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Title: Anarchists and Insurrection
Author: Matt Crossin
Date: August 4, 2022
Language: en
Topics: insurrectionary, organization, class struggle, Red and Black Notes
Source: Retrieved on August 5, 2022 from https://www.redblacknotes.com/2022/08/04/anarchists-and-insurrection-organisation-class-struggle-and-riots/
Notes: This is the third in a series of articles by Matt Crossin, ‘Critical Notes on Developments in the Anarchist Movement’. New articles in the series will be published in coming weeks.

Matt Crossin

Anarchists and Insurrection

The ‘classical’ period of anarchism, which can be defined as lasting

from the foundation of the St. Imier ‘anarchist’ International in 1872

to the end of the Second World War in 1945, had two significant

currents. ‘Mass’ or ‘Social’ anarchism, represented by

anarcho-syndicalism (the formation of anarchist union federations) and

dual organisationalism (the formation of specific anarchist

organisations intervening in mass struggles), was overwhelmingly

dominant, and traces its lineage through the St. Imier Congress, to the

libertarian wing of the First International, and other federalist

precursors within the workers’ movement.[1] Opposed to this was the

minority current of ‘insurrectionary’ anarchism, which saw the

developing workers’ movement as reformist (and reforms themselves of

dubious worth), opposed formal organisations as inconsistent with

anarchism, and limited itself to tactics intended to provoke widespread

insurrection: armed attacks against the State and property,

assassination of politicans and bosses, etc.

Insurrectionary anarchism found new life with the decline of the

international workers’ movement in the late 1970s. Radical forms of

rank-and-file power were repressed. Unions managed by professionalised

bureaucracies, committed to the stability of the capitalist system

(including their cushy position within it), and generally subservient to

the interests of affiliated political parties, accepted the integration

of organised labour within highly regulated, legalistic channels of

dispute management, which criminalised effective direct action and

restricted workers’ control over the struggle.[2]

Rather than recognize the turn from law-defying militancy to legalistic

impotence as an outcome requiring a renewed commitment to the long and

patient work of workplace agitation, some revolutionaries chose to

accept the more convenient narrative that this historic tragedy had been

inevitabile. Our position as ‘workers’ – individuals forged by

capitalist development into a class, but capable of becoming a class

that acts for itself – was supposedly ‘no longer relevant’ to

emancipation.

Insurrectionists claim that the struggle over production ultimately led

to bureaucratisation and an accommodation with class society. From their

perspective, there is, therefore, no point in attempting to collectively

identify as an oppressed class of ‘workers’, or organise mass

organisations of struggle on that basis. Indeed, insurrectionary

anarchists oppose all forms of formal organisation and are often

sceptical of the idea of ‘organisation’ itself. They argue that specific

projects require nothing more than informal ‘affinity groups’: close

comrades working together to achieve concrete goals, without any ongoing

structure or political programme.

But if we are not struggling as an organised class at work, where should

such affinity groups be engaged in struggle? Insurrectionists have

typically advocated a politics of ‘constant attack’. They relish in the

images of street fights with police, the lighting of fires, and looting

of stores. As with the neo-anarchist politics of Occupy, the point of

struggle is generally seen as the street, or the public space, carved

out as an experiment in ‘autonomy’. But where the neo-anarchist finds

freedom in the self-management of a tent-city or community garden,

today’s insurrectionist seems to find it in the act of rebellion itself;

the demonstration of their supposed ungovernability. The insurrectionist

and their ‘crew’ steal a bag of groceries to feed the hungry, and keep

the cops at bay when they try to stop them.

It’s obviously a good thing to feed someone who is hungry and we have no

objections to breaking the law, but this is a strange idea of freedom.

It assumes the insurmountable permanence of a society based on the

existence of bosses, governments, and commodities. It proposes that we

act as if capital and the State can never really be overthrown through a

concrete transformation of social relations in production. Things can’t

be changed, they can only be subverted or defied.

The most far-sighted of insurrectionists view riots, assassination, and

property destruction as a sort of propaganda by example, or ‘propaganda

of the deed’. These are intended as initiating events, sparked by

courageous minorities, which they hope may spiral into general

insurrections against the government; freeing us from the drudgery of a

life spent at work and any risk of a ‘return to normality’.[3]

With the George Flloyd Rebellion the politics of insurrectionary

anarchism was put to a serious test. The insurrectionists were presented

with a nation-wide uprising which broke from legality and the control of

any organisation. Police stations were attacked and stores looted. A

multi-racial coalition of the working class took to the streets, arm in

arm, to face down the cops. In the so-called ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous

Zone’ (CHAZ), an entire neighbourhood block was cleared of police, and

established as a space for cooperative projects (such as a ‘Black and

Indigenous only’ community garden) as well as an open-mic for ongoing

debate.

The ‘CHAZ’ (which, in reality, was never able to develop beyond a

cop-free block-party) quickly stagnated, with no clear aims other than

maintaining the occupation. The affinity groups attempted to maintain

the rage, but were unable to encourage the rebellion in a revolutionary

direction.

Things soon ended in chaos and disaster.[4] All manner of cranks and

adventurists were attracted to the project. Liberal notions of

‘privilege politics’ – a shallow understanding of identity-based

domination – were aggressively pushed, undermining the new links of

solidarity.[5] Ultimately, a few armed individuals (having appointed

themselves as a ‘patrol’) fired on and killed a few black teenagers

speeding by in their car. Amidst the fog of uncertainty, vague reports

spread on social media, exciting those who equate the use of arms with

militancy. The killings were initially lauded in some insurrectionist

corners of the internet as a successful case of ‘revolutionary

self-defence’ against ‘right-wing infiltrators’.[6]

Across the United States insurrection gradually turned to legal, managed

protest. The militancy of the initial outburst vanished without having

established any organisational forms or strategy suitable for its

reproduction, let alone escalation. Minneapolis’s Third Precinct was

burnt to the ground, windows were smashed, and the goods from looted

stores shared amongst grieving communities. But police, prisons,

capitalist firms, and commodity production remain. The capitalists

continue to be a possessing class in need of the State, and the State –

itself the owner of so much of the means of production – continues to

require a system of property to reproduce itself and the privileges of

political rule.

These social relations can not be smashed or blown up in the streets.

They can’t be abolished by simply attacking the individuals who rule

over us. They can only be transformed at their root, within the sphere

of production, through the expropriation of property and the forceful

destruction of the State.

The uprising of 2020 no doubt marks a significant moment. The experience

transformed the thinking of many who took part, or even witnessed it.

The unparalleled expression of solidarity with Palestinains under

Israeli assault just a year later was in no small part due to a popular

shift in consciousness around racial domination. The militant opposition

to the police also deepened their ongoing recruitment crisis. This has

intensified the cycle in which the institution nakedly exposes its

authoritarian character, as it is disproportionately the most fascistic

who continue to be attracted to the profession.

But as the writer Shemon Salam asked in the aftermath of the Rebellion,

“In what sense are riots a path towards revolution if they simply cannot

generalize to the point of production, unless the latter is no longer

needed”? “Good luck getting food once the grocery store is looted

empty.”[7]

Likewise, Tristan Leoni’s insightful analysis of the Gilet Jaunes

(Yellow Vest) movement in France leads us to the same conclusion:

[The Yellow Vests] targeted circulation rather than production. Yet

blocking means blocking other people’s work. It is only because some

workers produce goods and others transport them that the blockade has

any “impact”: in other words, blocking is the result of a minority,

because the majority does not go on strike. By definition, the sphere of

circulation is not central, it is upstream and downstream of production

[…] In May 68, when 10 million workers were on strike, there was no more

flow to block! Therefore, to make revolution, blocking or stopping

production is not enough […] it is necessary to change production from

top to bottom (and therefore most likely to do away with a lot of it),

as well as changing the social relationships that come with it. This is

rather difficult if you only rebel in your spare time.[8]

With the rise in strike activity across the world – inside of the

unions, outside of them, and even against the wishes of union

bureaucrats – it is interesting to note that the insurrectionists have

gotten rather quiet about the ‘irrelevance’ of class-based organisation.

We are even hearing less about the supposed sufficiency of affinity

groups!

Who could possibly argue now that the George Flloyd Rebellion would have

been ‘bureaucratized’ by the participation of anarchists, belonging to

anarchist organisations, encouraging activity in accordance with a

shared anarchist analysis and programme? Who would object to the

movement having shifted from street battles over ‘autonomous’ roads and

parks, to the occupation and repurposing of essential supply chains

under workers’ control? Can it really be doubted that organised workers,

federated in solidarity, and capable of wielding their shared technical

knowledge of their respective industries against capitalist production

itself, would be better prepared for such an uprising?

Short of revolution, such a development would have terrified the ruling

classes far more than all the burning cop cars put together.

Accepting that this is the case, insurrectionary anarchists would

benefit from revisiting some of the thoughts expressed by one of their

more serious thinkers: the Italian revolutionary Alfredo M. Bonanno.

Bonanno’s most famous work, Armed Joy (1977), is in many ways

representative of insurrectionary anarchist writings. Certainly, it

reflects all of the shortcomings that entails, the most blatant of which

is the tendency to write in an overwrought and pretentious style. The

pamphlet is notable, however, in that – when not simply reducing our

class struggle politics to either a strawman of conservative

syndicalism, or an opportunistic tailing of social movements – it

concedes so much to the mass-anarchist analysis.

Armed Joy dismisses “meetings”, the “rigid model of the frontal attack

on capitalist forces”, and efforts to “take over the means of

production” through a system of “self-management”. Bonanno makes clear

that he is much more impressed by those who simply, “make love, smoke,

listen to music, go for walks, sleep, laugh, play, kill policemen, lame

journalists, kill judges, blow up barracks” etc. And yet, Bonanno does

recognize the need for “the self-organisation of producers at the

workplace”, so as to realize communism: “The affirmation that man can

reproduce and objectify himself in non-work through the various

solicitations that this stimulates in him”. For Bonanno, communism is a

mode of production in which:

production would no longer be the dimension in which man determines

himself, as that would come about in the sphere of play and joy… it

would be possible to stop producing at any moment, when there is

enough.[9]

The most contrarian of insurrectionists can pretend otherwise, but if

Bonanno’s words are to have any coherence at all, this amounts to ‘a

frontal attack on capitalist forces’, ‘taking over the means of

production’, and communist ‘self-management’ – as articulated by the

classical mass-anarchist movement.

The parallels with mass-anarchist thought (particularly of the dual

organisationalist, or ‘platformist’ kind) are even clearer in other

works by Bonanno, such as those which outline a strategy based on

‘production nuclei’. For example, In the pamphlet A Critique of

Syndicalist Methods he argues in favour of:

direct struggle organised by the base; small groups of workers who

attack the centres of production. This would be an exercise in cohesion

for further developments in the struggle which could come about

following the obtaining of increasingly detailed information and the

decision to pass to the final expropriation of capital, i.e. to the

revolution.

He proceeds to assert that:

The economic situation could be organised without any oppressive

structure controlling or directing it or deciding on the aims to be

attained. This the worker understands very well. He knows exactly how

the factory is structured and that, this barrier overcome, he would be

able to work the economy in his own interest. He knows perfectly well

that the collapse of this obstacle would mean the transformation of

relationships both inside and outside the factory, the school, the land,

and the whole of society. For the worker the concept of proletarian

management is above all that of the management of production […] It is

therefore control over the product which is lacking in this perspective,

and with it decisions on lines of production, choices to be made, etc.

[…] What is required is to explain to him the way this mechanism could

be brought about in a communist economy, how he can come into possession

of as many products as are his “real” needs and how he can participate

in “useful” production according to his own potential.

Who does Bonanno think should “explain” this? Not ‘privileged delegates’

or ‘salaried bureaucrats’, but rather “political animators”:

“activist[s] [who] must work in the direction of the workers’ needs. “In

other words, the militant minority of anarchists should encourage the

development and activity of “[economic] federations of base

organisations”, in accordance with the principles agreeable to us, in

pursuit of both improvements (at work and outside of it) as well as

social revolution.

Where exactly does Bonanno’s opposition to formal anarchist

organisations figure into such a proposal? Does our role as “political

animators”, or “activists”, become inevitably bureaucratizing if our

organisations are committed to more than just singular, immediate tasks,

and are guided by revolutionary programmes available for all to read?

Bonanno notes the risk of organisations prioritising their own

reproduction as organisations over their supposed function. For

mass-organisations, such as federations of workers associations, located

at the point of struggle, the problem becomes one of potentially

sacrificing the struggle in favour of self-preservation.

But this is not a unique insight of insurrectionary anarchism! And

Bonanno knows this. Indeed, he approvingly quotes these words of the

Dutch anarchist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis:

I am an anarchist before anything else, then a syndicalist, but I think

that many are syndicalists first, then anarchists. There is a great

difference… The cult of syndicalism is as harmful as that of the State…

As anarchist proponents of dual organisationalism have long argued, what

is needed is the ongoing capacity for anarchists to maintain a

consistent libertarian position; to be able to act independently of any

mass-organisation, while still maintaining opportunities to intervene in

the struggles of our fellow workers.

Bonanno cites the experience of the CNT in the Spanish Revolution as

demonstrating the institutional and psychological danger posed by

merging the specifically-anarchist movement with non-specific

mass-organisations of direct struggle.[10] The deference shown by so

many workers to the collaborationist policies of the CNT, including

permitting leading anarcho-syndicalists to take positions in government,

is indicative of the need for the organisational independence of

anarchists. This strategic approach best prepares us for circumstances

in which we must break with the wavering positions of

mass-organisations, both mentally and practically, and allows us to

encourage a clear, revolutionary course within the movement; redirecting

our energies wherever the self-organisation of the struggle takes us.

But Bonanno bolsters this argument with citations of… Malatesta! who

argued that the anarchist union was either limited to anarchists, and

therefore “weak and impotent, a mere propaganda group”, or built on a

class basis, rendering “the initial program […] nothing but an empty

formula.”[11]

This is Bonanno once again echoing dual organisationalism.[12] The rest

of his argument amounts to the mere insistence that anarchist

organisations cannot help but become a bureaucratizing,

counter-revolutionary force if they adopt a continuity of membership and

an anarchist programme. He also makes the unsubstantiated claim that it

is the form of ‘production nuclei’ which is uniquely immune to the

tendencies inherent to unions; whether they are reformist, revolutionary

syndicalist, or anarchist.

As unconvincing as this is, it is worth noting how far we are from

‘smoking weed, having sex, killing cops’ – or the slogans favoured by

Bonanno’s contemporary admirers, calling for the ‘destruction of the

economy’, ‘of production’, and the abandonment of old dreams, such as

‘revolutionary self-management’.

If insurrectionary anarchists – tired of endless riots, and disoriented

by the return of organising on the shop floor – can bring themselves as

far as Bonanno’s best work, perhaps they can also allow themselves to

concede that the mass-anarchist tradition is something worth reviving.

Let the affinity group stick around; think together about the world and

how to change it; write down your ideas and share them with comrades;

talk with your co-workers about how to act against the boss; spread news

of struggle everywhere; recognize where our power is within capitalist

society, and use that power.

Let’s build the organisational capacity to struggle within our

respective industries. In the process of that struggle, we can likewise

build the capacity to (forgive the dusty old phrase) seize control of

the means of production. This requires that we do all that we can to

encourage the renewal of a militant workers movement, with rank-and-file

control over the struggle, coordination across the economy, and links

with radical social movements beyond the workplace.

For those interested in anarchy and communism, this remains the central

task.

[1] For an introduction to the ideas of dual organisationalism,

platformism, and especifismo, see Tommy Lawson’s pamphlet ‘Foundational

Concepts of the Specific Anarchist Organisation’, published by Red and

Black Notes:

https://www.redblacknotes.com/2022/07/30/foundational-concepts-of-the-specific-anarchist-organisation/.

I also highly recommend Felipe Corrêa’s essays ‘Organizational Issues

Within Anarchism’ (2010, Espaço Livre), available here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/felipe-correa-organizational-issues-within-anarchism,

and ‘Bakunin, Malatesta and the Platform Debate: The question of

anarchist political organization’ (2015, Institute for Anarchist Theory

and History), co-written with Rafael Viana da Silva, and available here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/felipe-correa-and-rafael-viana-da-silva-bakunin-malatesta-and-the-platform-debate-the-question.

[2] This was often sold by governments and union leaders as a sacrifice

necessary to resolve the economic crises of the period. It also

supposedly offered the movement “a seat at the table”, or a “share in

power”. In reality, the crisis was one of profitability, which could

only end with the crushing of the labour movement, or a social

revolution. By sacrificing the ability to take direct action for an

illusory idea of power within the State, the labour movement accepted

its own disorganisation and a major defeat. For an excellent study of

this process as it occurred within Australia, through the form of ‘The

Accord’, see Elizabeth Humphrys’ 2018 book How Labour Built

Neoliberalism.

[3] “We have seen that the specific minority must take charge of the

initial attack, surprising power and determining a situation of

confusion which could put the forces of repression into difficulty and

make the exploited masses reflect upon whether to intervene or not.” –

Bonanno, A. M. 1982. ‘Why Insurrection?’. Insurrection. Available at:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-why-insurrection

[4] For a comradely critique of the CHAZ (or ‘CHOP’) project, see the

analysis written by Black Rose Anarchist Federation members Glimmers of

Hope, Failures of the Left:

https://blackrosefed.org/chop-analysis-glimmers-hope-failures-left/.

Perhaps even more interesting is the critical account from the

CrimethInc collective, The Cop-Free Zone: Reflections from Experiments

in Autonomy around the US:

https://crimethinc.com/2020/07/02/the-cop-free-zone-reflections-from-experiments-in-autonomy-around-the-us.

Indeed, CrimethInc appears to be a collective in a period of transition.

Once the favourite of dumpster-divers and purveyors of ‘riot porn’, they

have increasingly become a reasonably reliable source for breaking news

of working class uprisings around the world. They have even begun to

engage more seriously with classical mass-anarchist history and theory,

as in their great 2019 essay Against the Logic of the Guillotine:

https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too.

[5] Idris Robinson’s essay ‘How It Might Should Be Done’ (originally a

talk; later published by Ill Will Editions) is justly scathing on this

phenomenon:

There’s a lot of talk about how to end racism, especially within

corporate and academic circles. We saw how to end racism in the streets

the first weeks after George Floyd was murdered.

“It was only after the uprising began to slow down and exhaust itself

that the gravediggers and vampires of the revolution began to reinstate

racial lines and impose a new order on the uprising. The most subtle

version of this comes from the activists themselves. Our worst enemies

are always closest to us. You’ve all been in these marches, these

ridiculous marches, where it’s, “white people to the front, black people

to the center”—this is just another way of reimposing these lines in a

more sophisticated way. What we should be aiming for is what we saw in

the first days, when these very boundaries began to dissolve.”

Robinson’s essay can be read here:

https://illwill.com/how-it-might-should-be-done. Another essay by Shemon

Salam, ‘The Rise of Black Counter-Insurgency’ (also published by Ill

Will) touches on similar issues and is likewise recommended:

https://illwill.com/the-rise-of-black-counter-insurgency.

[6] One can’t help but recall the uncritical enthusiasm demonstrated by

many insurrectionary anarchists during the 2014 Euromaidan uprising in

Ukraine. Not only was there little interest in the political character

of the struggle, but even in the influential presence of far-right

elements. People were in the streets, in violent conflict with the

brutality of the State… Molotovs were being thrown! ‘What else is there

to a revolution?’ This is how an ‘anarchist’ thinks when they are not

concerned with class struggle and the need to transform the structures

of production and distribution.

[7] Salam, S. Breonna Taylor and the Limits of Riots’. Spirit of May 28.

Available at:

https://www.sm28.org/articles/breonna-taylor-and-the-limits-of-riots/.

Salam’s argument recalls similar points made by Malatesta. See, for

instance, his articles ‘The Products of Soil and Industry: An Anarchist

Concern’ (El Productor, 1891, available at:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-the-products-of-soil-and-industry?v=1609149065)

and ‘On ‘Anarchist Revisionism’’ (Pensiero e Volontà, 1924, available

at:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-on-anarchist-revisionism).

[8] Leoni, T. 2019. Sur les Gilets Jaunes. Translation is from Gilles

Dauvé’s equally important piece for troploin, ‘Yellow, Red, Tricolour,

or: Class & People’. For Dauvé’s essay see:

https://www.troploin.fr/node/98. Leoni’s work is available in French

here:

https://ddt21.noblogs.org/files/2019/11/GILETS-JAUNES-DDT21.VERSION-PDF-FINAL-novembre-2019.pdf

[9] All quotes from Bonanno, A. M. 1977. Armed Joy. Available here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-armed-joy.

[10] This is true whether we are concerned with unions or (Bonanno

cannot avoid this!) ‘federations of production nuclei’.

[11] All quotes from Bonanno A. M. 1975. ‘A Critique of Syndicalist

Methods’. Anarchismo. Available at:

https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-a-critique-of-syndicalist-methods.

[12] Or ‘synthesis organisation’ as Bonanno confusingly calls it.

Typically, synthesis organisation refers to an approach in which

anarchists of all types work together, without a specific shared

analysis, programme, or strategic approach.