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Title: Insurrectionary Anarchy Date: 2003 Language: en Topics: insurrectionary anarchy, organizing, post-left Source: Retrieved on 2020-05-02 from https://archive.org/details/Insurrectionary/
“From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the
point that must be reached.”
– Franz Kafka.
For us anarchists the questions of how to act and how to organise are
intimately linked. And it is these two questions, not the question of
the desired form of a future society, that provide us with the most
useful method for understanding the various forms of anarchism that
exist.
Insurrectionary anarchism is one such form, although it is important to
stress that insurrectionary anarchists don’t form one unified block, but
are extremely varied in their perspectives. Insurrectionary anarchism is
not an ideological solution to social problems, nor a commodity on the
capitalist market of ideologies and opinions. Rather it is an on-going
practice aimed at putting an end to the domination of the state and the
continuance of capitalism, which requires analysis and discussion to
advance. Historically, most anarchists, except those who believed that
society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state behind,
have believed that some sort of insurrectionary activity would be
necessary to radically transform society. Most simply, this means that
the state has to be knocked out of existence by the exploited and
excluded, thus anarchists must attack: waiting for the state to
disappear is defeat.
Here we spell out some implications that we and some other
insurrectionary anarchists have drawn from this general problem: if the
state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its existence?
Insurrectionary anarchism is primarily a practice, and focuses on the
organisation of attack. Thus, the adjective ‘insurrectionary’ does not
indicate a specific model of the future. Anarchists who believe we must
go through an insurrectionary period to rid the world of the
institutions of domination and exploitation, moreover, take a variety of
positions on the shape of a future society – they could be
anarcho-communist, individualist or primitivist, for example. Many
refuse to offer a specific, singular model of the future at all,
believing that people will choose a variety of social forms to organise
themselves when given the chance. They are critical of groups or
tendencies that believe they are ‘carriers of the truth’ and try to
impose their ideological and formal solution to the problem of social
organisation. Instead, many insurrectionary anarchists believe that it
is through self-organisation in struggle that people will learn to live
without institutions of domination.
There is also another, more specific usage of the term ‘insurrection’ –
one that comes from the distinction Max Stirner, a 19th century German
philosopher and individualist, drew between insurrection and
revolution.[1] To Stirner, revolution implied a transition between two
systems, whereas insurrection is an uprising that begins from an
individual’s discontent with their own life and through it the
individual does not seek to build a new system but to create the
relations they desire. Both of these general conceptions of insurrection
have informed insurrectionary anarchism.
In this article we will first explore some of the general implications
of these two conceptions of insurrection. Then, as these ideas have
grown out of the practice of struggle and from concrete experiences, we
will explain these ideas further by putting them within the historical
context of their development. While insurrectionary anarchists are
active in many parts of the world at the moment, we are particularly
influenced by the activities and writings of those in Italy and Greece,
which are also the countries where insurrectionary anarchists are the
most active. The current, extremely varied Italian insurrectionary
anarchist scene, which centres around a number of occupied spaces and
publications, exists as an informal network carrying on their struggle
outside of all formal organisations. This tendency has taken on the
‘insurrectionary anarchist’ label to distinguish itself from the Italian
Anarchist Federation; a platformist organisation which officially reject
individual acts of revolt, favouring only mass action and an educational
and evangelistic practice centring around propaganda in
‘non-revolutionary periods’ – and from the Italian libertarian
municipalists[2] who take a largely reformist approach to ‘anarchist’
activity.
The state will not wither away, as it seems many anarchists have come to
believe – some are entrenched in a position of waiting, while others
even openly condemn the acts of those for whom the creation of the new
world depends on the destruction of the old. Attack is the refusal of
mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation and compromise in
struggle. It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that
we will open the path to insurrection – although obviously analysis and
discussion have a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches
waiting; in acting one learns to act. Yet it is important to note that
the force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure for
evaluating the importance of a generalised revolt is not the armed
clash, but, on the contrary, the extent of the paralysis of the economy,
of normality. If students continue to study, workers and office
employees to work, the unemployed to solely strive for employment, then
no change is possible. We could look to the examples of May 1968 in
Paris, Italy in the 1970s, or the more recent insurrection in Albania
for inspiration.[3]
As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference; no
matter what we are doing or with what problem we are concerned. But the
revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference, it
should not be thought of as inhabiting an abstract future. Precisely
because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more
modest attempts that 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 and excluded
of society and the most politically aware minority opens the way to the
possible involvement of increasingly wider sections of the exploited in
a flux of rebellion which could lead to revolution. Over the last year,
we have seen the beginning of this process at work in Argentina. Yet
struggles must be developed both in the intermediate and long term. In
other words, it is still possible and necessary to intervene in
intermediate struggles, that is, in struggles that are circumscribed,
even locally, with precise objectives that are born from some specific
problem. This may be direct actions to resist the building of military
bases or prisons; fights against the institution of property, such as
squatting and rent strikes; or attacks on particular capitalist
projects, such as high-speed railways, genetically modified crops or
power transmission lines. These should not be considered to be of
secondary importance; such kinds of struggles also disturb capitalism’s
universal project.
For these events to build, they must spread; insurrectionary anarchism,
therefore, places particular importance on the circulation and spread of
action, not managed revolt, for no army or police force is able to
control the generalised circulation of such autonomous activity. Paying
attention to how struggles have spread has led many anarchists to aim
their critical focus on the question of organisation, for whereas
centralised struggle is controlled and limited (one only needs to think
of the examples of the many revolutionary movements in Latin America
that until recently were controlled by ‘The Party’ to understand this),
autonomous struggle has the capacity to spread capillary-style.
Therefore, what the system is afraid of is not just these acts of
sabotage themselves, but also them spreading socially. Uncontrollability
itself is the strength of the insurrection. Every proletarianised
individual who disposes of even the most modest means can draw up his or
her objectives, alone or along with others. It is materially impossible
for the state and capital to police the whole social terrain. Anyone who
really wants to contest the network of control can make their own
theoretical and practical contribution as they see fit. There is no need
to fit themselves within the structured roles of formally organised
revolt (revolt that is circumscribed and controlled by an organisation).
The appearance of the first broken links of social control coincides
with the spreading of acts of sabotage. The anonymous practice of social
self-liberation could spread to all fields, breaking the codes of
prevention put into place by power.
In moments when larger scale insurrections are not taking place, small
actions – which require unsophisticated means that are available to all
and thus are easily reproducible – are by their very simplicity and
spontaneity uncontrollable. They make a mockery of even the most
advanced technological developments in counter-insurgency. In the United
States, a string of arsons of environmentally damaging projects, some
claimed under the name Earth Liberation Front, have spread across the
country due largely to the simplicity of the technique. In Italy,
sabotage of high speed railways has spread uncontrollably, again because
anyone can plan and carry out their own action without needing a large
organisation with charters and constitutions, complex techniques or
sophisticated knowledge.
In addition, contrary to the mathematicians of the grand revolutionary
parties, it is never possible to see the outcome of a specific struggle
in advance. Even a limited struggle can have the most unexpected
consequences. The passage from the various insurrections – limited and
circumscribed – to revolution can never be guaranteed in advance by any
method, nor can one know in advance that present actions will not lead
to a future insurrectionary moment.
As insurrectionary anarchism is a developing practice – not an
ideological model of the future or a determinist history –
insurrectionary anarchists do not take the work of any single
revolutionary theoretician as their central doctrine: thus
insurrectionary anarchists are not Bakuninists, for example, and feel no
need to defend all his writings and actions. Yet Bakunin was
historically important to the development of an anarchism that focused
its force in insurrection. Unlike Marx, who built his support in the
First International, mostly within the central executive structure,
Bakunin worked to build support for co-ordinated action though
autonomous insurrections at the base, especially in Southern Europe. And
since Bakunin’s time insurrectionary anarchists have been concentrated
in Southern Europe.
In the responses to the Paris Commune of 1871 and in the conflicts of
the First International one can see the formation of insurrectionary
anarchism’s basic concepts. Whereas Marx believed that the new political
forms of the Commune (forms of democracy and representation) would
advance the social revolution, Bakunin argued that political and
organisational forms had held the social revolution back. Also
influential to later insurrectionaries, Bakunin argued that it was one’s
actions that would spread the revolution, not words. In 1871 Marx and
his supporters allied themselves with the followers of Blanqui – from
whom the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” came – to cut
Bakunin and his supporters out of a special conference of the
International held in London. Bakuninists held their own conference in
Sonvilier, arguing that hierarchical and political means could never be
used to gain social revolutionary ends. As the Sonvilier circular
states, it was impossible “for a free and egalitarian society to come
out of an authoritarian organisation.” Marx pejoratively termed the
Sonvilier conference “anarchist,” and those in Sonvilier called the
London conference “Marxist” to mark its authoritarian attempt to control
the International. In 1872, Marx succeeded in expelling Bakunin from the
International and requiring all member organisations to advocate the
conquest of political power as the necessary prerequisite to revolution.
Another issue that has caused a lot of debate within anarchist circles
is the supposed contradiction between individual and social struggle:
again, this is a question of the organisation of struggle. This is a
debate that has gone on and still goes on within the insurrectionary
anarchist circles; Renzo Novatore stood for individual revolt, Errico
Malatesta for social struggle, whilst Luigi Galleani believed there was
no contradiction between the two.
Novatore, an Italian anarchist who died in a shoot-out with the police
in 1922, wrote, “Anarchy is not a social form, but a method of
individuation. No society will concede to me more than a limited freedom
and a well-being that it grants to each of its members.”[4] Malatesta,
also an Italian and an active insurrectionary his whole life, was an
anarcho-communist for whom anarchism was based in the organised attack
of collective struggle, especially of the labour movement; yet, he was
still very critical of any form of organisation that could become
authoritarian. This was the basis of his 1927 disagreement with the
Russian Platformists – who attempted to create a centralised and unitary
revolutionary organisation.
Malatesta critiqued the proposal of the Platformists – who put forward
their program in response to the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia –
for attempting to discipline and synthesise struggle within a single
organisation. In his critique of the proposal he stated, “in order to
achieve their ends, anarchist organisations must in their constitution
and operation, remain in harmony with the principles of anarchism; that
is, they must know how to blend the free action of individuals with the
necessity and the joy of co-operation which serve to develop the
awareness and initiative of their members.” While many social anarchists
of today critique insurrectionary anarchists by claiming that they are
against organisation as such, it is worth noting that most social
anarchists and anarcho-communists active in the beginning of the last
century did not view organisation and individualism as a contradiction,
and that few anarchists have ever been against organisation as such.
Maltesta’s 1927 statement on the subject bears repeating: “Judging by
certain polemics it would seem that there are anarchists who spurn any
form of organisation; but in fact the many, too many, discussions on
this subject, even when obscured by questions of language or poisoned by
personal issues, are concerned with the means and not the actual
principle of organisation. Thus it happens that when those comrades who
sound the most hostile to organisation want to really do something they
organise just like the rest of us and often more effectively. The
problem, I repeat, is entirely one of means.”[5]
Galleani, who emigrated to the United States in 1901 after facing arrest
in Europe edited one of the most important US Italian anarchist
journals, Cronaca Sovversiva, and was critical of formal organisation.
In his articles and speeches he merged Kropotkin’s idea of mutual aid
with unfettered insurgency, defending communist anarchism against
authoritarian socialism and reformism, speaking of the value of
spontaneity, variety, autonomy and independence, direct action and
self-determination. Galleani and his followers were deeply suspicious of
formal organisations, seeing them as likely to turn into hierarchical,
authoritarian organisations. The critique of formal organisation has
become a central concern of most insurrectionary anarchists ever since.
Galleani saw no contradiction between individual and social struggle,
nor did he see a contradiction between communism and anarchism. He was
firmly against authoritarian communism, which he saw as growing out of
collectivist ideologies – the idea that production and consumption must
be organised into a collective in which individuals must participate.
Galleani is one of main influences on those who today call themselves
insurrectionary anarchists.
struggles that are appearing spontaneously everywhere, turning them into
mass insurrections – that is to say actual revolutions.
useful to nobody but the managers of class domination.
structures, individuals and organisations of capital, state and all
forms of oppression.
compromise with power in their belief that the revolutionary struggle is
impossible at the present time.
if the time is not ripe.
rather than wait until conditions make its transformation possible.
and insurrectionists.
by Alfredo Bonanno.
The debate about the relation between individual and social struggle,
between individualism and communism, continues today. Some
insurrectionary anarchists argue that insurrection begins with the
desire of individuals to break out of constrained and controlled
circumstances, the desire to re-appropriate the capacity to create one’s
own life as one sees fit. This requires that they overcome the
separation between themselves and their conditions of existence – food,
housing, etc. Where the few, the privileged, control the conditions of
existence, it is not possible for most individuals to truly determine
their existence on their own terms. Individuality can only flourish
where there is equality of access to the conditions of existence. This
equality of access is communism; what individuals do with that access is
up to them and those around them. Therefore, there is no equality or
identity of individuals implied in true communism. What forces us into
an identity or an equality of being are the social roles laid upon us by
our present system. Thus there is no contradiction between individuality
and communism.
The insurrectional anarchist project grows out of the individual’s
desire to determine how one will live one’s life and with whom one will
carry out this project of self-determination. But this desire is
confronted on all sides by the existing social order, a reality in which
the conditions of our existence and the social relationships through
which our lives are created have already been determined in the
interests of a ruling class who benefit from the activities that we are
compelled to do for our own survival.
Thus the desire for individual self-determination and self-realisation
leads to the necessity of a class analysis and class struggle. But the
old workerist conceptions, which perceived the industrial working class
as the central subject of revolution, are not adequate to this task.
What defines us as a class is our dispossession, the fact that the
current system of social relationships steals away our capacity to
determine the conditions of our existence. Class struggle exists in all
of the individual and collective acts of revolt in which small portions
of our daily life are taken back or small portions of the apparatus of
domination and exploitation are obstructed, damaged or destroyed. In a
significant sense, there are no isolated, individual acts of revolt. All
such acts are responses to the social situation, and many involve some
level of complicity, indicating some level of collective struggle.
Consider, for example, the spontaneous, mostly unspoken organisation of
the theft of goods and the sabotage of the work process that goes on at
most workplaces; this informal co-ordination of subversive activity
carried out in the interest of each individual involved is a central
principle of collective activity for insurrectionary anarchists, because
the collectivity exists to serve the interests and desires of each of
the individuals in re-appropriating their lives and often carries within
it a conception of ways of relating free of exploitation and domination.
But even lone acts of revolt have their social aspects and are part of
the general struggle of the dispossessed. Through a critical attitude
towards the struggles of the past, the changes in the forces of
domination and their variation between different places, and the
development of present struggles, we can make our attack more strategic
and targeted. Such a critical attitude is what allows struggles to
circulate. Being strategic, however, does not mean there is only one way
to struggle; clear strategies are necessary to allow different methods
to be used in a co-ordinated and fruitful way. Individual and social
struggle are neither contradictory, nor identical.
In Italy, the failure of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s led
some to reassess the revolutionary movement and others to abandon it all
together. During the ’70s, many Leninist groups concluded that
capitalism was in the throes of its final crisis, and they moved to
armed struggle. These groups acted as professional revolutionaries,
reducing their lives to a singular social role. But by the 1980s they
came to believe that the time for revolutionary social struggle had
ended, and they thus called for an amnesty for movement prisoners from
the ’70s, some even going as far as to disassociate themselves from the
struggle. This separated them from insurrectionary anarchists who
believed that a revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism and the
state still continued, for no determinist history could name the correct
moment to rebel. In fact, determinist history often becomes an excuse
for not acting and only pushes a possible rupture with the present
further into the impossible.
Much of the Italian insurrectionary anarchist critique of the movements
of the ’70s focused on the forms of organisation that shaped the forces
of struggle and out of this a more developed idea of informal
organisation grew. A critique of the authoritarian organisations of the
’70s, whose members often believed they were in a privileged position to
struggle as compared to the proletariat as a whole, was further refined
in the struggles of the ’80s, such as the early 1980s struggle against a
military base that was to house nuclear weapons in Comiso, Sicily.
Anarchists were very active in that struggle, which was organised into
self-managed leagues. These ad hoc, autonomous leagues took three
general principles to guide the organisation of struggle: permanent
conflict, self-management and attack. Permanent conflict meant that the
struggle would remain in conflict with the construction of the base
until it was defeated without mediating or negotiating. The leagues were
self-generated and self-managed; they refused permanent delegation of
representatives and the professionalisation of struggle. The leagues
were organisations of attack on the construction of the base, not the
defence of the interests of this or that group. This style of
organisation allowed groups to take the actions they saw as most
effective while still being able to co-ordinate attack when useful, thus
keeping open the potential of struggle to spread. It also kept the focus
of organisation on the goal of ending the construction of the base
instead of the building of permanent organisations, for which mediating
with state institutions for a share of power usually becomes the focus
and limiting the autonomy of struggle the means.
As the anarchists involved in the Comiso struggle understood, one of the
central reasons that social struggles are kept from developing in a
positive direction is the prevalence of forms of organisation that cut
us off from our own power to act and close off the potential of
insurrection. These are permanent organisations, those that synthesise
all struggle within a single organisation, and organisations that
mediate struggles with the institutions of domination. Permanent
organisations tend to develop into institutions that stand above the
struggling multitude. They tend to develop a formal or informal
hierarchy and to disempower the multitude: power is alienated from its
active form within the multitude and instituted within the organisation.
This transforms the active multitude into a passive mass. The
hierarchical constitution of power relations removes decision from the
time such a decision is necessary and places it within the organisation.
The practical consequence of such an organisation is that the active
powers of those involved in the struggle are stifled by the
organisation. Decisions that should be made by those involved in an
action are deferred to the organisation; moreover, permanent
organisations tend to make decisions based not on the necessity of a
specific goal or action, but on the needs of that organisation,
especially its preservation. The organisation becomes an end in itself.
One needs only to look at the operations of the many socialist parties
to see this in its most blatant form.
As an organisation moves towards permanence and comes to stand above the
multitude, the organiser appears – often claiming to have created the
struggle – and begins to speak for the mass. It is the job of the
organiser to transform the multitude into a controllable mass and to
represent that mass to the media or state institutions. Organisers
rarely view themselves as part of the multitude, thus they don’t see it
as their task to act, but to propagandise and organise, for it is the
masses that act.
For the organiser, who takes as their motto ‘only that which appears in
the media exists’, real action always takes a back seat to the
maintenance of the media image. The goal of such image maintenance is
never to attack a specific institution of domination, but to affect
public opinion, to forever build the movement or, even worse, the
organisation. The organiser must always worry about how the actions of
others will reflect on the movement; they must, therefore, both attempt
to discipline the struggling multitude and try to control how the
movement is represented in the media. Image usually replaces action for
the permanent organisation and the organiser.
The attempt to control the vast image and opinion-making factories of
our society is a losing battle, as if we could ever try to match the
quantity of images put forward by the media or get them to ‘tell the
truth’. Thus, many insurrectionary anarchists have been very critical of
carrying on the struggle within the capitalist mass media. In Italy,
this has put them at odds with organisations such as Ya Basta! who see
the media as a key vehicle for their movement; in other parts of the
world, the question of how anarchists should relate to the media has
been a focus of debate in recent years – especially since 1999 in
Seattle – and it is therefore important for us to spell out the critical
position of some insurrectionary anarchists.
On a basic level, we need to ask, what is opinion? An opinion is not
something first found among the public in general and then, afterwards,
replayed through the media, as a simple reporting of the public opinion.
An opinion exists in the media first. Secondly, the media then
reproduces the opinion a million times over, linking the opinion to a
certain type of person (conservatives think X, liberals think Y).
Thirdly, as Alfredo Bonanno points out, “[An opinion] is a flattened
idea, an idea that has been uniformed in order to make it acceptable to
the largest number of people. Opinions are massified ideas.”[6] Public
opinion is produced as a series of simple choices or solutions (“I’m for
globalisation and free trade” or “I’m for more national control and
protectionism”). We are all supposed to choose – as we choose our
leaders or our burgers – instead of thinking for ourselves. It is
obvious, therefore, that anarchists cannot use the opinion-making
factory to create counter-opinions, and hopefully anarchists would never
want to operate on the level of opinion even if we could somehow exert
control over the content spewed out of the factory gates. Anyhow, the
ethic of anarchism could never be communicated in the form of opinion;
it would die once massified. Yet, it is exactly on the level of opinion
that the organiser works, for opinion and image-maintenance are the very
tools of power, tools used to shape and discipline a multitude into a
controllable mass.
Instead of moving power and decision making into an organisation, most
insurrectionary anarchists recognise the need to organise in a fashion
that lacks the formality and authority which separate organisers and
organised; this is called informal organisation. Because the organiser’s
nature is to plan and control, they often privilege the perpetuation of
the organisation over other goals. Informal organisations, on the other
hand, dissolve when their goal is achieved or abandoned; they do not
perpetuate themselves merely for the sake of the organisation if the
goals that caused people to organise have ceased to exist.
As in the case of the Comiso leagues, informal organisation is a means
for affinity groups to co-ordinate efforts when necessary. We must
always remember that many things can be done more easily by an affinity
group or individual, and, in these cases, higher levels of organisation
just make the decision making process cumbersome – it stifles us. The
smallest amount of organisation necessary to achieve one’s aims is
always the best to maximise our efforts.
Informal organisation must be based on an ethic of autonomous action;
autonomy is necessary to prevent our active powers from becoming
alienated, to prevent the formation of relations of authority. Autonomy
is refusing to obey or give orders, which are always shouted from above
or beyond the situation. Autonomy allows decisions to be made when they
are necessary, instead of being pre-determined or delayed by the
decision of a committee or meeting. This does not mean to say however
that we shouldn’t think strategically about the future and make
agreements or plans. On the contrary, plans and agreements are useful
and important. What is emphasised is a flexibility that allows people to
discard plans when they become useless. Plans should be adaptable to
events as they unfold.
Just as an informal organisation must have an ethic of autonomy or it
will be transformed into an authoritarian organisation, in order to
avoid the alienation of our active powers, it must also have an ethic of
no compromise with respect to the organisation’s agreed goal. The
organisation’s goal should be either moved towards or abandoned.
Compromising with those who we oppose (e.g. the state or a corporation)
defeats all true opposition, it replaces our power to act with that of
our enemies.
The scraps handed down to appease and divert us by those we oppose must
be refused. Compromise with any institution of domination (the state,
the police, WTO, IMF, ‘The Party’, etc.) is always the alienation of our
power to the very institutions we supposedly wish to destroy; this sort
of compromise results in the forfeiture of our power to act decisively,
to make decisions and actions when we choose. As such, compromise only
makes the state and capital stronger. For those who wish to open the
possibility of insurrection, for those who don’t wish to wait for the
supposedly appropriate material conditions for revolution, for those who
don’t want a revolution which is merely the creation of a new power
structure but want the destruction of all structures which alienate our
power from us, such compromise is contrary to their aims. To continually
refuse to compromise is to be in perpetual conflict with the established
order and its structures of domination and deprivation. Permanent
conflict is uncontrollable autonomous action that does not compromise
with power.
Revolutionary solidarity, another central practice of insurrectionary
anarchism, allows us to move far beyond the ‘send a cheque’ style of
solidarity that so pervades the Left, as well as solidarity that relies
on petitioning the state for relief or mercy. One example of
revolutionary solidarity was Nikos Mazotis’ action against TVX Gold in
December 1997.[7] Many people in the villages around Strymonikos in
Northern Greece were struggling against the installation of a gold
metallurgy plant in their area. In solidarity with the villagers, Nikos
placed a bomb in the Ministry of Industry and Development that was
intended to explode when no one was in the building; unfortunately, it
never went off at all. Nikos was sentenced to fifteen years in prison,
but is now free. TVX Gold is a multinational company whose headquarters
is in Canada, there are thus many points at which revolutionary
solidarity with the villagers of Stryminikos could have been enacted.
Fundraising on behalf of one’s comrades is necessary and surely
appreciated, but this can be combined with more active forms of
solidarity with those who struggle against our common enemies.
Revolutionary solidarity communicates the link between the exploitation
and repression of others and our own fate, and it shows people the
points at which capitalism or the state operate in similar ways in very
different places. By creating links between struggles against the state
and capital, revolutionary solidarity has the potential to take our
local struggles to a global level.
Moreover, revolutionary solidarity is always an active attack; it always
involves the recovery of our own active powers that multiply in
combination – in solidarity – with the active powers of others. Many
insurrectionary anarchists have been involved in the resistance against
the FIES prison regime (Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimiento –
Inmate Files for Special Monitoring) in Spain. This is a revolutionary
struggle because it is not only aimed at a mere reform, but ultimately
its goal is the disappearance of prisons, which involves a radical
social change. It is a self-organised struggle, in which there are not
any leaders or representatives, neither inside the prisons nor outside,
but only solidarity that grows between exploited people both from inside
and outside the walls.
One of the primary strengths of informal organisation is that it allows
anarchists to intervene in intermediate or specific struggles without
compromising principles or demanding uniformity of action and politics.
Informally organised struggles may be composed of affinity groups with
quite different political perspectives from each other. Some people may
wish to open the possibility for insurrection, while others are only
concerned with an immediate goal. There is no reason why those who share
an immediate practical aim but diverge in their long-term goals might
not come together. For example, an anti-genetic engineering (GE) group
could form and decide to co-ordinate the tearing up test crops and to
circulate anti-GE leaflets. In this case those who want an
insurrectionary rupture with this social order and those who merely hate
genetic engineering could easily work together towards this immediate
goal. Groups that take a more insurrectionary approach to action,
however, often end up in conflict with other groups working around
similar issues. The Earth Liberation Front, an informally organised set
of groups which have taken a position of attack on those they see as
destroying the earth, have been vilified by the mainstream environmental
movement. At the same time, they would probably be critiqued by many
insurrectionary anarchists for focusing defensively on the protection of
the earth and ignoring the social aspect of revolution. What is
important to allow different groups to work together is co-ordination
with autonomy.
For those who wish to open the possibility of insurrection, such
co-operation will not close the door on their dreams. Informal
organisation, with its ethics of autonomy and no compromise, does not
control struggle, and uncontrollability opens the possibility for an
insurrectionary rupture with the present social order..
It’s worth looking at these two English language insurrectionary
anarchist journals:
Killing King Abacus, PO Box 993, Santa Cruz, CA 95061, USA.
Email: kk_abacus@yahoo.com
Web:
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/
Wilful Disobedience, PO Box 31098, Los Angeles, CA 90031, USA.
Email: acraticus@yahoo.com
Web:
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vbutterfly.html
Many insurrectionary anarchist writings can be obtained from Elephant
Editions publications. These, mainly pamphlets, can be ordered from them
at: Elephant Editions, BM Elephant, London WC1N 3XX, England. Many of
them can also be found on the web at:
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/ioaa.html
For insurrectionary anarchist texts in Spanish check out the Palabras de
Guerra website at: http://flag.blackened.net/pdg/
I have a theory. My theory is that every time the government or some
corporation commits an act of destruction to the wild or humanity; if
every time a corporation’s oil tanker pollutes a coastline, or they
mangle, plunder and destroy a wild place; if every time they do this, I
take my anger and I place it in a certain compartment inside my brain,
when it comes time for the insurrection I will be able to access those
pieces of anger that I stored.
So I spend my days patiently continuingly attempting to stop the madness
which drives the governments and corporations, and each day I hear of
new atrocities. I go on another A to B demonstration, shout some
slogans, and then at the end of day I again open up this special
compartment and put the anger of some new atrocity in it, all in
anticipation of the day when I shall need this anger to bring the Empire
down.
But a new fear has overcome me. I perceive my anger calling me from
inside this compartment, I hear the door unlatching from inside, and
this new terrible question approaches me:
How shall I know when it’s time for insurrection?
Will it be when the next river or lake is destroyed after being
needlessly polluted? When logging companies have destroyed another
eco-system and driven the native peoples from the land?
Is then the time for insurrection?
Or is it when a government or NATO or the UN bombs a country and murders
thousands of people? When another multinational is complicit with the
murder of indigenous tribes so another of the earth’s natural areas can
be plundered?
Is then the time for insurrection?
When your local factory exports another shipment of arms designed and
destined to kill people like you and me? If corporations continue to
wreak havoc upon the ozone layer, if ecology is cast blindly aside in
favour of profit? If certain parties proceed in a manner which is
clearly imperilling the lives of a multitude of glorious and beautiful
animals and plants on our planet?
Is then the time for insurrection?
Or do we carry on simply demonstrating, handing in petitions, hoping the
system will realise its faults and change, or hope for a future
revolution when we’ve got the masses on our side and we will then be
able to put everything right? Do we hope for this whilst the system
carries on destroying us and the planet to such an extent that the world
may not be worth living in when we finally get round to doing anything
about it?
Do we carry on waiting and waiting until things get critical? Is it then
the time for insurrection?
Or will it be too late…?
[1] See The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner (Rebel Press, London, 1993)
ISBN 0 946061 009
[2] ‘Anarchists’ who generally turn their back on direct action, and use
local politics to try and gain reforms and establish ‘anarchist
controlled’ towns.
[3] See Albania: Laboratory of Subversion by Anonymous (Elephant
Editions, London, 1999) No ISBN
[4] See A Strange and Outcast Poet: The Life and Writings of Renzo
Novatore (Venomous Butterfly Publications) See:
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vbutterfly.html
[5] A Project of Anarchist Organisation by Errico Malatesta (1927) See:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6170/malatesta_project.html
[6] The Anarchist Tension by Alfredo M Bonanno (Elephant Editions,
London, 1998) No ISBN
[7] When arrested Nikos refused to recognise the authority of the whole
legal system. He made a radical anarchist statement to the court during
his trial, giving the reasons for the bombing, and explaining his
insurrectionary hatred for the state and industry. He’s now released.