INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:
AGAINST TERRORISM:



The following article was recently published at the Anarkismo website. It comes originally from the Swiss platformist group Libertäre Aktion Winterthur. What the following provides is a little more context about not just the recent embassy bombings in Italy which have been discussed at this blog before and may be a complete police fabrication. What the following provides is a criticism of the whole romantic idea that terrorist tactics can be used to advance the cause of anarchism. Of course they can't, and such tactics have nothing whatsoever to do with what the anarchist movement aims towards. They are the acts of desperate individuals with little social connection who glom onto anarchism as an excuse for what they want to do. Anarchism is not the only ideology that has suffered, is suffering and will suffer from such "friends". What I find valuable in the following is that it is a clear and blunt repudiation of such nonsense without any hedging or throat clearing "apologies". The more real anarchists state their views in this way the sooner we will be clear of the terrorist parasites that live off the hesitation of the majority in the movement.
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No Solidarity with “anarchist” letter bombers
by Libertäre Aktion Winterthur law at arachnia dot ch

The question of violence has always been a hot topic in anarchist discourse. How can the oldest and rawest expression of power be combined with the teachings of an anti-authoritarian ideology? Can a revolutionary anarchist strategy contain violence?


[Note: This communiqué is consciously not written in response to the most recent attacks in Rome on 23rd December [2010]. We question any anarchist link to these incidents, because – just like with the series of attacks in 2003 - the ominous “Federazione Anarchica Informale“ (FAI) has claimed responsibility. It is an unlikely coincidence that this group shares the same acronym as the Federazione Anarchica Italiana who distanced themselves clearly from the events in 2003 and suggested the “FAI” could well be a fake organisation. There are several examples in recent Italian history of false flag operations. One of them was the bombing of the Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969, which was commissioned by the state and blamed on the local anarchists. In the most recent “FAI” communiqué in relation to 23rd December, the final words - “Long live the FAI, long live anarchy!” - are rather atypical for a self-described “informal” organisation.]



The question of violence has always been a hot topic in anarchist discourse. How can the oldest and rawest expression of power be combined with the teachings of an anti-authoritarian ideology? Can a revolutionary anarchist strategy contain violence? We can assume that the libertarian way – which includes the expropriation of the current owners of the means of production and abolishing material privilege – will meet brutal resistance by those who see themselves robbed of commodities. Master-servant relations (inconspicuous or obvious) are always based on coercion. This always includes violence which we can only resist as a strong and revolutionary mass movement.

However, as conscious anarchists we shouldn't fall into the trap of letting the means become the ends. “Real anarchist violence is that which ceases when the necessity of defence and liberation ends. It is tempered by the awareness that individuals in isolation are hardly, if at all, responsible for the position they occupy through heredity and environment.” [1] These words by Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta haven't lost any validity since they were written almost 100 years ago. They prohibit us to injure or even kill functionaries within capitalism as part of a libertarian praxis simply for the role they play. We think this should be obvious to anybody with an anarchist understanding.

In recent months, events have taken place – also in relation to Switzerland – which have questioned this libertarian principle in the name of anarchism. We don't mean call-outs like “Schlag die Polizisten, wo ihr sie trefft” ('Hit the cops where you encounter them') that are plastered on walls and published on websites as acts of individual resistance. These texts might be rhetorically quite clever but the content is rather confused. Nor are we talking about the numerous solidarity actions for Billy, Costantino and Silvia, whose anti-civilisation ramblings we only find amusing. [2] However we can assume that people from these networks are supportive of actions, that go far beyond paintbomb attacks or slashing car tyres.

We are thinking about the letter bombs that have been sent to various institutions of the state, particularly to embassies, in recent months. Hoping to injure a high-ranking bureaucrat when opening the envelope, the bombs were meant as a form of revenge for the imprisonment of the three aforementioned activists. This kind of praxis doesn’t only demonstrate political stupidity, but also cowardice and inhumanity. In the best case because of naivety, or in the worst because of calculation, the senders were prepared to injure a simple clerk or a subordinate secretary. With these acts, the senders stand among ruthless criminals who, as servants of capital, have persecuted and killed members of the working class. These acts are not revolutionary but an expression of political reaction. Faced with the infamy of these actions, we can only conclude: No solidarity with the “anarchist” letter bombers – never! A few years ago left-radical groups had to be created by the state to convince the population of the need for more repression. It is tragic that things have become so easy for the European capitalist class.

It is difficult for all of us to react adequately to a political and social climate that is taking us, the exploited, to the brink of frustration. This shouldn’t, however, be an excuse to find sanctuary in the old illusion of the “Propaganda by Deed” and the desire to change society through individual acts of violence. The follow-on effects of such deeds will be repression, escapism and an even bigger hopelessness instead of an insurrection by the masses. It is also wrong for anarchists to use structurelessness as a modus operandi, as demanded by our “insurrectionary” comrades. If everybody is only responsible to themselves, individualist and unpredictable actions will be preferential, instead of creating a praxis of solidarity to constantly work towards the social revolution.

We can only resist the capitalist system together in an organised and goal-oriented class struggle. Theoretical unity and stringency in praxis, federalist structures and individual discipline are the qualities of anarchists who are fighting in the spirit of solidarity for the social revolution and not for total repression. The workplace and school, the neighbourhood and the community centre, the street and the refugee centre: these are the spaces of our libertarian agitation and the organisation of the struggle and not the columns of the bourgeois media, who are waiting to report about the most recent attack by people in revolt with sensationalist headlines.


End of December 2010
Libertäre Aktion Winterthur (Anarchist Action)


[1] From a text by Errico Malatesta. Full text available: http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/anok&violence_em.pdf [PDF 108kb]
[2] Billy, Costantino and Silvia were arrested in Switzerland in on 15th April 2010. It is alleged that they were attempting to bomb IBM in Zurich. They have been in jail since. More information: http://againstthewaiting.blogsport.de/


Related Link: http://www.libertaere-aktion.ch

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT- GREECE:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH:

The events in Greece continue along with the anarchist response there, a response that I have often characterized on this blog as "inadequate". Perhaps "immature" would be a better word. Despite the great rebelliousness of the Greek population the anarchists there generally have little to offer beyond...more rebellion. this is immensely sad. Looking across the world Greece may be the second country after Spain where anarchism is most popular on a per capita basis. Travelling through downtown Athens you might even get the illusion that anarchism was more popular than in places such as Barcelona. I've been in both. The difference, and it is a great and profound difference, an essential difference, is that in Spain the majoritarian anarchist tradition is anarcho-syndicalist. This means that anarchism has sunk deep roots amongst ordinary people, and that anarchism speaks to their concerns and not to people whose primary identification is with a subculture. This means that anarchism in Spain is inherently less "flashy" but much more profound and practical for its lack of visible "difference".

Not that I don't admire the Greeks. When visiting that country I was privileged to meet with anarchosyndicalists and members of the 'Anti-Authoritarian Movement'. The former, however, are small and marginal amongst Greek anarchists. Hopefully it will not always be so. The latter are gradually struggling towards a class based politics and a program that is detailed enough to appeal beyond a subculture of rebellion. This subculture is, it must be admitted, a considerable cut above that that is so common in the 'anglosphere', especially the USA. There is none of the usual nonsense about how to dress, what to eat, what music to listen to (more or less) nor how to talk (politically correct speech). Still, while it may be admirable in comparison it is still...an incestuous subculture. Many Greek anarchists recognize this, and they also know that what has been offered so far is simply not enough to draw the ordinary person to their side.

The problem in Greece is that this evolution towards a "popular anarchism" is inhibited by a form of anarchism, "autonomism" which actually derives from Maoist roots and is under the great illusion that one can precipitate some sort of libertarian revolution without either organization nor program by simple violent actions. Autonomism is a particularly European example of the decay of Maoism 9and the idea of "peoples' war" applied to urban settings) that has very little echoes today outside of Greece, Italy and Germany. It is in Greece that it is most prominent.

This "deviation" (to use an old commie term) has always inhibited the Greek movement insofar as its addiction to mindless violence has both disgraced anarchism in the view of the average person and also diverted the majority of the movement into something resembling a "competition of militancy" whereby they hope to compete with the firebombers.

Firebombers !!! Arson in an urban setting is pretty well always a very stupid idea. Here in North America the stupidity is compounded by the fact such arsons are pretty well inevitably connected to nothing more than the desire of the perpetrators to prove how committed and "enlightened" they are. Even when there is a "real" issue that doesn't involve arrogance bordering on psychopathology such as "hating porn stores" (Canada) or the people who drive SUVs (USA) arson very rarely (never ???) accomplishes anything. Even if you are making a "class point" against the ruling class - such as firebombing banks- it accomplishes nothing.

It is also very bad propaganda. What it says very plainly is that you don't give a shit about what has euphemistically called "collateral damage" which is always a possibility when fires are started in urban areas. Don't depend on the fire departments to be omnipotent. In Greece this possibility has become a reality as three bank workers were killed by a fire started by protesters in recent demonstrations. There have been all sorts of "excuses" for this. Some "anarchists" have echoed the commies and the vague leftists of the Coalition of the Radical Left by trying to blame the incident on agents provocateurs. This is nonsense. Others have tried to shift the blame to the management of the bank who (literally) locked the workers in. This, at least, has some truth to it, but it avoids the ultimate question. EVERY TIME when you start a fire in an urban area (and often in a rural area) there is the possibility of the death of innocent people. Greece has certainly seen enough of this sort of arson (with deaths) in recent years carried out by people who intend to redevelop land. It's a sad commentary on the "anarchism" of some people that they should imitate the actions of the lowest and most criminal of the business class.

No doubt there are some who are hardened ideologues, once more particularly in the USA, who call themselves "insurrectionist anarchists" who do their damnest to excuse such actions-or at least to argue against how atrocious they are. In Greece this "struggle for the soul of anarchism" has been going on for many years. Those who think that terrorist options are the best way to proceed have not been sparing in also physically attacking attacking other anarchists who disagree with them, and once more arson has been one of their methods.

What should be made plain here and now is that the semi-religious devotion to "a diversity of tactics" here in North America can result in obvious disaster. The demand that there be no criticism of any action no matter how foolish is preliminary to physical attacks on those who dissent. Such attacks have already happened in Canada and the USA.

Quite frankly it hardly matters in the cosmic scheme of things if totalitarians disguised as anarchists want to attack those who disagree with theatrical "mini-riots" involving a few dozen people. Nor if they physically assault somebody who has dissented from the "vegan cult". The world moves on. It does, however, matter when important issues such as those in Greece are in play.

The great point that I want to make here is not to those who are ideologically convinced that one riot after another will lead to a libertarian society (or at least convinced for 5 1/2 years until they either mature or find a way to make money out of the nonsense). I speak here to those who have been convinced by the rhetoric of "diversity of tactics". Such suspension of disbelief may be all well and good when an action will have no visible consequences ie all "anti" protests so favoured by the "travelling anarchist rent-a-riot". It is a totally different matter when the destiny of a nation is being determined. People in Greece are desperately attempting to make anarchism relevant for ordinary people. You have two choices for your "solidarity". You can be in solidarity with the Greek anarchists who want to make anarchism a living and practical reality or you can be in "solidarity" with those who have both frustrated their project in the past and also physically attacked them. The choice is clear.

The following , from the Anarkismo website, is one out of many self criticisms from within the Greek anarchist movement about the events that led to the deaths of the three workers. What is significant here is that the criticism comes from within, and it proposes the question of "who" you are in solidarity with. It's obvious what side I have chosen. To echo Martin Luther..."here I stand, I can do no other".
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An anarchist comrade from Athens:
Enough is enough

Let us shout it out loud and if they do not hear it let us show it with our actions: Enough is enough.



On the 5th of May, we lived the chronicle of three pre-destined deaths. Unfortunately, the belief that we had for the longest time that it is only a matter of time before we mourn the first victims of indiscriminate violence, came true. Unfortunately, lives had to be lost in order to hear or read from some of the collectives of the movement, albeit timidly, albeit vaguely, the first allusions of criticism for the nihilistic culture of violence. Unfortunately, some still continue to hide behind their finger, focusing on those that bear the moral instead of the actual responsibility, on the results of the murderous act and not the reasons behind it.

Let's show the courage and the sincerity that (must) characterize a revolutionary/liberating movement and let's talk about the gist of the matter. If the death of the three people was proven to be the result of a targeted action by the far right, would they focus on the - anyway criminal and inhuman - stance of the management of the bank? But even if this was the case, the below are fully in effect.

The tolerance that has been shown for the longest time by a part of the anarchist movement to the proponents of indiscriminate violence is the beginning of any (self-) criticism. All those that, for many years, acted virtually undisturbed, in the same monotonous, dangerous, destructive and provocative ways, next and inside our blocks, should have been isolated, instead of being described on hindsight, generally and vaguely as "agents provocateur" or "gang-members", without any analysis whatsoever on how we ended up in this situation accompanying those characterizations. This can still take place though and work as a kind of catharsis. All these years when anyone tried to distance themselves from phenomena of indiscriminate violence, or from mass - armed or not - violence, was thought as setting themselves apart, was jeered or attacked. So is it not positive that even now, even vaguely, voices against the practice of violence for the sake of violence are being heard? Maybe it is and maybe it isnʼt. Only time will tell.

The more our critique of the phenomenon remains hazy and without supporting evidence, the less persuasive it becomes. The effortless characterization of "agents provocateur" is insufficient mainly because it is too general. With this general condemnation you do not expose the crux of the matter. You only avoid to answer questions such as those that follow, ones that we need to answer with clarity and also look into the results of a sterile "insurrectional" oratory and the even more sterile and dangerous practices that originate from this oratory. As agents provocateur can act not only a sad gang of ego-centric malcontents, but a state-sponsored gang on designated duty as well, if we judge the acts only in relation to their results. But is such a judgment suitable for us to adopt? No, because the revolutionary expression is rational, clear, acute and examines the causes of each phenomena. No, because at this point we need to be direct and act accordingly. No, because such a critique characterizes Authority and the crutches that prop it up. They are the ones who are used to give a fuzzy explanation and leave it at that. But if you are indeed seeking to prick the boil of violence, your discourse against blind violence needs to be concise and consistent at all times. Your actions, even more so. Otherwise, any abstract verbal distance one may try to keep from those gangs and their actions will not be believable. And moreover, they do not help in the spreading of the anti-authoritarian word. Even if one is not diachronically consistent, the change of attitude and course - if it is sincere - has to be followed with arguments and self-criticism, to avoid becoming opportunism. The questions we talked about earlier are many. If they were a state-sponsored gang, why did we not break them up during the rally? Were we caught with our pants around our ankles? Obviously not, since they act the same way for years on end. But then the question becomes why we have not done so all those years. Our reflexes against state gangs and secret policemen have not been blunted that much, so our inactivity is not justified. Perhaps the reflexes of some of us have been blunted towards gangs that hijack anarchist and anti-authoritarian ideology to play their little games to our detriment.

Let's dispense with the jokes, the convenient excuses and reasoning. We watch the same play for years on end. A part of the movement was accepting for many years the brainless partisans of violence for violence's sake, the proponents of window-smashing, providing them with an ideological basis for their actions. The rest either reacted spasmodically, or put up with them, or awaited a fateful event in order to react. Let it be understood that their murderous stupidity has cost human lives. We are not talking anymore about immaturity and ideological fixations; we are talking about a crime. They are the perpetrators. The anarchist and the social movement in general has paid dearly the fad and the autism of a few cowards and those that supported their actions with their so-called 'insurrectionist' oratory, believing that the social struggle against the State and Power is undertaken by a few insurrectionary types in society's absence and is limited to broken glass or whatever mobilizes the police for a stone-throwing war. With them and their practices, anarchy has nothing in common. Enough discredit, enough backward steps. The conflict will be multi-level and massed. Targeted and conscious.

The very moment that an entire square demanded furiously "Burn this brothel, the parliament", the very moment that hundreds of thousands were on the streets to clash with totalitarianism, the very moment that life is taken away from us, this moment the anti-violence to the violence of Power must at all costs shed this weight. This though, from now on, even belatedly we need to prove that it is a fact. For starters, we can do what people are talking among themselves: organize immediately a rally and protest march against indiscriminate violence. This will act as a rallying beacon for the movement, will make known our position towards society and maybe become the starting point of setting the score straight with the aforementioned autism.

Let us shout it out loud and if they do not hear it let us show it with our actions: Enough is enough.

Words as treacherous reptiles ie chameleons:
To clarify what I said about the original meaning of "direct action" in anarchist parlance I present the following quote from the piece entitled 'Direct Action' by Voltairine De Cleyre. She says,
"Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. All cooperative experiments are essentially direct action. "
This says it very clearly. Most of the peaceable actions that anarchists have been involved in during the last century and a half, whether building unions, cooperatives, free schools, intentional communities, credit unions, cultural organizations, community organizations and so much more were direct action in this original sense. Where anarchism has gone "off the rails" and engaged in terrorism as in the days of 'propaganda by the deed' or in modern terms of hero worshipping Maoist thugs or play-acting at "tinker-toy terrorism" it is NOT "direct action". It is, at the high of hubris, the idea that one can terrorize ruling groups into giving up their power. With things that are really pinpricks in the social scale of things. This sort of nonsense has never worked, and it has been tried thousands of times by various actors-most of them non-anarchist. When something doesn't work once you can't say anything. When it fails 5 times in a row there is definitely a trend. When it fails 20 times in a row (such as Communist regimes) there is some sort of "law" involved- to the 95% confidence level. When, like terrorism, it has failed thousands or tens of thousands of times it is no longer a statistical law. It takes on the character of a "law of nature".
At a lower level of self delusion it is the idea that "exemplary actions" will inspire "the masses" (substitute your own word for other people here if you like) to rise up of the shining example given by the audacious revolutionaries. This was actually quite a common idea of "anarchism in its infancy". It might have had some superficial attraction in the days of the Bakuninist International in France and Italy. It lingered on for a longer time in the practice of the Spanish anarchists, but even there it ran aground on the hard shore of reality. It never worked even in peasant societies where the ground had been prepared by decades of educational activity. Let's say that again- it NEVER worked.
This delusion that all it takes is a spark has pretty much been abandoned by the mature anarchist movement of today. It lives on in the theory of "insurrectionalists" in countries such as Greece and Italy and in their anglosphere hero worshipers. Though I must say that backing this particular football team for North Americans doesn't begin to approach the mindlessness and moral turpitude of always being on the lookout for nationalist and Leninist teams to back. The present theory and practice of "insurrectionism" lacks the peasant society that made this strategy even moderately convincing in the 19th century and the early years of the 20th in countries such as Spain.
Then, of course, you come to the bottom of the barrel. Those who glorify plotting riots in which they always,always,always,always,always lose in the end under the delusion that you can influence not "the people/masses,majority,etc" but some vague "movement" that needs to be "radicalized". Or, to probe BELOW the bottom of the barrel, that the results simply don't matter, that getting the crap kicked out of you is either an absolute moral imperative or somehow really "fun and liberating" and "creates new ways of living". At this point we have left the domain of politics and entered some of the more strange demiworlds of religious cultism.
But to come back to the title of this little complaint. Words can be slippery things at the best of times, and they often change their meanings over time. The word "communism" is instructive. It originally meant nothing more than a social situation where the means of production were owned socially, not individually. The mechanism of this ownership was usually seen as a local group of residents, "the Commune". It took on an utopian dimension with the ideological triumph of Marxism and its left of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" from the more creative so-called "utopian socialists". The fantasy of an Hegelian end-goal of history, fueled by the totalitarian power of pseudo-explanation afforded by this dream became very popular and essentially obliterated the earlier vision which retained more than a slight "hint" of "punishing defectors". The ordinary people who incubated the earlier vision knew that they couldn't trust "their own" to not cheat, let alone the declasse intellectuals who came to seize power in Marxist Parties. But this bastard child of the German academy was able to exert a religious appeal that simple popular wisdom could never have.
Later even this utopian vision was overwhelmed by yet another meaning. In the time of Leninist success "communism" came to mean nothing more than whatever the ruling classes of communist states said it was- this week. Being as this "communism" involved mass murder on a scale that dwarfed even the Nazis, "communism" acquired an odious connotation that 90% of the world's population finds detestable.
The attempt by some to revive the term under such headings as "anarchist communism" or "anarcho-communism" may be understandable, but it runs up against the logic of history. The term "communism" no longer means what anarcho-communists want it to mean in either its original or utopian formulations. I know what it means, and I consider it one (but NOT the only one) of ways in which an anarchist society could order its economy. To be less utopian I also consider it ONE of the ways that anarchists could work towards reform of advanced industrial societies. It is part of an intelligent strategy for an anarchism that realizes its limitations. NOT the "whole pig", but an essential part. Some enterprise should be run by democratic vote of local residents- with due checks and balances such that such power was not absolute. Some enterprises are much better managed in different ways.
Incisive thinkers such as Murray Bookchin recognized that this historical debris existed. hence his desire to rename the essential ideas of anarchist communism as "Communalism". Even the term "anarchism" itself has very often distressed more than a few convinced anarchists. The reason is the same. It is something that has acquired meanings not just different from the original but often in direct contradiction to same. I've often felt the urge to describe what I believe as "libertarian socialism", but this is rather restrictive in that it fails to take into account an emphasis on individual liberty (here in the civilized world outside of the USA where "libertarian" is either a synonym for anarchism or a "whazzat" word). Most anarchists have responded by adding adjectives to their anarchism. Any Time Now calls itself "for social anarchism" or "a journal of social anarchism" just like "social ecology" did before its more pronounced split with anarchism. Fred Woodworth calls his opinions "ethical anarchism". Groups such as NEFAC and other platformists call what they believe "communist anarchism".
To the initiated this means that there are those who call themselves "anarchist" who are not "communist", let alone "social" nor "ethical". Anarchism has NOT been a religious cult such as Marxism that demands uniformity of belief, and its stance of rebellion has attracted not just some of the best over the years but also some of the worst. Their is a need for clearly distinguishing oneself in this whirlpool of ideas.
The term "direct action" is very much like words such as "communism" or "anarchism" It can easily come to mean nothing more than posturing at militancy rather than what it meant to the historical anarchist movement at its best. In such a case-"bugger the word". If it comes to mean something very much the opposite of its original it would be time to find new terms to describe achieving a goal by ones own efforts; not by pleading with authority OR by childishly trying to bully authority. Especially !!! not anything more than bragging about one's "militancy".