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Title: Revolutionary Solidarity Author: Various Authors Date: 1989–1994 Language: en Topics: anti-militarist, history, practice, repression Source: Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/revsol.html Notes: Original titles:
The concept of solidarity is not only used and abused by the various
reformist syndicalist and humanitarian movements and even power itself,
it is also sadly emptied of any content by many anarchists. The
levelling is such as to reveal a symbolic attitude worthy of the Church
but which allows us to put our conscience at rest.
Counter-information and propaganda in the lead, demonstrations (true
processions), then nothing, provoke a feeling of powerlessness, a
pernicious frustration that sees justification open the way to
resignation.
We discover that everything crumbles there where the mentality of the
group and quantity thought it was strong. Nothing changes as we enter a
vicious circle with mournful calls to a miserable bartering with the
State one wanted to fight.
When individuals find themselves alone at night, no longer supported by
“collective strength”, the arms of Morpheus transform the imprisoned
comrades one wanted to support, to whom one wanted to express one’s
solidarity, into a real nightmare with no escape.
So! Should we no longer show solidarity to imprisoned comrades given
that it serves no end?
Never! A movement that is not capable of looking after its comrades in
prison is destined to die, and that at a high price under atrocious
torture.
The reflection must be made in other terms. What does it mean to express
revolutionary solidarity? Basically the reply is not all that difficult.
Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its roots in one’s own
project that is carried on coherently and proudly too, especially in
times when it might be dangerous even to express one’s ideas publicly. A
project that expresses solidarity with joy in the game of life that
above all makes us free ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation,
mental poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to experimentation
and the continual activity of one’s mind in a project aimed at realising
itself in insurrection.
A project which is not specifically linked to the repression that has
struck our comrades but which continues to evolve and make social
tension grow, to the point of making it explode so strongly that the
prison walls fall down by themselves.
A project which is a point of reference and stimulus for the imprisoned
comrades, who in turn are point of reference for it. Revolutionary
solidarity is the secret that destroys all walls, expressing love and
rage at the same time as one’s own insurrection in the struggle against
Capital and the State.
Daniela Carmignani
There are many ways to demonstrate solidarity to comrades who are being
criminalised by the State, each one of which is a direct expression of
the way one intervenes in the social clash in general.
There are those who see solidarity as lending a social service to this
or that arrested comrade, and that is the way they carry out their
activity: looking for lawyers, sending money and clothes to prison,
visiting and so on. This purely humanitarian solidarity also translates
itself into the constitution of defence committees and relative
campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion.
Then there are those who see solidarity in a strictly political key and
play at making a heap of “distinctions” aimed at not compromising the
image of their own activity. So for reasons of opportunity they defend
and show solidarity to those who declare themselves innocent, not to
those who Claim responsibility for their actions.
Others still, if they see there is something to be gained in terms of
political propaganda, immediately bring out flyers and leaflets in
formal solidarity with the comrade or comrades arrested, i.e. they
declare solidarity in words, while in practice there is no trace of it.
Then there is solidarity in an ideological context. This is the case of
the marxist-leninists in the revolutionary combatant party version. They
show solidarity with those with positions similar to their own, and are
in contrast with those who do not share or recognise their political
line or strategy, often using censorship and ostracism against those
they consider inconvenient.
What do we think we should mean by revolutionary solidarity then? The
first aspect is that of seeing solidarity as the extension of the
insurrectional social practice one is already carrying out within the
class clash, i.e. as a direct demonstration of actions of attack against
all the structures of power, large and small that are present in one’s
own territory. And that is because these should to all effects be
considered responsible for everything that happens in social reality,
including therefore the criminalisation and arrest of comrades wherever
they are. It would be short-sighted to reduce the question of repression
against comrades to something strictly linked to the legal and police
apparatus. The criminalisation and arrest of comrades should be seen in
the context of the social struggle as a whole, precisely because these
are always the hasty material means used by the State to discourage
radicalisation everywhere. No matter how great or insignificant it might
be, every act of repression belongs to the relations of the social
struggle in course against the structures of dominion.
The second aspect is that each revolutionary comrade should be defended
on principle, irrespective of the accusations made against them by the
State’s legal and police apparatus, in the first place because it is a
question of snatching them from its clutches i.e. from the conditions of
“hostage” they have been reduced to. Moreover, it is also a question of
not losing the occasion to intensify the attack against the “law”
intended as the regulating expression of all the relationships of power
present in constituted society.
The third aspect concerns the refusal to accept the logic of defence
that is inherent in constitutional law, such as for example the problem
of the “innocence” or “guilt” of the comrades involved, and that is
because we have many good reasons for defending them and no one can
justify the political opportunism of not doing so. We cannot and must
not consider ourselves lawyers, but revolutionary anarchists at war
against constituted social order an all fronts. We aim at radically
destroying the latter from top to bottom, we are not interested in
judging it as it does us. For this reason we consider any sentence made
by the State vultures against proletarians in revolt, and all the more
so if they are comrades, to be a sentence against ourselves and as such
to be avenged with all the means we consider opportune, according to our
disposition and personal inclinations.
The fourth and final aspect concerns our attitude towards the arrested
comrades, whom we continue to behave towards in the same way as those
not in prison. That means that to revolutionary solidarity we always and
in any case unite a radical critique. We can and do show solidarity with
imprisoned comrades without for this espousing their ideas. Those who
show solidarity to imprisoned comrades are not necessarily involved in
their opinions and points of view, and the same thing goes for us as far
as they are concerned. We actively support all imprisoned comrades in
all and for all, but only up to the point where what we do for them does
not come into contrast with or contradict our revolutionary
insurrectionalist way of being. Ours is exclusively a relationship
between social revolutionaries in revolt, not that of bartering
positions. We do not sacrifice any part of ourselves, just as we do not
expect others to do the same.
We think of solidarity as a way of being accomplices, of taking
reciprocal pleasure and in no way consider it a duty, a sacrifice for
the “good and sacred cause”, because it is our own cause, i.e.
ourselves.
Starting from these premises, of primary importance in the development
of one’s anarchist insurrectionalist action, revolutionary solidarity
takes on meaning as such, because we would show simple material support
to any friend who ends up in prison.
Revolutionary solidarity is an integral part of our very being as
insurrectional anarchists. It is in this dimension that it should be
demonstrated incessantly, precisely because it contributes to widening
what we are already doing.
Pierleone Porcu
Prison, a physical territory distinct and separate from the rest of
social life and what it represents and determines, seems to occupy a
reserved space in our thoughts and minds.
The law is a concentrate of the way society has chosen to regulate its
conflicts (by force and through image), whereas prison sums up what
directly crushes and oppresses us. For us it is a question of
understanding how and where one can act to put an end to all the filth
of survival, including facing the problem of the destruction of prison
and the law. And in order to put an end to the law it is also essential
to stop thinking and talking in its language, that normally used to
denounce the “abuses” of power. By so doing we certainly don’t want to
contest the prisoner’s possibility to demand to be treated properly when
tormented by the screw. But by shutting oneself up in particular wrongs
(the screw’s abuses) without considering the monstruosity of the very
existence of prison, the prisoner finds himself drawn into a perverse
accountancy: what does it mean to ask for the right to be treated
properly? Would any individual whatsoever not prefer not to be treated
at all?
Law as the right of an individual to obtain or do such and such a thing,
or as a whole including texts and legal practices. The latter apparently
include and guarantee the former. So the democratic procedure always
consists of padding out law with the rights of man, whereas any law we
might benefit from is itself a dispossession, a search for ourselves in
something other than ourselves.
But what do laws define? Freedom conceived of only in negative terms:
“my freedom ends where another’s begins”. A vision of the individual as
a territory limited by others, a vision of small proprietors, precursors
of the famous “my body belongs to me”. It is not by chance that the
temporal dimension, a fundamental human value, is lacking in these
concepts.
Every right is by nature both a principle and a practical means of
exclusion and privation. Whoever says right says exchange, because the
law is there to organise a measured repartition of rights and duties
and, in the case of damage, it prescribes the amount of compensation. A
right always belongs to a miserable proprietor, because he needs a
property title for something he is afraid of losing or that could be
taken from him. Law is always aimed at governing a community which is
incapable of living as such, in order for it not explode completely.
Law is also an ideology — a mental and rational construction that serves
to justify the real social function of justice.
Today law is a precise quantifiying coded instrument which determines
and points out what each individual, including each civil servant, must
do. The police are held to respect very severe regulations and at the
same time they are continually having to break them in order to
function. Legal control of their work is a fake: everyone knows the pig
uses particular techniques in order to function and to exert pressure,
which judges nearly always close a eye to. No matter whether it is
applied to the investigator or the common citizen, the law does not
prevent excesses, it merely keeps them within reasonable limits so as
not to put the social order and institutions at risk. In the same way a
prison sentence serves to circumscribe the revenge of the injured party
by keeping it within the limits that have been established and applied
by a third party “above the parts”, as all societies dispose of norms to
allow those in power to regulate their arguments, legitimize their power
and obtain the consensus of the exploited.
The Bible does not define, it lists, justifying such an operation with
the unknowable and inscrutable divine will concerning what one should
and shouldn’t do. The modern era also supplies a definition of man upon
which to organise its social rules. The same goes for the law, with the
pretext of establishing what is right and what is wrong. Hence the
classification into good and bad. Innocence and guilt are attributes of
the legal mechanism as they contain a judgement (which the person
concerned is heartily invited to interiorise). Now, to understand and
live the crudest acts (rape, murder, torture) does not mean to judge
them. Whoever sits in judgement is acting in the name of something that
goes beyond the social relations which determined these same acts.
Precisely in the same way as morals do in interpersonal relations, the
law applies a pre-established norm to a conflict or violence to
solemnize the trauma, defining it in order to exorcise it. In this logic
it is necessary for there to be a guilty party, not just someone
responsible, as guilt penetrates the guilty, becoming their whole being.
This is complete when the law claims to judge not only action but the
whole person in the light of their action, reinforced with an analysis
of the motivations, psychiatric reports and personality tests.
The sphere of State control is extending as rights increase, as it is
necessary to have them respected and to sanction transgressions. The
tendency of democratic society is to penalise everything. It has a
clause and a punishment for every form of violence from the slap of the
parent to rape. The extension of rights is synonymous with generalised
criminalisation. It is claimed that violence has been banished from all
social relations. But that reinforces the monopoly of violence that has
been “legitimised” by the State, which is infinitely worse than any
other kind. The law does not eliminate violence, it normalises it. Like
democracy, it constitutes a filter to intolerance and violence alike.
Like democracy, the law functions on the basis of reason without having
recourse to force. But for this reason brute force is also necessary in
order for it to express itself, for any discussion to take place on its
own terms. In the same way democracy bases itself on the refusal of the
violence it has generated and which it needs in order to perpetuate
itself.
And so this filter also affects radical action, when it enters a court
for example, rendering it incapable of proposing anything other than
what is acceptable to the law. However, that is not a reason for not
acting, or for regretting having acted, but rather for doing it
knowingly: no revolutionary intervention can exist within the ambit of
the law. The legal apparatus separates the accused from the discussions
that concern him by delegating his power, as is continually done in
democracy, to a few of its representatives: in this case to lawyers.
The worst thing is that, because the trial is public, one is convinced
one is controlling the law, whereas it is really the law that is
controlling the public. The image that comes from the court carries an
essential, hypnotically repeated message: violence is the monopoly of
the State. And when conflicts between parties lead to confusion and
uncertainty it is the State that sorts things out: “I also have a
monopoly of truth”. The trilogy “police-justice-media” must therefore be
analysed as a whole. Even if the game between the three partners
overturns it is still able to absorb any scandal. There is a scandal
when it transpires that somebody has broken the rules: but such an
accusation presupposes one’s remaining inside the game. The real rupture
would be to break out of it.
No denunciation, no blinding glare of truth contains on its own the
strength to threaten the existence of social institutions and relations.
So, why take up the question of repression and the law? Certainly not
just because of the existence of the primary, essential, exemplary
horror of the courts and prisons. We have no need to seek a peak of
horror in order to put the whole of society in question, as that would
fail to supply us with elements for getting to the roots of exploitation
and alienation. Moreover, a scale of atrocities would be inconceivable.
The prisoner in jail, the soldier being trained for fighting in the mud
of a trench, the worker who has an accident at work, the peasant who
toils sixteen hours a day, each one has a number of good reasons for
finding the ultimate horror in their own condition.
In effect a solid, efficient society knows how to cover up a
relationship of oppression with the honey of partial satisfactions. Is
the humanisation of work not one of Capital’s constant programmes? And
then, in a “free” and democratic society it is not necessary to simply
produce wealth, it is necessary above all to “find a job”. In prison too
they now understand that no one should stay idle any longer: the
prisoner will be conceded a job in order to “earn his time”, and will be
allowed to move himself, “fill up his time”. The concept of the
inflicted sentence alone is now historically and culturally out of date.
So these same subjects who failed to fulfil and “ennoble” their
existence when they were outside the walls, now find themselves with an
occupation that offers considerable advantages to themselves and the
State.
The penal institution is necessary to the class society, no matter how
many or how few prisoners it holds. The idea of an eventual suppression
of it is a pure illusion, just as the idea of an economy managed from
the base is, the existence of firms where the wage earners could
“self-manage” their own exploitation (a horror worthy of the most
sanguinary dictatorships). Prison has an indispensable symbolic
function. The reclusion of the few not only recalls the existence of the
norm that has been violated, but also functions as a point of reference,
a rough border of the limits not to be ventured beyond.
Today’s society is one of maximum impotence and generalised assistance.
The whole of existence now requires intermediaries, so there is a
proliferation of public services whose function is assured thanks to a
network of induced needs. The State fills the void of existence with the
instruments that it uses to control at the same time as it maintains
structures like prison as places of social dumping. Of course, this
function could be assured in other ways. A society that was capable of
reforming itself would do so with lower costs (social and accounting),
but it would still maintain that function in some way.
Superficial critiques that are incapable of conceiving of an end to the
law consider that it can and must be maintained, at best without
intervening, imagining a future society without violence and attributing
the violence of today to the misdeeds of the class society. This has
been the dream of many enlightened partisans of all the schools of
thought desirous of a “perfect” world.
A separate mechanism for the resolution of conflict by projecting an
image and excluding the individual, the law will never be abolished even
though its functions may be entrusted to another entity that is not
above people and is far more maleable, revocable, submitted to
elections, or controlled by popular assembly. A spontaneous form of
justice with flexible laws or even without any text at all would not for
that cease to be machinery dividing good from evil independently of and
against social relations. It makes no difference to us whether judges be
bureaucrats or not, the penal code rigid or adaptable. It is the very
notion of law that we want to destroy. Even if the law changes daily
with the “evolution of customs” it does not change its function.
No matter what the opinion polls say, the social order wins every time
one votes, in the same way that no matter what the jury vote, the very
existence of the law is what constitutes the victory, it does not need
anything else.
The modern legal apparatus is extremely rational and scientific as it
ostentates its superior “impartiality” through the application of
procedures which weigh up the possibilities conceded to the accused and
their defence almost to the milligram. It can even allow itself to be
scrupulous to the individuals who are obliged to submit to it, controls
them, despoils them completely, having acquired full power over their
existence. Its very existence is a victory as it constrains everyone,
including those like us who contest it, to play according to its rules.
Only the incorrigible political lefty zealot can consider a sentence or
an acquittal to be a victory or defeat of justice. And it is no wonder
that it is precisely those who refuse to criticise the law as such who
do not understand or accept the nature of Democracy, Fascism,
Antifascism, and so on. Just as they participate in elections or claim
immigrants’ right to vote. They call for working class juries instead of
“bourgeois judges”. Their perspective is not at all that of destroying
justice as such, but of democratising it like everything else. However,
one sees there, tragically or comically, the reproduction of the
characteristics of justice and its prison corollary. This often takes
place among the exploited themselves, which gives an idea of the extent
of the problem.
At times some might feel obliged to pass over to the enemy camp and
argue in legal terms, but that never constitutes a victory. And anyway
it is always a task that is best left to the lawyer. For example, a
public action capable of raising doubts, waving the scarecrow of a
clamorous “legal” error and some good work by the lawyers during the
debate can even force the judiciary to renounce coming down heavily on
the accused, but that does not alter the fact that in any case the law
has acted according to its own rules by obliging us to respect them.
Moreover, an institution that is capable of admitting its mistakes is an
institution that strengthens itself.
In the same way a court that acquits, like one that convicts, is still a
court. It would be hard to imagine anywhere that the disinherited have
less power than in a court. An exceptional case could arise from
pressure exercised on the judiciary by a social movement, for example
when a crowd gathers demanding an acquittal precisely in the same way as
a police station can be besieged by hundreds of demonstrators demanding
that those arrested be freed, but this pressure is external. It is
always elsewhere that the strength of the exploited can constitute
itself.
All the same, eradicating the conviction that the only way to obtain
benevolent treatment by the legal apparatus is to busy oneself from the
inside to show up the social inoffensiveness of those caught up in it is
often an arduous task
Yes, and in theory we are all convinced that the best way to solidarise
with an act of revolt is to commit another. Many are capable of
applauding and praising a successful action, and there is no lack of
comrades ready to put this maxim into practice by reproposing it,
thereby contributing to its generalisation. Any act of subversion goes
far beyond its actual outcome, in good as in evil. On the contrary,
regularly when things “go wrong” and the authors of the act of rebellion
are singled out or arrested, it does not occur to anyone to act in turn.
Solidarity no longer concretises in our action but in the reaction to
the actions of others, in this case, those of the judges.
So we prefer to wait, listen to lawyers’ advice, the arrested comrades’
declarations, the completion of investigations. We wait to see how
things are going as though what mattered before was our desires and our
attempts to realise them, and now it is simply a question of getting our
comrades “out”.
Not intending to act instrumentally, getting comrades out of prison is
undoubtedly our primary aim. All the same, it is necessary to evaluate
the means one intends to use and to be aware of their nature and limits.
Instead it turns out that it would seem more becoming to put the usual
critiques of the law aside. Forget the bellicose declarations of war
against society and limit oneself to being just, and consequently to
having an innocent person acquitted, freeing a sick comrade, or
considering what in other circumstances we would accept as gestures of
revolt, as nothing but childish pranks. But is that really what we want?
To appeal to the humanitarian sentiments of those we despise?
In the face of the law and the fear it arouses, it seems that we are
incapable of doing anything other than recanting ourselves and what we
say we desire.
Rebels and revolutionaries when we are free, once we are in the hands of
the enemy we are only capable of showing the innocuousness of the
actions we carried out.
Power puts subversives, anarchists, in prison because as such they are
“socially dangerous”. Is painting them as inoffensive lambs all we can
do to get them out?
Are we cynical? Are we making an apology for sacrifice? Nothing of all
that. We are simply tormented by a question that is beginning to worry
us — are we just good boys and girls?
Aldo Perego
Of course we are far from the times and conditions in which the tragedy
of Sacco and Vanzetti took place. But have the problems concerning the
way that the movement of democratic opinion all over the world reacted
changed all that much? Why? Perhaps due to lack of clarity and certain
misunderstandings? These are the questions that led to the notes that
follow.
I read “Acts on the study day on Sacco and Vanzetti” held in
Villafalletto on September 4 and 5, 1987, and asked myself how much did
the fact that these two comrades were innocent count at the time and
still does today concerning this affair? If the two comrades had
declared themselves responsible, or had just as incontrovertibly been
considered responsible for the actions attributed to them would they
still have been defended by the international anarchist movement? What
would the reaction of the world movement of opinion that took over the
whole affair have been in that case?
Of course, history isn’t built with “ifs”, I know that perfectly well.
And it is not my intention to make a contribution to the “history” of
Sacco and Vanzetti. I have a strong suspicion of all more or less
professional historians, have more than a little suspicion of history
itself, and obviously suspect all politicians old and new and their good
faith in taking up historical “cases”.
On the other hand, I have no doubt about the fact that Sacco and
Vanzetti were quite extraneous to the specific acts they were accused
of. But this certainty is personal and quite foreign to facts that can
be ascertained or obscured in the event of a trial and does not prevent
me from asking myself, and I hope the few comrades that read me, a few
disturbing questions.
Of course, it must be terrible to die innocent, and that is because the
moral value of justice is rooted in each one of us. Not the sacrosanct
justice of proletarian rebellion that upturns everything and settles
accounts in a collective thrust of destruction but the technical,
judicial, traditional one. The old justice with the blindfold eyes that
we unmask to discover in horror are all rotten.
But although we have read about and are aware of all this, we are still
convinced that justice should work. Christ! How can you send two
innocent men to death! The holy indignation of so many anarchist
comrades goes hand in hand with the lay indignation of the communists,
democrats and possibilists of every shade. The glorious crusade of the
left reassembles unequivocally each time the names of Sacco and Vanzetti
are mentioned. And what links them is precisely the general and
objectively justifiable question of innocence. But the rage that is at
the root of this, the rage for two comrades murdered by the State,
cannot let us close our eyes to other problems.
It seems to me that the flux of democratic personalities, the artistic
and literary ones even more than the judicial or academic ones, greatly
contributed to spreading the Sacco and Vanzetti “case”. This led to vast
propaganda at world level, but also to lowering the level of the clash
that was undoubtedly taking place in America, and more specifically in
court, at the time. Too much talk, too many theatricals, too many
democratic journalists, too many politicians. And this, like a
continuous, perverse thread still is going on today with attempts to
recuperate by the contender to the White House, Dukakis.
But how do you decide otherwise? Take the case of piazza Fontana [1969 —
a bomb in the Banca dell’Agricoltura, Milan, kills 17 people. Anarchists
are accused of this State massacre which was denounced by the whole of
the left] — could you have told the Communist Party to get lost and drop
their support? If anarchists do everything to spread their propaganda in
order to involve people and have themselves heard by the widest number
possible, how can they refuse the collaboration of the political and
intellectual forces even though they know perfectly well where that
leads. This is not an easy problem to answer. At the time of Sacco and
Vanzetti, could they have refused the support of people like Sinclair
Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, Walter Lippman, John Dos Passos, not to mention
the various Roman Rollands, Thomas Manns, Albert Einsteins etc., all
over the world who supported the anarchists’ innocence? Yes, it would
have been difficult.
But I don’t want to bring up the quite legitimate point of view that the
comrades should only have been defended within the international
anarchist movement, with propaganda limited to the latter’s motivations
accepting only the outside forces that were willing to keep the question
within these limits. I just want to say that the kind of collaboration
imposed by the lawyer Moore necessarily had to have the stamp of
approval of both the Defence Committee and the two comrades in prison.
It wasn’t foreseen how much the innocence of the two comrades would be
underlined and how neglected their guilt on principle due to their
militancy, their belonging to a specific part of the American and
international anarchist movement, would be cast into the background.
That was the price of that collaboration. After all, one could play on
the doubt, and this still happens today, that it was a question of two
immigrants, two honest workers, and underline the nationalist and class
element which certainly produced results at the time but did not put any
light on the anarchist and revolutionary personalities of Sacco and
Vanzetti.
Was the presence of the forces of the international “left” useful to the
aim of saving their lives? One must conclude that they were not, given
that the two comrades were assassinated all the same. The fact that it
reduced any possibility of their anarchist activity emerging is also
negative.
What would have happened if that presence had been refused? The two
comrades would have been defended in the same way as the others who
ended up on the scaffold, some innocent, some guilty, were by Galleani’s
paper. And here we come to the question: but does this differentiation
between “guilty” and “innocent” make any sense?
Frankly, I don’t know. I reread the “Acts” we are talking about here,
and saw that both Sacco and Vanzetti contributed to “Cronaca
Sovversiva”. So they must have been aware of Galleani’s position on this
false problem. The fact that they were “innocent’ could not make them go
back to a total acceptation of the innocentist road, at least in the
terms developed in the trial. I agree with Pedretti, therefore, when he
writes “Bartolomeo Vanzetti was not an acritical one-dimensional person,
he denounced the mechanism that led to heroising his defeat to the
bitter end: he was essentially a communist anarchist, profoundly
convinced and extremely proud of his political and existential
choices... in fact he never concealed his hatred of the injustice he was
a victim of and his desire to be avenged”. (p. 130) In a sense, once the
decision had been made it was necessary to go on to the bitter end,
right to the point of making the fact (imposed by the “frightened
progressives” who made up the great mass of the supporters of Sacco and
Vanzetti ) that they were anarchists appear between the lines.
The fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered although obviously
innocent proves only one thing: that the concept of innocence and guilt
is not an objective fact but is a measure imposed by the class struggle.
The legal techniques and police procedures that establish whether a
person is guilty or innocent are part of the culture of power.
For an anarchist revolutionary the procedures that come to be pushed as
logical “evidence” are worth absolutely nothing. It is to one’s
revolutionary conscience that one must respond, not the evidence of a
situation orchestrated by an enemy who makes and breaks the rules of the
game at its pleasure. For a “democrat” on the contrary there is a net
difference between being guilty and being innocent. Guilty is he who has
broken the law in a precise way, in the context notified to him and for
which legal proceedings are commenced. On the contrary, the innocent are
those who did not do what, for various reasons, they have been accused
of. The great mass of those who still cringe in horror when they think
of what happened to Sacco and Vanzetti, do so because these two comrades
of ours were innocent, i.e. did not carry out the robbery or kill the
people they were accused of killing and which they died for on the
electric chair. A small minority, and among them there must have been
anarchists, cringe in horror not only because of the ignominious,
atrocious method in which the prosecution succeeded in maintaining their
responsibility concerning the specific events, but because Sacco and
Vanzetti were murdered by the State. Would the horror we are talking
about have existed, apart from in this small minority which for one
reason or another did not take any notice of the objective fact of their
innocence, if the two anarchists had had a more dignified trial (from
the point of view of establishing proof) and it had turned out that they
had committed the robbery? We are sure that things would have been quite
different.
The great mass of those who are respectable by profession would all have
been in favour of a sentence, and we understand this. On the other hand
a small minority including anarchists would, like Galleani, have stated
that there is no difference between innocence and guilt.
Had Sacco and Vanzetti really been responsible for those deeds there
would only have been a modest show of defence at the level of opinion by
comrades, such as that which existed some time before the tragedy of
Sacco and Vanzetti, for Ravachol for example. On the other hand,
comrades who put themselves in the optic of expropriation cannot believe
they have a movement behind them, no matter what its objective
conditions are and the level of theoretical awareness within it.
Why can we not expect such a thing? For at least two good reasons:
first, because the decision to carry out particular actions, including
those aimed at participating through a precise effort in increasing the
availability of certain revolutionary instruments, is always a personal
decision and must be borne, in good as in evil, by the individual
comrades and their matured awareness. Secondly, because a movement, even
a revolutionary one, needs to develop, has divergences of opinion,
certain legitimate reservations that cannot all be cast aside in one go.
Put this way, correctly as far as I can see, there is nothing strange
about taking a distance in such cases, thus clearly showing one’s
extraneousness to the question. Whyever should one let oneself get
involved a posteriori in something one does not agree with? The only
criticizable position is the moralist one, which necessarily ends up in
the realm of the morals of power produced and imposed by the bosses.
This brief reflection should help us to see various situations more
clearly, in the first place that of Sacco and Vanzetti. If being
innocent is no more than an external factor that might or might not
exist — and in the case of the two comrades Sacco and Vanzetti murdered
in America, they were innocent — comrades should be defended everywhere,
even if they are “guilty”. Now, if this is so, we cannot constitute wide
fronts when comrades are innocent, then limit ourselves to a small part
of the anarchist movement when comrades are “guilty”. The thing should
be approached in the same way, at least theoretically, if we admit in
the first place, as should be obvious, that “innocent” or “guilty” only
exist in the logic of power.
How can we get out of this dilemma? Quite simply. By always starting
from the fact that for us the technical aspect is secondary, and if
comrades are accused, imprisoned and in some cases even killed, this
happens, apart from the objective event that constitutes the element of
debate in court and which is of marginal interest to us, because they
are anarchists. We cannot make technical points become the central
elements of the defence campaign.
Many comrades, even those in good faith, think differently because they
are prey to the banalities of the dominant ideas. The claim to
objectivity is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy of the
conquerors.
It is important to understand this because it always takes us by
surprise, reappearing where we least expect it. That reality is
something that can be determined in a precise way is one of the many
myths at the basis of the new scientific thought, just as when it
emerged from the complex conditions of the Renaissance, let’s say, in
the ideas of Galilei: rationalism reduced to description, no longer as
essence.
And contemporary law is a worthy heir of enlightenment rationalism, not
having changed the certainties concerning the “way” in which things went
very much. One still assists today in comical “reconstructions” and
other such things in court. We have become so used to this way of
thinking that we do not even notice it.
When we say that Sacco and Vanzetti were not innocent but on the
contrary were guilty, but only of being anarchists, we insert into the
trial that claims to be objective (therefore of a quantitative nature),
an element that is extraneous to the trial itself (or at least, is
considered so by judicial science), an element of a qualitative nature.
And yet this is not so. Reality is precisely this complex thing that
cannot be reduced to the result of a legal procedure. The latter will
always be arbitrary and founded not on evidence but on strength, not on
logic but power.
A difficult way of reasoning? Perhaps, yes, but if you do it once you
never forget it.
Alfredo M. Bonanno
meeting in Bologna
What follows is no more than a few points that all the anarchists
present agreed upon at the end of the two days. Each one of them,
although strongly linked to the others, deserves to be examined
individually because of the profound theoretical and methodological
problems it raises. The circulation of this text should therefore serve
to stimulate further moments capable of bringing forth new ideas and,
above all, new instruments for practical intervention.
The present writer is convinced that the foul war unleashed by the
statist counter-position in ex-Yugoslavia is, in its complexity, a great
acid test for anarchism in that it involves many of its theoretical
assumptions, historical experiences and practical proposals (the problem
of the national liberation struggle to give but one example). Perhaps
the most important point of the discussion was the consideration that it
is impossible to make a distinction between the state of war in
ex-Yugoslavia and, more generally, the context of armed peace which it
is taking place in. The importance of this lies in the fact that
proposals for concrete intervention cannot fail to conform to this kind
of analysis of the situation in the Balkan area. If one were to consider
the war as a thing in itself the actions proposed to contrast it would
tend to re-establish conditions of normality, therefore favour — even
indirectly — the forces who want to restore Peace. Whereas if the
bellicose event is inserted into the reality of dominion where (and only
where) it belongs, it becomes possible to identify a much wider field of
practical intervention and single out objectives linked to far wider
responsibilities. The question is far less banal that it might seem. To
say war is also that which States and economic structures put into act
daily all over the world through oppression and exploitation does not
deny that there is a difference between the situation in Italy for
example and that in ex-Yugoslavia (in fact, dominion — within which
however divisions cannot be traced — determines the cohabitation of the
most refined instruments of technological control with the most cruel
barbarity). Just as it does not mean one considers (as it seems some do)
that a formation of opposing ethnic groups could materialise in Italy.
What we want to bring to light are the responsibilities of external
governments and international political and military organisms.
What is happening in ex-Yugoslavia cannot therefore (and here we came to
the second point) be carried out within a logic of aid. To limit
proposals to the creation of structures for receiving refugees and
deserters means to accept the logic of emergency which is no more than
one of the many mechanisms which the war, when it is considered as a
separate event, produces. Someone has pointed out how aid is, over and
above the good intentions, a spectacular expression of statism. Is it by
chance that the associations that carry it out are often directly
related to the armed forces and that they tend to absolve external
responsibilities (such as for example those of the UN)? Is it possible
then for aid to contradict its very nature if it is organised by
anarchists? Or would it continue to favour, instead of damaging, the
structures that have every interest in fomenting the war? The idea of
creating an aid network by getting in touch with local councils to no up
areas of welcome for deserters put forward by some of those present is
even further removed from autonomy from and conflictuality against
power. It is obvious then, it was pointed out, how the ideology of
emergency leads to allying oneself with the internal power structure
(even in the form of local administration) in order to “resolve” an
external situation that has in part been created by the latter — or at
least in collaboration with it.
Instead of “aid” (third point) “complicity” was spoken of, by that
meaning the will to develop, through collaboration with groups and
individuals in ex-Yugoslavia (and other countries) that are active
against the war, moments of action that are really anti-militarist. In
this sense the practice of direct action against the military structures
(and not just military ones) that exist in our own country was proposed.
In order to create these relations of complicity the circulation of
ideas and information is essential (for example through meetings such as
that held in Pordenone and other more informal ones) and the spreading
of this material (for which the publication of a “bulletin” was
suggested).
In such a context, the proposal (still to be verified) to concretely
support the actions of deserters through a network between libertarian
individuals and groups active in Italy and other countries takes on a
different perspective. (fourth point)
A theoretical and methodological approach of this kind could, I believe,
supply useful instruments for reflection and practice concerning a
situation such as that of the Balkan peninsula, which there has been a
time-lapse in understanding on the part of anarchists. In fact (and here
we are facing the last question under discussion), the complex task of
singling out reponsibilities has not led to a “peace” movement such as
the one that was created, for example, during the Gulf war.
For anyone who has refused to take sides with any one of the
ethnocracies involved in the conflict (and this is obviously not the
case of the authoritarian groups “against” the war) a widening of the
objectives against which to address their actions cannot fail to be an
important step forward.
Massimo Passamani