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Title: Why Insurrection? Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Date: 1982 Language: en Topics: anarchist movement, insurrection, insurrectionist, revolution Source: http://pantagruel-provocazione.blogspot.com/search/label/Why%20Insurrection Notes: Translated and first published in English in Insurrection 1982.
Our task as anarchists, our main preoccupation and greatest desire, is
that of seeing the social revolution realized: terrible upheaval of men
and institutions which finally succeeds in putting an end to
exploitation and establishing the reign of justice. For we anarchists
the revolution is our guide, our constant point of reference, no matter
what we are doing or what problem we are concerned with. The anarchy we
want will not be possible without the painful revolutionary break. If we
want to avoid turning this into simply a dream we must struggle to
destroy the State and exploiters through revolution.
But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of
reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built
daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating
characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more
modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the most
exploited of the masses and the most politically sensitized minority,
opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider strata
of exploited in a flux of rebellion which could lead to the revolution
but could also end up in the establishment of a new power or a bloody
confirmation of the old one. In the case of the latter, although the
insurrection begins as a liberating uprising it concludes bitterly with
the re-establishment of State and private dominion. That is the natural
way of things. Insurrection is the indispensable element of the
revolution without which, without a long and painful series of which,
there will be no revolution and power will reign undisturbed in the
fullness of its might. We are not to be discouraged. Once again,
obtusely, we are preparing and struggling for the insurrection that will
come about, a small part of the great future mosaic of the revolution.
Certainly, capitalism contains deep contradictions that push it towards
processes of adjustment and evolution aimed at avoiding the periodic
crises that afflict it; but we cannot cradle ourselves in waiting for
these crises. When they happen they will be welcomed if they respond to
the requirements for accelerating the elements of the insurrectional
process. In the meantime, for our part, we are preparing ourselves and
the exploited masses for insurrection.
In this sense we consider the time is always ripe for the next
insurrection. Better a failed insurrection than a hundred vacillations
which cause the failure of a hundred occasions from which it might have
been possible for the final revolution to break out. We are therefore
against those who say that the recent defeat of the revolutionary
movement should make us reflect and conclude that we should be more
prudent. We consider that the time for insurrection has come precisely
because it is always time to fight, whereas procrastinating is useful
only capital.
To prepare for insurrection means to prepare the subjective conditions
(personal and material) that consent a specific anarchist minority to
create the indispensable circumstances for the development of the
insurrectional process. Although insurrection is a mass phenomenon, and
would risk aborting immediately if it were not, its beginning is always
the result of the action of a decided minority, a handful of brave ones
capable of attacking the nerve centres of the partial objective to be
reached.
We must be very clear on this point. The tasks of the anarchist struggle
against power can be extremely varied, but all — in our opinion — must
be coherently directed towards preparing the insurrection. Some comrades
may want to dedicate themselves to theoretical clarification, economic
analyses, philosophy or historical research but all this must be
immediately functional to the preparation of that minority capable of
realizing the insurrection, acting in such a way that the masses
participate as widely as possible or that at least that they do not
hinder it.
Some comrades might consider the insurrection realizable in the near
future (not put off to infinity), others that it can be realized right
away: this can determine a division of tasks, in the sense that the
former will be inclined to interest themselves more in the problems of
revolutionary culture, but their final aim must be the same. Otherwise
the rebel forces, who need precisely clarity to organize action and not
chatter to put it off, would be lulled to sleep. The minority’s task of
preparation is therefore twofold: on the one hand that of being
sensitized to problems at the level of the class struggle that are not
only military and political but principally of a social and economic
nature. Following that, concrete, specific and detailed preparation with
the insurrection in view.
Once again, we insist: the preparation of the wide masses can in no way
be one of the preconditions of the revolution. If we were to wait for
all the masses to be prepared for this grandiose task we would never do
anything. We are convinced that the preparation of the great masses will
more than anything be a consequence of the revolution, and perhaps not
the most immediate one. On the contrary, the revolutionary anarchist
minority must be prepared for the historical task awaiting them. Let us
also eliminate the argument of “purity.” We do not only participate in
insurrections led by anarchists but also in all the other insurrections
that have the characteristics of the people in revolt, even if for some
reason it is our future enemies, the stalinists, that are leading them.
In that case we should try to conquer a better place for ourselves in
the struggle itself, during the events, defending as far as possible our
program of total liberation which we shall counterpose to the banally
economic ones of the authoritarians. It will be the insurrection itself
to verify the rest.
The insurrection is a task to be accomplished right away. But with what
concrete means? We have seen that the specific minority must take charge
of the initial attack, surprising power and determining a situation of
confusion which could put the forces of repression into difficulty and
make the exploited masses reflect upon whether to intervene or not. But
what do we mean by specific minority? Perhaps the revolutionary movement
in the wide sense? These questions require a clear answer.
Let us begin with the widest hypothesis. From the point of view we are
interested in, the revolutionary movement as a whole cannot be
considered a specific minority capable of realizing the insurrection
together. It presents a whole series of contradictions, which in turn
mirror the contradictions of the society we are living in. To the
ideological model corresponds organisational groupings that end up
putting theoretical prejudice before the immediate interests of
liberation. Moreover, the analytical formula of a large part of the
revolutionary movement are of an authoritarian character, therefore
envisage the conquest of the State and not its immediate destruction.
They foresee its claimed use in an anti-bourgeois sense and not its
disappearance. This part of the revolutionary movement, therefore,
clearly have no interest in preparing for insurrection right away as
they delude themselves that time is on their side, crumbling away the
supporting base of capitalism and preparing the revolutionary situation
without the dangerous anti-chamber of the insurrection. We would thus
find this section of the revolutionary movement to take an
anti-insurrectional position, going as far (as we have seen in many
cases recently) as attacking and denouncing the anarchist comrades who
support the opposite thesis. We conclude at this point that it is not
possible to widen the concept of the specific minority. Hypothetically,
when the stalinists unleash their insurrectional process, either because
they are convinced that the revolutionary conditions are ripe or because
they are drawn by the solicitations of the base who are not interested
in ideological refinements, then our task will be that of participating
in the insurrection with all our forces, to fight in the concrete field
of struggle and find there the necessary space for our ideas. In the
case of the contrary where it is we who are the initiators and proposers
of the insurrection, we might quite possibly find this part of the
revolutionary movement to be in an opposite position or, at best, in the
position of waiting.
Let us now see if the anarchist movement as a whole can be considered a
specific minority capable of eventually realizing insurrection. The
conclusion is negative yet again. The contradictions within the movement
are immense and mainly due to the fears and restraints which a
restricted group of pinchbecks have carefully disseminated within it.
The movement today resembles an old coat covered in patches, which only
with a great deal of good will remembers its past splendours. The flight
towards hypothetical forms of elitist interventions such as the attempt
to impose pre-constituted analyses or catechisms ready for use, or when
it claimed to supply the whole movement with the final analysis to be
put into practice right away, has proved a failure. The same flight
backwards towards anarcho-syndicalism which could not fail to leave both
the exploited as a whole and the revolutionary comrades disappointed.
And then the wider and ascertained politics of the ostrich, of hiding
behind the fear of provocation in order to do nothing, only to intervene
after the event, always with the scales ready to weigh, judge and
condemn those few comrades who were doing anything at all, even if
circumscribed and limited. From this part of the movement there remains
but the name, the symbol, a few old comrades, a few young comrades old
before their time, a few optimists who never lose hope, parchment
mummies in their little shop. The great number of active comrades who
form the revolutionary part of the anarchist movement and who are ready
to begin the struggle must not be discouraged by Cassandras and birds of
ill omen. Action is the measure for distinguishing beyond symbols and
declarations of principle.
It is precisely the comrades that are available for action who make up
the specific minority. They will be the ones to prepare and realize the
insurrection in the ways and forms which the experience of the
revolutionary struggle as a whole has transmitted to us, taking into
consideration the recent modifications of the State and the bosses. The
method cannot fail to take account of minimal organizational forms of
the base which will have to solve the various problems that will arise
during the insurrectional preparation. In these organizational forms the
responsibility for the work to be done must obviously fall on the
revolutionary anarchist comrades and cannot be left to goodwill or
improvisation. At this stage the very rules of survival impose the
indispensable conditions of security and caution. The urgency of action
puts an end to pointless chatter.
There is more to be said of the actions carried out in minimal
structures of intervention by the specific minority as just identified.
These actions cannot be considered purely from the point of view of
“propaganda by the deed.” Their aim, in fact, is not that of giving an
example or of influencing a wide range of sympathizers. Certainly this
empirical aspect also exists, bearing in mind that the maximum alliance
that will guarantee the success of future plans is that of the masses in
revolt, but this aspect is easily recuperated by the mechanisms of
capitalist information which transform it into merchandise, retailing it
through the newspapers, television, cinema, books, etc. The truth is
that the specific minority themselves, through realizing action, have
the possibility of making something clear to others if they understand
something themselves in the moment of the action itself. Action
therefore means education through action, and education of oneself and
others. If we think that we know everything and put our trust
exclusively in our own knowledge at the moment of action, we are putting
a repetitive mechanism into the hands of capitalism, one that inserts
itself perfectly within the generalized mechanism of capitalist
production which, above all else, is repetition to infinity. The action
of the specific minority must therefore consist not of an interruption
of learning at one’s own cost what the reality of the struggle is, but a
gradual and complete transformation of one’s own learning in showing
others how one learns to understand the reality of the struggle. If the
action of the specific minority gives an example of anything it gives
the example of how one learns to single out and strike the enemy, and
not how one teaches. The right action at the right time becomes the
substance of the individual and specific attack and symbol of all the
possible future attacks, and this unfurling of a moment which has not
yet reached maturity is the maximum level of intervention which the
minority reaches operating in the reality of the struggle. The class
struggle characterizes the conflict in act and is the element that
allows the concrete action of the specific minority. Within it action is
continually transforming itself from attempt to understand to attempt to
teach. By cancelling the first moment everything drowns in repitition,
by cancelling the second, everything drowns in indecision.
In the continual flux of the class struggle one finds everything,
teachers and pupils. In it everything finds its right place within the
relationships of strength. Whoever has not learned from their own
mistakes can demonstrate nothing to others, and an eminent way of not
learning is precisely by ceasing to learn, of thinking that the time has
come to teach and that is all. Through the filter of the class struggle
the memory of the revolution unfolds slowly, becoming something which
can be handed down. In action this memory is handed down concretely and
becomes perceptible to others at the moment in which it is reflection
and criticism for the person who carries out the action himself.
Each individual minimal structure of intervention that acts within the
specific minority runs the risk of placing itself in contrast with the
revolutionary movement as a whole and sometimes with the whole mass of
the exploited, if the sense of one’s action is not posed correctly.
Taking ourselves as an isolated part in the face of so many references
we convince ourselves that the whole movement and the exploited, their
sort and the sort of the revolution, depends on us; we expect who knows
what from what we are doing; we remain frustrated by the superficiality
of the response and the general incomprehension. The revolutionary
struggle is like a stormy sea against which to struggle would be vain
folly, it is necessary to adapt ourselves to the direction of the waves,
to swim sometimes strongly and sometimes lightly, to grasp the impetus
of life which the sea hides within it to reach the desired goal. It is
in this difficult art of swimming that the political meaning of minority
action is hidden. The latter puts emphasis on its class significance,
exploding suddenly as a fruit of the revolutionary memory and as
indication for the struggle now in act.
We think, therefore, that if they are correctly chosen the action of
these minimal structures are indispensable for the preparation of the
whole insurrectional process, which we consider to be the immediate task
of all anarchists and which cannot be postponed. Far from there being a
contrast between the two things — as some have tried to point out to us
— we consider that they are complementary and indissociable. The basic
task of the minimal structure of intervention sums up all the work of an
organisational and general nature of the specific minority as a whole.
Once again the insurrection will be the acid test, both cause and
effect, of the changing of the power relationship that leads to the
opening of the doors of the revolution.