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Title: The Insurrectional Project Date: 1998 Source: Retrieved on April 8, 2009 from [[http://anti-politics.net/distro/download/insurr-project-read.pdf][anti-politics.net]] Notes: Elephant Editions, London, 2000, KKA publications, 2001, Quiver Distro, 2006. Translated from Italian by Jean Weir in collaboration with John Moore and Leigh Stracross Authors: Alfredo M Bonanno Topics: History, Technology, Organization, Insurrectionist, Italy Published: 2009-04-08 18:31:38Z
If we refuse to let our lives be organised by others we must have the
capacity to organise ourselves, that is, we must be able to ‘put
together the elements necessary to act as a coherent functioning
whole’. For anarchists, individuals who ardently desire the
elimination of every trace of tyranny and domestication, this has been
experimented in a myriad of forms according to prevailing social and
economic conditions, and marked by each one’s particular concept of
wholeness. If this could once be interpreted — by some — to mean a big
organisation to oppose big industry, today social disintegration and
uncertainty have gone further than any critique in relegating such
undertakings to the pages of history. We are left with the exquisite
dilemma: if my freedom depends on the freedom of all, does not the
freedom of all depend on my acting to free myself? And if all the
exploited are not acting to free themselves — as a tangible composite
whole — how can I function, i.e. organise myself, to destroy the
reality that oppresses me without delay? In other words, how can I act
as a whole that seeks to expand and enhance itself to infinity? Having
refused the sop of participation, voluntary work and progressive
change with which the democratic ideology seeks to satiate its bloated
subjects, I am left with myself and my unmediated strength. I seek my
accomplices: two or three, hundreds or hundreds of thousands, to upset
and attack the present social order right now — in the tiny act that
gives immediate joy, indicating that sabotage is possible for
everyone; or in great moments of mass destruction where creativity and
anger combine in unpredictable collusion. I am therefore faced with
the problem of creating a project whose immediate aim is destruction,
which in turn creates space for the new.
What holds things together and puts my actions in context cannot
therefore be a fixed formal organisation, but the development of the
capacity to organise myself, alone and with others, where numbers are
not an aim, but are always potentially present. In other words, I must
create an insurrectional project which already contains all the
elements of a revolutionary perspective: the decision to act now;
analysis of the present time taking account of the profound
transformations capital is undergoing globally and which have had an
effect on the whole concept of struggle; choice of objectives, means,
ideas, desires; the means of making these known to others in my search
for affinity; the creation of occasions for confrontation and debate,
and much more besides. Projectuality becomes force in movement, a
propelling element within the whole insurrectional flux.
The following texts come to us from a series of meetings that took
place in Greece some years ago. A sub-heading of one of the sections
has since reached notoriety after being chosen by the Italian
carabinieri in 1996 to name the phantom armed organisation they
subsequently accused dozens of anarchists of belonging to. This should
not divert us from our understanding of the text, which could be seen
as a starting point, an invitation to consider and experiment in the
insurrectional adventure.
In January 1993 I was invited to Greece along with another comrade to
hold a number of talks at the Athens Polytechnic and the Law Faculty
of Salonika.
The texts published here are: an outline of the talks I intended to
give, a transcription of the tapes of the Salonika conference and a
transcription of an interview with the Athens daily
<em>Eleftherotipia</em>. As the first of these texts was intended to
be a guide to the conferences, I worked it out in detail along with
the Greek comrades in time for it to be translated and handed out to
those present. This was necessary due to the difficulties of on the
spot interpretation.
I published the texts in May 1993 in number 72 of **Anarchismo**,
with the title ‘Recent Developments in Capitalism’.
The three pieces have a homogeneity that still makes them worth
publishing together, as they all concern capitalist restructuring and
the forms of insurrectionalist struggle that anarchists are proposing
against it.
A curious thing happened. The penultimate section of the first piece
published here is still entitled ‘Revolutionary anarchist
insurrectionalist organisation’. The origin of this now infamous
heading is rather strange and deserves comment. In fact I had
originally entitled the subsection ‘Informal anarchist
insurrectionalist organisation’, but we came up against difficulties
when trying to translate the term ‘informal’. It was impossible to
solve them before my arrival in Greece, so the comrades suggested
replacing the term ‘informal’ with the more generic one,
‘revolutionary’.
I forgot to restore the word ‘informal’ when I published the text in
Italy, although it is nearer to what I am talking about in that
particular section.
I do not feel I can make such a correction now given all the nonsense
that the specialists of the Attorney General’s office in the courts of
Rome, led by Public Prosecutor Marini, have come out with.
I think it might be useful to give a brief description of the way the
minds of the Italian judiciary and Carabinieri have laboured on this
text.
On September 17, 1997, dozens of anarchists were arrested in Italy on
charges of kidnapping, robbery, murder, possession of arms, etc.,
initiating what came to be known as the ‘Marini Frame-up’. These
separate charges were transformed into one combined charge, i.e. that
of belonging to a clandestine armed organisation entitled the ORAI.
The name had been taken from the paragraph mentioned above:
Revolutionary anarchist insurrectionalist organisation.
This trial is still going on, and could drag on for years to come
given the various legal stages which make up the process. We were
freed from prison fourteen months after being arrested thanks to a
simple procedural error: the Attorney’s Office genius in Rome had been
so busy trying to justify a phantom ‘armed gang’ that they forgot to
follow their own rules. The result is that although still facing
charges that carry life imprisonment those who, like myself, did not
have sentences pending are now all at liberty.
As the enthralled reader will discover, the following texts contain no
theory relative to a specific armed organisation, but are an
examination of the insurrectionalist method of organising. This is
based on affinity groups composed of anarchists, the elaboration of a
common revolutionary project, their linking together in an informal
organisation, the constitution of base nuclei in a situation of mass
struggle and, finally, the way these structures could be linked
together.
I realise that for the obtuse mentality of a Carabinieri educated to
seeing the enemy as a negative copy of himself and his organisation,
nothing under the sun could exist that is not equipped with an
organisation chart, leaders, strategies and objectives. And up to this
point I can even understand a tendentious reading of the text in
question. But what I cannot understand, and what no reader will surely
be able to either, is how such a text came to be given the task of
constituting the foundations of a clandestine armed organisation. This
is still simmering away in the mind of the Public Prosecutor, who will
stop at nothing to demonstrate our guilt.
<em>Stop at nothing.</em> Precisely, even to the point of denying all
the evidence to the contrary. And in fact, as appears from the trial
documents and even from the succinct phrasing of the arrest warrants,
they must have had a few doubts on the subject. However, these were
evidently cast aside due to the greater precedence of their need to
justify the unjustifiable: If it is true that Bonanno is theorising a
specific armed clandestine organisation (ORAI) in this piece (‘Recent
Developments in Capitalism’), then we, the Prosecution and
Carabinieri, declare that he cannot have gone to Greece to talk about
it publicly in a university auditorium. That would be illogical. And
as the text in question must mean what we, Prosecution and
Carabinieri, say it means, then we must conclude that Bonanno did not
go to Greece, did not give these conferences, and did not write this
text as an outline and memorandum for what he was about to say in
public... A logical conclusion! Only it ignores one thing: that in
both Athens and Salonika hundreds of people were present at these
conferences. There are tape recordings not just of the conferences but
of the whole debate. Both the conferences and the Salonika debate have
been transcribed and presented in a book published in Greece. And,
finally, there are even photographs published along with my interview
(the third of the pieces published here) on February 28 1993 in the
Athens daily **Eleftherotipia**.
But why do the prosecution want to read something — the theorisation
of an inexistent armed band complete with name — into this text, even
at the risk of making themselves ridiculous? There is a simple answer:
because they would not otherwise be able to sentence dozens of
anarchists for conspiracy — a conspiracy that clearly does not exist.
It would then remain for them only to prove individual charges which
would have to be dealt with separately, according to the rules of the
penal code, etc.
The accusers know perfectly well that the second alternative would not
be easy for them. They are well aware that most of the charges are
based on the spurious accusations of a young girl bribed by them,
<em>that</em> is why they are so persistent in wanting to read
something that is not there into this text.
In fact, the concept of informal organisation proposed in the text in
question does not in any way resemble that of an armed clandestine
organisation. We are in two different worlds. The closed organisation
(necessarily so if we are talking of **clandestinity**), is an
instrument like any other, and in certain conditions of the class
clash it might even be useful as defensive or offensive means if one
finds oneself in dire straits. The economic and social structure would
have to change profoundly in order for it to become useful as a means
today. Capital would have to turn back on its steps to the conditions
of production that existed in the Eighties when there was a strong,
centralised working class and a fixed transmission belt of left wing
unions and parties — all things which clearly no longer exist. The
closed organisational model, which only indirectly wants the struggle
to generalise and does nothing in that direction other than make its
actions known through the media — and we know how **that**
functions — corresponds in many respects to the ideological conditions
that sum up the union and the party. If we refuse to be likened to
political parties, we must also refuse to be compared to organisations
whose aim is numerical growth, increasing the number of its actions
and setting itself up as the mainstay of the class struggle.
Of course, if anarchists were to get involved in constituting a
specific, closed organisation, they would do it in quite a different
way to the classic sclerotic one of the Marxist-Leninists. And there
is no doubt that, in its time, Azione Rivoluzionaria was an attempt in
that direction. But it soon moved away from its initial tragectory in
the direction of a generalisation of the struggle, and closed itself
up in the logic of recruiting and joining arms with the other
combatant organisations on the scene at the time. I am not saying that
they did not make any interesting proposals, especially in their early
documents. What I am saying is that, not only did these proposals not
stand up to criticism but by withdrawing into a position of defence
they ended up annihilating themselves by becoming more and more
clandestine, that’s all. The best comrades, it was said at the time,
are those in prison. One simply had to end up in prison to become a
better comrade.
The problem is simple. When we work out an analysis we cannot put our
own personal positions aside. These inevitably come to permeate the
analysis without our meaning it to. And when the latter is written in
prison, it is obvious that that is where it has come from. Moreover,
when a comrade sees his immediate reality to be radically compromised
he conveys this in the analyses he is working on, as well as in the
kind of intervention and methods he proposes. By imprisoning himself
in the stifling viewpoint of a clandestine organisation his way of
thinking becomes clandestine even to himself, almost without realizing
it.
It has been said that if one were to find oneself in a
pre-revolutionary phase (although no one could explain how we were to
recognise this phase), the only road possible would be that of the
more or less closed armed organisation. It was later seen that all
attempts at ‘being different’ simply ended up aborting themselves in
the classic condition of closure. It does not occur to anyone today
that we are in a pre-revolutionary phase, so if we were to accept the
idea of a specific armed organisation it would simply be a question of
our own personal decision, nothing more. A choice like any other. And
I say that with no expectations concerning the accusations in the
trial in Rome.
At this point I could quote something I wrote years ago, in an article
published in **Anarchismo** — in 1979 to be exact — entitled ‘On
Clandestine Organisation’, which is also available in my book <em>The
Illogical Revolution</em> (pages 88–90), but it seems pointless to me.
While many might simply have forgotten these words from the past, I
myself do not know what to do with them. I do not even want to read
them again, because they belong to a period that is quite different to
the present. As far as I can remember, they referred to the fact that
the critique of the closed clandestine organisation is not simply an
affirmation of individualism. Criticism does not have a weakening
effect, it strengthens. But something strange occurs when those under
criticism are comrades who participate in, or support, a closed form
of organisation, even in theory. The critique is taken as a personal
attack or something aimed at weakening one’s conditions. And when you
are faced with a comrade with years of prison hanging over them, you
run the risk of being lynched. I do not think that the concept of the
generalisation of the struggle, including armed struggle, is the
refusal of organisation. Nor do I think that to criticise the closed
clandestine organisation means to ‘expose oneself to massacre’. Such
generalisations do not interest me.
The informal organisation of affinity groups and the consequent
development of base nuclei in specific mass struggles, are the
organisational forms I consider most useful today for the
generalisation of the struggle, armed or otherwise.
From the late Seventies until the early Eighties, industry in the
leading capitalist countries was in crisis. The relationship between
plant and productivity had never been worse. Struggles led by the
trades unions, as well as those of the proletariat in general
(especially in their more violent manifestations under the leadership
of the various revolutionary working class structures), had led to a
rise in labour costs quite out of proportion to capital’s income.
Incapable of adjusting, lacking the strength to reduce labour and
employment costs drastically, it seemed as though the whole system was
moving towards its natural collapse.
But by the first half of the Eighties rapid change had set in, with
industrial restructuring taking an electronic direction. The primary
and secondary productive sectors (industry and agriculture) were in
decline, with consequent reductions in employment. The tertiary
(services) sector had expanded out of all proportion, absorbing some
of the laid-off work force, thus attenuating the social backlash that
the capitalists had feared more than anything else.
In short, the much-feared riots and revolutions did not take place.
There was no intolerable pressure from the reserve army of the
proletariat. Instead, everything quietly adapted to changes in the
structures of production.
Heavy industry replaced old plants with robotised ones capable of
reaching hitherto undreamed of levels of flexibility and low levels of
investment. Labour costs decreased without this leading to any fall in
demand because the services sector held well, assuring levels of
income that were sufficient to inflate the capitalist system as a
whole. Most of the sacked workers managed to find some way of getting
by in the new flexible and permissive capitalist world.
None of this would have been possible without the emergence of a new
flexible mentality at the work place: a reduction in the need for
professional qualifications and an increase in the demand for small,
auxiliary jobs. This coincided with a consolidation of the democratic
mentality.
The middle classes’ myths of careers and improvements in workers’
wages disappeared for good. All this was possible thanks to
articulated interventions at every level:
This all took place according to the spirit of the times. Dreams of
philosophical and scientific certainty gave way to a ‘weak’ model,
based not on risk and courage but on adjustment in the short-term, on
the principle that nothing is certain but anything can be fixed.
As well as contributing to the disappearance of the old and in many
aspects out-of-date, authoritarianism, the democratic mentality also
led to a tendency to compromise at every level. This resulted in a
moral degradation where the dignity of the oppressed was exchanged for
a guaranteed but uncomfortable survival. Struggles receded and
weakened.
Undoubtedly one obstacle to be faced is precisely this amorphous,
flexible mentality outlined above. This cannot be compared to the
old-style reliance on social security; it is simply a desire to find a
niche in which to survive, work as little as possible, accept all the
rules of the system and disdain ideals and projects, dreams and
utopias. The laboratories of capital have done an exemplary job in
this sense. School, factory, culture and sport have united to produce
individuals who are domesticated in every respect, incapable of
suffering or knowing their enemies, unable to dream, desire, struggle
or act to transform reality.
Another obstacle, which is related to the first, consists of pushing
production to the margins of the post-industrial complex as a whole.
The dismembering of the class of producers is no longer a nebulous
project, it has become a reality. And the division into numerous small
sectors which often work against each other is increasing this
marginalisation.
This is fast making the traditional structures of worker resistance,
such as workers’ parties and trades unions, obsolete. Recent years
have witnessed a progressive disappearance of the old-style
trade-unionism, including that which once aspired to revolution and
self-management. But, more importantly, we have witnessed the collapse
of the communism which claimed to have built a socialist State —
realised through police control and ideological repression.
It cannot be said that any organisational strategy capable of
responding to the new conditions of capitalist productive and social
reality in general has emerged.
Developments that might have arisen from proposals made by
insurrectionalist anarchists, especially those moving in the direction
of informal relations between individuals and groups based on
affinity, have not yet been fully taken on board. They have often
received a tepid welcome by comrades due to a certain, in some ways
understandable, reluctance to abandon the old ways of thinking and
apply new methods of organisation.
We will say something about this further on as it is central to the
struggle against the new structures of repression and total control
produced by Capital and the State.
The present technological revolution based on information technology,
lasers, the atom, subatomic particles, new materials such as optic
fibres which allow energy transportation and consumption at speeds and
over distances once unthinkable, genetic modification concerning not
only agriculture and animals but also man, etc., has not stopped at
changing the world. It has done more. It has produced conditions that
make it seem impossible to plan or make plans for the foreseeable
future, not only as far as those who intend to maintain the present
state of affairs are concerned, but also by those who intend to
destroy them.
The main reason for this is that the new technologies, which are now
interacting and becoming part of the context that has been developing
over at least the past 2,000 years, could produce unpredictable
results. And some of these results could be totally destructive, far
beyond the devastating effects of an atomic explosion.
Hence the need for a project aimed at the destruction of technology as
a whole in its first, essential phase, and which bases all its
political and social approaches on this imperative.
Profound changes are also taking place in the economic sector. These
changes are affecting the political situation in advanced capitalist
countries, with consequent effects on the military sector.
New frontiers in post-industrial capitalism are emerging from
widespread processes and re-arrangements that are continually in flux.
The static concept of production tied to heavy machinery in huge
factories capable of producing a multiplicity of consumer goods has
been surpassed by the ingenious idea of swift change and increasing
competition in specialised production with stylish, individual,
personalised products. The post-industrial product does not require
skilled labour but is set up on the production line directly, simply
by reprogramming the robots to produce it. This has meant incredible
reduction in storage and distribution costs and eliminated
obsolescence and stockpiling of unsold products.
This development created great new possibilities for capital around
the beginning of the Eighties, and by the end of the decade it had
become the norm. So the political situation had to change to
correspond with the new economic one.
This explains the considerable changes that took place at the end of
the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. There has been a move
towards careful selection of the managerial strata, which must be able
to see to the requirements of this new form of production. That
explains why advanced industrial countries such as the US and Great
Britain went through a period of increased authoritarianism in
government, then moved on to a more versatile, flexible form of
political management corresponding to the economic necessities of
various countries which are now all coordinated globally.
Any advance from the countries of actual socialism beyond cautious,
reciprocal suspicion was unthinkable in the old capitalist reality.
But the birth of the new computerised, automated capitalism has not
only made advances possible but has forced these countries to change
radically, pushing them to an irreversible as it was indecent
collapse.
Rigid authoritarian regimes based on ideological calembours such as
proletarian internationalism and the like are finding it difficult to
comply with the needs imposed by a production structure that is now
coordinated globally.
If they do not want to get stuck in a precarious, marginal situation,
the few remaining authoritarian regimes will have to resolutely
democratise their political management. Inflexibility forces the great
international partners of industrial development to stiffen and
declare war one way or the other.
It is in this sense that the role of the army has also changed
considerably. It has intensified internal repression, and at the same
time taken on the role of global policeman that was first developed by
the US. This will probably continue for a number of years until other
crises interrupt and require new yet equally precarious and dangerous
forms of equilibrium.
Accordingly, the resurgence of nationalism is bringing with it one
positive albeit limited element, and one that is extremely dangerous.
Its immediate and specific effect consists in the overturning and
dismemberment of the big States. Any movement that goes in this
direction is to be hailed as positive, even if on the surface it
presents itself as being a carrier of traditional, conservative
values.
The other factor, the one that is extremely dangerous, is the risk of
wars spreading between the small States, declared and fought with
unprecedented ferocity and causing tremendous suffering in the name of
miserable principles and just as miserable alternatives.
Many of these wars will lead to a more efficient and structured form
of post-industrial capitalism. Many will be controlled and piloted by
the multinational giants themselves. But basically they represent a
transitory condition, a kind of epileptic fit, following which social
conditions could evolve in the direction of the elimination of any
trace of the old State organisms.
At the moment we can only guess how this might happen, starting off
from an examination of conditions today.
The end of the great trades union organisations’ function of
resistance and defence — corresponding with the collapse of the
working class — has allowed us to see another possibility for the
organisation of the struggle. This could start from the real capacity
of the **excluded**, i.e., of the great mass of exploited,
producers and non-producers, who already find themselves beyond the
area of guaranteed wages, or who will in the near future.
The proposal of a kind of intervention based on affinity groups and
their coordination and aimed at creating the best conditions for mass
insurrection often comes up against a brick wall even amongst the
comrades who are interested in it. Many consider it to be out of date,
valid at the end of the last century but decidedly out of fashion
today. And that would be the case had the conditions of production, in
particular the structure of the factory, stayed as they were a hundred
and fifty years ago. The insurrectionalist project would undoubtedly
be inappropriate were such structures and their corresponding
organisations for trade union resistance still in existence. But these
no longer exist, and the mentality that went with them has also
disappeared. This mentality could be summed up by respect for one’s
job, taking a pride in one’s work, having a career. This, along with
the sense of belonging to a producer’s group in which to associate and
resist and form trade union links which could even become the means
for addressing more problematic forms of struggle such as sabotage,
anti-fascist activity and so on, are all things of the past.
All these conditions have disappeared for good. Everything has changed
radically. What we could call the factory mentality has ceased to
exist.
The trade union has become a gymnasium for careerists and politicians.
Wage bargaining has become a filter for facilitating the adaptation of
the cost of labour to the new structures of capital. Disintegration is
extending rapidly beyond the factory to the whole social fabric,
breaking bonds of solidarity and all significant human relationships,
turning people into faceless strangers, automata immersed in the
unliveable confusion of the big cities or in the deathly silence of
the provinces. Real interests have been substituted by virtual images
created for the purpose of guaranteeing the minimum cohesion necessary
to hold the social mechanism as a whole together. Television, sport,
concerts, art and cultural activities constitute a network for those
who passively wait for things to happen, such as the next riot, the
next crisis, the next civil war, or whatever.
This is the situation we need to bear in mind when talking of
insurrection. We insurrectionalist and revolutionary anarchists are
not referring to something that is still to come about, but to
something that is already happening. We are not referring to a remote,
far off model, which, like dreamers, we are trying to bring back to
life, unaware of the massive transformations that are taking place at
the present moment. We live in our time. We are the children of the
end of the millennium, actors taking part in the radical
transformation of the society we see before us.
Not only do we consider insurrectionalist struggle to be possible but,
faced with the complete disintegration of traditional forms of
resistance, we think that it is the condition towards which we should
be moving if we do not want to end up accepting the terms imposed by
the enemy and becoming lobotomised slaves, insignificant pawns of the
mechanisms of the information technology that will be our master in
the near future.
Wider and wider strata of the **excluded** are moving away from
consensus, and consequently from accepting reality or having any hope
of a better future. Social strata who once considered themselves to be
stable and not at risk are now living in a precariousness they will
never be able to escape from by dedication to work and moderation in
consumerism.
We believe that instead of federations and groups organised in the
traditional sense — part of the economic and social structures of a
reality that no longer exists — we should be forming affinity groups
based on the strength of mutual personal knowledge. These groups
should be capable of carrying out specific coordinated actions against
the enemy.
As far as the practical aspects are concerned, we imagine there would
be collaboration between groups and individuals to find the means,
documentation and everything else necessary for carrying out such
actions. As far as analyses are concerned, we are attempting to
circulate as many as possible in our publications and through meetings
and debates on specific questions. An insurrectionalist organisational
structure does not rotate around the central idea of the periodic
congress typical of the big syndicalist organisations or the official
movement federations. Its points of reference are supplied by the
entirety of the situations in the struggle, whether they be attacks on
the class enemy or moments of reflection and theoretical quest.
Affinity groups could then contribute to the forming of base nuclei.
The aim of these structures is to take the place of the old trades
unions resistance organisations — including those who insist on the
anarcho-syndicalist ideology — in the ambit of intermediate struggles.
The base nuclei’s field of action would be any situation where class
domination enacts a separation between **included** and
<em>excluded</em>.
Base nuclei are nearly always formed as a consequence of the
propulsive actions of insurrectionalist anarchists, but they are not
composed of anarchists alone. At meetings, anarchists should undertake
their task of outlining class objectives to the utmost.
A number of base nuclei could form coordinating structures with the
same aim. These specific organisational structures are based on the
principles of permanent conflictuality, self-management and attack.
By permanent conflictuality we mean uninterrupted struggle against
class domination and those responsible for bringing it about.
By self-management we mean independence from all parties, trades
unions or patronage, as well as finding the means necessary for
organising and carrying out the struggle on the basis of spontaneous
contributions alone.
By attack we mean the refusal of any negotiation, mediation,
reconciliation or compromise with the enemy.
The field of action of affinity groups and base nuclei is that of mass
struggles.
These struggles are nearly always intermediary, which means they do
not have a direct, immediately destructive effect. They often propose
simple objectives, but have the aim of gaining more strength in order
to better develop the struggle towards wider objectives.
Nevertheless, the final aim of these intermediate struggles is always
attack. It is however obviously possible for individual comrades or
affinity groups to strike at individuals or organisations of Capital
and the State independently of any more complex relationship.
Sabotage has become the main weapon of the exploited in their struggle
in the scenario we see extending before our very eyes. Capitalism is
creating conditions of control and domination at levels never seen
before through information technology which could never be used for
anything other than maintaining power.
- Because we are struggling along with the **excluded** to
- Because we consider it possible to contribute to the development of
- Because we want to destroy the capitalist order of the world which,
- Because we are for the immediate, destructive attack against the
- Because we constructively criticise all those who are in situations
- Because rather than wait, we have decided to proceed to action,
- Because we want to put an end to this state of affairs right away,
These are the reasons why we are anarchists, revolutionaries and
insurrectionalists.
Comrades, before starting this talk, a couple of words in order to get
to know each other better. In conferences a barrier is nearly always
created between whoever is talking and those who are listening. So, in
order to overcome this obstacle we must try to come to some agreement
because we are here to do something together, not simply to talk on
the one hand and listen on the other. And this common interest needs
to be clearer than ever given the questions about to be discussed this
evening. Often the complexity of the analyses and the difficulty of
the problems that are being tackled separate the person who is talking
from those who are listening, pushing many comrades into a passive
dimension. The same thing happens when we read a difficult book which
only interests us up to a point, a book with a title such as Anarchism
and Post-industrial Society, for example. I must confess that if I
were to see such a book in a shop window, I’m not sure I’d buy it.
That is why we need to come to some agreement. I think that behind the
facade of the problem under discussion, undoubtedly a complex one, the
fact that we are anarchists and revolutionary comrades means we should
be able to find some common ground. This should permit us to acquire
certain analytical instruments with which to better understand
reality, so be able to act upon it more effectively than before. As a
revolutionary anarchist I refuse to inhabit two separate worlds: one
of theory and another of practice. As an anarchist revolutionary, my
theory is my practice, and my practice my theory.
Such an introduction might not go down well, and it will certainly not
please those who support the old theories. But the world has changed.
We are faced with a new human condition today, a new and painful
reality. This can leave no room for intellectual closure or analytical
aristocracies. Action is no longer something that is separate from
theory, and this will continue to be the case. That is why it is
important to talk about the transformation of capitalism yet again.
Because the situation we see before us has already undergone rapid
restructuring.
When we find ourselves in a situation like this, we tend to let
ourselves be seduced by words. And we all know anarchists’ vocation
for words. Of course we are for action too. But tonight it is a
question of words alone, so we run the risk of getting drunk on them.
Revolution, insurrection, destruction, are all words. Sabotage —
there, another word. Over the past few days spent here among you I
have heard various questions asked. Sometimes they were asked in bad
faith, as far as I could tell. But translation from one language to
another comes into it, and I don’t want to be malevolent. I just want
to say that it is important not to deceive oneself that my analysis
provides the solution to the social problem. I do not believe any of
the comrades I have spoken to over the past few days have the solution
either. Nor does the anarcho-syndicalist comrade with his analyses
based on the centrality of the working class, or the other comrades
who as far as I can understand do not seem to agree with him and are
proposing an intervention of an insurrectionalist nature. No, none of
these hypotheses can claim to possess the truth. If anarchism teaches
anything it teaches us to be wary of anyone who claims to hold the
truth. Anyone who does so, even if they call themselves an anarchist,
is always a priest as far as I am concerned. Any discourse must simply
aim to formulate a critique of the existent, and if we sometimes get
carried away with words, it is the desire to act that gets the better
of us. Let us stop here and start thinking again. The destruction of
the existent that oppresses us will be a long road. Our analyses are
no more than a small contribution so that we can continue our
destructive revolutionary activity together in ways that make any
small talk simply a waste of time.
So, what can we do? Anarchists have been asking themselves this for a
long time: how can we come into contact with the masses? to use a term
which often comes up in this kind of discussion, and which I have also
heard on various occasions over the past few days. Now, this problem
has been faced in two different ways. In the past, throughout the
history of anarchism, it has been faced by using the concept of
propaganda, that is, by explaining who we are to the masses. This, as
we can easily see, is the method used by political parties the world
over. Such a method, the use of traditional anarchist propaganda, is
in difficulty today in my opinion, just as the spreading of any other
ideology is. It is not so much that people don’t want to have anything
to do with ideology any longer as that capitalist restructuring is
making it pointless. And I must say here publicly that anarchists are
having difficulty in understanding this new reality, and that it is
the subject of an ongoing debate within the international anarchist
movement. The end of ideology is leading to a situation where
traditional anarchist propaganda is becoming pointless. As the
effectiveness (or illusion, we do not know which) of propaganda
disappears, the road of direct contact with people is opening up. This
is a road of concrete struggles, struggles we have already mentioned,
everyday questions, but of course one can’t exceed one’s limitations.
Anarchists are a very small minority. It is not by making a lot of
noise, or by using advertising techniques that they will be able to
make themselves heard by the people. So it is not a question of
choosing the most suitable means of communication — because this would
take us back to the problem of propaganda, and therefore ideology,
again — but rather of choosing the most suitable means of struggle.
Many anarchists believe this to be direct attack, obviously within the
limits of their possibilities, without imagining themselves to be
anyone’s fly coachman.
I ask you to reflect for a moment on the state of Capitalism at the
beginning of the Eighties. Capitalism was in difficulty. It was facing
increased labour expenditure, a restructuring of fixed plants at
astronomically high costs, a rigid market, and the possibility of
social struggles developing in response to this. And then, think about
the conditions six or seven years later. How quickly Capitalism
changed. It overcame all its difficulties in a way that could never
have been predicted, achieving an unprecedented programme of economic
and imperialist management of the world. Perhaps it does not seem so
at the moment, but this programme aimed at closing the circle of power
is well underway. What has happened? How was a situation so wrought
with difficulties able to pick up so quickly and radically?
We all know what happened, it is not the technical side of it that
surprises us. Basically, a new technology has been inserted into the
productive process. Labour costs have been reduced, productive
programmes replaced, new forces used in production: we know all this.
That is not the aspect of capitalist restructuring that surprises us.
No, what astounds us is the latter’s ingenious use of the working
class. Because this has always formed the main difficulty for
capitalism. Capitalist geniality has succeeded in attacking and
dismantling the working class, spreading them all over the country,
impoverishing, demoralising and nullifying them. Of course it was
afraid to do this at first. Capital was always afraid to venture along
that road, because reductions in the price of labour have always
marked the outbreak of social struggles. But, as its academic
representatives had been insisting for some time, the danger no longer
exists, or at least it is disappearing. It is now even possible to lay
people off, so long as you do it by changing production sectors, so
long as others are being prepared to develop an open mentality and are
beginning to discuss things. And all the social forces: parties,
unions, social workers, the forces of repression, all levels of
school, culture, the world of the spectacle, the media, have been
rallied to tackle Capitalism’s new task. This constitutes a worldwide
crusade such as has never been seen before, aimed at modelling the new
man, the new worker.
What is the main characteristic of this new man? He is not violent,
because he is democratic. He discusses things with others, is open to
other people’s opinions, seeks to associate with others, joins unions,
goes on strike (symbolic ones, of course). But what has happened to
him? He has lost his identity. He does not know who he really is any
longer. He has lost his identity as one of the exploited. Not because
exploitation has disappeared, but because he has been presented with a
new image of things in which he is made to feel he is a participant.
Moreover, he feels a sense of responsibility. And in the name of this
social solidarity he is ready to make new sacrifices: adapt, change
his job, lose his skills, disqualify himself as a man and a worker.
And that is what Capitalism has systematically been asking of him over
the past ten years, because with the new capitalist restructuring
there is no need for qualifications, but simply for a mere aptitude
for work, flexibility and speed. The eye must be faster than the mind,
decisions limited and rapid: restricted choices, few buttons to be
pressed, maximum speed in execution. Think of the importance that
video games have in this project, to give but one example. So we see
that worker centrality has disappeared miserably. Capital is capable
of separating the **included** from the **excluded**, that
is, of distinguishing those who are involved in power from those who
will be **excluded** forever. By ‘power’ we mean not only State
management, but also the possibility of gaining access to better
living conditions.
But what supports this divide? What guarantees the separation? This
lies in the different ways that needs are perceived. Because, if you
think about it for a moment, under the old-style form of exploitation,
exploited and exploiter both desired the same thing. Only the one
<em>had</em>, and the other did not. If the construction of this
divide were to be fully realised, there will be two different kinds of
desire, a desire for completely different things. The
<em>excluded</em> will only desire what they know, what is
comprehensible to them and not what belongs to the **included**
whose desires and needs they will no longer be able to comprehend
because the cultural equipment necessary to do so will have been taken
from them for ever.
This is what Capitalism is building: an automaton in flesh and bone,
constructed in the laboratories of power. Today’s world, based on
information technology, knows perfectly well that it will never be
able to take the machine to the level of man, because no machine will
ever be able to do what a man can. So they are lowering man to the
level of the machine. They are reducing his capacity to understand,
gradually levelling his cultural heritage to the absolute minimum, and
creating uniform desires in him.
So when did the technological process we are talking about begin? Did
it begin with cybernetics as has been suggested? Anyone who has any
experience of such things knows that if poor Norbert Wiener has any
responsibility at all, it lies in the fact that he started to play
around with electronic tortoises. In actual fact, modern technology
was born a hundred years ago when an innocent English mathematician
started toying with arithmetic and developed binary calculus. Now,
following on from that it is possible to identify the various steps in
modern technology. But there is one precise moment in which a
qualitative leap takes place: when electronics came to be used as the
basis upon which the new technology (and consequently the technology
for perfecting electronics) was built. And it is impossible to predict
how things will evolve, because no one can foresee what the
consequences of this entry into a new technological phase will be. We
must understand that it is not possible to think in terms of cause and
effect. For example, it is naive to say that the great powers have the
atomic potential to blow up the world, even though this is so. This
idea, so terrifying and apocalyptic, belongs to the old concept of
technology based on the hypothesis of cause and effect: the bombs
explode, the world is destroyed. The problem we are talking about here
opens up the prospect of a far more dangerous situation because it is
no longer a matter of speculation but something that already exists
and is developing further. And this development is not based on the
principle of cause and effect but on the weaving of unpredictable
relations. Just one simple technological discovery, such as a new
substance for energy conservation for example, could lead to a series
of destructive technological relations which no one in all conscience,
no scientist, would be able to predict. It might cause a series of
destructive relations which would not only affect the new
technologies, but also the old ones, putting the whole world in chaos.
This is what is different, and it has nothing to do with cybernetics,
which is only the distant relative of the present nightmare.
In the light of all this we have been asking ourselves for a long time
now: how can we attack the enemy if we do not know it in depth? But,
if you think about it, the answer is not all that difficult. We very
much enjoy attacking the police, for example, but no one becomes a
policeman in order to do so. One informs oneself: how do the police
operate? What kind of truncheons do they use? We put together the
small amount of knowledge required for us to roughly understand how
the police work. In other words, if we decide to attack the police, we
simply limit ourselves to obtaining a certain amount of knowledge
about them. In the same way, it is not necessary to become engineers
in order to attack the new technology, we can simply acquire some
basic knowledge, a few practical indications that make it possible for
us to attack it. And from this consideration another, far more
important one, emerges: that the new technology is not abstract, it is
something concrete. For instance, the international communication
system is a concrete fact. In order to build abstract images in our
heads it needs to spread itself throughout the country. This is the
way the new materials are being used, let us say in the construction
of cables for data transmission. And it is here that it is important
to know technology, not how it works in the productive aspect, but how
it is spread throughout the country. That is to say, where the
directing centres (which are multiple) are to be found and where the
communication channels are. These, comrades, are not abstract ideas
but physical things, objects that occupy space and guarantee control.
It is quite simple to intervene with sabotage in this instance. What
is difficult is finding out where the cables are.
We have seen the problem of finding the documentation and research
required to attack: at some point this becomes indispensable. At some
point, knowledge of technology becomes essential. In our opinion this
will be the greatest problem that revolutionaries will have to face
over the next few years.
I do not know if any use will be made of the computer in the society
of the future, the self-managed society many comrades refer to, just
as it is impossible to know whether any use will be made of a
considerable number of the new technologies. In fact, it is impossible
to know anything about what will happen in this hypothetical society
of the future. The only thing I can know, up to a point, concerns the
present, and the effects of the use of the new technologies. But we
have already gone into this, so there is no point in repeating
ourselves. The task of anarchists is to attack, but not on behalf of
their own organisational interests or quantitative growth. Anarchists
have no social or organisational identity to defend. Their structures
are always of an informal character so their attack, when it takes
place, is not to defend themselves (or worse still to propagandise
themselves), but to destroy an enemy who is striking everyone. And it
is in this decision to attack that theory and practice weld together.
An historically unprecedented kind of capitalism is appearing on the
horizon. When we hear of neo-liberalism, this is in fact what is
meant. When we hear talk of global dominion, this is the project that
is being referred to, not the old concept of power, not the old
imperialism. It was in the face of this project and its immense
capacity to dominate that real socialism collapsed. No such thing
would ever have happened in the context of the old capitalism. There
is no longer any need for the world to be divided into two opposing
blocs. The new capitalist imperialism is of an administrative kind.
Its project is to manage the world for a small nucleus of
<em>included</em>, at the cost of the great mass of <em>excluded</em>.
And with these projects in mind, all possible means are already being
used — the new ones we have mentioned, along with the old ones, as old
as the world, such as war, repression, barbarity, according to the
situation. In this way, in the former Yugoslavia for example, a
ferocious war is being waged aimed at reducing a people’s capacities
as far as possible. Then there will be an intervention in this
situation of absolute destruction in the form of a little humanitarian
aid which will seem like an enormous amount of help in such conditions
of absolute and total misery.
Think of what the state of countries like the former Yugoslavia would
be like without the war. A great powder-keg at the gates of western
Europe, on our borders, alongside the European Community. A powder-keg
ready to explode, social contradictions which no economic intervention
would ever be able to raise to the level of western consumerism. The
only solution was war, the oldest device in the world, and that has
been applied. American and world imperialism are intervening in
Somalia and Iraq, but there is little doubt that they will intervene
in the former Yugoslavia because the probability of rebellion in this
area must be reduced to zero. So, old means are being used along with
new ones, according to the situation, according to the economic and
social context involved.
And one of the oldest weapons in the great arsenal of horrors is
racism. On the question of racism and all the misdeeds related to it
(neo-nazism, fascism, etc.), let’s look for a moment at the
differentiated development of capitalist restructuring. In order to
understand the problem it is necessary to see how capitalist
restructuring cannot solve all its problems just by waving a magic
wand. It is faced with many different situations all over the world,
each with various levels of social tension. Now, these situations of
social tension are making what is lurking in the depths of each one of
us rise to the surface, things that we have always put aside,
exorcised. Essential factors such as racism, nationalism, the fear of
the different, the new, Aids, the homosexual, are all latent impulses
in us. Our cultural superstructure, our revolutionary consciousness,
when it puts on its Sunday clothes, obliterates them, hides them all.
Then, when we take off our Sunday best, all these things start to
reappear. The beast of racism is always present, and Capitalism is
always ready to use it. In situations such as that which exists in
Germany where social tensions have developed rapidly over the past few
years, this phenomenon is in constant development. Capital controls
racism and uses certain aspects of it, but it is also afraid of it in
that the overall management of world power is of a democratic,
tolerant and possibilist nature. From the point of view of
utilisation, anything (e.g., ideology, fear) can exist — it is all
part of capital’s project. We cannot say with certainty that
post-industrial capitalism is against racism. We can see a few of its
main characteristics, such as its democratic nature, then suddenly
discover that in the context of one specific country the same
technologically advanced capitalism is using methods that were used a
hundred years ago: racism, persecution of Jews, nationalism, attacks
on cemeteries, the most hateful and abominable things man can devise.
Capital is manifold, its ideology always Machiavellian: it uses both
the strength of the lion and the cunning of the fox.
But the main instrument of capitalism the world over are the new
technologies. We must think about this a little, comrades, in order to
dispel so much confusion. And in doing so we must also consider the
possible use of such technology on our part, in changed social
conditions, in a post-revolutionary situation. We have already seen
how there has been a great qualitative leap from the old technologies
to the new — by new technologies we mean those based on computers,
lasers, the atom, subatomic particles, new materials, human, animal
and vegetable genetic manipulation. These technologies are quite
different from, and have little to do with, the old ones. The latter
limited themselves to transforming material, to modifying reality. On
the contrary, the new technologies have penetrated reality. They do
not simply transform it, they create it, instigating not just
molecular changes, possible molecular transformation, but above all
creating a mental transformation. Think of the use that is normally
made of television. This instrument of communication has got inside
us, into our brains. It is modifying our very capacity to see, to
understand reality. It is modifying relations in time and space. It is
modifying the possibility to step out of ourselves and change reality.
In fact, the vast majority of anarchists do not think it possible to
make use of this assemblage of modern technologies.
I know that there is an ongoing debate about this. However, this
debate is based on a misunderstanding. That is, it is trying to treat
two things that are radically different in the same way. The old
revolutionary dream, let us say of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, was
that of attacking and defeating power so that the working class could
take over the instruments of production and use them in the future
society in a way that was more just and free. Now it would be
impossible to make a fairer and more free use of these new
technologies, because they do not stand passively before us like the
old technologies of yesterday, but are dynamic. They move, penetrate
deep inside us, have already penetrated us. If we do not hurry to
attack, we will no longer be able to understand what we need in order
to do so, and rather than us taking the technologies over, it will be
the technologies that take us over. It will not be a case of social
revolution but of the technological revolution of capital. This is why
a revolutionary use of these new technologies is impossible. The
misconception is similar to the old one concerning the possible
revolutionary use of war, which many well-known anarchists fell prey
to when the first world war broke out. A revolutionary use of war is
impossible, because war is always an instrument of death. A
revolutionary use of the new technologies is impossible, because the
new technologies will always be instruments of death. So all that is
left to do is to destroy them — to attack, now, not in the future, not
when the project has been completed, not when those who are deceiving
themselves stop doing so, but sabotage now, attack now. This is the
conclusion we have reached. It is at the moment of the destructive
attack that one clarifies what we said to begin with. It is at this
point that theory conjoins with practice, and the analysis of
post-industrial capitalism becomes an instrument with which to attack
capitalism. It becomes an instrument for insurrectionalist and
revolutionary anarchism in order to direct one’s attention to what —
the men and the things — makes this project of restructuring of
Capitalism possible, and whose responsibilities are clear.
Today as never before, striking at the root of inequality means
attacking that which makes the unequal distribution of knowledge
possible directly. And that is because, for the first time, reality
itself is knowledge, for the first time Capitalism is knowledge.
Whereas the centres where knowledge was elaborated, the universities,
for example, were once cloistered places to be consulted at specific
times of need, today they are at the centre of capitalist
restructuring, the centre of repressive restructuring. So, a
distribution of knowledge is possible. I insist on saying that this is
an urgent problem, because it is possible to grasp any difference when
one sees it. But when a net separation between two different kinds of
knowledge which have no communication between them occurs — the
knowledge of the included and that of the excluded — it will be too
late. Think of the project of lowering the quality of schooling. Think
how mass schooling, once an instrument for gaining knowledge, has been
transformed over the past twenty years into an instrument of
disqualification. The level of knowledge has been lowered, whereas a
restricted minority of privileged continue to acquire other knowledge,
in specialised masters degrees organised by Capital.
This, in my opinion, demonstrates the need and urgency for attack yet
again. Attack, yes. But not blind attack. Not desperate, illogical
attack. Projectual, revolutionary attack, with eyes wide open in order
to understand and to act. For example, the situations where capital
exists, and is being realised in time and space, are not all the same.
There are some contexts in which insurrection is more advanced than
others, yet there is still a great possibility for mass struggles to
take place internationally. It is still possible to intervene in
intermediate struggles, that is, in struggles that are circumscribed,
even locally, with precise objectives that are born from some specific
problem. These should not be considered to be of secondary importance.
Such kinds of struggle also disturb Capitalism’s universal project,
and our intervention in them could be considered an element of
resistance, putting a brake on the fragmentation of the class
structure. I know that many comrades here this evening have
experienced such things, and have participated directly in specific
struggles.
So, we need to invent new instruments. These instruments must be
capable of affecting the reality of the struggles without the
mediation of trade union or party leadership. They must propose clear,
even though limited, objectives, ones that are specific, not
universal, so in themselves are not revolutionary. We must point to
specific objectives because people need to feed their children. We
cannot expect everyone to sacrifice themselves in the name of
universal anarchism. Limited objectives, then, where our presence as
anarchists has the precise task of urging people to struggle directly
in their own interests because it is only through direct, autonomous
struggle that these objectives can be reached. And once the aim has
been reached the nucleus withers and disappears. The comrades then
start again, under different conditions.
What comrades are we talking about? What anarchists are we talking
about? Many of us are anarchists, but how many of us are available for
real, concrete activity? How many of us here today stop short at the
threshold of the issue and say: we are present in the struggle, we
suggest our project, then the workers, the exploited, do what they
like. Our task is done. We have put our conscience at rest. Basically,
what is the task of the anarchist if it is not propaganda? As
anarchists, we have the solution to all social problems. So we present
ourselves to the people who suffer the consequences of the problem,
suggest our solution, and go home. No, this kind of anarchism is about
to disappear out for good. The last remaining mummies belong to
history. Comrades must take the responsibility for struggles upon
themselves directly and personally because the objective against which
the exploited need to struggle in certain situations, and against
which they often do not, is a common one because we are exploited just
as they are. We are not privileged. We do not live in two different
worlds. There is no serious reason as to why they (the so-called
masses) should attack before we do. Nor do I see any reason why we
should only feel ourselves authorised to attack in their presence. The
ideal, certainly, is mass struggle. But in the face of the project of
capitalist restructuring anarchists should feel responsible and decide
to attack personally, directly, not wait for signs of mass struggle.
Because this might never happen. So this is where the destructive act
takes place. It is at this point that the circle closes. What are we
waiting for?
So, individual acts of destruction too. But here an important
objection has been raised: what does one gain by smashing a computer?
Does that perhaps solve the problem of technology? This question, an
important one, was presented to us when we worked out the hypothesis
of social sabotage. It was said: what result is obtained by destroying
a pylon? First of all, the question of sabotage is not aimed so much
at the terminal points of technology as at the communications network.
So, we are back to the problem of knowledge of the way technology is
distributed over the country, and, if you allow me to digress for a
moment, I want to point to a serious problem that arises here. I allow
myself to use the term ‘serious problem’ because a comparison has been
made between what a clandestine armed organisation thinks they are
doing by striking a specific person, and what, instead, an anarchist
insurrectionalist structure thinks it is doing by striking a
technological realisation, maintaining that, all said and done, there
is not much difference. There is a difference, and it is a very
important one. But it is not a question of the difference between
people and things. It is an even more important difference, because
the aims of the clandestine armed organisation contain the error of
centrism. By striking the person, the organisation believes it is
striking the centre of Capital. This kind of error is impossible in an
anarchist insurrectionalist organisation, because when it strikes a
technological realisation (or someone responsible for this
realisation), it is fully aware that it is not striking any centre of
Capitalism.
During the first half of the Eighties, huge mass struggles took place
against nuclear power plants in Italy. One of the most important of
these was the struggle against the missile base in Comiso. In this
context we realised ‘base nuclei’. For three years we struggled
alongside the local people. This was a mass struggle, which for
various reasons did not succeed in preventing the construction of the
base. But that is not the only kind of struggle we consider, it is
just one of the possible ones we participate in as insurrectionalist
anarchists, one of the many intermediary struggles possible.
In another direction, in the years that followed, over four hundred
attacks took place against structures connected to the electric power
supply in Italy. Sabotage against coal-fired electric power stations,
the destruction of high-voltage pylons, some of them huge ones that
supplied a whole region. Some of these struggles transformed
themselves into mass struggles; there was mass intervention in some of
the projects of sabotage, in others there was not. On a dark night in
the countryside, anonymous comrades would blow up a pylon. These
attacks were spread over the whole country, and in my opinion
possessed two essential characteristics: they constituted an easily
realisable attack against Capital, in that they did not use highly
destructive technology and, secondly, they are easily copied. Anyone
can take a walk in the night. And then, it is also healthy. So
anarchists have not passively waited for the masses to awaken, they
have considered doing something themselves. In addition to the four
hundred attacks we know about, one could guess that at least another
four hundred could have taken place as the State conceals these
actions because it is afraid of them. It would be impossible to
control a capillary-style spreading of sabotage all over the country.
No army in the world is capable of controlling such activity. As far
as I know, not one comrade has been arrested in connection with the
known four hundred attacks.
I would like to wind up here because I think I have been talking long
enough. Our insurrectionalist choice is anarchist. As well as being
let us say a characterological choice, a choice of the heart, it is
also a choice of reason, a result of analytical reflection. What we
know about global capitalist restructuring today tells us that there
is no other way open to anarchists but that of immediate, destructive
intervention. That is why we are insurrectionalists and are against
all ideology and chatter. That is why we are against any ideology of
anarchism, and all chatter about anarchism. The time for pub talk is
over. The enemy is right outside this great hall, visible for all to
see. It is simply a question of deciding to attack it. I am certain
that insurrectionalist anarchist comrades will know how to choose the
timing and the means for doing so, because with the destruction of
this enemy, comrades, it is possible to realise anarchy.
<em>What is your identity and that of anarchism?</em>
Today, particularly following the collapse of actual socialism, wide
perspectives are opening up for revolutionary anarchism. This should
be intended both as an analytical instrument, a means for
understanding reality, and as an organisational point of reference for
people carrying out social struggles in everyday practice.
<em>What is the position of the Italian anarchist movement in today’s
society?</em>
The Italian situation is very different from the Greek, partly because
Italy has witnessed twenty years of authoritarian revolutionism, i.e.,
Marxist-Leninist armed groups. The failure of this authoritarian
strategy, the aim of which was the conquest of power, has led people
to think that all revolutionary struggle is doomed to failure. So
anarchists in Italy are faced with a very difficult task today,
because on the one hand this problem needs to be clarified, and on the
other it is necessary to explain to people what one means by
revolutionary struggle, which for anarchists is the destruction of
power. And they cannot limit themselves to explaining all this merely
in words. It also needs to be done by means of the concrete practice
of social struggles, something that is still to happen.
<em>What image do Italian people have of anarchists?</em>
When Italian society has an image of anarchism and anarchists — I say
when it has, because often they do not even know what anarchists are —
it is either an image that dates back about 100 years or one supplied
by the media. Media images often confuse anarchists, autonomists and
other marginal components of society such as the lumpen-proletariat in
revolt, even to the point of sometimes calling hooligans anarchists.
<em>This happens in spite of the fact that the anarchist movement has
a long history in Italy?</em>
It is also due to a certain incapacity on the part of anarchists
themselves. But it should be said that it is not easy to destroy an
opinion that television constructs in a day, in one single programme.
You must understand that the historical inheritance of the Italian
anarchist movement is hardly known, as it is confined to the anarchist
minority and academic study. The information that most people receive
is limited to the mass media. Due to such conditions, which are the
same in Greece, it is not possible to modify the situation from one
day to the next, a lot of work is required here.
<em>Is a use of the media considered to be part of the insurrectional
project?</em>
This is a very important question, and demonstrates the radical
difference between two revolutionary strategies. On the one hand the
authoritarian one, that of the old Marxists whose aim was to realise
spectacular actions — the case which caused the greatest stir being
the Moro kidnapping — using the media and, through this instrument of
sensationalism, make mass propaganda. According to insurrectionalist
anarchists this is definitely a losing strategy. Anarchists do not
think it is possible to use the media. A limited, subtle dialogue can
only be held at a theoretical level, as we are doing now. It cannot
exist at a practical level during social struggles, because then, more
than at any other time, the media merely carry out the role of
supporting the enemy. Insurrectionalist anarchists do not believe it
is possible for objective, neutral information to exist.
<em>But are all people prey to the media? Could these means of
information not play an important role in making anarchists better
known?</em>
I don’t believe anything is absolute. In revolutionary activity
choices are made that naturally have both positive and negative
aspects. When they find themselves in social struggles,
insurrectionalist anarchists have chosen to refuse this means of
communication. Of course that has its price in terms of transmission
of the image, but I think that there are more important issues
involved such as keeping the media away from the social struggle,
although that does not prevent them from carrying out their job of
mystification. But here it is a question of revolutionary
responsibility, and in Italy more than a few journalists have been
attacked personally as a result. So, there is nothing absolute about
making such judgements, only practical choices to be made.
<em>It has been argued that Europe is presently moving through a
cultural Middle Ages. What is your opinion on this?</em>
This is a complex question, which in order to answer requires at least
a couple of words of introduction of a cultural nature. The very
concept of a ‘cultural Middle Ages’ shows the limitations of certain
information. The Middle Ages is seen negatively, as the ‘dark ages’,
which was not the case. The crisis of ideology has also led to a
crisis in the idea of progress, upon which the Marxist analysis in
particular was based. It is sufficient to think of Lukacs and his
theory that reality is proceeding in a determinist and historicist way
towards a better future. In the past this ideological concept was also
shared by various anarchists, and it was in error. Reality is not
moving in a progressive direction, and the conditions of barbarity are
always present. There is not one thing in history that can guarantee
otherwise. We cannot look at any specific period and say: barbarity is
over, fascism is finished with for good. We live with fascism, we can
see this better thanks to the crisis in ideology that has opened our
eyes a little, but only a little. So, as far as this question is
concerned I am of the opinion that we find ourselves, not in the
Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages were not barbarian, but in a
situation where barbarity is currently possible. So, no, I don’t agree
with the idea that we are going through a historical period similar to
the Middle Ages. We are constantly living in a condition of possible
barbarity, but also of possible freedom. It is up to us to choose
which road we want to take, and this is the aim of revolutionary
activity: understanding which road is the road to freedom, and finding
the means to take it.
<em>Concerning the crisis in ideology and the position of Fukuyama re
the end of history, the end of ideas — have we reached the end of
history or do we have any ideas that are capable of giving us
information? And if so, what do we then mean by the concept “the end
of history”?</em>
That is a very articulate question. We need to determine what we mean
by history. Not by chance is there a relationship between
neo-liberalism and history, because the old liberalism was
historicist, that is, it supported the ideology of history. That kind
of history is finished. No matter what the philosophers say, the
crisis in the idea of progress concerned a single line proceeding
forward through reality and time, necessarily leads to a crisis in the
ideology of history, not merely a crisis of history. So, it is not
just a matter of a crisis in ideas, because the new liberalism is
afraid of a future lack of social control and is circulating the fear
of ‘the end of history’ at the level of public opinion. Their aim is
to limit people through an ideology of history which, like any
ideology, is an instrument of control. So, we have not reached any end
historically at all. The fact that we are reaching the end of the
millennium just increases the confusion. A neo-millenarianism is being
put into circulation for irrational reasons. This is a very dangerous
social terrain where we can see a development of all the religious
integralisms, including the Christian version, in the name of an
abstract need to save man. So, it is not a question of “the end of
history”, but rather of the end of historicism which, like any new
ideology of world domination does not know what to do yet. It realises
that it does not yet have the ideally adapted theoretical instruments
necessary, whereas academia, i.e. the world — Japanese and American —
university has nothing better to do than produce amenities of this
kind.
<em>Does history have a cyclical or a linear pattern?</em>
This is also a difficult question. But are all your readers
philosophers? I do not know how much depth analysis could be useful,
however I will start by establishing that we cannot separate the idea
of history from the idea of progress. The idea of progress comes from
the revolutionary bourgeoisie who lent themselves to the conquest of
power. We need to understand that the idea of progress is an idea of
power, of the management of power. Now, the idea of progress requires
a linear conception of history, something that was expressed very well
by Marx. He thought that the revolutionary clash between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat would necessarily end up with the
victory of the proletariat, because the latter were destined to
realise history. In this he applied the idea of his philosophical
mentor, Hegel, who said that the objective idea of the world would
realise philosophy and would render it useless, so people would no
longer need to think. And we have seen how the State did think in
place of people in the countries of actual socialism. And these
apparently innocent philosophical ideas still lurk amongst small
university groups and are discussed by very serious people, savants
worried about people’s destiny. Then they come out of the
universities, move about in reality and contribute to building the
concentration camps, determining full-scale massacres, historical
tragedies of vast proportions, wars and genocide.
Now, having established this we can return to the problem of the
linear concept of history. What do anarchists put in its place? They
suggest inverting Marx’s sentiment, that the sleep of reason breeds
monsters. On the contrary, anarchists maintain that it is in fact
reason that breeds monsters. That is to say the reason of the
philosophers, the politicians, the programmers of power, dominion, and
also of historical ideology. So, as long as it is possible to build
States and support exploitation, war and social death, a concept of
linear history will be possible. When all that changes, or begins to
change, we will finally realise that there is no such thing as linear
history but that, according to the intuition of your ancient Greek
philosophers (who remain unchallenged today), reality is of a circular
movement wherein the barbarity of the past can present itself at any
time. In this circular movement nothing is ever old or new, but rather
everything is always different — which does not mean that it is more,
or less, progressive. That is why it is necessary to begin again each
time, identify the enemy, the class enemy, the social enemy, power,
and attack it, always with new means. It is something of the work of
Sisyphus, and anarchists have this quality of Sisyphus, of always
starting at the beginning again, because, like him, they never give
up. And with this moral strength of theirs they are superior to the
gods, just like Sisyphus.
<em>What do you think of the reappearance of nationalism?</em>
There is not only a reappearance of nationalism, but a reappearance of
the most ferocious barbarity of the past. For instance, at least
according to what the newspapers report, twenty thousand women have
been raped in Bosnia. But not in the same way as with all the other
armies in the world, because rape is a normal practice of any army,
but rather as a deliberate means of fathering Serbians, i.e. as a kind
of genetic programming. Such an idea really goes back to the beginning
of time and confronts us with tragic considerations. For example, it
could be that we (including anarchists) made a mistake concerning
man’s original goodness and the notion that it was society that made
him become bad. We will probably all have to reconsider these
concepts. We need to become more intellectually acute, and not be
amazed each time these events re-occur in history, and stop placing
our hopes in peoples’ goodness. Nationalism rises up again because it
exists in each one of us, because racism is inside every one of us.
The fear of the black man is inside us, in those obscure regions that
we are afraid to penetrate, where there is the fear of the different,
the foreigner, the Aids sufferer, the homosexual. These fears exist
inside all of us, anarchists included, and we need to talk about them,
not hide them under ideology, under great words such as revolution,
insurrection, freedom. Because all these beautiful words, if they are
developed and brought about in reality by men who are afraid of the
different, run the risk of becoming the instruments of the power of
the future, not instruments of liberation.
<em>What do the American ghetto riots such as the one in Los Angeles
signify?</em>
The collapse of actual socialism has brought the apparent universal
domination of the Americans to the fore. I say apparent because it is
not just the Americans. If we make the mistake, as I seem to see being
made during the course of these talks in various towns in Greece over
the past few days, of aiming all our criticism at the Americans, we
will not be able to understand the general character of the new
imperialism. Yes, we have American domination, but also that of the
European Community and the Japanese economic colossus. But this
triumvirate is different to the power structures of the past. They do
not relate to each other in terms of the competition that existed
before the collapse of the Soviet empire, but share economic relations
of imperialist administration, that is, the construction and
maintenance of world domination.
For example, the situation in the former Yugoslavia is only
comprehensible through an analysis of the new world imperialism — not
only Yankee, but also European. Just think, west Germany has planned
to invest thousands of billions of marks over the next ten years to
raise east Germany to the level of western consumerism. And that
concerns just 17 million people. Now, if such a project were to be
made for the whole of the East, from Russia to the former Yugoslavia,
an impossible sum would be required. No world power in existence is
capable of bringing about such an operation, and world imperialism is
aware of this.
What is the solution then? War. That is why there is no American
intervention in the former Yugoslavia, because a ferocious,
destructive war such as the one now taking place will throw the
Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian people into conditions of such acute
poverty that even the slightest intervention, any tiny act of
humanitarian aid, will be seen as something positive. Think of such a
situation existing without the war. Combative peoples at the gates of
Eastern Europe, on the border with Greece. Combative peoples in
extreme poverty, with a great capacity for revolutionary social
action: what a danger for the European Community! Unfortunately I
believe the use of war as an instrument of imperialist management
could well be extended, and other examples of this can be seen.
The question of the riots within the American empire is quite
different. We must bear in mind that it is not just a question of
America, because similar events have also taken place in other
countries. More than ten years ago there were riots in Brixton. Then
in Switzerland, there was the revolt in Zurich, and in Germany, in
Hamburg. Under the conditions of advanced capitalism and precisely due
to the process of expulsion of the old proletariat from the factory,
there is an increasingly wide strata of new poor who have nothing to
lose, and who constitute a threat that is ready to explode at any
moment.
It should be said however that the significance of these explosions
should not be overestimated. It is true that anarchists have always
been in favour of such revolts. Whenever possible, they have
participated in them, anywhere — in society or in prison, and always
on the side of the weakest. But today they must avoid the theoretical
risk of putting the social rebels of the future in the place of the
worker centrality of yesterday. Society is a complex problem, which
has nothing in its centre. There is not one small part of society that
is capable of realising the revolution, not even the Los Angeles
rioters. Even if we sympathise with them, even if we are alongside
them. But we must admit that they are just one element, a sort of
involuntary anticipation of possible future mass insurrections, not
the main element. And this needs to be said clearly, against all those
who deliberately accuse us of forgetting the roles of the other social
strata.
<em>What relationship is there between the recent scandals in Italy
and Greece, and the new management of power?</em>
The problem of the Italian and Greek scandals is important, and it is
no coincidence that these have come to light at the present time,
because they correspond to profound changes in the management of
power. The new global capitalism, more obvious in some places than
others — for example it is more evident in the United States, less so
in Greece — needs a political managerial class, not one characterised
by ideological agreement, but one technically suited to the managerial
needs of global imperialism.
For example, a management of power similar to that of the ex-USSR, or
a kind of national socialism, would of necessity have had recourse to
mass arrests, mass executions, and would have resolved the problem of
a revolt in a few days. A democratic management must use other means.
Replacing the head of government is a difficult thing to do, and
scandals are an excellent means of achieving the replacement of the
old social leadership by the new technocratic one.
<em>Can you tell us anything about the Gladio in Italy? </em>
As Machiavelli once wrote, anything is legitimate in the political
arena. In Italy the Gladio scandal is the Christian Democrats’
response to the denunciation of their clandestine activity after the
war, which came to light in the Soviet archives years later. Yes, I
said it was the Christian Democrats’ response... Contrary to what is
believed, it was not the Communist Party that denounced the armed
activity of the USA and the Christian Democrats. It was the Christian
Democrats themselves who justified their activities in terms of the
defence of capitalist ideals, in a desperate attempt to save the old
political leadership by building a ‘revolutionary’ purity to show that
people who had taken up arms in the past should not be made to pay by
Capital. Contrary to the logic of other economic scandals, the Gladio
is an exercise in inverse logic. Whereas the economic scandals are
aimed at destroying the old leadership, the Gladio operation tried to
save it. Nevertheless this proved impossible, because the needs of
world imperialism are greater, and end up by taking over.
<em>In a Greek anarchist paper of 1896 there is an interesting article
on ecology. What do you think about the fact that today Capital itself
uses ecology as a means of restructuring?</em>
First we need to put this into context, given that you’ve made
reference to a paper from the nineteenth century. Anarchism is not a
political movement and never has been. It is a social movement, a
carrier of social ideas, and so has always, right from its birth,
dealt with the entirety of social problems. If one looks at anarchist
papers of the last century, one can find not only the question of
ecology addressed but also any other problem that concerns man. The
anarchists were the first to talk about free love, eroticism,
homosexuality, about all the aspects that concern daily life. This is
one of the strengths of anarchism, and has led to the anarchist
movement being considered, today as in the past, a great reservoir of
ideas into which everyone can dip, and from which Capital itself has
derived many concepts. But anarchists are aware of this. They have
always put their ideas at the disposal of others, because, as Proudhon
said, the worst kind of property is intellectual property. Anarchists
have never been afraid that Capital might steal their ideas, because
they have always known that they are capable of moving beyond them.
So, if at the end of the last century anarchists were ecologists in a
particular way, in that they were the only ones to be ecologists, now
that Power has ‘become ecologically-minded’ and ecology has become a
leading industry, anarchists are no longer ecologists the same as
before. They no longer say that it is necessary to save nature, but
rather that in order to save nature it is necessary to destroy both
those who are polluting it, and those who want to save it using State
means.
<em>How do you see yourself?</em>
That is a question that I was asked before many years ago here in
Greece, in a very different political situation. The physical
conditions were also very different then. At the time I replied: a
comrade among comrades. Now that I am older my reply is the same: a
comrade among comrades.