves to knowledge, against property, but, the moment we reach out a
hand to attack it, inside of us an alarm sets off. Centuries of moral
conditioning act unconsciously and trigger two reactions, equal and
contrary. On one hand, the shiver of the forbidden, which brings many
comrades to senseless robberies often beyond immediate and inevitable
need; on the other hand, the discomfort for an "immoral" behavior.
Putting that shiver aside, which does not interest me and that I will
gladly leave to those who enjoy such things, to those who want to insist
on this “discomfort”. The thing is that we are all reduced to the status
of animals in the pack. It is not here the case to quote and I do not
accept any authority. The matter is obvious. The morality that everyone
(“everyone”, so even those who negate it theoretically and then find
alibis of every type to not turn this negation into praxis) shares is
that “altruism”, gentlemanly in the behavior, tolerant in the relations,
egalitarian and levelling in the utopias. And the territories of this
moral are yet to be discovered. How many are the comrades who proudly
declare to have visited some of them and then would back down horrified
before the breasts of their own sister ? Maybe many, certainly not few.
And we are always prisoners of an idea of slavery, said moral, when we
justify before ourselves (and before the tribunal of history) our attack
against private property, claiming that the expropriators shall be
expropriated. In this way, we confirm the "eternal" validity of morality
of our previous masters, deferring to those who will come later the task
of judging whether we can or cannot consider expropriators those in
whose hands we have put back what we have personally expropriated.
Justification after justification, we almost build back the church. I
have said "almost", because deep down we do notice, but we are scared of
it.
When we take away the property of others, this fact has a social
meaning, it constitutes a rebellion, and precisely for this reason, the
possessors of property that are attacked must be representatives of the
class that detains property and not simple possessors of something. We
are not aesthetes of the nihilist act, for which it would be ok to
deprive charity from the dish of the poor because that "is" property.
But the act of expropriation has a meaning precisely in its class
context, not in the "wrong" behavior of someone we sought to expropriate
has had in the past. Otherwise, we'd have to exclude because of
legitimacy the capitalist who pays his employees according to the
syndical rate and doesn't deprive them of anything according to the law,
moreover to not sell at exorbitant prices and does not commit usury. Why
should we even care about such things ? The same problem emerges when we
talk about "destructive" actions. Many comrades cannot stay at peace.
Why these actions ? What is their finality ? What is their validity ?
They do not cause utility to us, only damage to others. Attacking, for
example, just for the love of discussion, a corporation which provides
weapons to South Africa or funds the racist regime of Israel or projects
nuclear plants or makes electronic devices that are then used to better
address traditional weapons, and many other similar activities, the
emphasis is not so much put on the specific responsibility of who we are
attacking, as it is in its class position. Specific responsibilities are
elements of judgment for the strategic and political choice, class
collocation is the only element of judgment for the ethical choice. This
way we can shed some light. The moral basis of the action resides
entirely in the class difference, in the diverse affinity of two
components of society that cannot be mixed or make pacts and whose
existence will end with the destruction of either of them. The political
and strategic basis instead determines a series of considerations that
can also be contradictory.
Every objection aforementioned is obviously traceable at this second
aspect and does not influence the moral basis. But, without even
noticing, it is in the territory of the decision that many of us find
difficulty. Deep down, mass movements, pacific (or almost), simply
declarative of intents “against”, was a whole other thing. Even the
extremely violent clashes against the police are another matter. There
is a halfway place between us and the "enemy" object, a reality which
lets us save our moral alibi. We felt sure to be in the "right", even
when we had - in the dimension of democratic dissent - positions not
shared by the mass of protestors. Even when we broke some windows,
things were always kept in a state that could be repaired. Directly
facing the attack, we, all alone, or with other comrades that could
never give us that psychological "blanket" like the one we received so
easily inside "the mass", things are different. We are, alone, to decide
our attack against the institution. We don't have mediators, we don't
have alibis, we don't have excuses. We either attack or back off. We
either accept to the end the logic of class conflict like an irreducible
contrast without solutions, or we go back to compromise and linguistical
and moral messes. If we reach our hand, deteriorate someone else's
property, but always property of the class enemy - we have to take on
all the responsibilities, without finding any excuses in the alleged
conditions of the collective situation in its entirety. That is to say
we cannot defer the moral judgment, relative to the necessity of
attacking and hitting the enemy, at what the others think, who
participate altogether in determining "the collective situation". Let me
explain. It is not that I am opposed to mass effort, counter informative
and preparatory, to those intermediate clashes that still have to exist
in conditions of exploitation and misery. I am against a symbolic
setting (exclusively symbolic) of these conflicts. They have to be
directed at obtaining, even if partial, concrete, immediate and visible
results, but with the precondition of an insurrectionary method, that
is, a method based on the refusal of representation, on the autonomy of
intervention, on permanent conflict and on autonomous basic structures.
What I disagree with is the stubbornness of some on the necessity to
stop here, when they do not declare to stop before, at a simple
wrestling of counter information and of denunciation, orchestrated and
rythmed at the pace of oppression.
It is possible, necessary even, to do something else, and this
something, at the moment, in a phase of violent and swift restoration,
it seems possible to individuate in direct action, scattered, towards
small objectives of the class enemy, objectives that are well visible on
the territory (and when they are not visible, the work of prior counter
information can make them visible with some effort). I don't think there
would be anarchist comrades who would be against these practices, at
least in principle. There could be those (and there are) who declare
themselves as fundamentally against a general consideration of the
social and political situation, because they don't perceive in it a
constructive massive freeing, and I can understand that. But there
cannot be a priori disapproval. The thing is that those who distanciate
from these practices are by far less than those who, even if accepting
them, do not perpetuate them. How to explain all this ? I think it can
be explain with this "moral fracture" that the overstepping of the
threshold of the other's “right” entails in many comrades, like me and
many others, educated since infancy to thank and to forgive continually.
We often talk about the liberation of the instincts and — without really
having a clear mind - we talk about "living one's true life" (complex
argument which deserves an in depth analysis). We talk of rejecting the
illusory ideals transmitted to us by the bourgeoisie in it's victorious
moment, at least of rejecting the forged terms by which these ideals
were imposed on us through the current morality. Finally we talk of the
real satisfaction of our needs, which are not only the so called primary
needs of simple physical survival.
Well, I think that for all of this beautiful program, the words won't be
enough. When we stayed still on the shore of the old class conception,
based on the desire of "reappropriation" of what was unjustly taken away
from us (the product of our work), we were able to "speak" properly
(even though we'd then badly ramble) of needs, of equality, of communism
and even of anarchy. Today, when this phase of simple reappropriation
has been quickly modified under our very eyes by capital itself, we
can't use the same words, the same concepts. The time of words is slowly
coming to an end. And every day we notice to be tragically backwards, to
be enclosed in a ghetto of discourse in which we linger to chat on
arguments nowadays void of real revolutionary interest. And in the
meanwhile people travel rapidly towards other meanings and other
perspectives, phonily pushed by the improbable but efficient insistence
of power. The enormous work of liberating the new man from ethics, this
gigantic weight that was constructed at its time in the laboratories of
capital and smuggled among the ranks of the exploited, this work
practically hasn't even begun.