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Title: ProvocAzione ā Editorials Author: ProvocAzione Date: 1987ā1991 Language: en Topics: Italy, Elephant Editions Source: https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/provocazione-editorials
This paper was born from the need to accompany the review āAnarchismoā
with an agile publication capable of developing ācircumscribed and
condensedā analyses. Political and social analyses, leaflets,
communiques and documents of the anarchist movement as well as of other
groups and organisations, as well as many short and very short articles
concerning attacks on the structures of power, news items testifying
forms of spontaneous rebellion, that are manifesting themselves with
different modalities and often turn out to be quite extraneous to the
specific ambit of the anarchist or antagonist movement.
Starting from a series of analyses ā concerning among other things, the
modifications in the productive structures, the perfectioning of
information technology, transformations in the world of work and school,
the progressive cultural emptying ā a perspective of struggle is
outlined: not only the attack on the āgreat temples of deathā, on the
āvisible complexes that attract everybodyās attentionā but also and
principally small and often simple objectives, peripheral structures
spread over the whole territory that are beginning to take on increasing
importance for capital: factories, commercial structures, seats of
power, but also electricity pylons, communications cables, everything
that combines in the development of capital and the continuation of
exploitation. These analyses and proposals precede the publication of
āProvocAzioneā in part, but in this paper they are gone into further and
turn out to be still, valid at the present time.
In a reality that is opening up possibilities for revolutionary
intervention, or rather that is heightening the desire for profound
transformation, we need to give ourselves more suitable instruments that
can be better understood by eventual users. A paper is always something
limited, necessarily circulating within a predetermined circuit. We are
well aware of this but we will not let ourselves be influenced by those
who come out with total condemnation.
So long as it is up to these intentions and does not turn out to
contradict itself or be too unilateral. That is precisely what we
thought we could see in the last series of Anarchismo. A contradiction
caused by our wanting to kill two birds with one stone: one of them
ended up not biting the bait. The documentation and news articles often
came out too late (given the not exactly monthly regularity of
Anarchismo), whereas the analytical critique suffered from seeing itself
constrained within the narrow confines of a few pages.
So it ended up becoming unilateral. In fact, the informative model (or
counter-informative) ended up deciding in the field of analysis as well,
limiting it to the affairs of the moment and preventing the task of
analysis that always remains that of āseeing in order to foreseeā. You
canāt foresee much ā so cannot make your āsurpriseā actions of the
future adequate ā if your analysis is tied to affairs of the moment.
It is necessary to have the logical space of taking a distance in order
to see more clearly. In view of resolving, or rather of lightening, this
task, we have given life to ProvocAzione which will come out monthly.
More frequent therefore, and more news items. Also analyses. More
circumscribed and condensed. Documentation and details of struggle. News
and considerations. Exposition of events and personages. The enemy and
its counterpart. The class war and small actions.
A readable paper. At least, so we would like to think (and hope). But
always readable by having recourse to oneās brain, not to sclerotic
residuals of what the mechanisms of consensus have left us with. Our
paper will be simple, not simplistic. No specialised language, but not
for that will it be āreducedā. No concessions made to fashion, either
substantial or formal. No cohabitation with those who are killing our
capacity to understand, starting from language (written or spoken).
Against manipulators and swindlers of all kinds. We have always been
against those who think that they can solve any problem with just one
more icon.
So much for the form.
For the content, the war continues against all those who intentionally
mislead, a number of whom are more dangerous than danger in the same way
that āhangers onā suffer from an excess of zeal, āmore royalist than the
kingā. The enemy and surroundings. Perspectives and methods of
domination and the management of the poverty of consensus. Jailers and
prisoners in the new perspective where their reciprocal acceptation of
opposing roles is being weakened, and the few revolutionaries still on
the barricades see themselves more and more under the spotlight.
Projects of power. Places of power.
And then rebellion. Wherever it comes about, in whatever way it
manifests itself. The revolt to breathe, to not die here and now,
asphyxiated by the repression or by simple piousness. Torturers or Red
Cross nurses, they are both our enemies.
Now rebellion is beginning to portray itself for what it is: a permanent
state of mind for whoever refuses charity or cowardice. The pride of
rebellion is no longer that of the slave who rebelled because he was
constrained to choose between death or revolt. Now, at a time when the
project of power is based on the prospect of consensus and not
repression pure and simple, rebellion is a question of pride and
dignity, and it will become so more and more.
The time has come for a clear but firm distinction between revolt and
dissent. The insecure and tepid will continue to say ānoā, while power
prepares to use this no as a further element of government. For how much
longer will we keep confusing the respectable pacifist with the decided
enemy of a system of death disguised as progressivism?
Is it possible to make this distinction? Or have the roles become so
gangrenous as to be inseparable? Have we all become spineless animals?
Looking around one sees nothing but beggars. Even comrades that we would
never have imagined would have stooped to hypothetical negotiations with
power are now talking about the end of the revolution, possible
government concessions, a practice of platonic dissent incompatible with
the rigidity and firmness we thought they possessed. Disillusion?
Possibly. But also clarity.
The paper wants to unmask this reality, also by going into the all-time
low of shabby excuses and camouflage. The pathetic individual that hides
behind formal dissent makes us vomit, but we need to point them out from
time to time if we do not want to be overwhelmed by a tide of chatter in
all and for all, complying with the will of those who are setting up the
dominion of tomorrow.
We must harden our hearts if we want to reply effectively as
revolutionaries to the perspectives of the ānewā rebellion. The time for
tenderness has disappeared for ever. Now benevolence and tolerance
towards those who hesitate or openly collaborate, means betrayal.
Yesterday we were considered excessive, but we were simply logical.
Today we need to be really cruel if we do not want to be confused with
the manifest heap of the utilisable.
We are decidedly for the attack on the class enemy and against the
structures of power. We consider that simple dissent and platonic
respectable pacifism lead right to the chamber of horrors. Anyone can
fool themselves as much as they like or show their clear decision to
refuse attack, either due to fear or opportunism. May this come out
clearly.
Let the charlatan con-artists and birds of ill omen stop complaining. If
they have converted to collaborationism, may they say so openly and stop
trying to throw smoke in our eyes, talking of the so-called
impossibility to do anything else.
We desire something else. And along with us millions of men and women
who want to struggle in the name of their own dignity.
Second issue. Too soon to draw conclusions. But we do want to say one
thing. Something that various comrades have noted.
It seems that some people had felt a need for ProvocAzione. And the
proof is that this issue went like hot cakes. There are only a few dozen
of the three thousand copies printed left.
But the sales of a paper are never proof of its validity, although not
necessarily of the contrary.
Sometimes the first issue of a paper goes out of curiosity. Then,
possibly, the number goes down. Perhaps we will do the same. Perhaps
not.
Many of those who distributed it got the impression that quite a number
of comrades are interested in our insurrectional positions. And the same
goes for the stupidity of those who, not knowing how ā or not wanting ā
to criticise us through reasoning, prefer to circulate such nonsense and
grossness as to push comrades in good faith to read our positions with
suspicion. And this has been and continues to be very useful. We
therefore thank all the gossips for their involuntary propagandistic
contribution that unwittingly turned out to favour the revolutionary
cause.
And then there are the objective motivations, the coherence and critical
rigour that we have always shown in our struggles against repentance,
dissociation, amnesty, social democratic reformism, ideological
ecologism and the metaphysical inaction of the eternally undecided. From
this road of ours, now relegated to the clarity of the already done,
comrades can take note and overcome not only the gossip but also the
slandering and hysteria of those who continue to see us with smoke in
their eyes.
It seems instead that many comrades continue see clearly, and see well.
Above all, attack. As a discriminant, a slogan, a concrete project. In
deed. Also small deeds. Not chatter. Even if there has been the usual
chatter about maximum systems.
If we must meet, letās meet on this.
In actions against the great realisations, the temples of death, the
complexes that are visible from afar and attract the attention of all,
that even those who will invent anything to insist that they donāt
understand will see.
We agree, but not only.
Each day, along our road, we come up against objectives that are barely
visible. Not the great cathedrals showing off on gigantic media screens,
but minute terminals of a monstrous project of control and repression,
of production and enrichment for the bosses of the world. These minute
objectives often pass unobserved. Sometimes we use them ourselves,
without even noticing.
But it is from the small rivulet, innocuous and slender, that the
turgid, dirty river is built, from affluent to affluent. If we cannot
build a dam on the river because our strength does not allow it, at
least we can reduce the flow, blocking some of these small tributaries.
And we can. No repressive control, however capillary, will ever be able
to safeguard each single element of the productive project as a whole.
Fragmentation over the territory is one of the new conditions of
capitalist production.
So that can become a starting point of our strategy of attack. They are
easy and do not preclude other more consistent interventions which,
taken alone, are more significant.
But, letās not forget, the significance of small attacks is in their
quantity, and that is possible as it is not a question of complex
actions, in fact they are often decisively elementary.
We think the time to move from the centre to the periphery has arrived.
We have an idea that many comrades are unable to find the thread for
getting to the root of the supposedly tight corner that āProvocAzioneā
is proposing.
In fact, they give the impression that they do not even want to make the
effort to find this thread, or to demonstrate that it doesnāt exist,
that we are incoherent and confused. It is not enough to bury oneās
heads in the sand hoping that some good fairy will appear and make the
nightmare go away. It is not enough to just ignore what is taking place
right in front of our very eyes.
The fact is that we clearly pointed out what āsideā to read us from, and
we did that on the basis of an analysis that does not seem to have
received the attention it merits.
Small actions, which we have been reporting and will even more in future
issues, are (for anyone that might have realised it) in themselves an
analytical proposal that is not necessarily shared by everyone. They are
always an indication of struggle and point to the profound modifications
that the structure of the productive relations of dominion is
undergoing.
To ignore all that, entrenching oneself behind the illusion that it is
just a question of disconnected signs of an empty, affected
rebelliousness that sooner or later will end up with a possible
rekindling of our dreams, means closing oneās eyes because reality is
too ugly to look at.
Or, if you like, it means something else. Even worse. Not sharing
certain perspectives of struggle and finding neither the arguments or
the courage to say openly that one is for other methods or roads
addressed towards non-conflictual forms of negotiation, means one
doesnāt know what to do.
If one doesnāt agree with the method of attack, why not say so clearly
without the academic drivel? Because, sooner or later something must be
said. If our proposal to widen the range of attacks to more simple
objectives pulverised throughout the territory, doesnāt please. If
contrary proposals (which do not oppose ours) of attacks on the huge
structures of power (for example army bases and nuclear power stations)
doesnāt suit either, may someone point out an alternative that is not
simply a negation of what we or other antagonist forces have suggested.
But in order to do that and not just hide behind the haze of
philosophical chatter āI donāt read you, I donāt understand you, I donāt
agreeā, it is necessary to find the logical thread we are in favour of.
Just to hope that this ProvocAzione nightmare will one day disappear so
that everything can return to the usual āpub talkā, is pointless as far
as we are concerned.
We have every intention of carrying on.
The ProvocAzione continues. Ours of course, already in its fifth month
of life.
Five issues are not much, but they can help whoever wants to, to
understand something. To the others, those who, like Don Abbondio, lack
the courage to understand, no one can give the strength to abandon
lethargy or hollow chatter.
We therefore have to note two kinds of response: on the one hand the
positive one, subscriptions and distribution by comrades continue to
increase (beyond our wildest expectations, a steady 2,000 copies
printed); on the other, the negative side, the superficial critiques,
the silences, the insinuations that our movement never tires of.
We are obviously happy about the positive response, not the negative
one. Not because we donāt like criticism, but precisely because when it
reaches us it has been scarce and only dealt with marginal aspects and
not the content. Questions of form, the layout, the space given to
individual expressions of revolt, also the most minute. Thatās all. No
one took on the paperās function (negative or positive), no one has
bothered to critically take on the analytical proposal supported by the
paper, i.e. small actions of dissent (unfortunately also symbolic), but
as a complement to and perfecting the class attack as a whole.
On the other hand, once again we are aware of the usual gossip in the
movement about what we mean by struggle and many other things as well.
We hope that this tendency will diminish and open up some productive
confrontation (for whoever has any interest in developing it) that turns
out to be useful to all the comrades who desire to act.
For our part, we are reaffirming our intention to widen the content of
ProvocAzione in such a way that the capacity of the real movement to
produce not just a series of separate attacks on the class enemy but
also a spontaneous coordination, a kind of self-organised relationship
that can be read between the lines of events and is itself creating a
real theoretical response, emerges. Of course, this proposal would be
clearer if the number of events reported and commented upon was greater.
But that is linked to the present editorial limitations that we will try
to overcome, letās say over the next few issues.
Following the bearably sad disappearance of the ideology and practice of
the armed party, many things can be said about taking up the
revolutionary struggle in Italy and other European countries again.
This resumption undeniably exists and cannot be distorted by the
accusations of so many respectable people, old and new, who are trying
to undermine a subversive practice that is spreading in a capillary way
(even if in embryo), nor by the glorification of so many old figures who
still insist on crystalizing redundant super-actions, which in their
opinion will impress the media.
So it is that each time a subversive deed is qualified with the old
blessing of āarmed struggleā (in the best of cases) or āterrorismā (by
someone preferring to use the language of the police files), this only
leads to confusing things irreparably Iād say.
This is the reality that we are talking about, which obviously
corresponds antagonistically to the profound changes taking place in the
productive structure and the related process of social control. The
substitution of the old models of centralised revolutionary endeavour
with models of fragmentation and a spreading of the destructive attack
throughout the territory is now almost a certainty.
There can undoubtedly be delays in these situations coming to the fore.
Nobody can say that we are satisfied with the level of analytical
examination of reality as a whole (economic and social), it can never be
up to the multiform changes that this presents at every moment. But
there could be other reasons for this delay. Fear and ideological
tardiness, the defence of symbols and the circumscription of political
territories.
In this field the delay is immense. Here argument and rumours are taking
the place of struggle and intervention in reality.
Fear leads to seeing āterroristsā everywhere and confuses the ideas of
the most upright respectable person in the world. Wrapped up in his
daily activities, this worthy person takes an interest in the fate of
his kin and humanity in general. This resuscitated redeemer also comes
out into the streets to demonstrate, but cannot have an exact (and
perhaps not even sufficient) knowledge of what is going on in the world.
His circumscribed universe (generally tolerant, polite, well disposed,
clean, ordered, deterministically built and enlightendly supported by
benevolent proposals) leads him to seeing anything different and
disturbing as the work of adverse forces of tumult and chaotic
destruction. So the āterroristā ends up sleeping at his bedside,
disturbing his dreams, entering his reading of the morning paper and
accompanying him to his weekly political meetings.
Under such conditions delay is irreparable. It is no longer a delay in
information or analysis, but an historic delay, we could also say a
class delay. And this delay takes him into a bottomless pit, which he
digs himself with systematic arrogance, to distance himself further and
further from whatever disturbs his dreams, in order to exorcise any
signs of passing turbulence.
We are sure that none of our few readers see themselves in this
framework that we are delineating here in the darkest of forms. And this
is a source of great joy to the present writer. No one wants to see
themselves as narrow-minded and idiotic. In spite of that the world is
full of idiots and narrow-minded people.
Then there are the marks of repression. This has its own rhythms. It
travels slowly but moves forward surely. It takes as good everything in
front of it. On the basis of law (or kind of) it calculates years and
special conditions of imprisonment. For it a gun is a gun and a stick of
dynamite a stick of dynamite. The perspectives of liberation where such
means can be used do not interest them at all. Repression is like that.
It can, and often does, see the enemy of today as the collaborator of
tomorrow, at least at the level of setting up new forms of power. But
these are things that anarchists know and understand very well.
Basically, the men of power of the present and those of the future
always end up understanding each other. For us things are different. For
us the means of revolution are purely and exclusively means of
liberation. When we use them, our perspective is one alone. But the
repression doesnāt care. On the contrary, it comes down heavy in the
knowledge that it will never be able to do a deal with us.
That is why even the smallest signs are grasped immediately. Something
moves, not in the emporium of ideology and chit chat, but in generalised
subversive practice. The repression does not know exactly what this
something is (on the other hand neither do we), but acts immediately,
striking the signs closest to those who have always supported the
generalisation of the struggle, always fighting against specialisation
and the centralisation of the revolutionary clash. What does it matter
that it is impossible to reach anyone who is actually responsible? What
does it matter that the facts, places and identity do not correspond?
The desire for a generalised subversive practice do correspond. Feelings
and theory correspond. Analyses and indications of struggle correspond.
And we agree. The concept is correct. We are responsible for the
generalised and fragmented actions that might occur, are occurring. We
are the ones who dreamed, hoped, theorised, considered such actions
possible while others were all still fascinated by the great spectacles
of the revolutionary process: those who waited for them like the
vengeance of those who can in place of those who cannot do much, to
those who put it off like the greatest ill of the century. We were
thinking other things.
May these things come about. In its long tortuous course the social
revolution is obliged to pass through these infinitely small paths that
are all linked, tracing the web of a project that is undoubtedly wider
than that which we are able to imagine at the present time.
We do not want to impede the free and potent development of this
destructive capacity. We only hope that other forces that still define
themselves revolutionary do not either.
Let us leave the job of extinguishing flames to the fire brigade. We
wonāt do a job that has nothing to do with us.
The pace and procedure of recuperation are reaching perfection. The
State has almost recovered from the previous convulsions caused by the
ācontingencyā. It is aiming at restoring āorderā and ālegalityā.
Everybody is in a hurry to forget. Even the old leninist relics are
painting themselves with gaudy colours to make people forget the
uniformity of that red they had undeservingly borrowed from the colour
of the blood spilled by fallen proletarians.
Everybody is forgetting in a hurry. They are painting over the facade.
They are taking an interest in new stuff (a manner of speaking) entering
the antinuclear forces, housing struggles, the cultural debate,
opinionism taken to the extreme. They are struggling for rights (and
also for ālawā), they are giving off smoke, a lot of smoke, to hide
behind.
Then there are those who āagreeā (in words of course) but abstain,
keeping themselves in a wobbly equilibrium, a respectable distance from
those that are disavowing and those that have nothing to disavow because
they never did anything more than take a bus ride without a ticket. They
do not want to estrange themselves, either with the advancing wave of
disavowed, or with the forces of conservatism (inside and outside the
revolutionary movement). So they are developing the role of social
indicators, they isolate, like spies, police informers, renegades and
the new conscripts of the respectability of opinion.
The horizon is clearing, the possibilities of confusion are fewer.
Anyone with eyes to see, look. Those with ears to hear, listen.
Most of the Italian anarchist movement has been asking itself a number
of questions over the past few years, with a not exactly brilliant
critical capacity.
One these questions has concerned that of the decline in anarchist
specificity and the growth of a vast area of antagonism that is not
exactly anarchist, in name at least, but moves along libertarian lines.
Apart from the marginal cases of those who only consider anarchists
those who declare themselves to be such in principle and in theory,
there is the (greater) part of the movement that has tried in various
ways to come into ācontactā with this area of antagonism that we could
define ālibertarianā.
It seems to us that there has been a fundamental mistake, caused by the
claim to start off from consolidated positions: those, precisely, of
anarchism as a political movement, trying to establish itself as a point
of reference towards which that area should have moved. Personal
incomprehension, fear and uncertainty, have done the rest. The result,
no one has moved, in fact the area of the above has been sucked in, if
not as a whole, at least in part into the multi-coloured games of the
green āswampā or the ānebulousā autonomia.
Perhaps one should have been less rigid. Not so much in the context of
anarchist principles, as here one canāt fail to make assertions of
method that distinguish us from one and all, as the mentality of
considering ourselves bearers of the truth, therefore fortified in
defence of this āsacredā nucleus from which any contamination from
outside must be kept at a distance.
We think that it was a mistake was to see only the movement that
embellishes itself with the name āanarchistā, with all its practical
contradictions and ideological clarity.
Anarchism is something wider and more spontaneous. The anarchist process
of movement and transformation is already āin deedā a long time before
detailed ideological precision appears. This is the wealth of anarchism
and, from the organisational point of view, it is also one of its
limitations, an obstacle that will prevent it, always, from reaching
historically quantifiable results of power (and you call that a limit!).
To remain locked up within an archaic concept of anarchism means to bury
oneās head in the sand, acting like an acephalic body devoid of
cognition of time and place, transformation and evolution.
Reality is moving fast, staying under the sand might be comfortable, but
it is a sure sign of incapacity and inactivity.
On regularity. That would be a good title for the editorial that I am
about to write. But also the need for regularity. First the periodical
kind, then the personal, that rhythm of biological and social
equilibrium that keeps us well or otherwise, discovering aspects of
incommensurable beauty in the most disastrous of situations.
And it is the name of regularity, of foreseeability and uniformity that
the most fearful crimes, the most incredible atrocities, have been
committed. And it is always our regularity that we want to impose on
others, the regularity of our church, our Credo, our Faith, whether
these be secular, or, why not, even revolutionary.
And everyone swears on their own itinerary of regularity, looking grimly
at those of others, suspecting bad intentions, that turn out to be quite
right.
Whoever observes the action of others and does not understand it
immediately has recourse to an expedient: they disqualify it, demonise
it. In this way they convince themselves that they understand them,
while they are do nothing but showing their ignorance, when not bad
faith. For this reason anyone who acts is always seen with a bad eye by
those who find excuses for not attacking the enemy, and the courage and
decision of the first are never recognised except through calumny and
gossip. Mean figures of regularity are hanging around in the most fetid
meanderings of the revolutionary movement, filling up their sad days
with the behaviour of cops and spies. What can we do about it?
The evil is precisely in this excessive need for regularity that we all
have. Some get over it, as we hope to do, at least sometimes, admitting
that others might think differently, but no one is immune. We often act
against othersā behaviour. And this, at least at first glance, is an
attitude that one has with a certain regularity where we consider
ourselves to be superior to others. And if that were so, we would also
be despicable and condemnable. But we believe things are not exactly
like that. Let us see why.
In the first place, we donāt agree with certain positions (visible to
all) that basically come down to desistance and accommodation. When we
were against amnesty, dissociation and the more or less open declaration
of defeat of a method that everyone was saying was out of date (that of
the direct, destructive and immediate clash) it was because we felt that
one couldnāt allow behaviour not only that sold out a whole heritage of
struggle to be saved (albeit submitted to criticism), but also because
things ended up falling on those who did not accept compromise but
remained (in one way or another) firm and inflexible in their positions.
There was therefore no question of regularity, only a question of
revolutionary strategy, which might not please some but remains based on
attack and can never be moved into the field of negotiation.
But when we were affected by the irreducible mania of sticking to the
insurrectional method of the destructive attack on the class enemy, we
did so ā and this must also be recognised even by our worst detractors ā
in the light of day. If we wanted to call someone an idiot, we did so
without half measures, just as we have always called some others spies,
and others cops.
I do not believe that all those who stick to their own regularity have
the same courage of their convictions. We know that at least some have
been responsible for such behaviour. We are sure that this way of doing
(talking behind the scenes, jousting slander by letter, tracing
apocalyptic descriptions of plans and ways of acting, playing the part
of the cops and the other repressive instruments of the State) is
ingrained in those who have absorbed revolutionary activity into the
realm of politics. Many have become (but perhaps they were never
anything else) politicians and act as such.
To them, all our disdain. What can we do about it?
A search for a new equilibrium. This is without doubt the dominant theme
of the political moment that we are going through. Not only in Italy,
but all over the world.
However, considering things from the point of view of our own reality we
should say right away that this research is not just happening with the
various levels of consultation on institutional reforms, not only with
the roped climbers against the wild protests of a certain trade unionism
of new coinage but also with a certain way of facing the problem of the
recent legislative and judicial emergency.
Again on various sides they are taking up the question of amnesty,
pardon and all the other judicial instruments that are capable of
resolving the delicate situation of the State institutions in the face
of the phenomenon of armed struggle as it has been developing over past
years.
We do not know how things will turn out, aware that they had to find a
solution one way or another. To be convinced of this are not only the
dissociated old and new with all their more or less intelligent nuances,
but also those who ā like Piperno ā are on the point of returning to
Italy or have already done so.
In the first place the solution will be useful in the prospect of a new
Italian political equilibrium. The State, especially when faced with a
prospect of institutional and constitutional reshuffling, needs an
old-style political āoppositionā even filled with opportunely recycled
inglorious signatures. From this āoppositionā one could, as everybody
sees, make the most opportune and optimal use as a lubricant to avoid
the risky frictions of the past, i.e. greater unrest. Certainly, men who
have bargained with the State, even āintelligentlyā, such as those who
āsuggestā that the State look at its cards again to remedy the āwrongsā
of the past in order to avoid a gloomy future of āpointlessā and bloody
clashes, must necessarily be available for manipulation, for suitable
use. We are not talking about a Curcio in parliament like Negri and
perhaps worse than him. But we are talking of an opposition that is
insinuating itself beyond the institutions (thatās a manner of speaking)
recuperating the real dissent of the country that is precisely the
greatest preoccupation of our governors at a time that appears to be
transitory, to move towards an institutional re-systemisation. Think of
the great importance of an old-style fictitious opposition organised in
the streets, supported by the official forces of the parties and the
left, or even by recycled organisations or those of a new stamp, to
serve as a safety valve at a time when they finally want to gag the
possibilities of strikes, spontaneous workersā organisations, freedom of
movement, of thought, meeting up, etc. Because that is what we are
talking about.
The State is prospecting a more adequate refoundation in the nineties,
which will mean years of struggle for the drastic restructuring of
production on the basis of the post-industrial economy. In this
perspective it could be very accommodating to have a fictitious
opposition that pushes the great masses of the past into the streets,
people with years and years of prison to show as a guarantee and plenty
of hazy ambivalent discourses to pass off as new horizons of
revolutionary struggle.
There is nothing strange about that. We need to think about it. After
all, in the perspective of State restructuring it is precisely the
highly politicised minorities that scare, those who could constitute a
point of reference, a potentially subversive struggle. And it would be
difficult to control these minorities and repress them with the
classical means (police, judiciary, etc.) that a democratic State has as
its disposal. Whereas they could easily fall into the arms of a
fictitious orientation of opposition and, in so doing, disarm themselves
for ever.
That is why ā and we are reminding all those who have not yet seen it ā
we have always been against struggles for amnesty. That is why, once
again, we are pointing to the dangers of a turning in the direction of
āpardonā, legitimisation, or whatever more or less clean term with which
they want to indicate the abandonment and renunciation of ideals and
practice of revolutionary struggle.
Power is being given time to rearrange its structures and sort out its
projects for the best.
This is what one grasps from the hesitation and uncertainty about the
best way to set out the struggle.
The traditional front of the class struggle, after more or less long
periods of wild readjustment, is moving towards sorting out more
tranquil and productive social peace in the medium term. The ātheoremā
of Tarantelli and Modigliani is revealing itself to be inexact.
Political re-enforcement, as an effect of economic re-organisation, is
producing more favourable conditions of exploitation. People feel safer
(better represented) and, largely speaking, are more willing to be
exploited. The democratic wager must be played out in full. Otherwise an
inverse process could develop. Credit could become debit, faith lack of
it. Peace rage.
In what way and when all that could happen, we cannot say. Economic
readjustments are proceeding well. The financial counterblows (such as
those in the stock exchange) are better amorticised than what happened
following the relative independence of the capitalist structures from
crude financial capitalist needs. Italy in particular is growing to
economic levels capable of threatening the French and English
leadership. We are also about to become economic colonisers in
territories that were traditionally decisional centres where foreign
colonialism started off against us (who can forget the exploitation
brought about in Italy by the great foreign railway firms). There are
drawbacks, but these are also under control. The unemployed are on the
increase, but they are not giving excessive preoccupations. The State
deficit is at levels that were unthinkable just a few years ago, but is
still far from the standard levels of the big industrial countries. We
now know well that only with big debts is it possible to manage big
enterprises of exploitation. The management of the enterprise as a whole
does not matter, what counts is profit in the short term. In fact, to be
precise, not so much profit in financial terms but power and influence
in the short term.
The level of the struggle is in decline. It is pointless to hide this
fact. The sign of this decline is shown by the fact that the
confederated unions are also gaining ground, eminently holding all kinds
of autonomous phenomena under control, moreover carriers of not very
original reasons for struggle. The decrease in struggles will give new
space to the final structuring of power. If in the next two years a new
cycle of struggles does not take root, capital will place its
unsurmountable frontiers in such a way as to guarantee itself at least a
decade of sure margins.
It no longer seems to us to be the case to come out again with the
symbols of great unifying objectives. Nuclear power, for example,
undoubtedly constitutes a āreadableā objective, but no longer in a
ādemonstrativeā key. In this perspective it has become a supporting
element of restructuring. The same can be said for all kinds of
pollution. These two sectors can see interventions of struggle, and the
same in the sectors of international class collaboration, but not at
incisive levels. Today fighting for whoever wants to do so, means
finding new roads even within these sectors of intervention that are
open to everyone. But, at least in the beginning, these new roads can
fail to be practicable except by a few.
The awakening of great strata of comrades and exploited in general will
only come about more slowly. The struggle, simple and practical, is
starting up again, from the beginning. With simple means, without great
illusions, but with the usual hope in our hearts.
In past times when everything seemed to be going for the best on the
wings of ideological illusions, when demonstrations and clashes,
destructive actions and attacks on the class enemy were only disturbed
by those wanting to push them to a level of excessive military
efficiency. When the present fashion of symbolism and creeping
repression had not yet been discovered, one lined up whole-heartedly
with different possible ways of seeing the social clash and the
revolutionary intervention.
On the one hand the old remnants of social democracy contained in
anarchist symbols and banners, on the other the noisy supporters of
disturbance taken to the extreme of the ecstatic dreams of the former
and their more or less avid supporters.
For the outside spectator the clashes, both verbal and on paper, seemed
like a storm in a teacup. Chatter on the right, chatter on the left.
More or less well done more or less agreeable to read, obvious in its
basic elements.
Then there was a third element, that which we could now call the
ācentristsā. Comrades who like Pontias Pilate did not want (and do not
want, because they are still around) to get their hands dirty, avoiding
taking sides in one or other way of seeing things. This āmaraisā, like
all swamps, lay hidden, nesting in the corridors of meetings and
conferences but never coming out into the light of day with smiles and
hyberbolic declarations of esteem, along with unequivocal indications of
equidistance.
Whatever the reasons were for the possibilist āsocial-democratsā and
whatever the unconfessed interests of the inhabitants of the āmaraisā,
the fact remains that most of the time they ended up cohabiting within
the same positions, cutting, without realising it, the same lean figure.
Now things are changing. If you like, in the rarefaction of the present
facts, divergences and methods are distinguishing themselves better. The
old possibilists have been leading the movement, recruiting new adepts
and these, as always happens, are more royalist than the king. The swamp
in the middle is filling up with new opportunists who, in the best of
cases, i.e. giving them credit for their good faith, must say they do
not know which fish to choose. Not to mention the professional informers
and spies, who also exist, but they make up such a minute isolated
minority that, for the time being, they are not worth mentioning.
We believe that the evolution of things, i.e. of the conditions of
exploitation, the production of the new subordinated man sold out to the
new techniques of power, the destruction of any residual sign of
humanity or dignity; all this along with elements of the good will of
the few who have not remained prisoner to psychological dilemmas and
moral plunder, will produce a new need for confrontation. We do not
believe it is possible to carry on as though nothing has happened, to
see the old social democratic merchandise, as we believe it is difficult
that in the next few months one will be able to continue to float in the
slimy waters of the swamp without fishing down to the depths.
To understand ourselves, beyond any possible doubt, we do not intend to
point out eventual roads of clarification or convergence in the name of
superior principles to be saved at any cost. We are only indicating the
sad possibility of a far heavier divarication. And neither does our
contestation want to be a raising of shields but simply a bitter
verification of how confused and unmanageable the divergences are. We
have never shown pity for anyone, least of all ourselves, and we donāt
intend to start now. That is why we might seem to be too rigid at times.
The fact is that perhaps we really are rigid.
In the things of life you want a little logic and, why not,
intelligence. Also in the highly questionable and miserable practice of
dissociation, the masters in this field have made us see that you need a
certain logic, a certain graduality. Dissociative positions are not in
themselves necessary up to the moment that things occur that those who
intend to dissociate themselves do not agree with.
For example, the long line of dissociated in the past 15 years has
taught us that there is always time for signing declarations. First one
must see how things stand, evaluate the pros and the cons, before taking
a distance from someone whose practices we do not approve of.
Pre-confectioned dissociation ābulletinsā as these could be defined,
letās say, their linguistic structure predetermined, to be put into
circulation by parties, politicians and economic personalities when
certain facts occur. It is a question of generic condemnation where one
frequently finds the term āvile attackā and other such things.
The difference exists although it remains within a strata that disgusts
in any case.
Now, what one might ask, were the motivations that pushed the comrades
of Rivista āAā and the FAI in Milan to dissociate themselves from events
that took place in Milan some time ago, small attacks against
militaristic targets like the ENEL nuclear research centre or similar
firms who work in the nuclear sectors?
Why did they immediately bring out a communique? What were they in such
a hurry to distinguish themselves from? They certainly werenāt afraid of
risking seeing themselves with the carabinieri turning up at their homes
to raid them, as it is well known ā at least in Milan ā that these
political line-ups donāt agree with certain practices. What did they
want to take a distance from? Would not it have been better to have
waited for a few days, if only to be able to defend the comrades who
could (and presumably will be), persecuted for things that they
themselves have nothing to do with, and at the same time as supporting
the comrades, draw the legitimate distinction they are making in
political terms because it is not right for everyone to share a practice
which by its very nature can only be accepted by a few at this time?
Wouldnāt that have been better?
Of course it would have been better and it would have made an act of
police intimidation more difficult than when the floodlights are shining
on precisely just a few of us.
I ask myself then, what pushed these comrades to act like this? Which
turns out to be contradictory. First they dissociate themselves from a
certain practice, thus contributing to turning attention to comrades who
do not intend to dissociate themselves in such a way, and then they
solidarize with those struck by the repression. Precisely the repression
that they had contributed to with their own dissociative practice. Such
behaviour seems to me to be not only contradictory but also devoid of
the minimum of political intelligence required in the practice of social
struggles, whatever that might be.
A comrade, with a passion that is his, defined them at the ForlƬ
conference recently as āpieces of shitā. Certainly, itās a strong
phrase, beyond any measure of good manners, but we must also understand
that certain ways of acting, beyond agreeing with certain practices or
not, are inadmissible as it is behaviour that feeds the instruments of
repression.
I would suggest a letās say ābenevolentā reading of these āincidentsā in
which, in my opinion, have involved both the Milan FAI and Rivista A;
basically the latter have been taken by surprise: they did not expect a
movement to exist in todayās situation, a number of comrades, even
minimal, intending to carry out destructive attacks against militarist
targets. This is actually happening and we, of this paper, have
punctually shown how much it is happening, at times undergoing
incrimination, raids, and trials with accusations of instigation,
apology, and, incredible as it may seem, participation; without for that
claiming that what we do should be applauded by all comrades. But, when
taking a position, it is necessary to think about what could happen in
the future as a result.
Criticism is one thing. Police-style denunciation is another.
There are various ways in which to see the situation we find ourselves
living in as natural and thriving. One of these, undoubtedly the best,
is by using the positive aspects of that situation, not caring about
what happens to others but only according to a spectacle that has now
become habitual and tedious. However, in any case, both in the
eventuality of the first as in the second, nothing is moved of oneās own
initiative, nothing of that which belongs to us and which is clear to us
put in question and criticised.
We have before our eyes the blatant behaviour of those who come under
the first conception of life cited above, but also that no less blatant
of those who raise a groan in the name of the second.
It is the latter, as it is easy to understand, that attract our
attention, giving the first for the time being our absolute disdain,
then later, we hope, something more concrete.
Profound changes are taking place in the world: generalised
insurrections, changes in the structures and equilibrium of
international power, massacres and genocide of every dimension. Over all
this fine people pull a piteous veil of routine interest: the newspapers
(even our papers), TV. The spectacle of massacres reaches our homes
every day, our eyes are now trained and our hearing is turned off.
The Palestinians are beginning their 10th month of popular insurrection
in the occupied territories, they are systematically being massacred by
the Israeli occupying army, they are dying in the ghettoes and
concentration camps. We look and listen.
The South African blacks are defying the most racist country in the
world, they are organising in structures of struggle, they are being
killed daily not only by the bullets of the army and police, but also by
hunger and isolation. We look and listen.
The Birmanians are rebelling against a dictatorial socialist regime. The
people are fighting in the streets against the army in complete
isolation in the most total indifference. We look and listen.
The Afghan Mujaheddin are continuing their struggle, even after the
departure of the Russian army. Now, although between internal disputes
for the conquest of power, the time is ripe for the moment of truth with
the puppet regime. Only the poor, involved in a gigantic struggle that
has been going on for almost a decade, continue to die. We look and
listen.
The Miskitos of Central America, after winning their battle against
Managua that was forced into a truce, are employed in taking up the
struggle again against the Honduras. Also here massacres are the order
of the day: hundreds dead, 70 villages razed to the ground, thousands of
refugees. We look and listen.
In Burundi a majority are literally being massacred by a minority in
power in the name of a crazy racial difference but, more precisely in
defence of specific economic interests and those of power. We look and
listen.
Then in Ireland, Spain, Corsica, New Caledonia, Canada, Yugoslavia,
Russia, etc., peoples in struggle are trying to survive against
oppression, the division into classes to the profit of the strongest,
systematic death organised in great style. We limit ourselves to
listening and looking on.
Yet, in our own small way, we can do something. Not in the optic that
revealed itself to be a losing one so many years ago, that which could
be summed up in the words ātaking the third world into Europeā, so much
as in the optic of attack on the European capitalist interests that are
being woven with the interests of those who, in every part of the world,
are putting the people in revolt under their heels.
We can therefore do little things. And many of us are of the opinion
that these things need to be done, and soon. Many others are only
waiting for a slight push, collaboration, advice, a suggestion,
practical and technical support, a little analytical clarity. Then there
are many others, also among ourselves, who do not think the same way.
And it is to them that we are addressing ourselves.
They belong to the category of those for whom nothing that is done in
the name of practical initiative and immediate and precise direct action
goes. They have strange theses for criticising whoever wants to act now,
right away. The strangest are the first, who base themselves on the
sophism that small actions serve no\purpose because they do not disturb
anyone and only increase repression (but against whom?) while the most
important actions are the heritage of groups of specialists against whom
it is always necessary to be in a critical position, otherwise what
anarchists would we be.
In other words, they donāt know what they want. Neither small actions
(to understand each other, these people do not agree with attacks on the
pylons of the ENEL and have bitterly criticised attacks against the
death industries that were struck some time ago in Milan), nor the large
(only hypothetical at the moment, for. capitalās good fortune, certainly
not ours).
Just talk. That, yes, is all right for them. Analyses. The incredible
and strongly anachronistic lists of war industry, nuclear, etc., lists
made up it seems to document that capital produces arms, produces
nuclear power, etc., as if we didnāt know. If some of these lists then
do reach the due consequences, they line themselves immediately against,
criticisng whoever decides that two and two make four.
Mysteries of the logic of a certain anarchism.
The fact is that certain comrades have transformed anarchism into a
pacific gymnasium of interesting debates, in which each one measures
himself with the other in the exclusive light of the worthiness of their
own lives. Practice must stay outside the door.
We donāt agree.
The world is being shaken by insurrectionalism. In the places of maximum
tension, people are moving and coming out into the streets more or less
everywhere. They are claiming their rights or, more often, what they
believe their rights to be, in deed. We donāt want to say that all these
insurrectional movements are moving in the right direction, but they are
in the right situation and the right method.
It is not up to us to say if what we have been saying for years finds
confirmation in this historical phase or, as some would certainly like
to see, a denial. We pay as much attention to the critic-critics as we
do to the whispers of the spies in the backstreets of the police. On the
contrary, what we do find interesting is that people, vast populations,
are moving, choosing the method of attack and putting aside the
reformist perspective of a power that is always finding new ways to hide
the mystification of reality.
Not only the Algerians and the Palestinians, not only the European
countries of the Russian empire, not only Yugoslavia, Cechoslovakia,
Poland, but also Manfredonia, Ionia, Athens, Berlin, etc. Of course, for
different reasons, different perspectives and, if you like, different
equivocations but, above everything, unity of method.
We have often mentioned the causes of a possible new insurrectionalism
and how this does not see possible an historical continuity with the old
model based on the exclusivity, or almost, of economic claiming blocked
by boss intransigence or by the mechanisms of capital. Today, the
international structure of capital already renders institutional the
blocks and impossibility. A crisis within a system that has transformed
the periodic crises of the past into one of the elements of recuperation
and rationalisation of the productive process. Not crises therefore, but
a permanent crisis. A life in crisis. A life in the probability of a
happening and not in the certainty of a path. There is only one
certainty today: that nothing can happen that is persistent and durable,
but everything changes quickly, within the framework of absolutions and
preconstituted condemnations. Awareness of that, well beyond the seeds
and the earth in the strict sense is taking people in the direction of
direct action. Also, we believe, beyond the situation of flags and
territories. Under some conditions nationality, like bread and work, are
still a propulsive element in the struggle, and it would be stupid to
deny it. But this element is closely linked to others that were quite
unrecognisable in the past, only to play a quite secondary role in the
light of the unrestraining function that these new elements are
developing.
The breaking of institutional links, in the first place that of taking
the family into account, is one of these elements. In many situations
this lightening of interjected order produces a sense of panic, of not
knowing where to base oneās perspectives, oneās hopes. The State, as
other than oneself, is no longer capable of supplying elements of valid
surrogate. Most of the time it is in crisis itself, ideologically if
nothing else. It needs support and does not know how to give support.
The myth of nationality alone is not sufficient to be an element of
order and putting a brake on things, moreover, most of the time it
produces outbursts in the opposite direction. The world is precipitating
more and more into an impermanence that exalts the possibility of
recuperation of capital and makes possible its restructuring in the
short term but, at the same time, it is imposing very high social and
psychological costs.
In the light of recent events, much more of the libertarian alternative
that it saw as field of struggle hardly a few decades ago, and a
progressive reduction of the authoritarian content of the institutional
structures of society has been realised today, than even the most
unchained utopians might have been hoped. From religions to morals, from
pedagogy to the science of self, from language to philosophy, even
science, everywhere the culture of technological man has borrowed
liberation as an element for recycling the new dominion. And they
realised this without fatigue. In the past one worked for the king of
Prussia, and now they are reaping the profits.
But every repressive design has its limits and therefore renders
possible the interests of the struggle. Even this omnivorous possibility
of mature capitalism to use also cultural elements, the most estranged
to its own production, presents aspects that are contradictory. In fact,
the destruction of the classical values of accumulation, (money in the
strict sense, charges, recognition, stability, status, etc.) makes
possible a more agile utilisation of people in the productive process,
also in view of a strong quantitative reduction, and without any notable
problems of social disturbance. This also has a cost in terms of a
progressive lack of stability of the system as a whole.
It remains to be seen, as is logical, not having any past experience on
which to base itself, on what this new lack of stability will end up.
For the moment we can see that manifestations of mass violence are
forming, some of which are gratuitous and blatant, even if not exactly
very significant (we are talking about the so-called violence in the
football stadiums); but they are also supplying insurrectional
manifestations that are far more important and full of revolutionary
significance. We are talking, in this second case, of the great
movements of people that are developing at the present time.
Are they destined to disappear? We do not know. We could hazard a guess,
make an hypothesis. But we will have quite other things to do.
The empty ideological delirium of those who, in spite of what is
happening within and outside the movement, are continuing unperturbed to
consider themselves neutral judges of such situations, denounces a
flight of oneās responsibilities. No one finds themselves above the
parts. Everyone, even without wanting it, finds themselves in the
condition to operate their own choices on reality, choices which, no
matter how insignificant or microscopic they might be, in one sense or
another, they influence the course of events more than one might
imagine.
If you are involved always and anyway, why deny it?
One can pure say one is outside the situation, just as one can affirm
one can leave the social scene. But in the last analysis one always
finds oneself operating a choice of the field. Either integrate oneself
into the stomach of the whale, and therefore drown oneās desires, oneās
passions, oneās anguish, oneās subversive existential motives in the sea
of a cotton wool-like mortifying social peace reached thanks to an
apparent rediscovered domestic tranquillity: or radically refuse this
new paradise of boredom, alienation and torment, choosing open and
violent conflict against this present state of affairs: then it is
social war led at all levels from the internal existential one, from
that singular existential to the external relational.
In this computerised society where everyone ends up in competition
recycling themselves, changing their skin, looking for compromise to
better integrate oneself, feel oppressed, exploited, alienated, it is
now an awareness left to who havenāt resigned themselves. Just as the
generous dignity of strong men seems to have become a sickness to
protect oneself from. The important thing is to be accepted so as to be
like all the others, that is the new christianity. Clarity, solidarity,
come to be dealt out cheaply by our humanist blackmailers and
recuperators, the gravediggers of passions, in the shadow of the old
political rationality of the State administrator and manager of society
and that social-economic of capital which from mercified bodies make an
indiscutible source of income and profit.
The desert in human relations is growing and extending on the
proletarianisation of individuals.
The end of the social spectacle is passing for the end of misery rigged
up in the proximity of our freedom ā liberation full of mortifying
goodness.
We are decidedly for the attack against the class enemy and against the
structures of power. We said it two years ago or so in the first issue
of this paper, we are saying it again today with the same projectuality
but more firmly and with more grit, in the awareness that the project of
restructuring of capital is now in an advanced phase.
Beyond the critique of the organisations of synthesis, it is the
sectorialisation of social reality in its new post-industrial forms is
pushing many comrades to develop their individual initiative. There is a
growing tendency to do away with mediating the struggle through
organisations of synthesis, in favour of the individual/organisation
capable of acting autonomously and of establishing relationships based
on affinity. The starting point is the revolutionary subject within
their insurrectional project. And the more the individual develops their
capacity to self-organise, the more significant their relationships of
affinity become.
As a consequence of this the anarchist group intended as something fixed
and circumscribed is giving way to an informal network of qualitative
relations: individual comrades supplying themselves with instruments for
the struggle, carrying out actions against the class enemy alone or with
a few others. At the same time they are acting for the extension of the
specific anarchist movement, but always in the dimension of a
generalisation of the struggle at mass level. The gap between theory and
practice begins to close.
A necessary instrument in this dimension is undoubtedly a paper which
must serve to identify the enemy in all its forms, giving indications as
to where it can struck most effectively. It must also serve to report
news of the struggle in course, and to produce analyses, theory and
counter-information with the aim of acting against repression more
effectively.
At times this work might seem schematic and repetitive, always pointing
to the same things: pylons being sabotaged, attacks against petrol
companies, drug laboratories, schools, work. But that does not worry us.
The felling of a pylon is always a specific, unique action which causes
multiform damage to the homicidal projects of the system. To put petrol
pumps out of use is a precise act of sabotage, not merely a symbolic
gesture. Dynamite against those responsible for the massacre of the
Palestinian people strikes home, gives an indication of struggle, warms
our hearts.
And so the great revolutionary laboratory is continually in movement,
developing theory and practice and extending, using the universal
language of attack against the class enemy. Fire and dynamite together
with the objective struck speak eloquently to all those who have a
concrete conception of struggle.
There is also an immense amount of work of understanding and analysis
that needs to be liberated from the confines of language and become
accessible to all. The insurrectional project is also this, and requires
structures capable of carrying out this task, as well as the decision
and constancy to act in this direction.
From the newspapers we learn of the arrest of a number of members of a
non-existent group āAnarchismo e ProvocAzioneā. We do not want, nor can
we, say anything of the actions the investigators consider them
responsible for, nor the connections and relations they refer to, to say
the least, very confused. We merely want to underline, as comrades
making up the editorial of āAnarchismoā and the editorial of
āProvocAzioneā that we are estrange to any clandestine organisation
whatsoever, let alone one called āAnarchismo e ProvocAzioneā.
Apart from our work as anarchists and revolutionaries that we reconfirm
with heads held high, even at this moment when one of the most clamorous
frame-ups of recent years is appearing on the horizon (and it is not the
first time), we want to point out the inexistence of possible
ācontinuismsā between organisations operating in the past under the name
of āARā and our editorials. The fact ā as has been underlined ā that our
editions published a book containing the communiques of this
organisation, cannot be considered belonging to it or participating in
it, in that we have published other books expressing opinions that are
diametrically opposed (something the papers do not take the trouble to
report).
We think that individual choices, revolutionary or other, be claimed for
what they are: personal decisions which cannot draw in structures of the
anarchist movement simply because it suits an inquisitor more ambitious
than others.
It is necessary to do everything possible to denounce this frame up at
all levels as foolish and hateful as ever. There has never existed, nor
could there have existed, āanarchist terrorismā, nor anarchists stupid
enough to lightly give life to deeds such as those pointed out by the
inquirors signing themselves in the name of a paper regularly
distributed all over Italy.
āAnarchismoā
āProvocAzioneā
For understandable reasons the present issue of ProvocAzione is coming
out with only a few pages in the new format that it will also take in
future issues. We have printed more copies in order to have the widest
possible diffusion. On the basis of our strength. We ask all comrades
interested to telephone or write.... In these grave moments we need the
maximum possible support. All comrades interested in constituting a fund
for defence costs etc. are asked to.