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Title: Articles from “Canenero”
Author: Various Authors
Date: 1994–1997
Language: en
Topics: armed struggle, Canenero, insurrectionist, Italy, repression, Little Black Cart
Source: Personal communication with the translator.  Proofread text source from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3727][RevoltLib.com]], retrieved on December 10, 2020. Published by Little Black Cart in book form [[https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=239.

Various Authors

Articles from “Canenero”

Translator’s Introduction

Canenero was a weekly anarchist publication that came out in Italy

between the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1997 with one break. This

was when the Marini investigation against anarchists began to bear its

rotten fruit in an attempt to imprison dozens of anarchists on charges

of “subversive association” or membership in an “armed gang”.[1] One of

the ideas behind Canenero was to provide a means for ongoing

communication and discussion in the face of this repressive operation of

the state. A substantial portion of the material in the paper dealt with

the situation and the various anarchist responses to it.

But the editors of Canenero were not willing to allow the repressive

activity of the state to define the limits of the discussion in the

paper they published, so along with information and analysis of that

specific situation other significant questions and idea were raised in

its pages. Thus, within its pages one could find pointed, but brief,

theoretical articles, social and historical analyses and bitingly witty

looks at the weeks news.

Of course, as is appropriate for a weekly publication, most of the

articles are specific to the time they were written, intended for

immediate use in the heat of the situation that was going on. But there

were enough articles of more general interest that I considered it worth

my while to translate a number of them for publication in this form. I

have already mad some of this material available in More, Much More, a

collection of writings by Massimo Passamani whose ideas I find

particularly thought-provoking, and The Fullness of a Struggle Without

Adjectives, texts originally intended to stimulate a discussion about

armed struggle groups that appeared in the last few issues of Canenero.

In this booklet, I have collected a number of articles that I find

particularly stimulating. I am certainly not in agreement with every

word here. But I have found all of it to be a stimulus to deepening my

own thinking on the sorts of questions raised. If, for example, Mario

Cacciuco’s description of relationships between people as that of

“spheres that bounce of each other” and his consequent rejection of the

very idea of love and friendship seem rather bleak to me, this is

precisely why his article provokes me to examine the nature of everyday

relationships more closely, particularly those that we call “love” and

“friendship”. In fact, one of the things that stands out for me in these

articles is the way in which they are able to raise significant

questions, often about matters that we take for granted, in so few

words.

I have chosen to print the material in chronological order. The first

article was an introduction to the project and the last was the editors’

explanation for bringing the project to a close. In this last piece, the

problems that confront any anarchist publishing project are made clear.

As anarchists, hopefully, we do not publish just in order to have

something to do. There has to be a purpose that relates to our broader

life project of revolt. If we don’t want to be leaders or evangelists

carrying a supposed revolutionary gospel to whatever imaginary “masses”,

then it seems to me that the idea of developing relationships of

affinity and complicity in which significant discussion plays a central

part would be a primary reason for publishing. Without this, publishing

seems to be a meaningless spewing forth of words playing into the

degradation of language that this society imposes through its own

one-way “communication”. And real discussion is not a mere taking of

positions and defending them from the fortress of our various

ideologies. It has to be the real encounter between various and

conflicting ideas.

If, ultimately, the editors of Canenero did not feel that it stimulated

the sort of discussion they desired, it is my hope that in publishing

these articles in English, discussions may be stimulated here. There is

a lot to think about in these brief writings. Perhaps it will stir

something up.

Wolfi Landstreicher

February 2006

Vagabond Destruction

Canenero.

One word alongside another. A sound that is lost in the continuous

deafening noise that they still call language. A word different from

others. A hiss in the midst of shouts. A sigh from which to move in

search of new meanings in world where everything has been said.

A word against others, an against that is other with respect to words,

that doesn’t inhabit the space of the opposition between concepts, but

that of the silence that precedes and accompanies it.

A word, finally, that doesn’t refer to itself, but that causes us to

sense that region in which, in the silence where thought can move

freely, the meaning of our singularity and the desire for revolt against

all that suffocates it grow.

A paper for all those who, in this civilization of collective identity

and reciprocal belonging, want to affirm their nature as “strangers

everywhere”, as refractories against every fatherland (the “entire

world” included).

Vagabond like the thought of the cynics, the Greek philosophers who in

their scorn toward the regal condition of a philosophy addressed to

power symbolized themselves with the image of the dog (Kýon, in Greek),

as a sign of refusal of hierarchy, social obligation and the supposed

necessity for laws. Repaid, as is fitting for all free spirits, with

censure and mystification. In our language — that is passed off as

neutral but cannot hide its christian nature — “cynicism” has become

synonymous with voluptuous indifference to the suffering of others.

Thus, the police of ideas which travels through the centuries

underground has gotten rid of what utterly did not give a damn for gods

or laws.

So that the desire to be outside does not became resigned mutilation,

but arms itself , but arms itself against every form of authority and

exploitation.

So that one passes from the Power of dialogue (with which one thinks

everything can be resolved) and from the dialogue of Power (that invites

everyone to reasonable negotiation) to a feeling of radical hostility

toward the existent, to the destruction of every structure that

alienates, exploits, programs and regiments the lives of individuals.

The black of the dog (this animal which is general associated with the

idea of submission, of servile meekness) is precisely the desire to come

out from the herd of voluntary servitude and open to the joy of

rebellion. Not the black in which all cows are equal (even if it is in

their being against or outside), but rather that in which the boundaries

between destruction and creation, between extreme defense of oneself and

the construction of relationships of mutuality with others, disappear.

A paper — to piece together a mosaic of thousands of possible meanings —

of vagabond destruction, meaning by this the possibility of passing to

the attack against state and domination in all its manifestations

without pledging allegiance, to use a well-known expression, to any flag

or organization.

As individuals, always, even where the unshakeable desire for the other

leads us to choose the path of union.

The Technique of Certainty by Marco Beaco

“I was frightened to find myself

in the void, I myself a void.

I felt like I was suffocating,

considering and feeling

that everything is void,

solid void.”

— Giacomo Leopardi

The metaphor of “mental illness” dispossesses the individual of whatever

is most unique and personal in her way of life, in his method of

perceiving reality and herself in it; this is one of the most dangerous

attacks against the singular, because through it the individual is

always brought back to the social, the collective, the only “healthy”

dimension in existence.

The behavioral norms that regulate the human mass become absolute, the

“deviant” act that follows a different logic is tolerated only when

stripped of its peculiar “meaning”, of the particular “rationality” that

underlies it. Reasons connect only to collective acts, which can be

brought back, if not to the codes of the dominant culture, to those of

various ethnic, antagonist and criminal subcultures that exist. The

sharing of meanings, symbols and interpretations of reality thus appears

as the best antidote to madness.

Thus if one who suddenly kills his family is a lunatic, or better, a

“monster”, one who sets fire to a refuge for foreigners appears as a

xenophobe (at most, from the method, a bit hasty, but still within

reason) and one who slaughters in the situation of a declared war is

nothing but a “good soldier”.

Thus, according to the classifying generalization that makes them all

alike, expropriating them of their lived singularity, lunatics are “

dangerous to society”. Truthfully, one can only agree with this,

certainly not because of the supposed and pretextual aggressiveness and

violence attributed to those who suffer psychiatric diagnosis (the

psychiatrists and educators of every sort are undoubtedly much more

dangerous), but because they have violated, knowingly or not, the

essentially quantitative codes that constitute normality. What is

surprising is that after long years of domestication there is anybody

who does not respond to cultural stimuli, if not quite automatically, at

least in a highly predictable manner. Unpredictability is the source of

the greatest anxiety for every society and its guardians, since it is

often the quality of the individual; no motive, no value, no purpose

that is socially comprehensible, only an individual logic, necessarily

abnormal.

Defense from this danger is entrusted to the proclamations of science.

In other words, the “unhealthy” gesture, the creator of which is not

responsible, remains as a consequence of an external misfortune that

could strike and give rise to thousands of people like him. The

mechanism is therefore well contrived, a gesture deprived of meaning, of

an underlying will, becomes innocuous, and it is easy to neutralize it,

along with its creator, behind the alibi, which is “social” as well, of

the cure.

The psychiatric diagnosis comes down on the individual like an axe,

amputating her language, his meaning, her life paths; it claims to

eliminate them as irrational, senseless; the psychiatrist behaves before

them with the liquidating attitude of one who transforms the experiences

of life into malfunctions of the psyche, the emotions into a malignant

tumor to be removed.

Psychiatrists, as technicians of certainty, are the most efficient

police of the social order. Reality, like the meaning of existence, has

clear and unequivocal boundaries for these priests in white shirts;

their mission: to “return” those who have gotten lost venturing onto the

winding paths of nonsense “to their senses”.

If the police are limited, as is claimed, to beating you, the

psychiatrist demands to hear you say, “Thank you, I am well now” as

well.

The focal point in the discussion is not in the four walls and the bars

of the asylum, nor in the electroshock and constraint beds, nor in bad

as opposed to good psychiatry, but in “psychiatric thought” itself, in

the form of thinking of anyone who addresses himself to different

subjects with the clinical eye of diagnosis, always looking for the

symptoms of a pathology in them, in order to annul the difference with a

“therapy” that brings them back to being more like us.

If the real purpose of the “new places” of psychiatry was that of

stimulating creativity, individual growth, liberating communication and

developing the capacity for relations, they would not be “psychiatric”

or “therapeutic/rehabilitative” places, but probably ideal places for

everyone, places of freedom. The problem is that these places are

nothing but ghettoes in which one does not find individuals interacting

on the level of mutuality, but rather two “categories” of persons in

asymmetrical positions: the professionals and the clients , the healthy

and the diseased, those who help and those who are helped; in these

places, the healthy try to persuade the diseased that what they did and

thought up to that time was wrong, or rather “unhealthy”, and through

the “joyful” method of the encounter group, of dance, theatre and

music...lead them toward the binaries of normality.

The “autonomy” and “self-realization” about which these democratic

operators flap their tongues are exclusively their own and, to them, it

is necessary to conform in order to be able to leave the healing

enclosure. Psychiatric medicine itself, as analgesic (anesthetic) for

the mind, is the sign of the attempt to block every development, every

pathway however painful at times, that an individual puts into action as

a reaction to that which oppresses her. Without mystifying this process,

this moment of “crisis”, that is not necessarily a pathway to

liberation, the fact of the matter remains that the answer of power is

generalized narcosis, collective stupefaction, that renders us static

and tranquil, anchored to our placid misery.

The Obscure Clarity of Words by Alfredo M. Bonanno

One who writes, perhaps even more than one who speaks, is called to

clarify, to bring light. A problem is posed — the problem of something

the one who writes should be concerned with since otherwise his respect

would be deprived of meaning. This problem is illuminated by the use of

words, by a specific use, capable of being organized within the shell of

certain rules and in view of a perspective to be attained.

One who reads, perhaps even more than one who listens, does not catch

the individual words but their meaning within the sphere of the rules

that organize them and the perspective that they affirm they desire to

reach.

However weak the meaning of what one writes (or says) might be, the one

who reads (or listens) does not carry out the role of passive receiver.

The relationship often takes on the appearance of conflict, within which

two different universes clash with each other. But this clash is not

based on any active intention on the part of the one writing (or

speaking), and a passive one on the part of the one hearing (or

reading). The two movements are only contrary only in appearance. The

reader participates in the effort of the writer and the writer in that

of the reader. Even if the two movements are separated from each other,

they are not so in the fact, which has not been much considered, that

the one who writes is always (simultaneously) a reader of the text she

is writing, and the one who reads is also himself (simultaneously) the

writer of the text that he is reading.

Here two errors are committed. The first is that in which one encounters

the writer who thinks that by reading while he writes, he understands

what she is writing, and doesn’t realize that often her comprehension is

not due to the clarity of the text, but to the reader-writer connection

that reaches the highest level in the precise act of organizing word

according to a project. The second is that which happens to the reader

who, imagining himself in the act of writing the text that he is

reading, refuses to accept word choices that are unthinkable to her, and

doesn’t realize that often the incomprehensibility of the text that she

reads is not so much due to a lack of clarity as to the fact that he

would have written it differently.

The thing that seems to escape this binary relationship is the third

element, i.e., the topic that is being discussed. The reality examined

with words is a barrier that, on the one hand, may help to organize the

words in a certain way (accepting some and rejecting others), but, on

the other hand, carries out a distorting process with regards to the

employment of the accepted words. No word is neutral, but each one,

being organized within concepts, contributes to transferring into the

reader (and in still different ways, into the listener) a conception of

the diffraction of the reality examined (of which one writes or speaks).

Thus, no word is clear or obscure as such; there is no possibility of

definitively casting a pool of light on reality, clarifying it once and

for all. Once the word is detached from the reality to which it refers

and thus from the choice that the writer (or speaker) made on the basis

of the suggestions of the reality examined, it no longer means anything.

It vanishes, and its possibility for being anything, a means for thought

or action, an element for uniting or dividing human beings, vanishes

with it. The dictionary is like a warehouse of words. They are lined up

there on the shelves, some used continuously, others only rarely, all

equally available, but only a few of them able to be coordinated

together according to the intentions of the one who chooses and the

suggestions of the reality she wants to dress up in words.

It’s just that we can understand words, and thus decide if each of them

is “clear” for us, on the condition of being conversant with this

operation of dressing up. There are not words on one side, dead objects

shut up in dictionaries, and reality on the other side where individual

objects exist beside words that are also themselves objects, but all in

a haphazard manner, without relationship. Flows of meaning exist, i.e.,

working procedures in the course of which the elements of reality (that

here, for convenience, we can call “objects”). They receive meaning

through us, putting on linguistic clothes. There is no chair separate

from the word that means it, and the different words to which different

languages have recourse reconfirm this endeavor as a flow of meaning,

proposing philological nuances that through the history of the millennia

often cause incredible routes, extraordinary adventures, to emerge.

Dressing reality is thus the primary activity of the human being, the

condition for acting and itself an action, the essential form of action,

insofar as thought itself is the process of clothing reality (a fact

that is not much considered). What could we “do” without the capacity of

“reading” reality. We would find ourselves before a dark mass of

foreboding and fear. The most important question is not that of the

greatest clarity (easiest words, dressed most modestly, linearity in the

correspondences), but rather, and maybe contrarily, that of the greatest

richness (different words contrasting the commonplaces, dressed in the

liveliest colors, uncertainty of correspondence). The word is also

enchantment, marvel, joyous invention, fancy, evocation of something

other, not the seal of the already seen, the confirmation of one’s

certainties.

The aim of speaking and writing is therefore not that of “clarifying”,

but of “enriching” reality, of inviting the unexpected, the

unpredictable. The one who communicates has no obligation to give us

prescriptions for repair, panaceas for our fears, confirmations of our

knowledge, but can even feel free to suggest difficult routes, to make

uncertainty and danger flare.

And whoever wants to feel safe in his house is free to stop his reading

or cover her ears.

The Reverse Road by Alfredo M. Bonanno

Times of doubt and uncertainty have arrived. New and old fears spur the

search for guarantees. In the market where human affairs are managed,

new models of comfort are briskly haggled over. Madonnas weep,

politicians make promises; everywhere war and misery, savagery and

horror are rife, rendering us now unable to even feel outrage, let alone

to rebel.

People have been quick to accustom themselves to blood. They scarcely

smell the odor of the massacres, and every day something new and more

incredible awaits them: Tokyo, Gaza, the changeless Bosnia, Burundi and

still more places, remote, distant, and yet nearby. What they ask is to

be left out of it. Being informed, even of the smallest household

massacres, those of Saturday evening for example, which pattern dozens

of deaths weekly, with no other purpose than that of knowing in order to

forget.

In a world that is revealed to be increasingly weak in real meanings, in

motivations that give content to life, in projects worthy of being

lived, people give away freedom for specters that are in easy reach,

specters that come out from the studios of power. Religion is one of

these specters. Not any religion whatsoever, objectified in distant and

crusty practices, governed by priests and simulations lacking sense, but

a religion that can reach the emptiness of their minds, filling it with

the future, that is with hope.

I know well that a religion of this sort does not exist, but there are

many people who try hard to exploit the need that exists for it. Against

this need, the rationalist claims made by Cartesian veterans of the

victories through which they have conquered, and destroyed, the world

are worthless. Their chatter of scientific certainty no longer charms

anyone. No one, except for a small group of relentless intellectuals, is

willing to believe in the capacity of science to solve all the problems

of humanity, to give an answer to all the questions concerning the

eternal fear of the unknown.

Now it occurs that even we anarchists allow ourselves to take on this

extraordinary laceration, to which we should instead remain extraneous,

if we want to find a path for action, a path capable of making us

understand reality, and thus putting us in a position to transform it.

Even we don’t quite know what to do.

On the one hand, we withdraw, horrified, in the face of always delirious

and disgusting manifestations of faith in all its forms. Sometimes we

have pity for the man that stoops, that suffers under pain, and thus

accepts the image of the incredible specter, and hopes, and continues to

suffer and hope. But we can have no more than this for him. Immediately

afterwards, contempt takes over, and with contempt, refusal, distancing,

rejection.

On the other hand, still looking carefully, what do we find? We find an

equally contemptible misery, but one that knows how to dress itself

well, with the garments of culture and fine speech. This latter misery

believes in science and in the world that can be systematized, in the

world that is moving toward its highest destinies. But it closes its

eyes and covers its ears, waiting for the storm to die down, unconscious

and pitiless in the face of the pain and misery of the rest of the

world. This universe of specialists and respectable people also disgusts

us, in many ways as much as or more than the other, that at least had

ignorance and the passionate force of emotion on its side.

But us, what do we do? We don’t beat our chests, nor do we go around

with a slide-rule in our pockets. We believe neither in god nor in

science. Neither miracle workers nor wise men in white coats interest

us. But are we then really beyond all this?

I don’t think so. Merely reflecting, we realize that we are still

children of our times. But, being anarchists, we are so in a reversed

manner. We naively think that it is enough to overturn the errors of

others like a glove in order to have the beautiful truth dished out in

shovelfuls. It isn’t so.

Therefore, refusing that of the obscure which exists in the times in

which we live, we set our feet on the certainties of a different

science, indeed, a science that we must build completely ourselves, from

top to bottom, but that like the other one will be based on reason and

will. And, at the same time, refusing what there is of the functional

and utilitarian in science, we go in search of sensations and emotions,

intuitions and desires from which we expect answers for all questions,

answers that cannot come to the extent that these stimuli crumble in our

excessively rough hands.

Thus, we reel, now in one direction, now in another. We don’t have the

ideological certainties of a few decades ago, but the critiques we have

developed are still not able to tell us with the least bit of

trustworthiness what to do. Thinking that we are in a position to act

beyond every value, every foundation, in the moment that we ask

ourselves what to do, we don’t know how to give ourselves a certain

answer.

In other times, we had less fear of ridicule, we were more obtuse in our

stubborn and coherent doing, less worried about matters of style. I fear

that we are too much in love with subtleties, with nuances. Continuing

along this path, we might even lose the meaning of the whole that has

never been lacking, the projectual sense that made us feel rooted in

reality, part of something in the course of transformation, not mere

monads, brilliant in our own light, but dark to each other.

Streamlined Production by Alfredo M. Bonanno

Among the various characteristics of the last several years, the failure

of global automation in the factories (understood in strict sense) must

be pointed out, a failure caused by the failure of the prospects and, if

you will, the dreams of mass production.

The meeting between the telematic and traditional fixed production

(harsh assembly lines later automated up to a certain point with the

introduction of robots) has not developed toward a perfecting of the

lines of automation. This is not due to problems of a technical nature,

but due to problems of an economic nature and of the market. The

threshold of saturation for technologies that can replace manual labor

has not been exceeded; on the contrary there are always new

possibilities opening in this direction. Rather, the strategies of mass

production have been surpassed, and have thus come to have little

importance for the economic model of maximum profit.

The flexibility that the telematic guaranteed and has steadily made

possible in the phase of the rise of post-industrial transformation at a

certain point caused such profound changes in the order of the market,

and thus of the demand, as to render the opening that the telematic

itself had made possible or rather put within reach useless. Thus, the

flexibility and ease of production is moved from the sphere of the

factory into the sphere of the market, causing a standstill in the

telematic development of automation, and a reflourishing of new

prospects for an extremely diversified demand that was unthinkable until

a few years ago.

If one reads the shareholders’ reports of some of the great industries,

it becomes clear that automation is only sustainable at increasing costs

that quickly be come anti-economical. Only the prospect of social

disorder of a great intensity could still drive the financially

burdensome path of global automation.

For this reason, the reduction of the costs of production is now

entrusted not only to the cost of labor, as has occurred in the past

several years as a consequence of massive telematic replacement, but

also to a rational management of so-called productive redundancy. In

short, a ruthless analysis of waste, from whatever point of view, and,

first of all, from the perspective of production times. In this way, by

a variety of means, productive pressure is exercised once again on the

producer in flesh and blood, dismantling the ideology of containment on

the basis of which an easing of the conditions of suffering and

exploitation that have always been characteristic of wage labor was

credited to telematic technology.

The reduction of waste thus becomes the new aim of streamlined

production, in its time based on the flexibility of labor already

consolidated and the productive potentiality guaranteed by the telematic

coupling as its starting point. And this reduction of waste falls

entirely on the back of the producer. In fact, the mathematical analysis

realized through complex systems already in widespread use in the major

industries can easily solve the technical problems of contractors, which

is to say, those relative to the combination of raw materials and

machinery, in view of maintenance. But the solution to these problems

would remain a marginal matter to production as a whole if the use of

production time were not also placed under a regime of control.

Thus, the old taylorism comes back into fashion, though now it is

filtered through the new psychological and computing technologies. The

comprehensive flexibility of large industry is based on a sectoral

flexibility of various components, as well as on the flexibility of the

small manufacturers that peripherally support the productive unity of

command. Work time is thus the basic unity for the new production; its

control, without waste but also without stupidly repressive irritations,

remains the indispensable connection between the old and new productive

models.

These new forms of control have a pervasive nature. In other words, they

tend to penetrate into the mentality of the individual producer, to

create general psychological conditions so that little by little

external control through a timetable of production is replaced by

self-control and self-regulation of productive times and rhythms as a

function of the choice of objectives, which is still determined by the

bodies that manage productive unity. But these decisions might later be

submitted to a democratic decision from below, asking the opinion of

individuals employed in the various production units with the aim of

implanting the process of self-management.

We are speaking of “suitable synchronism”, not realized once and for

all, but dealt with time and again, for single productive periods or

specific production campaigns and programs, with the aim of creating a

convergence of interest of interests between workers and employers, a

convergence to be realized not only on the technical terrain of

production, but also on the indirect plane of solicitation of some claim

to the demand, which is to say, on the plane of the market.

In fact, it is really in the market that two movements within the new

productive flexibility are joined together. The old factory looked to

itself as the center of the productive world and its structures as the

stable element from which to start in order to conquer ever-expanding

sections of consumption to satisfy. This would indirectly have to

produce a worker-centered ideology, managed through guidance by a party

of the sort called proletarian. The decline of this

ideological-practical perspective could not be more evident today, not

so much because of the collapse of real socialism, and all the direct

and indirect consequences that followed from this and continue to grow

out of it, but in reality, due to the productive changes which we are

discussing. There is thus no longer a distinction between the rigidity

of production and the chaotic and unpredictable flexibility of the

market. Both these aspects are now brought back under the common

denominator of variability and streamlining. The greater ability to

penetrate into consumption, whether foreseeing and soliciting it or

restraining it, allows the old chaos of the market to be transformed

into an acceptable, if not entirely predictable, flexibility. At the

same time, the old rigidity of the world of production has change into

the new productive speed. These two movements are coming together in a

new unifying dimension on which the economic and social domination of

tomorrow will be built.

A Eulogy to Opinion by Alfredo M. Bonanno

Opinion is a vast merchandise that everyone possesses and uses. Its

production involves a large portion of the economy, and its consumption

takes up much of people’s time. Its main characteristic is clarity.

We hasten to point out that there is no such thing as an unclear

opinion. Everything is either yes or no. Different levels of thought or

doubt, contradiction and painful confessions of uncertainty are foreign

to it. Hence the great strength that opinion gives to those who use it

and consume it in making decisions or impose it on the decisions of

others.>

In a world that is moving at high speed toward positive/negative binary

logic, from red button to black, this reduction is an important factor

in the development of civil cohabitation itself. What would become of

our future if we were to continue to support ourselves on the unresolved

cruelty of doubt? How could we be used? How could we produce?

Clarity emerges when the possibility of real choice is reduced. Only

those with clear ideas know what to do. But ideas are never clear, so

there are those on the scene who clarify them for us, by supplying

simple comprehensible instruments: not arguments but quizzes, not

studies but alternative binaries. Simply day and night, no sunset or

dawn. Thus they solicit us to pronounce ourselves in favor of this or

that. They do not show us the various facets of the problem, merely a

highly simplified construction. It is a simple affair to pronounce

ourselves in favor of a yes or no, but this simplicity hides complexity

instead of attempting to understand and explain it. No complexity,

correctly comprehended, can in fact be explained except by referring to

other complexities. There is no such thing as a solution to be

encountered. Joys of the intellect and of the heart are cancelled by

binary propositions, and are replaced with the utility of “correct”

decisions.

But no one is stupid enough to believe that the world rests on two

logical positive and negative binaries. Surely there is a place for

understanding, a place where ideas again take over and knowledge regains

lost ground. Therefore, the desire arises to delegate this all to others

who seem to hold the answers to the elaboration of complexity because

they suggest simple solutions to us. They portray this elaboration as

something that has taken place elsewhere and therefore represent

themselves as witnesses and depositories of science.

So the circle closes. The simplifiers present themselves as those who

guarantee the validity of the opinions asked, and their continual

correct production in binary form. They seem to be wary of the fact that

once opinion — this manipulation of clarity — has destroyed all capacity

to understand the intricate tissue that underlies it, the complex

unfoldings of the problems of conscience, the fevered activity of

symbols and meanings, references and institutions, it destroys the

connective tissues of differences. It annihilates them in the binary

universe of codification where reality only seems to have two possible

solutions, the light on or the light off. The model sums up reality,

cancels the nuances of the latter and displays it in pre-wrapped

formulas ready for consumption. Life projects no longer exist. Instead

symbols take the place of desires and duplicate dreams, making them

dreams twice over.

The unlimited amount of information potentially available to us does not

allow us to go beyond the sphere of opinion. Just as most of the goods

in a market where every possible, useless variety of the same product

does not mean wealth and abundance but merely mercantile waste, an

increase in information does not produce a qualitative growth in

opinion. It does not produce any real capacity to decide what is true or

false, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. It merely reduces one of these

aspects to a systematic representation of a dominant model.

In reality, there is no good on the one side or bad on the other. Rather

there is a whole range of conditions, cases, situations, theories and

practices which only a capacity to understand can grasp, a capacity to

use the intellect with the necessary presence of sensibility and

intuition. Culture is not a mass of information, but a living and often

contradictory system, through which we gain knowledge of the world and

ourselves. This is a process which is at times painful and hardly ever

satisfying, with which we realize the relationships which constitute our

life and our capacity to live.

By canceling out all of these nuances, we again find ourselves with a

statistical curve in our hands, an illusory course of events produced by

a mathematical model, not a fractured and overwhelming reality,

Opinion provides us with certainty on the one hand, but on the other it

impoverishes us and deprives us of the capacity to struggle, because we

end up convinced that the world is simpler than it is. This is totally

in the interest of those who control us. A mass of satisfied subjects

convinced that science is on their side, that is what they need in order

to realize the projects of domination in the future.

The Specter That Reassures as it Kills by Alfredo M. Bonanno

All authority comes from god, said the apostle, and he was right. But

not in the sense of offering legitimacy to authority due to its divine

origins, but in the sense of the impossibility of authority in the

absence of the idea of god.

The very concept of supreme security, of something beyond the parts, and

thence also the concept of the sacred and untouchable function of

government and justice, comes from the idea of god. The “immutable”,

dreamed up by people as protection against the fear of the future and of

the unknown that are hidden in the mists within which this last is

enveloped, is god, the specter that reassures as it kills.

But in order for authority to be exercised in the sphere of human

matters, that is to say, to become state and government, to insinuate

itself into every fiber from which society is composed, it doesn’t just

need the support provided by the idea of god; it also needs force, real

force, suitable to the times and conditions of the conflict with all

those who, because they suffer the authority and pay the consequences

for it in terms of repression and restrictions of freedom, oppose it.

And this force is made up of weapons and armies, governments and

parliaments, cops and spies, priests and laws, judges and professors, in

short, of the entire apparatus at the service of power without which it

remains a dead letter.

But the force is based on wealth, that is on the possibility of

accumulating money or of securing oneself control of the flows in which

the circulation of money is realized. With the development of commerce

and industry, passing from ancient times through those of the industrial

revolution up into the epoch in which we live, at the beginning of the

third millennium, when wealth bends into a spasmodic essentialization of

itself, passing from the old and static form of accumulation to the new,

dynamic form of flux and high velocity circulation, its function as the

basis of authority has not changed.

So we can say that an authority without wealth is a contradiction. All

the tyrants of the past, like all the political people of today that

have managed and continue to manage the public thing, have had immense

quantity of wealth in their hands.

A poor person can never exercise authority, which is why an authority

lacking the wealth that could form it into institutions and guarantee it

as such in the concrete exercise of its functions tends to weaken into

authoritativeness, thence into something quite different. A poor person

may be authoritative for her knowledge, his coherence, her accuracy, but

he would never constitute an authority.

This is why they Church, aware of its historical task, passed through a

theoretical and practical torment that lasted three centuries and

carried it from the initial critique of wealth (carried out in all the

texts of primitive christianity), to the justification and acceptance of

wealth, and the time in which this voyage was completed corresponds

precisely to the philosophical maturity of St. Augustine and the

conquest of power through Constantine, nearly simultaneous events.

This is why in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the pope confuses us,

limiting himself to quoting only half of the citation and thus

misappropriating it to justify (or rather establish) the “gospel of

life” as he calls it.

The fable speaks of a young man who approached the Master and asked him

what to do in order to obtain eternal life, and the Master told him to

observe the commandments, going through a list that begins with “Thou

shalt not kill”. It is from this that the pope draws his cue to

establish the “gospel of life” carrying out an act of confusion rather

than reasoning. In other words, the mixing of the order of the

commandments put into play here in the gospel text, which places “Thou

shalt not kill” in the first place, is the proof of the will to defend

life as the primary essential good. But the text of the story in Matthew

continues. In fact, it tells us that the rich young man responds by

saying that he had followed all of these commandments, but wanted to

know something more, and the response was quite precise: “If you want to

be perfect, go, sell all that you own, give it to the poor and you will

have treasure in heaven, then come follow me.” As if to say that wealth

were an obstacle and that the Church cannot accept it.

But to refuse wealth would have meant that the Church would condemn

itself to exclusion from power and invalidate its participation in

earthly authority that it always considered as a provisional passage

toward the total conquest of power and the domination of the world,

realized, of course, for the greater glory of god.

This is why it never accepted this refusal, but always persecuted with

violence and death, with fire and sword, all those who supported the

necessity for the Church to be poor in order to speak to the poor and

not converse with the rich over the topics that interest them relating

to the management of power or to mutually contend with them for power.

And this is why the Church has always considered all those who support

the refusal of wealth and all those who intend to fight against the rich

of the earth to be heretics.

If it had taken the concrete force that comes from wealth and from

commerce with the powerful, the Church would have removed the

possibility of acting as the practical foundation of authority from the

idea of god and would have forced authority to become blatant tyranny,

clear and visible to everyone.

Continue to Speak to Me by Alfredo M. Bonanno

Facing the understanding of oneself and others, unsuspected aspects of

awareness are frequently discovered. When we approach a problem about

which we know little or a person whom we have never met before, we feel

a sense of panic (or of pleasure, a subtle difference that is never

completely clear). Will we manage to get to the bottom of it? We ask

ourselves. And the answer is not always positive.

Most of the time we look at the “stranger” with suspicion, the suspicion

that always exists of the difference that is not yet codified. Where

will this “stranger” take us? Certainly toward new things, and what will

these be like? They might be good or bad, but they upset our balance,

the sleep (and dreams) that we often create between one harsh awakening

and the next.

From this, it is all the more necessary not to reveal ourselves. Since

our personal world, our own world, is what is at stake when we risk

venturing into the unknown, we are disposed to defend it to the death;

its boundaries harden and propose an interpretive scheme. The

“stranger”, whether person or problem, is thus catalogued in the sphere

of our schemes; we dilute the form in the structure, suppress it by

force, expecting the other to conform itself to our needs. Thus, after

having killed it in the ritual manner that we can and within the limits

of our capacity as killers, we reproduce it, adapted to our aims, even

continuing to feed our inclusive desires, dreams and sleep.

In this way, some of us, and certainly not the worst, wrap ourselves up

in the cocoon of codification, judging or suspending judgment without

being aware of it. But in daily practice, this suspension is always

expressed in trusting the other to remain in the sphere of our

perspective by itself, without our needing to do it violence. In these

cases, the common sense of ridicule helps in finding tunings that would

otherwise be revealed as nonexistent.

Please, no shouting your contempt for order; it is sufficient that you

show me that your way of living follows a lively, dancing qualitative

logic and not the obligation of the routine of quiet and the code. But

show me this with logical, accurate connections. Please, tell me that

you are crazy, just like me, but say it with clarity. Please, speak to

me of the terrible shudder of darkness, but tell me about it in the

light of the sun, so that I can see it, here and now, represented in the

distinct speech in which I was educated.

Encourage me with your chants about destruction — they are sweet

lullabies for my heart’s needs — but speak of them in an orderly manner

so that I can understand them and thanks to them understand what

destruction is. In short, I want the words to reach me in a

well-organized form. Alas, if you start to shout, I will no longer

listen. It is good to destroy, but with the order that logic imposes.

Otherwise we go into the chaos of the unrepeatable, where everything

fades into the incomprehensible. Yes, granted, something could reach me

even through the perplexing shouts of an Algerian marketplace on a feast

day, but I am not used to that life, to that unpredictable and fleeting

dance, to the unforeseen appearance of the “stranger”. It is necessary

that you put the code of habit before me, that the language be made full

of immediateness. Speak to me, I beg you, so that the word becomes the

umbilical cord between me and the world of what has already happened, so

that nothing presents itself as being thrown suddenly into the dark

dimension of chaos.

Speak to me of love, of your love, for me, of every possible love, even

of the most remote and difficult to understand, of the violence that

goes at it from the hip, of violence and death, but, in order to let me

see it with the eyes of the mind, speak to me about it imprisoned,

captured in the slimy and corruptible web of words. Speak to me about it

carefully, I beg you, so that my heart can bear its repercussions. Then

I will make a habit of it. And really, since you have spoken to me about

it, the love will become familiar to me and I will carry it with me

everywhere, like one carries a knife in one’s pocket, a heavy object

that furnishes security. As to that other possibility, as to the

“stranger” that presented herself suddenly before my eyes, like a thief

in the night, no longer beckoning to me there, it abandons the high howl

that could still speak to me in the night.

Speak to me of the future society, of anarchy, that in which you and I

believe, describe its conditions of uncertainty to me, the

unpredictability of relations between human beings finally freed of

every constraint; with your calm, persuasive words, tell me of the

ferment of the passions that break loose, the hatred and the desire for

destruction that don’t disappear from one day to the next, the fear and

the blood that don’t stop spreading and flowing in the veins of a

society that is finally different from every nightmare of the past. Tell

me, I beg you, but do it in a way that does not frighten me, Speak to me

about it in an orderly manner, speak to me about what we do, you and I,

and the others, and the comrades, and those who were never comrades, but

who come to understand from one moment to the next, all together,

building, a little here, a little there, bit by bit, while everything

within life, I mean true life, begins to flourish again. But speak to me

about it with intelligible logic. Don’t shout into my ear that which

shouts within you, frightening me. Keep it to yourself. Keep the

difficulty of coordinating your needs and ideas with mine to yourself.

Keep the indomitable strength to yourself that leads you far from any

acceptance of my will, your own being irrepressibly hostile to all

codification just like mine, after all. Not telling me all these things,

you would stop frightening me.

I beg you, don’t give me anything more to worry about.

Anarchism and Criticism of the Existent by Benedetto Gallucci

In a historical context like the one in which we live (the collapse of

ideological dogmas, institutional certainties, etc.) it is a matter of

fact that more and more people are beginning to show an interest in

anarchism and to take libertarian ideas into consideration. Anarchist

groups and circles and libertarian collectives are growing.

At this point, I don’t think it would be untimely to talk about the

difference between the individual comrade who discovers an anarchist

awareness and therefore begins to spread her anarchist ideas and the

classical militant of a political organization. As anarchists, we are

focused on the critique of the existence that surrounds us, but we don’t

forget to take time for individual self-criticism that serves to make us

keep our feet quite firmly on the ground. But self-criticism is lacking

among political militants, and this inevitably leads them to set

themselves up on a pedestal of arrogance and presumption. By

self-criticism, I mean the individual process of self-analysis that is a

part of the life of every libertarian, through which they constantly

bring their way of thinking, acting, speaking and relating with others

into question.

It isn’t a question of merely examining one’s character or temperament.

On the contrary, it’s a question of driving out all the shit that Power

and the Church (as well as the current everyday consumer society) shoves

into us from the moment we’re born. Certain internal mechanisms with

which we were shaped from a most tender age are quite difficult to

destroy even when one has the lucidity to recognize that they are in

clear conflict with libertarian principles. One always tends to think,

“after all, I am made this way...” It is safe to say that it is a bit

humiliating to discover people who speak of self-determination, anarchy

and revolution who are totally incapable of carrying out an internal

revolution that is necessary for destroying authoritarianism in whatever

form it manifests itself.

For every future collective project of liberation, an individual voyage

to grasp hold of the awareness of anarchist ideas is essential, a

project that cannot be separated from a profound critique of the

pathogenic germs of Power present in everyone of us.

A Yellow Rose by Alfredo M. Bonanno

But have we truly finished interpreting the world? I did not realize

that anyone was transforming it. The absolutely “other” event does not

stand out on the horizon, whereas the mechanisms of the market are

organizing themselves on the old codes and reproduce themselves,

justifying poverty and wealth, the absurd polarizations of “the world

goes this way”.

In A Yellow Rose, Borges makes us see how the poet Marino, prince of

fine speech, seventeenth century Italian master of human letters,

realized at the point of death that speaking (or doing, which is really

the same thing) as reproduction and mirror of the world, as grand

interpretive picture, is not possible. He concludes more modestly with

doing (and thus also speaking) as excess, as superfluous addition to a

composition that is already complete, even if, for us, it is unwelcome

and intolerable.

Thought and action, like this and that, are never simply projected,

i.e., they don’t have a meaning “merely” as a function of what they

contribute to determining or what one could foresee them as determining.

First of all, they are a previous history, i.e., they are themselves

events, significant in their sort of autonomy, full of meaning and,

thence, carriers of the marking that human activity has attached to

them.

In other words, they are characterized messages, pieces in motion of the

humans that have thought and done them, as thoughts and actions. As

such, they have no neat counterparts in the goal that they intend to

achieve, i.e., they are not exhausted in the purposes that have

apparently determined them. The study of this “difference” leads

directly to the interior of the absolutely “other”.

If we think and act with the sole aim of adapting ourselves to reality,

maybe wildly tooting our own horn to make ourselves better heard, and

more distant, we don’t have time for nuances, for the thing added in

excess of which I am speaking here. We produce what is necessary because

the world goes forward with out contributions as well, and the rules of

the market impose the codes of this production on us. They tell us

(along broad, but sufficiently clear, lines) what to do so as to never

come out below, or above, what is required for the project to be

realized. And when we fail in the capitulation that is required of us,

we feel precisely that we have failed, we are failures, and we look at

our inefficient hands and weep despondently.

Perhaps we will have to weep hotter tears when success has come

precisely through the great capacity for adapting what we do to the

goals to be reached. Perhaps precisely in this instance, that the

increasingly intense efficiency of modern techniques suggests to us

every day, we have supplied our little contribution to the great

constructions of power. And this even when the project assumed the

particulars of revolution, of the subversion of institutions and values,

customs and traditions.

In this case, in small and big things, we are set up as suppliers of the

future executioner, we have concluded our efforts in the perfection of

what we had thought. A greater number of final details that correspond

with the starting hypothesis is always seen as a higher degree of

success. Goals have been achieved, finish lines crossed, hopes

satisfied. Now the people have their free rules, old tyrannies are dead,

new freedoms are engraved on shiny new tablets. We can present the bill.

We are the liberators: we are the creators of the project and its

details. We have incubated high social meaning the way a peacock egg is

incubated, and now we witness the shining of the sun’s golden feathers.

The force of the goal to achieve has killed the initial character of

action and thought. And that character was the adherence of to the

concrete activity of the one who thought and acted, a manifestation of

strength that wanted to leave its sign, to affirm itself in the world,

to transform the world, not with the mark of subordination to something

external, but with its own exuberance, with the excess that this very

thinking and acting produce. The concern of the one who acts and thinks,

and who makes of her thought and action a single thing, is thus not that

of finding a measure outside himself, in the efficiency with which the

project has been realized, in the completeness of the result, but is

rather that of finding within the project itself, which was and remains

a moment of doing and thinking, all the superabundance of the absolutely

“other”. What does this mean?

It means not waiting for the goals to give reasons to the choices, ideas

and means in order to act. Not waiting for practical authorization or

moral foundation to arrive from the outside, from others or from what

one hopes to obtain. If the project is not clear within us, if we are

therefore not willing to incur the risks that our ideas and actions

entail, we cannot expect a mere positive result to furnish us with what

we lack. By accepting this conception, we present ourselves as

creditors; we want a concrete result but only for ourselves, precisely

because we have always been aware of that initial lack and have always

gone in search of a completeness.

If, however, we are sure of what we think and of the reasons that move

us to act, we are complete from the start. And if we are complete, we

can make a gift of ourselves to the other, we can make a gift of

ourselves to the objective we want to achieve. And this gift of

ourselves will appear immediately for what it is: the exchange of a gift

between ourselves and the other, between ourselves and the reality that

stands before us, unknown but desired, that we want to transform. Our

gift is not remedial, it doesn’t equalize, it doesn’t bring justice, it

doesn’t smooth out faults. It destroys and creates, adds the

immeasurable excess beyond which all calculation becomes impossible. It

fills our hearts beyond any economic calculation.

The Persistent Refusal of Paradise by Penelope Nin

It is rumored that we (a “we” not well-defined whose lack of definition

suits the rumor-mongers) have nothing to do with anarchism, being in

reality nihilists disguised for the purpose of penetrating into the

sanctuary of anarchy with bad intentions. It is noted that one who takes

up the task of guarding the temple ends up seeing thieves everywhere,

and maybe the hour has come to quiet “our” troubled detractors.

First of all, they must explain what they mean by nihilism. Personally,

I view anyone who extols the joys of nihilism to me with suspicion

because I consider nihilism, as the substantiation of nothing, to be a

deception. When the incompleteness of all is cultivated with a feeling

of fullness, it is difficult to resist the temptation to replace the old

absolute with its most abstract moment in which nothing is immediately

transformed into all and is therefore totalized. Ultimately, nihilism

seems to me to be a crafty form of reasoning, that drives the whole

structure of knowledge into the darkness of Nothingness only to receive,

through this spectacular, radical negation, still more of the light of

the All.

But probably the rumored “nihilism” consists of something much simpler,

that is, of a supposed absence of proposals. In other words, one is

nihilistic when one persistently refuses to promise a future earthly

paradise, to foresee its functioning, to study its organization, to

praise its perfection. One is nihilistic when, instead of taking and

valuing all the moments of relative freedom offered by this society, one

radically negates it, preferring the drastic conclusion that none of it

is worth saving. Finally, one is nihilistic when, instead of proposing

something constructive, one’s activity comes down to an “ obsessive

exultation of the destruction of this world.” If this is the argument,

it is, indeed a meager one.

To begin, anarchism — the Idea — is one thing, and the anarchist

movement — the ensemble of men and women who support this Idea — is

another. It makes no sense to me to say of the Idea what in reality only

a few anarchists assert. The Idea of anarchism is the absolute

incompatibility between freedom and authority. From this it follows that

one can enjoy total freedom in the complete absence of Power. Because

Power exists and has no intention of disappearing voluntarily, it will

be necessary indeed to create a way to eliminate it. Correct me if I’m

mistaken.

I don’t understand why such a premise, which no anarchist “nihilist” has

ever dreamed of denying and suppressing, must lead necessarily to

postulating new social regulations. I don’t understand why, in order to

“be part” of the anarchist movement, one must first undergo a doctoral

examination in the architecture of the new world, and why it isn’t

enough to love freedom and hate every form of authority with all that

entails. All this is not only absurd from the theoretical point of view,

but also false from the historical point of view (and the anarchist

rumor-mongers show so much fervor for History). One of the points about

which Malatesta and Galleani clashed regularly was precisely the

question of whether it was necessary to plan what would be created after

the revolution or not. Malatesta argued that anarchists must begin

immediately to develop ideas of how to organize social life because it

doesn’t allow for interruption; Galleani, on the other hand, argued that

the task of anarchists was the destruction of this society, and that

future generations that are immune to the logic of domination will

figure out how to rebuild. In spite of these differences, Malatesta did

not accuse Galleani of being nihilist. To make such an accusation would

have been gratuitous because their difference was only over the

constructive aspect of the question; they agreed completely about the

destructive aspect. Though this is omitted by many of his exegetes,

Malatesta was, indeed, an insurrectionalist, a confirmed supporter of a

violent insurrection capable of demolishing the state.

Today, however, one merely needs to point out that anyone who holds

power does not give up their privileges voluntarily and draw the due

conclusions to be accused of nihilism. Within the anarchist movement, as

everywhere, times change. Whereas once the debate among anarchists dealt

with the way of conceiving the revolution, today it seems that all

discussion centers around the way to avoid it. What other purpose could

all these disquisitions on self-government, libertarian municipalism, or

the blessed utopia of good sense have? It is clear that once one rejects

the insurrectional project as such, the destructive hypothesis begins to

assume frightful contours. What was only an error to Malatesta —

limiting oneself to the demolition of the social order — for many

present-day anarchists represents a horror.

When pious souls hear the bark of a dog, they always think that a

ferocious wolf is coming. For them the blowing of the wind becomes an

approaching tornado. In the same way, to anyone who has entrusted the

task of transforming the world to persuasion alone, the word destruction

is upsetting to the mind, evoking painful and unpleasant images. These

things make a bad impression on the people who, if they are to be

converted and finally flock into the ranks of reason, must have a

religion that promises an Eden of peace and brotherhood. Whether it

deals with paradise, nirvana or anarchy is of little importance. And

anyone who dares to place such a religion into question cannot be

thought of as simply a non-believer. In the course of things, such a

person must be presented as a dangerous blasphemer.

And this is why “we” (but who is this “we”?) are called “nihilists”. But

the nihilism in all this, what is the point?

Prisoners of a Single World by Gruppo Anarchico Insurrezionalista “E.

Malatesta”

“The fact is that the state would not be so pernicious if those who

wanted to were able to ignore it and live their lives in their own way

together with those with whom they get along. But it has invaded every

function of social life, standing over all the activities of our lives

and we are even prevented from defending ourselves when we are attacked.

“It is necessary to submit to it or bring it down.”

— Errico Malatesta

If we were not deeply dissatisfied with this world, we would not write

on this paper and you would not read this article. It is therefore

useless to waste further words to confirm our aversion to Power and its

manifestations. Rather, what seems useful to us is the attempt to

determine whether a revolt that is not openly and resolutely against the

state and power is possible.

The question should not seem odd. In fact, there are those who see in

the struggle against the state nothing but a further confirmation of the

extent to which it has penetrated into us, managing to determine our

actions — even if only in the negative. With its cumbersome presence,

the state would distract us from that which should be our true

objective: living life our way. If we think of taking down the state, of

obstructing it, of fighting it, we don’t have the time to reflect on

what we want to do ourselves. Rather than trying to realize our dreams

here and now, we follow the state wherever it goes, becoming its shadow

and putting off the realization of our projects to infinity. In a frenzy

to be antagonist, to be against, we end up no longer being protagonist,

in favor of something. Thus, if we want to be ourselves, we should cease

to oppose ourselves to the state and start to consider it not with

hostility, but with indifference. Rather than giving ourselves to trying

to destroy its world — the world of authority — it is better to build

our own, that of freedom. It is necessary to stop thinking about the

enemy, what it does, where it is found, what to do to strike it, and

dedicate ourselves to ourselves, to our “daily life”, to our

relationships, to our spaces that need to expand and improve more and

more. Otherwise, we will never do anything but follow the inclinations

of power.

The anarchist movement today is full of this sort of reasoning, the

continual search for justifications disguised as theoretical analyses

that excuse one’s absolute inaction. There are those who want to do

nothing because they are skeptical, those who do not want to impose

anything on anyone, those who consider power too strong for them and

those who don’t want to follow its rhythms and times; every one of these

excuses is good. But these anarchists, do they have a dream capable of

setting their hearts aflame?

In order to clear the field of these miserable excuses, it is worth the

effort to remember a few things. There are not two worlds, ours and

theirs, and even if, to be absurd, they did exist, how could they be

made to co-exist? There is a single world, the world of authority and

money, of exploitation and obedience: the world in which we are all

forced to live. It is impossible to pretend that we are outside. This is

why we cannot allow ourselves to be indifferent, this is why we cannot

manage to ignore it. If we oppose ourselves to the state, if we are

always quick to seize the occasion to attack it, it is not because we

are indirectly molded by it, it is not because we have sacrificed our

desires on the altar of revolution, but because our desires cannot be

realized as long as the state exists, as long as any Power exists. The

revolution does not distract us from our dreams, but rather is the only

possibility that allows the conditions for their realization. We want to

overturn this world as quickly as possible here and now, because here

and now there are only barracks, courts, banks, concrete, supermarkets,

prisons. Here and now there is only exploitation, while freedom, as we

understand it, does not really exist.

This does not mean that we give up on creating spaces of our own in

which to experiment with the relationships that we prefer. It only means

that these spaces, these relationships, do not represent the complete

freedom that we desire for ourselves and for everyone. They are a step,

but not the final one, much less the definitive one. A freedom that ends

on the threshold of our occupied house, of our “free” commune, is not

enough, it does not satisfy us. Such freedom is illusory, because it

frees only as long as we stay at home and don’t leave the confines that

are imposed on us. If we don’t consider the necessity of attacking the

state (and there is much that we could say about this concept of

“attack”), then, by definition, we can only do what it allows us to do

at its convenience, forever, limiting ourselves to surviving in the

little “happy isle” that we will build ourselves. Keeping our distance

from the state means conserving life, confronting it means living.

Our capitulation is implicit in indifference toward the state. It is as

if we were admitting that the state is stronger, is invincible, is

beyond contestation, one might as well lay down one’s arms and consider

cultivating one’s kitchen garden. Is it possible to call this revolt? It

seems to us rather to be a completely inner attitude, circumscribed by a

kind of diffidence, incompatibility with and disinterest in that which

surrounds us. But resignation remains implicit in such an attitude.

Contemptuous resignation if you will, but resignation nonetheless.

It is like throwing punches that are limited to warding off blows

without ever trying to bring the adversary that one hates down. But our

adversary does not give us any respite. We cannot merely leave the ring

and go on making a laughing-stock of it. It is necessary to bring our

adversary down; dodging and expressing our disappointment in it is not

sufficient.

Camomillo by Penelope Nin

At this time, a lot of anarchists from all over Italy are flooding into

Rome.

A month ago, by the order of a public prosecutor who was looking for

easy glory, about thirty enemies of authority were taken into custody

and locked up in Rebibbia, a prison in the outlying suburbs. To protest

against the arrogance and vengeful spirit of the judges who have decided

to take away their freedom, one of them has begun a hunger and thirst

strike to the death.

But last Saturday, these anarchists were not alone in breathing the air

of the eternal city. Others joined them there, guests this time of the

international bookshop, Il Manifesto, where they went to chatter —

together with communists, marxists and historians — about Camillo

Berneri, “an anarchist between Gramsci and Gobetti”, as the title of the

conference said. It was promoted by the daily newspaper of via Tomacelli

[2] by the libertarian studies center of Milan and by the Historical

Review of Anarchism of Pisa, in collaboration with the Roman bookshop

Anomolia.

It’s a good thing that there are anarchists willing to cleanse the good

name of anarchy, washing away the awful reputation that a few hotheads

would like to attach to it. In printing the news of the arrests a month

ago, Il Manifesto had already attentively made note of how the

investigators “a bit too easily” granted “a single ideological-political

motivation to actions that seem like those of a band of common

criminals.” But a fine convention organized all together was the thing

needed to dissipate the last doubts, to finally bring back a bit of

serenity.

In response to this proposal, it was immediately said that a better

subject could not have been chosen. What anarchist more than Camomillo

Berneri could have brought anarchists and personages such as Valentino

Parlato, Goffredo Fofi (who is publishing an anthology of Berneri’s

writings), and Enzo Santarelli onto a common terrain? Figures of this

sort certainly could not remain insensitive to the fascination exercised

by the leading exponent of anarchist revisionism and by his unsettling

definitions of Anarchy — “the society in which technical authority,

stripped of every function of political domination, comes to form a

hierarchy conceived and realized as a system of distribution of work” —

and of freedom — “the power of obeying reason”.

“Anarchist sui generis[3]” — so he loved to describe himself — Berneri

fought like a lion to bring anarchism out from the mists of utopia at

blows with reality. “Better the present evil than something worse” was

the battle cry that accompanied him throughout his life and to which he

always remained faithful. This sense of measure led him to salute the

Bolshevik regime in 1918, despise abstentionism[4] which he dismissed as

“cretinism”, collaborate with liberals like Gobetti, and make

sympathetic gestures toward a part of the Catholic world with which he

shared the idea of woman as wife, procreator and ideal housekeeper. And

the deep sense of duty — which Camomillo identified with God is what

made him write words full of cautious common sense about the necessity

of money and the inevitability of prison, with the consciousness that it

is always necessary to reach a “compromise between the Idea and the

fact, between tomorrow and today.”

Berneri was killed in Barcelona during the days of May 1937, in the heat

of the Spanish revolution. His martyrdom earned him canonization by a

part of the venerable anarchist Church. The fact that his murderers were

precisely the communists who Parlato, Fofi and their comrades praised so

highly up until recently is a particular that is utterly insignificant.

The fact remains only Camomillo Berneri — the anarchist who used to

candidly maintain that “a minimum of authority is indispensable” — could

have become the line of union between stalinists and anarchists, the

unbelievers who — like Gobetti and Gramsci — do nothing but feed dogma

with their heresy.

But, okay, let’s say it: as far as it goes, these judges are perfectly

right. There are anarchists and “anarchists”. Some are bad and are

rightly in prison. But others — among them, it is worthwhile to recall,

a few of the proposers of this convention, Claudio Venza, Gianni

Carrozza, Giampietro Berti — are good. So good that they can enjoy the

esteem of all the respectable people of this world.

A toast therefore to Camomillo. And to hell with the “anarchists” in

prison.

He Jokes with Men by Penelope Nin

“But expropriations and violent actions that put the lives of people at

risk, and more generally the theory and practice of illegalism at all

costs are far from our anarchism. Such actions are in clear contrast

with the anti-violent Malatestian spirit that we have made our own.”

(from Germinal, # 71/72, p. 26)

The greatest misfortune that can befall a human being endowed with any

quality is to be surrounded by followers. As long as he remains alive,

he will be perpetually compelled to keep watch so that nothing stupid is

said or done in his name, toil that will prove useless however when,

after his death, the initiates quarrel over how to advance the path of

his endeavor. The followers are never at the level of their “teacher”,

since only those who lack their own ideas take on those of others —

becoming, precisely, their followers. Thus, followers not only prove to

be incapable of causing something that has already been started to

advance, but since they lack the qualities of the one who came before

them, they easily reach the point of distorting and betraying the ideas

they claim to support.

The phenomenon, deprecable in itself, takes on ludicrous and even

amusing features and directions, particularly when the unfortunate

“teacher” is an anarchist, that is to say an individual hostile to all

authority and therefore opposed in principle to the herd mentality. And

yet who can deny that even within the anarchist movement such cases have

occurred? To avoid going too far, it is enough to consider Errico

Malatesta, the famous Italian anarchist.

All the friends and scholars of the thoughts of Malatesta have had to

agree on one fact. His sole preoccupation, his sole desire, throughout

his life was to make revolution. For Malatesta, there was no doubt:

anarchists are such because they want anarchy and it is only possible to

realize anarchy by making revolution, a revolution that would

necessarily be violent, the first step of which is insurrection. It

seems to be a banality, and indeed it is. And yet it is a banality from

which many anarchists tend to distance themselves with a sense of

disgust.

Luigi Fabbri wrote: “Insurrection is the necessary and inescapable event

of every revolution, the concrete event through which it becomes reality

for everyone. It is from this fact that Malatesta’s aversion for every

theory and method that tends, directly or indirectly, to discredit it,

to avert the attention of the masses and the activity of revolutionaries

from it, to replace it with means that are apparently more convenient

and peaceful grew.”

Not just revolutionary, since “anyone can call themselves revolutionary

while using the prudence to postpone the desired transformation to far

distant times (when the time is ripe, as they say),” Malatesta was above

all an insurrectionist inasmuch as he wanted to make the revolution

immediately — a revolution understood “in the sense of violent change

carried out through force against the preserving powers; and it thus

implies material struggle, armed insurrection, with the retinue of

barricades, armed groups, the confiscation of goods from the class

against which one fights, sabotage of the means of communications, etc.”

— not in a distant and undefined future, but immediately, as quickly as

possible, as soon as the occasion presented itself, an occasion that had

to be created intentionally by anarchists if it did not come on its own

through natural events.

Yes, I know; who is not familiar with certain critiques Malatesta made

of violence and polemics that he wrote about Emile Henry or Paolo

Schichi? Nevertheless, Malatesta did not deny the legitimacy and even

the necessity of the use of violence as such; he only opposed a violence

that “strikes blindly, without distinguishing between the guilty and the

innocent.” It is no accident that the example of blind violence that he

Usually gave was that of the bomb that exploded in Barcelona during a

religious procession, causing forty deaths and numerous injuries. This

is because he would have no critique to make in the face of rebellious

actions against precise targets that have no consequence for extraneous

people. In fact, in the course of one of his famous interviews with

conceded to Le Figaro, in which the interviewer tried to press him to

disapprove of Ravachol’s bombs, and of the attack at the boulevard

Magenta, Malatesta answered: “Your conclusions are hasty. In the affair

of rue Clichy, it seems quite clear to me that it was intended to blow

up a judge; but I regret that it was carried out — quite involuntarily,

I believe — in a way that brought injury to people whom he had not

considered. As to the bomb of boulevard Magenta — oh! I have no

reservations about that! Lherot and Very had become accomplices of the

police and it was a fine act of struggle to blow them up.”

It seems clear that all the discussion and polemics that occurred in

those distant years — that certain present-day anarchists run through

again in order to sell us the image of an anti-violent Malatesta — were

not in fact aimed at the use of violence in itself, but only the limits

one could not exceed without placing the very principles of anarchism in

question, or at most those limits suggested by considerations of a

tactical order.

But let’s leave “the dark end of an earlier century” and the polemics

that then raged in the anarchist movement, and return to the present. No

explosive actions claimed by anarchists in recent years could be

considered as being carried out in a “blind” and “insensitive” manner.

Rather all could be said to have been directed against the structures of

domination without putting “the lives of people at risk.” So how can one

justify the repudiation of these actions on the part of certain

anarchists? Certainly not by borrowing from the thoughts of Malatesta

since saying that there is a limit to the use of violence is not the

same thing as saying that one must never have recourse to it.

Having recourse to the dead does not serve to justify one’s indolence.

The Link That Isn’t There by Mario Cacciucco

In addition to explaining, language in its function of allowing

communication between individuals, situations and materiality is set the

misguided task of enclosing emotions, mental states and relationships

between individuals and others within syllables.

In my opinion, the mystification of relationships of love and friendship

is spurious. Examples from lived experience would be a great help in

explaining my reflection, but I want to try to clarify it by using, in

my own way, the written word.

I start from the presupposition that every individual is different in

her attitudes, aspirations, physical aspect, pleasures. The

relationships that exist between individuals are like spheres that

bounce off each other in a whirl of contacts, without causing any

fusion. Modifications, but never fusions. I on the other, the other on

me. In every instance, each sphere maintains its uniqueness. Starting

from my own uniqueness, I thus decide to embark on an unlimited search

for contacts and situations close to mine, in order to realize myself

excessively by enjoying the differences of others. And I do so by

affirming my will to preserve my decision-making abilities however and

whenever. In general, I recognize the difference of others, I am

attracted to it, like a child who sees a clown pirouette and is

attracted by the novelty and likableness that it communicates to him. I

recognize the charm of all that is external to me, the known, the less

known and the unknown.

The contacts that I establish may be more or less lasting. Circumstance

contribute to a large extent. But they always end with the option of

reopening.

When I talk about seeking affinity, I speak of granting myself a series

of contacts with other individuals, which do not cause harm to my

capacity to act, but are rather capable of giving me new strength, new

capacities, multiplying the bouncing of my sphere on those of others,

something indispensable for the search for myself and my satisfaction.

The common meanings of “love” and “friendship” thus leave me perplexed.

When relationships open, one cannot establish a priori how they might

extend or end themselves. Relationships are and that is all. The

randomness of events and the manifestation of individual will contribute

to creating a certain something. And when I say a certain something, I

mean everything. From the most heated passions, to carnality, to crime,

to sensory ecstasy, to esteem, to indifference, to annoyance.

Excluding is a bit like making laws, depriving oneself of possibilities

for movement. Uniting different events can cause the sense of their

originality and uniqueness to be lost. If for some a kiss is love, for

me it is a sensation of the lips to experiment with each time.

The individuals with whom I share moments are profoundly different from

one another. Each instance, having peculiar characteristics, has nothing

to do with any other instance. There is no doubt.

So, what is love and what is friendship when one speaks of

relationships? Are they oracles to which to prostrate ourselves of

obstacles to everything? Who is the person that we can get take part in

one of these categories with certainty? And wouldn’t this certainty be a

misguided and misleading boldness? Wouldn’t it always be to small? If

“the fragile cage of language” is what still creates these problems for

us, why not enter a bit more into contact with oneself and do away with

these oh so mysterious and intangible words that lead the fruit of our

personal emotions and agreeableness back to something that doesn’t

exist? Why make oneself the spokesperson of concepts aimed at defining,

establishing, when an unconditioned eruption of our desired could cancel

all this in order to lead it into the abyss of the possible, the

conceivable? And why not clearly, decisively, forcefully destroy the

relationship when it becomes hateful to us since the past is a thing

that becomes extraneous to the extent that you can no longer put your

hands on it. And memories are useful, more than anything else, to those

who momentarily live far from their will.

Comrades, friends, lovers, for me dissolution unites all these

descriptions. I love, I prefer, I choose in my own way, as a lawless

one. I don’t know what love is, and I don’t know what friendship is,

perhaps because they don’t exist or perhaps because I have no need to

use these words, because a have a more or less clear idea of what the

dynamic of knowing and standing together with others, in agreement or

disagreement, is.

Relationships without the disquieting and unbearable presence of

authority are the only ones that I put up with, and I rely on them to

express my boundless I When one of these relationships tends to create a

bit of restlessness or sacrifice or that smarmy thing known as

tolerance, then I hold that the time has come to remove myself from it,

to start over in another of the infinite situations that the existent

proposes to me.

Starting again from a gratifying detachment.

A Little, Little Giant by Il Panda

[There are moments when it seems that anything could open up, that all

possibilities are in play. These are the moments we need to seize in

order to realize our rebellious dreams. There are no guarantees in these

moments, only possibilities. The following article was written in the

midst of one such moment that occurred several years ago in France. —

translator]

It is not just a matter of proportions. We always appear so very little

in the face of this world that overwhelms us and that not only seems

incomprehensible — with its endless and intricate network of

relationships and dependencies between endless causes and effects — but

also unassailable.

Yes, of course, we’d like to turn this world upside down, we’d like to

destroy these relationships, but we don’t know where to begin;

everything seems useless to us, all our destructive fury seems to be

reduced to an almost inoffensive tickle against an impassive giant. Our

hearts are stirred to revolt, but how many times have we run up against

the supposed immutability of the giant that oppresses us? The pot is

boiling, we think; but we don’t know how to lift its lid, this blessed

pot, we don’t understand is rhyme or reason. And even if the urgency of

things always goads us into action, it doesn’t seem to us that this

manages to prime the mechanism that could put the existent into a hard

spot. Our continue clashes with the world don’t succeed in reproducing

themselves, rousing the passions, the wild and collective feasts, the

revolutions that we desire. And yet, as we know, the giant is neither so

big nor so passive as we imagine it to be. The feast is always right

around the corner, because if the paths of domination are infinite, so

are the paths of revolt: the giant that we have in our heads is really a

network of relations, enormous indeed, but quite concrete, and these

relations use determined channels, determined paths. And these paths

could, indeed, be blocked, priming, in time, unpredictable mechanisms.

Such an eventuality has been bringing difficult moments to life for the

French for several weeks. Truck drivers — those wage-laborers who drive

back and forth across France and Europe, transporting commodities for

the profit of capital — are on strike. Not only are all these goods not

being bought and sold, with all the consequent problems for French

cities and the economy; in fact, by strike, the French truck drivers did

not just mean a mere abstention from work. No, they park their semis at

the entrances of cities, on the expressways and block traffic; or they

surround refineries in order to prevent the resupplying of fuel.

Bordeaux is already completely blocked, like a consistent number of the

cities of the west and the southeast, and in Paris, the siege is

starting. Think, what can a blockade of this sort arouse: already, just

a few short days after the start of the protest, a few factories are

noticeably slowing down production. Without raw materials, industry

can’t work since its products are not transported and sold. And along

with the factories, offices and ministries are shaken.

What can happen in a blockaded city? Everything and nothing, it’s a

question of time. Cities are built around work and its time. The time of

the city is scanned from the hands of a clock, the ticking of which

rules our lives branding our days with fire. The office, the family,

Sundays, evenings, survival doesn’t survive without the ticking of the

clocks.

However, in a blockaded city, time might not have any more need for

clock faces and hands. It is released from work; it can expand and

contract improbably even to the point of vanishing.

This might be dangerous for the giant. You will see that, without time,

strange ideas enter people’s minds, strange vices are born that unleash

unpredictable mechanisms — to such an extent that the they displace the

narrow limits of demands, beyond which it no longer matters what the

truck drivers wanted to negotiate, whether wages, pensions or work

hours, because what is at stake is something else entirely, something

for everyone.

Or else nothing could happen in a blockaded city. It could be a huge,

very sad Sunday.

The pot boils and the giant is never too big for us; it cannot even

sleep peacefully. Its arteries — that are roads, electric wires and

computer networks — are exposed and can be cut, generating an infinite

and unpredictable series of possibilities.

Beyond the Law by Penelope Nin

To tell the truth, I don’t quite understand what is meant today when

people speak of “illegalism”. I thought this word was no longer in use,

that it could not slip out of the history books of the anarchist

movement any more, shut up forever with the equally ancient “propaganda

of the deed”. When I have heard it talked about again in recent times in

such shamelessly critical tones, I haven’t been able to hold back a

sensation of astonishment. I begin to find this mania for dusting off

old arguments in order to avoid dealing with new discussions

intolerable, but there is so much of this.

One thing, however, seems clear to me. The illegalism that is spoken of

(badly) today is not the concept that was debated with so much

heart-felt animation by the anarchist movement at the beginning of the

20^(th) century. At that time this term was used to indicate all those

practices prohibited by law that were useful for resolving the economic

problems of comrades: robbery, theft, smuggling, counterfeiting money

and so on. It seems to me that today some anarchists, lacking anything

concrete to discuss, are tending much too easily to claim that

illegalism means a refined glorification for its own sake of every

behavior forbidden by law, not only of those dictated by the

requirements of survival. In short, illegalism would become a kind of

theoretical framework for erecting illegality as a system, a life value.

Some people push it even further, to the point of censuring a no better

defined “illegalism at all costs”, yearning for comrades who would

violate the law even when they could do otherwise simply to savor the

thrill of the forbidden or perhaps in order to satisfy some ideological

dogma. But I ask, where have these comrades run across this illegalism

at all costs, who has spoken of it? Who would be such a fool as to

challenge the severity of the law when she could do otherwise?

Obviously, nobody.

But there is probably another point on which it would be useful to

reflect. Can an anarchist avoid challenging the law? Certainly in many

circumstances this is possible. For example, at the moment I am writing

for a paper that is published legally; does this perhaps make me a

legalist anarchist? On the other hand, if I were to go this evening to

put up clandestine flyers, would this make me an illegalist anarchist?

But then, what would ever distinguish these two categories of

anarchists?

The question of the relationship between an anarchist and the law cannot

be settled in such a hasty and misleading way. As I see it, the actions

of an anarchist cannot be conditioned by the law in either the positive

or the negative. I mean that it cannot be either the reverential respect

for the guiding standards of the time or the pleasure of transgression

as an end in itself that drives her, but rather his ideas and dreams

united to her individual inclinations. In other words, an anarchist can

only be an alegalist, an individual who proposes to do what most pleases

him beyond the law, without basing herself on what the penal code allows

or forbids.

Of course, the law exists and one cannot pretend not to see it. I am

quite aware that there is always a bludgeon ready to attend to our

desires along the way toward their realization, but this threat should

not influence our decision about the means to use to realize that which

is dearest to our hearts. If I consider it important to publish a paper

— a thing that is considered legal — I can easily attempt to follow the

provisions of the law about the press in order to avoid useless

annoyance, since this does not change the contents of what I intend to

communicate at all.

But, on the other hand, if I consider it important to carry an action

considered illegal — like the attack against the structures and people

of power — I will not change my mind simply because someone waves the

red flag of the risks I will face before my eyes. If I acted otherwise,

the penal code would be advising me about what my conduct should be,

greatly limiting my possibilities to act and thus to express myself.

But if it is an absurdity to describe an anarchist as “illegalist”, it

would be ridiculous to attribute the quality of “legalist” to her. How

could an anarchist, an individual who desires a world without authority,

expect to be able to realize his dream without ever breaking the law,

which is the most immediate expression of authority, that is to say,

without transgressing those norms that have been deliberately

established and written in order to defend the social order? Anyone who

intends to radically transform this world would necessarily have to

place herself sooner or later against the law that aims to conserve it.

Unless...Unless the desire to change that world that still smolders in

the hearts of these anarchists is in some way subordinated to the

worries about the risks they might face, about being persecuted by the

police, about being brought under investigation, about losing the

appreciation of friends and relations. Unless the absolute freedom that

means so much to anarchists is considered a great and beautiful thing,

but mainly in the realm of theory — manifesting itself in the

inoffensive banter exchanged fork the armchairs after a suffocating day

of work — because from the practical point of view the strength of

domination offers no hope. Then it is advisable to make utopia into

something concrete, with its feet upon the ground, uniting it with good

sense, because revolution could never be considered legal under any

penal code.

Enough of dreaming the impossible; let’s try to obtain the tolerable.

Here it is, the invective against the myth of illegalism coming from

certain anarchists takes on a precise meaning, that of justifying their

self-interested predisposition to conform to the dictates of the law,

setting aside every foolish, immoderate aspiration.

In the name of realism, of course.

The Rudiments of Terror

The ruling order and its challenger face each other. The former has

everything: an organization — the state — economic power, military

power, control over the entire nation. The latter has little at its

disposal. Only a specific number of people, full of desperation, with a

few rudimentary weapons. But these few are inspired by a terrible

propulsive force, the ambition for domination, that is great enough to

move them to launch their challenge. They know that they are weaker than

their adversary, so they must strike and run, strike and run. And when a

power — even in embryo — must strike, it knows only one tool: terrorism,

the use of intentionally blind and indiscriminate violence. Like that of

December 3, 1996 in Paris which caused the death of two people and the

wounding of fifty more, mangled by the explosion of a bomb that happened

in a subway car.

Terrorism has returned — the mass media throughout the world has begun

to scream it. It has returned? But when did it ever go away?

Of course, the terrorism of the challenging power is blatant and is

immediately denounced as such by the media of its rival. But who will

have the boldness to denounce the terrorism of the power in office, the

terrorism of the state, particularly the powerful states that maintain

the global order? The images of mangled bodies have traveled around the

globe, rousing the horror of all, perhaps enough to make people forget

that for those in power (and for those seeking it) the “common people”

have always been thought of as cannon-fodder. Slaughtering them in a

subway car or on a battlefield doesn’t really make any difference.

These deaths and injuries are just like the deaths and injuries caused

by aerial bombing, like those that occur year-round at workplaces, in

barracks, in police stations, in hospitals, in prisons. Like those

brought about by the paving over of wild places, by nuclear power

plants, by the adulteration of our food, by atmospheric pollution or by

the psychosomatic illnesses caused by the way of life that is imposed on

us in this world.

So here it is, the violence that strikes everyone in a blind and

indiscriminate fashion. Here it is, the terrorism of the state.

Poor Heroes

“His death unleashed a frantic propaganda about the hero Durruti. Any

discussion would end with the citation of his name. And each time he was

named, a bit of his thought and work was killed.”

— Abel Paz, “Buenaventura Durutti”

Durutti is probably the best known anarchist in the world. His name is

linked to the Spanish revolution, to the summer of 1936, when the

Iberian proletariat rose up, arms in hand, against power and attacked

the military bases, burned the churches, occupied the factories. It is

this struggle, where he fought on the front lines together with the

people of his column, that every one remembers. This is the struggle in

which he lost his life on the morning of November 20, 1936, and due to

which he became a hero to all.

And a hero is always right. No one ever dares to bring his statements or

his actions into question. No one. The dark sides of heroes need never

be put on display; they are justified. And Durutti had his dark sides as

every human being does. Of those linked to his character, such as his

hatred for homosexuals, there is nothing more to say. Everyone is made

as they are, and besides so much water has passed under the bridge since

then. But what of those linked to his choices in life? What can be said

about these? What, for example, can be said about his past as a bank

robber? Something needs to be said about it today when there are

anarchists in prison accused of robbing banks. Can one sing the praises

of that distant anarchist robber, dedicate a fine commemorative book to

him and keep silent about the anarchist robbers of our time? A response

to this is necessary; the comparison is far too obvious. And, as usual,

the response is found in his time, in his implacable raids, in his

ability to “objectively” change contexts and situations. And then there

is the man, Buenaventura Durutti. Wasn’t he, in fact, the one who said —

and the word of a hero is sacred — that “then I followed that method

because the circumstances were different from those of the present day”,

and “Banditry, no. Collective expropriation, yes! Yesterday is surpassed

by the road of history itself. And anyone who desires to revive it,

taking refuge in ‘the right to live’ is free to do so, but outside of

our ranks, renouncing the title of militant and accepting individual

responsibility for his action without compromising the life of the

movement or its prestige before the working class”? Yes, he really was

the one who said this, and we all need to remember it. All of us.

Only in this way could one forget. Forget that these words were said in

1933, when there were, to quote Durutti again, “a million union members”

and “ a population awaiting the propitious moment to carry out the great

revolution.” Forget that, after the propitious moment when he urged

collective action had passed, it would be the time for Sabate, Facerias

and other anarchist proponents of individual action — who were maligned

and disowned for this by other anarchists afraid that their organization

might lose its good reputation — to take this struggle up again.

But today, are we in a moment propitious for revolution? And besides,

don’t Durutti’s thoughts exclusively deal with members of the FAI/CNT?

Wasn’t it the militants of these organizations who were to renounce

their “titles” if they decided to attack a bank? And what of those who

have never been part of such organizations, aho have always strongly

affirmed individual responsibility for their actions? Has Durutti’s

meaning been erased in order to use his words against these people?

Those who have something to say are only his self-interested

interpreters, preoccupied with confirming for the millionth time that

there is no salvation outside the church.

Poor Durutti. His name — when not used to christen an after-work bar for

comrades — is reduced to a mere polemical tool.

The next four texts were printed in Canenero in order to stimulate on

ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, this discussion never went beyond

what is printed here and a few very brief statements that merely

amounted to taking sides rather than furthering the debate. Although I

am quite aware that the specific detail of the situation in Italy in

1996–7 were quite different from our present situation, I, nonetheless,

think that there are broader ideas presented in these texts worthy of

discussion and debate in relationship to a real practice here as well. I

hope that there are those who will be moved to further this discussion

in terms of our situation here and now. — the translator

Communiqué From Prison

On the day that the state-capital in its two-fold capacity of

judge-oppressor will officiate its vindicatory trial (in the Occorsio

hall of the court in Rome on December 10, 1996) against the anarchist

movement — an archaic rite of insult and criminalization against the

transgressors of bourgeois society — in the attempt to expunge every

form of individual or organized revolutionary antagonism combating the

exploitation of the human being, we fearlessly affirm combatant

revolutionary action, without unrealistic aphorisms or anathemas we will

claim our identity as an armed organization against the state.

In that hall-like place, formal representation of the legitimacy of

bourgeois law, we will practice militant anarchist anti-judicialism by

abstaining from the farce of the debate of the trial. We will not

endorse the mythical “de jure”, judicial doctrine, age-old normative

heritage of states that are developed on the age-old usurpations of

slavery, torture and the exploitation of other people’s labor, that

guarantees defense for those investigated, offering them the judicial

tool of reply, a way of guaranteeing the “democratic” form of the

prosecuting trial, a sharp, corrupt and deceptive way disguise a priori

the prejudice against the defendants who don’t appear in court. We will

not recognize the judges!

Industrial civilization is the highest of the aspirations of progress to

which state-capital society aims. It forces millions of people in the

world to give up the ancient indigenous culture of the population in

order to embrace the modern culture of the factory. With the great means

that the bourgeois capitalist state uses, beyond being functional as the

dominant means of production, are powerful organizers of culture, the

culture that is summed up in the symbols of the commodity as mediations

between production and consumption.

The globalization of exploitation now so extremely normal is

intellectual. The cerebral flattening to the preordained schemas of

intelligent machines, the homogenization of the cultures of peoples to

the new languages of communications and production are the aim of the

new imperialist colonialism. Cybernetic universalism, or multimedia

communication, is a tool of the systematic and quantitative

reorganization of the new world order, in the sectors of the market, of

capital, of the institutional order and of the territorial

infrastructure, of the repression of antagonists, refractory to the

homogenization of the new scientism, intellectual standardizer.

Inspiring ourselves critically with the experiences of the antagonist

armed movement of the 1970s and particularly with the anarchist

heritage, with struggles for regional independence, stable references

for our path of conflict with the state-capital aimed at extinguishing

them through insurrectional means, therefore, on the basis of this

historical heritage, we allude to constructing a communist society in

anarchist production in the anti-legal sense, without courts or prisons,

through struggle against every form of government and power that is

realized through the efforts of the exploited; an iconoclastic society

inspired by free cooperation among people and by free education.

We recognize in this court the fawning role of the servant of the state,

in which, living like a courtier off the sweat of the productive labor

of workers and peasants, it insures that the exploited populace

continues its obsequious service to bourgeois justice.

Every revolutionary action against the state and bourgeois institutions

will be claimed as the sign of a beginning and a continuation of a

precise antagonistic path, called Combatant Revolutionary Action, for

which we will assume all responsibility in front of power.

No claim at all — at least on our part — for actions against the state

with the circle A, because this exposes the anarchist movement to

continuous provocations, while it is right to form specific groups that

assume political responsibility for their actions.

Our combatant path is the formation in the revolutionary sense of a

combatant, internationalist, anti-imperialist anarchist organization, in

relation with all revolutionary forces that intend to subvert the order

of the bourgeois capitalist state in its phase of globalization, in

order to introduce ourselves as a unique productive and organizational

model for relations between human beings.

To the many-centered and camouflaged conformation of

cybernetic-industrial power, we will respond with wide-spread and

well-aimed actions to undermine it both on the territory and in the

urban space in which the organizational and informational

infrastructures of its domination are centered.

Living force to all revolutionary prisoners and to all combatants, for a

new free, anarchist and communist anti-authoritarian society.

Let’s remember to avenge all the comrades struck by the fire of the

repression of the state-capital.

Long live anarchy, long live armed struggle.

Rome, December 1, 1996

Pippo Stasi, Karechin Cricorian

(Garagin Gregorian)

The Fullness of a Struggle Without Adjectives

Recently a communiqué from prison was distributed that has probably

disturbed quite a few comrades. We are reproducing it here. Though it

has the tone of a proclamation and certain statements are ambiguous, it

seems to us that we can rule out the idea that we are confronting the

announcement of the formation of an anarchist armed organization. This

would be illogical for various reasons. For example, because, throughout

time, armed groups have been shrewd enough to explain themselves after

they have acted, and it doesn’t appear to us as if the acronym

“Combatant Revolutionary Action” has ever claimed anything. Furthermore,

if the comrades who signed the communiqué had, indeed, formed an armed

organization, their document would become an explicit self-denunciation

before the court, and this even before having initiated hostilities. If

such a thing were true, it would make no sense at all.

From this, we deduce that the text should be interpreted as a simple

proposal. Unfortunately, the wretched linguistic style in which it was

formulated risks provoking misunderstandings and incomprehension that it

would be best for everyone to avoid. More simply, we believe that Pippo

Stasi and Garagin Gregorian wish to invite the anarchist movement to

reflect on the arguments that they set forth, like the necessity for a

portion of anarchists to undertake a path of armed struggle and,

therefore to create a specific armed struggle. And since these comrades

have not hesitated to state what they think, assuming all

responsibility, we assume that no one will take it badly if we do the

same.

As we have often taken the opportunity to say in the columns of this

paper, we are decidedly opposed to all armed organization, including an

unlikely anarchist armed organization. Here it is not a question of a

mere divergence of views, but of a substantial radical difference that

goes well beyond any considerations of expediency or contingency. We are

against any armed organization today, as we were yesterday and will be

tomorrow. And we confirm that this aversion of ours is not limited to

formal disagreement. Not only will we never support an armed

organization, but we will oppose it with a harsh critique. We will

oppose its formation and spread because we consider it hostile to us,

insofar as it is not capable of generating prospects that we find

desirable.

We think that the individual who rises up, the individual who rebels

against this world that is too cramped to contain his dreams, has no

interest in limiting their possibilities, but in extending them

infinitely if possible. Thirsty for freedom, eager for experience,

anyone who rebels is in continuous search for new affinities, for new

tools with which to express herself, with which to go to the attack on

the existent in order to subvert it from the foundations. This is why

insurrectional struggle should find its stimulus and energy in our

capacity for filling its arsenal with ever new weapons, beyond and

against all reductive specialization. The experts in pistols are like

the experts in books, or occupations, or whatever else. They are boring

because they always and only speak about themselves and their favorite

means. Precisely because we do not privilege one tool over any of the

others, we love and support numberless actions, carried out through the

most varied means, that occur daily against the ruling order and its

structures. Because revolt is like poetry: to be such it must be made by

all, not by one alone, particularly not an expert.

Now the specific armed organization is the negation of this

insurrectionary struggle, the parasite poisoning the blood. Whereas

insurrection encourages enjoyment and the realization of what we have at

heart, armed organization only promises sacrifice and ideology. Whereas

insurrection exalts the possibilities of individuals, armed organization

only exalts the techniques of its soldiers. Whereas insurrection

considers a gun or a stick of dynamite to be only one of the weapons

available to it, the armed organization makes it the only weapon, the

only tool to use (“Long live armed struggle”). Whereas insurrection aims

to generalize itself and invites everyone to participate in its

festival, the armed organization is closed by force of circumstance and

— except for its few militants — nothing is left for others to do except

to cheer it on. The subversion of life is a vast project that knows no

limits, because it aims to disrupt the totality of society. Armed

organization is only able to glimpse a marginal aspect of this struggle

— the military conflict against the state — and mistakes it for the

whole. And even this conflict, even the armed attack against the state,

loses any liberatory meaning, any breath of life, when its entire

impetus is reduced to the promotion of a program an acronym to spend at

the political market.

It is rather in anonymity that all political calculation vanishes,

leaving space for the thousands of individual tensions and vibrations,

and for the possibility for them to meet, come together and abandon

themselves in each other. And of what use are neon signs to those with

no commodities to sell. As to the accusation against those actions

claimed with a “circle A”, claiming that they expose the whole anarchist

movement to police provocation, other anarchists, terrorized by the idea

that someone might come knocking at their door. Unfortunately for them

and for the comrades who signed the document, a possible acronym will

certainly not resolve the situation. At most, instead of suspecting

anarchists of having signed an action with a “circle A”, the police will

suspect them of being part of a specific group.

It seems to us to be a bit hasty to claim that in the 1970s, the

anarchist movement knew specific experiences of the combatant model,

since the “Revolutionary Action” (AR) archipelago — to which we assume

Stasi and Gregorian are referring — can only be described as “anarchist”

at the cost of a huge ideological distortion. In fact, comrades of

various origins came together in AR , animated at the beginning by a

libertarian and anti-stalinist spirit that defined its experiment for a

brief time as anarcho-communist, considered as the summation of the

various positions of the comrades. But it has become clear to many

anarchists that armed organizations, none of them excluded, contributed

to the decline of social subversion in those years. And these critical

reflections are not new, but have been expressed by various anarchists

on many occasions since the 1970s.

We don’t know what reasons pushed Stasi and Gregorian to distribute this

writing. To say it all, their proposal seems out of this world to us, a

bit like the rhetoric used for the occasion, that seems to come directly

from debates that raged in the 1970s, poisoning the atmosphere. But more

than anything else, we don’t like to see comrades accept the ultimatum

the power puts forth today (either reformism or armed struggle) allowing

themselves to get drawn into the foolish game of upping the ante: since

we are accused of belonging to an armed band that doesn’t exist, why not

form a real one? Well, this temptation, this attraction toward the

one-way mirror of the armed organization, has no grip on us, and we will

never tire of criticizing it wherever it manifests itself. Insurrection

has desires and reasons that no military logic could ever understand.

A Missing Debate

Three weeks ago, when we published Garagin Gregorian and Pippo Stasi’s

communiqué from prison, we thought that it might be able to open an

interesting and worthwhile discussion. That document could have

generated an endless series of reflection on topics that are always

relevant (specialization, specific armed organization, attack, justice)

and on others that — having never really disappeared — have returned

after many years to shake up our lives (the question of going on the

lam, for example). In our opinion, all these topics should be faced in

perspective. By this we mean that they should be confronted not just on

the basis of the much too obvious logic of “comrades are grown-up,

weaned and choose what to do for themselves”. We’ve all reached this

point, and it seems ridiculous to repeat it. It is not so necessary to

say which conception seems to us to be more or less compatible with

“anarchist ethics and tradition”, but which one seems like it could move

in our perspective. An armed band could possibly be organized in a

horizontal manner, but what does that have to do with our insurrection?

In the article that accompanied the comrades’ communiqué, we did nothing

more than reassert the basic banalities on the question of armed

struggle, the important matters that Canenero has always been fond of

emphasizing. But so many other questions remain open, questions that

need to be raised sooner or later.

An example for all: the police knock at our door with an arrest warrant.

In the situation where we manage to give them the slip, what do we do?

Take care, this is a serious problem because forced clandestinity should

not cause the interruption of our projects. We should make ourselves

capable of facing the new situation in a way that makes it possible for

us to still attack the ruling order, and to continue to live fully and

with passion in all the spaces that, despite everything, we are able to

conquer. To do this, clear ideas and usable tools would be of service to

us — before the arrest warrants — to makes sure that our life is not

reduced to flight. These tools are also the new way for organizing with

respect to the new situation, the new way of communicating with

struggles in course and with comrades who are not being pursued.

Everything with the same perspective of the complete overturning of

life, sacrifice and the existent that animated us before we had to go on

the lam. And what about this, what could it ever have to do with a

specific combatant organization — even one that is horizontal, but still

has acronyms, programs and the limits that follow from this?

In any case, we were wrong. The debate had a hard time getting off the

ground and only one contribution to the discussion has reached us up to

now [...]. All the rest have been collective communiqués and the taking

of stands [...] that don’t deal with the topics in question with

sufficient depth. On the contrary, it seems to us that they reveal, at

least partially, some common flaws and push us to consider a few things.

The first is that it is necessary to know how to read. By this we mean

that if someone writes that the specific armed organization, even when

it declares itself anarchist, is a structure that we consider our enemy

— as we wrote in the last issue — because it prospects utterly opposed

to those we hope for, one should not read that those who propose it or

practice it are our enemies. If we were to state that the

anarcho-syndicalist perspective, for example, is not just extraneous,

but also hostile, to us, we are certain that no one would misunderstand

our words. No one would think that we intended to wait outside the

houses of comrades who share this perspective in order to do them in, or

that we would refuse to give our solidarity if they were struck by

repression. The thing that touches us is that in their vision there is a

place ready for us as well, that we, however, do not want to occupy. And

our critique originates from their project of enclosing us in that place

and our firm intention not to be enclosed. And these two perspectives,

ours and theirs, have everything to gain from a mutual, constant and

heated critique, even harsh when necessary. Because only through

critique can distances widen or be bridged and the method be found for

making the clash of projects that are so different as to be hostile

worthwhile.

Knowing how to read also means that when someone writes that an

experience like Revolutionary Action (AR) can be described as anarchist

only at the cost of a huge distortion, one should not read that there

were no anarchist in the AR. There were many anarchists in the AR, but

there were also many other respectable comrades who, and this is not our

fault, were not anarchists. It is not without reason that we consider

the debate about the AR more interesting than that about the Red

Brigades or other combatant parties.

And then — to bring up another flaw — if the one who proposes certain

perspectives has the misfortune of being in prison, we certainly cannot

play the role of Red Cross nurses, accepting anything that comes to us

from behind bars with a compliant smile or applause even when we

consider it rubbish. As long as we consider comrades in prison as poor

things who we must always consider right so as not to cause them pain,

or as heroes who we consider right because prisoners are always right,

the problem will be left unresolved, new situations will catch us

unprepared yet again and — in turn — the comrades in prison will be left

more and more isolated. It would be best to shake the guerrilla war or

political myths of medals from our heads — the myths according to which

the more time one has been or has to be in prison, the more

revolutionary and, thus, the more correct they must be — and reason

passionately on our problems, which are also the problems of the

imprisoned who have their say as well. This is why Canenero dedicates

these pages to this topic [...]

Finally, one more thing shines through in some of the statements of

position: the concern that Canenero should or wants to be the

representative paper of “an area”. Canenero represents a small piece of

the lives of those who publish it. So don’t think ill of us if we don’t

consult all (all of who? which area?) before saying what we think about

what comes to us, or if we are not so many experts to teach the

doctrine, since we want to have nothing to do with doctrines.

— the editors of Canenero

Letter on Specialization

(Not putting one’s destiny into play unless one is willing to play with

all of one’s possibilities)

Today I thought about how sad it is to fall into the habit of defining

ourselves in terms of one of the many activities in which we realize

ourselves, as if that activity alone described the totality of our

existence. All this recalls the separations that the state and the

economy inflict on our lives much too closely. Take work, for example.

The reproduction of the conditions of existence (i.e., the activity of

putting out the effort in order to eat, sleep, stay warm, etc.) should

be completely one with discussion, play, the continuous transformation

of the environment, loving relationships, conflict, in short with the

thousands of expressions of our uniqueness. Instead, work has not only

become the center of every concern, but confident in its independence,

it also imposes its measure on free time, amusement, encounters and

reflection. In short, it is presented as the measure of life itself. In

fact, since this is their social identity, almost everyone is defined in

terms of the job they carry out, i.e., in terms of misery.

I am referring particularly to the repercussions that the fragmentation

that power imposes on everyone’s lives has on the theory and practice of

subversives. For example, take arms. It seems obvious to me that a

revolution without arms is impossible, but it is equally clear that arms

are not enough. On the contrary, I believe that the more revolutionary a

change is, the less armed conflict is its measure. The broader, more

conscious and more joyous the transformation is, the greater is the

condition of no return that is created in relationship to the past. If

subversion is carried into every sphere of existence, the armed defense

of one’s possibility for destroying becomes completely one with the

creation of new relationships and new environments. Then, everyone would

be armed. Otherwise, specialists come into being — future bosses and

bureaucrats — who “defend” while everyone else demolishes and

rebuilds... their own slavery.

This is especially important because it is not “military” defeats that

set off the decline and the consequent triumph of the old world, but

rather the dying away of autonomous action and enthusiasm that are

smothered by the lie of the “harsh necessities of the transition”

(sacrifice before happiness in communism, obedience to power before

freedom in anarchy). And historically, the most brutal repression is

always played out precisely in this decline, never in the moment of

widespread and uncontainable insurrection. Paradoxically, anarchists

should push, arm in hand, so that arms are needed as little as possible

and so that they are never separated from the totality of revolt. Then I

ask myself what “armed struggle” could ever mean. I understand it when a

leninist is speaking about it, since he possesses nothing of revolution

except the misery he sets up — the coup d’etat, the taking of the Winter

Palace. But for an anti-authoritarian? Perhaps, in the face of the

general refusal to attack the state and capital, it could have the

significance of emphasizing the inoffensiveness of every partial

opposition and the illusoriness of a liberation that tries to abolish

the ruling order simply by “delegitimating it”, or self-managing one’s

elsewhere. It could be. But if there is anything partial, it is

precisely the guerrilla mythology, with its entire stock of slogans,

ideologies and hierarchical separations. So one is harmless to power,

when one accepts going down the paths known to it and, thus, helps to

impede all those it does not know. As to illusions, what else can one

call the thesis according to which daily life — with its roles, duties

and passivity — is criticized through armed organization. I absolutely

recall the thesis: the endeavor was to supply a libertarian and

non-vanguardist alternative to the stalinist combatant organizations.

The results were already written in the methods. As if to attack the

state and capital, there would be need for acronyms, boring claims,

unreadable communiqués and all the rest. And still we hear talk of

“Armed Struggle” and “combatant” organizations. Remembering — in the

midst of so much self-interested amnesia — that arms also make up a part

of the struggle can only be positive. But what does this mean? That we

should no longer publish journals, have debates, publicly call for the

elimination of the pope, throw eggs at judges or yogurt at journalists,

loot during marches, occupy spaces or blockade the editorial office of

whatever newspaper? Or does it mean — exactly as some magistrates dream

— that this “level” should be left to some so that others can become

specialists of the “attack”? Furthermore, with the intention of sparing

the useless involvement of the entire movement for the actions of a few,

as if it were not separations that have always prepared the best terrain

for repression.

It would be necessary to free the practices of attack from any

“combatant” phraseology, in order to cause them to become the real

meeting of all revolts. This is the best way to prevent them from

falling into a rut. So much the more so, since the exploited themselves

sometimes move to the attack without waiting for instruction from any

organization whatsoever. Dissatisfaction arms itself against the

terrorist spectacle of power, sometimes feeding the spectacle. And

anarchists should not be the one’s to disarm it. In order to hide every

sign of dissatisfaction, in order to show that no one — except the

latest “terrorists” — rebels against democracy, the state tries to

invent a clandestine anarchist organization to which it attributes

thousands of expressions of revolt — a revolt that goes beyond any gang,

armed or not — in order to negate them. This way, it manages silence and

social consensus. Precisely because the masters would like to enclose

our activities into a military structure, dividing them into different

“levels”, it is necessary for us to expand and unite them as much as

possible into a revolutionary project that surpasses the armed mythology

through excess. Each one with her own aptitudes and desires. And more

than this, carrying subversion into every sphere of existence. The arm

that contains all arms is the will to live with all one’s possibilities,

immediately.

And what of the thesis according to which it is necessary to take one’s

responsibility in the face of power by claiming one’s actions? It seems

clear to me that acronyms ready for sticking on inconvenient individuals

make the police happy. So if responsibility is not to be a lie or a

pretext for control, it must be individual. Each person is responsible

to herself in her actions. The mutual recognition of responsibility only

happens on a plane of mutuality. Therefore, there is no responsibility

in the face of those who, by exploiting, place themselves against all

mutuality. In the face of authority, there is no terrain — political or

military conflict — of common recognition, but only hostility. What does

it mean, then, to take one’s responsibility in the face of power? Could

it maybe mean — in perfect leninist observance — being recognized by it

as an organization? Here responsibility ends and its collective

substitute, the spectacle of social war, begins.

The leftist democrat, respectful of the law, is the first one to become

infatuated with guerrilla iconography (especially when it is exotic) and

once the guerrilla has laid down his arms, he is the first one to

return, gradually from the left, to law and democracy. From this point

of view, the one who declares the insurrectional perspective closed in

its entire range, adhering more or less directly to reformism, helps to

reinforce the false need for combatant organizations — reversed

projections of political impotence. Leftist militants are even able to

use subcommandante Marcos to legitimate their role against right through

the game of postponements. For his part, the subcommandante hopes for

nothing more than to be able to act democratically for his fatherland.

Leaving behind the more or less modernized leninists, we come to the

sphere of anarchists. Even here, among the specialists of debate, many

clasped the “Chiapas insurgents” to their hearts, provided that

insurrection — this infantile disorder of anarchism — is never talked

about from our side... And as long as one takes the due distance from

those who continue to talk about it.

Once at the very end of a meeting on self-managed spaces, a friend of

mine told me that in the 1970s there was the firm belief that anyone who

used a gun, for this reason alone, was right, while now it seems that

reason has been transferred lock, stock and barrel to those who occupy

spaces. Interchangeable specializations. In itself, occupying spaces is

an important method of struggle, which contains the very possibility of

all subversion in a nutshell: the determination to reach out a hand and

take one’s space. This clearly doesn’t mean that such a method, by

itself, could put an end to the world of constraints and commodities. As

always, the ideas and desires of those who apply it make the difference.

If anyone in the occupied spaces seeks the guarantee of survival in a

slapdash way, she will find it there, just as — by putting the

occupation itself into play — she could find the point of departure for

his most boundless demands there. The same goes for books, explosives or

love affairs. The most important thing is not to place limits — in one

direction or the other — borrowed from the ruling criteria (law, the

number, the fortune of success).

Personally, I don’t know “the insurrectionalists”; I only know

individuals who support the necessity of insurrection, each with his own

reasons or methods. A necessity, as one of our friends said, determined

by the fact that within the present society it is only possible to

propose different ways of responding to the existing questions (perhaps

with direct democracy, citizens’ committees, etc.), whereas with

insurrection the questions themselves change.

And if we refuse all specialization, why describe ourselves as

“squatters”? Why describe ourselves through one practice alone? Is it

maybe because we can speak publicly of this practice, because it can

spread further than others and because it implies a collective

dimension? Poor criteria, in my opinion. One can also speak publicly of

sabotage, as long as there isn’t any need to say, “I did this” or “that

guy did the other thing”, in order to discuss a question. Several people

could also carry out an act of sabotage together, but if only one person

were to put it into practice, this would not make the action lose its

meaning. It seems to me that the question of the capacity for spreading

in itself should be a reason for reflection, certainly not a unit of

measure. If someone who loves breaking the windows of banks or shopping

centers were to say to you, “Hi, I am a vandal,” it would make you

laugh. It would be equally ridiculous if a subversive described himself

as a “writer” because he doesn’t disdain publishing some book or

article. I have never heard any anarchist present herself as a

“saboteur”. If I ever heard this, I would think I was meeting a cretin.

Furthermore, who has ever critiqued occupation as such? Who has ever

said that dynamite is “more revolutionary” than crowbars? Making the

struggle in all its form into an indivisible totality — this is the

point. I would say this not of the struggle, but of my life. Without

“propaganda” and “the arms of critique”, “armed struggle” and “the

critique of arms”, “daily life” and “revolution”, “individual” and

“organization”, “self-management” and “direct action”, and away with

pigeonholing.

But without specific proposals (labor struggle, the occupation of spaces

or something else), how do you create a broader involvement? Proposals

are possible, even though it is necessary to agree on what and with

whom. But such proposals are either instances of a theoretical critique

and a global practice, or they are... accepted proposals.

Nonetheless, not everything is to be destroyed. The possibility of

destruction must not be destroyed. This is not wordplay. Destruction is

thought, desired, projected and organized. To do this, no useful

contribution, whether theoretical or practical, is wasted, no method

abandoned. It is certainly not with fine proclamations of subversion

that we can go to the assault on the world. This way, one only becomes a

retiree of revolt. The possibility of destruction is completely to be

invented, and no one can say that that there has been much effort put

into doing this. Often with the alibi that he doesn’t want to construct

anything, someone will go deeply into reasonings, and equally often, she

lacks the will to be as open-minded and quick as her ideas, to refuse to

remain at the mercy of events. In short, the ability to know how to

choose the occasion. “In the heart of the occasion, everything is a

weapon for the man whose will is not disarmed.”

I say again: everything together or nothing. When one claims to subvert

the world only with discussion, or occupations, or books, or arms, one

ends up trying to direct assemblies, occupying hovels, writing badly and

shooting worse. The fact is that by repeating these banalities that

should be the foundation for starting to truly discuss, one becomes

boring like the specialists of repetition. The worn-out dialogues change

by changing the situation.

Massimo Passamani

An Adventure Without Regrets

Dear readers,

What you have in your hands is the last issue of Canenero. Various

reasons have moved us to decide to bring it to a close. They all refer

back to what we said in the editorial of #33, the first in the new

series: “Canenero is a wager that only has meaning if there is someone

willing to play.” And so now, those who have been willing to gamble on

this stake are no longer so.

We are no longer available to do Canenero because its publication has

come to take up too much of the time of our lives, preventing us not

only from carrying out other projects that are close to our hearts, but

also from being able to fully utilize the very instrument to which we

gave life. If an anarchist weekly doesn’t want to have the aim of merely

being an account, it must necessarily be used, and paradoxically those

who made this one didn’t have the opportunity to use it as we would have

liked.

Besides the limited length for articles in a weekly conceived like this

(the famous page and a half) very often at most allowed us to outline

certain discussions, to then leave them unresolved. Since it is

unthinkable that the subsequent deepening of the discussion could happen

in a weekly of this sort, it could only have been brought back to other

more suitable venues, which up to now nobody has thought of creating. In

the end, this situation became intolerable to us, first of all because

of the current absence of other tools, like magazines that come our less

frequently or books of some interest to us.

Finally, we have realized that, particularly in times like these, a

weekly manages is able to stimulate reflection and worthwhile debate

only with great difficulty. Incredibly, precisely due to irs decision to

put out questions to be confronted, Canenero has ended up becoming an

object of debate itself, and not one of those involved in debate. To

speak clearly, a weekly is alive when it is able to involve as many

individuals as possible, i.e., when the ideas expressed are able to

trigger chain reactions, even violent ones if you will, provided that

they occur in conditions of mutuality. Otherwise, the paper falls back

on itself and the only thing left is for it to die, if it doesn’t want

to survive as a pathetic monument to the idea. And so, this

confrontation is lacking. Those who didn’t agree with our ideas didn’t

contribute, only being able to send letters of insults and accusation,

lacking the least bit of argumentation. And those who shared our ideas —

even if only partially — didn’t contribute. Worse yet, we realized that

a representative task had been entrusted to the weekly: being the voice

of those who have none. And the only discussions that Canenero seems to

have been able to raise are those relating to its ability or lack

thereof to perform a task that none of us ever desired. In this regard,

the position-taking that appeared in the last issue, in its “stodgy

supplement”, are an indicative example. A broad, interesting debate

capable of expressing many imaginable facets and nuances was not born

from the clash of two different perspectives. All that was born was a

distressing series of declarations for or against. But for or against

what, and why? Silence. Everyone keeps quiet.

A silence that reconfirms our doubts about the current validity of

Canenero, and only increases the need to abandon an analytical tool like

a weekly that maybe due to its overly narrow time schedule does not

allow a better settling of the ideas contained in it, limiting itself

inevitably to piling up problems and questions that still remain open.

And for all of these reasons, we have decided to put an end to Canenero.

Without regrets.

The editors

[1] Venomous Butterfly Publications has published a pamphlet of material

dealing specifically with this investigation and trial called simply The

Marini Trial.

[2] Also called Il Manifesto. — translator.

[3] “his own kind of anarchist”. — translator.

[4] refusal to participate in the electoral process. — translator.