Work in Progress

The rationalisation of exploitation at global level and the illumination among all those with a glimmer of dignity and passion that reformism is not the way to fight it, is leading to explosions of rebellion in many parts of the world. Anarchists are close to these moments, at least in spirit, but do we have anything to give this reality beyond causing immediate damage or attacking police lines? Must we continue to leave everything to chance, believing that organisational clarity will spring forth out of the blue? If we do, the great potential for new qualitative relations risks becoming reabsorbed into extremely pragmatic and convincing reformist programmes which apparently appear from nowhere. Some are not sleeping. The organisers of tomorrow’s misery lie constantly in wait for such opportunities to ride the tiger in order to harness and redomesticate it, possibly under slogans of freedom and self-management.

Words. Mere Words. The pages that follow are in part transcriptions of the spoken word—‘the wonder worker that is no more’, as Emma Goldman wrote wistfully over one hundred years ago when referring to the inadequacy of the spoken word to awaken thought and shake people out of their lethargy. Here in the twenty-first century anarchists no longer talk about spoken propaganda to awaken the masses, bemoaning the absence of orators such as Johann Most or Luigi Galleani. In rare encounters organized by comrades today ‘the masses’ are noticeably absent, they don’t even enter the equation.

Our boundless horizons disdain the world of time, uninterrupted flux of measurable aspects from boredom to slaughter that mark the daily doing of civilisation and its History, a man-made assemblage of fables and litanies. We have therefore retrieved the following words, not to be swallowed literally, but which through their force of penetration and above all opening towards the unknown paths of a conscious struggle to nowhere, might be welcomed into a process of thinking, discussion, experimentation in the field of attack, the only admissible place for verification of intentions. Far from the parcelised rythms of specialisation, submission, fear of the future or the comfort of the new perspectives mapped out by all-pervasive technologies towards a green-tinged concerted ‘we’re all in this together’ attempt to save the planet (for the bosses).

Capitalism is a social relationship and not a citadel of power. It is starting from this banality that one can deal with the question of summits and counter-summits. To represent the domination of capital and the State as a kind of general headquarters (such as the G8, the WTO or some other organization) is useful to those who would like to substitute that centre of power with another centre: the political structures of the so-called movement, or better, their spokespeople. In short, it is useful to those who propose merely a change in management personnel. Not only is this tendency reformist in its essence and purpose, it is also collaborationist and authoritarian in its method, as it leads to the centralization of opposition. That’s why these leftist opponents, who want so much to be heard by the “masters of the world”, invest money and political hype on the summits, the dates of which they are often set with them.

The problem of the vanguard has been gone into by all conscious revolutionaries past and present. They fear its dangers and try to see what causes it and how to eliminate it or attenuate its effects. The problem is far more serious for anarchists. They do not accept the political expedients that other revolutionaries end up justifying in their haste to take power.