The concept of solidarity is not only used and abused
by the various reformist syndicalist and humanitarian
movements and even power itself, it is also sadly
emptied of any content by many anarchists. The
levelling is such as to reveal a symbolic attitude
worthy of the Church but which allows us to put our
conscience at rest.
Counter-information and propaganda in the lead,
demonstrations (true processions), then nothing,
provoke a feeling of powerlessness, a pernicious
frustration that sees justification open the way to
resignation.
We discover that everything crumbles there where
the mentality of the group and quantity thought it was
strong. Nothing changes as we enter a vicious circle
with mournful calls to a miserable bartering with the
State one wanted to fight.
When individuals find themselves alone at night,
no longer supported by "collective strength", the arms
of Morpheus transform the imprisoned comrades one
wanted to support, to whom one wanted to express one�s
solidarity, into a real nightmare with no escape.
So! Should we no longer show solidarity to
imprisoned comrades given that it serves no end?
Never! A movement that is not capable of looking
after its comrades in prison is destined to die, and
that at a high price under atrocious torture.
The reflection must be made in other terms. What
does it mean to express revolutionary solidarity?
Basically the reply is not all that difficult.
Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its
roots in one�s own project that is carried an
coherently and proudly too, especially in times when
it might be dangerous even to express one�s ideas
publicly. A project that expresses solidarity with joy
in the game of life that above all makes us free
ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation, mental
poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to
experimentation and the continual activity of one�s
mind in a project aimed at realising itself in
insurrection.
A project which is not specifically linked to the
repression that has struck our comrades but which
continues to evolve and make social tension grow, to
the point of making it explode so strongly that the
prison walls fall down by themselves.
A project which is a point of reference and
stimulus for the imprisoned comrades, who in turn are
point of reference for it. Revolutionary solidarity is
the secret that destroys all walls, expressing love
and rage at the same time as one�s own insurrection in
the struggle against Capital and the State.
Daniela Carmignani
Prison, a physical territory distinct and separate
from the rest of social life and what it represents
and determines, seems to occupy a reserved space in
our thoughts and minds.
The law is a concentrate of the way society has
chosen to regulate its conflicts (by force and through
image), whereas prison sums up what directly crushes
and oppresses us. For us it is a question of
understanding how and where one can act to put an end
to all the filth of survival, including facing the
problem of the destruction of prison and the law. And
in order to put an end to the law it is also essential
to stop thinking and talking in its language, that
normally used to denounce the "abuses" of power. By so
doing we certainly don�t want to contest the
prisoner�s possibility to demand to be treated
properly when tormented by the screw. But by shutting
oneself up in particular wrongs (the screw�s abuses)
without considering the monstruosity of the very
existence of prison, the prisoner finds himself drawn
into a perverse accountancy: what does it mean to ask
for the right to be treated properly? Would any
individual whatsoever not prefer not to be treated at
all?
The other side of the law
Law as the right of an individual to obtain or do such
and such a thing, or as a whole including texts and
legal practices. The latter apparently include and
guarantee the former. So the democratic procedure
always consists of padding out law with the rights of
man, whereas any law we might benefit from is itself a
dispossession, a search for ourselves in something
other than ourselves.
But what do laws define? Freedom conceived of only in
negative terms: "my freedom ends where another�s
begins". A vision of the individual as a territory
limited by others, a vision of small proprietors,
precursors of the famous "my body belongs to me". It
is not by chance that the temporal dimension, a
fundamental human value, is lacking in these concepts.
Every right is by nature both a principle and a
practical means of exclusion and privation. Whoever
says right says exchange, because the law is these to
organise a measured repartition of rights and duties
and, in the case of damage, it prescribes the amount
of compensation. A right always belongs to a miserable
proprietor, because he needs a property title for
something he is afraid of losing or that could be
taken from him. Law is always aimed at governing a
community which is incapable of living as such, in
order for it not explode completely.
Law is also an ideology: a mental and rational
construction that serves to justify the real social
function of justice.
Today law is a precise quantifiying coded
instrument which determines and points out what each
individual, including each civil servant, must do. The
police are held to respect very severe regulations and
at the Same time they are continually having to break
them in order to function. Legal control of their work
is a fake: everyone knows the pig uses particular
techniques in order to function and to exert pressure,
which judges nearly always close a eye to. No matter
whether it is applied to the investigator or the
common citizen, the law does not prevent excesses, it
merely keeps them within reasonable limits so as not
to put the social order and institutions at risk. In
the same way a prison sentence serves to circumscribe
the revenge of the injured party by keeping it within
the Limits that have been established and applied by a
third party "above the party", as all societies
dispose of norms to allow those in power to regulate
their arguments, legitimize their power and obtain the
consensus of the exploited.
The Bible does not define, it lists, justifying
such an operation with the unknowable and inscrutable
divine will concerning what one should and shouldn�t
do. The modern era also supplies a definition of man
on which to organise its social rules. The same goes
for the law, with the pretext of establishing what is
right and what is wrong. Hence the classification into
good and bad. Innocence and guilt are attributes of
the legal mechanism as they contain a judgement (which
the person concerned is heartily invited to
interiorise). Now, to understand and live the crudest
acts (rape, murder, torture) does not mean to judge
them. Whoever sits in judgement is action in the name
of something that goes beyond the social relations
which determined these same acts.
Precisely in the Same way as morals do in
interpersonal relations, the law applies a
pre-established norm to a conflict or violence to
solemnize the trauma, defining it in order to exorcise
it. In this logic it is necessary for there to be a
guilty party, not just someone responsible as guilt
penetrates the guilty, becoming their whole being.
This is complete when the law claims to judge not only
action but the whole person in the light of their
action, reinforced with an analysis of the
motivations, psychiatric reports and personality
tests.
The law and Democracy
The sphere of State control is extending as rights
increase, as it is necessary to have them respected
and to sanction transgressions. The tendency of
democratic society is to penalise everything. It has a
clause and a punishment for every form of violence
from the slap of the parent to rape. The extension of
rights is synonymous with generalised criminalisation.
It is claimed that violence has been banished from all
social relations. But that reinforces the monopoly of
violence that has been "legitimised" by the State,
which is infinitely worse than any other kind. The law
does not eliminate violence, it normalises it. Like
democracy, it constitutes a filter to intolerance and
violence alike.
Like democracy, the law functions on the basis of
reason without having recourse to force. But for this
reason brute force is also necessary in order for it
to express itself, for any discussion to take place on
its own terms. In the Same way democracy bases itself
on the refusal of the violence it has generated and
which it needs in order to perpetuate itself.
And so this filter also affects radical action,
when it enters a court for example, rendering it
incapable of proposing anything other that what is
acceptable to the law. However, that is not a reason
for not acting, or for regretting having acted, but
rather for doing it knowingly: no revolutionary
intervention can exist within the ambit of the law.
The legal apparatus separates the accused from the
discussions that concern him by delegating his power,
as is continually done in democracy, to a few of its
representatives: in this case to lawyers.
The worst thing is that, because the trial is
public, one is convinced one is controlling the law,
whereas it is really the law that is controlling the
public. The Image that comes from the court carries an
essential, hypnotically repeated message: violence is
the monopoly of the State. And when conflicts between
parties lead to confusion and uncertainty it is the
State that sorts things out: "I also have a monopoly
of truth". The trilogy "police-justice-media" must
therefore be analysed as a whole. Even if the game
between the three partners overturns it is still able
to absorb any scandal. There is a scandal when it
transpires that someone has broken the rules: but such
an accusation presupposes one�s remaining inside the
game. The real rupture would be to break out of it.
No denunciation, no blinding glare of truth
contains on its own the strength to threaten the
existence of social institutions and relations.
The social prison
So, why take up the question of repression and the
law? Certainly not just because of the existence of
the primary, essential, exemplary horror of the courts
and prisons. We have no need to seek a peak of horror
in order to put the whole of society in question, as
that would fail to supply us with elements for getting
to the roots of exploitation and alienation. Moreover,
a scale of atrocities would be inconceivable. The
prisoner in jail, the soldier being trained for
fighting in the mud of a trench, the worker who has an
accident at work, the peasant who toils sixteen hours
a day, each one has a number of good reasons for
finding the ultimate horror in their own condition.
In effect a solid, efficient society knows how to
cover up a relationship of oppression with the honey
of partial satisfactions. Is the humanisation of work
not one of Capital�s constant programmes? And then, in
a "free" and democratic society it is not necessary to
simply produce wealth, it is necessary above all to
"find a job". In prison too they now understand that
no one should stay idle any longer: the prisoner will
be conceded a job in order to "earn his time", and
will be allowed to move himself, "fall up his time".
The concept of the inflicted sentence alone is now
historically and culturally out of date. So these same
subjects who failed to fulfill and "ennoble" their
existence when they were outside the walls, now find
themselves with an occupation that offers considerable
advantages to themselves and the State.
The penal institution is necessary to the class
society, no matter how many or how few prisoners it
holds. The idea of an eventual suppression of it is a
pure illusion, just as the idea of an economy managed
from the Base is, the existence of firms where the
wage earners could "self-manage" their own
exploitation (a horror worthy of the most sanguinary
dictatorships). Prison has an indispensable symbolic
function. The reclusion of the few not only recalls
the existence of the norm that has been violated, but
also functions as a point of reference, a rough border
of the limits not to be ventured beyond.
Today�s society is one of maximum impotence and
generalised assistance. The whole of existence now
requires intermediaries, so there is a proliferation
of public services whose function is assured thanks to
a network of induced needs. The State fills the void
of existence with the instruments that it uses to
control at the same time as it maintains structures
like prison as places of social dumping. Of course,
this function could be assured in other ways. A
society that was capable of reforming itself would do
so with lower costs (social and accounting), but it
would still maintain that function in some way.
Superficial critiques that are incapable of
conceiving of an end to the law consider that it can
and must be maintained, at best without intervening,
imagining a future society without violence and
attributing the violence of today to the misdeeds of
the class society. This has been the dream of many
enlightened partisans of all the schools of thought
desirous of a "perfect" world.
A separate mechanism for the resolution of
conflict by projecting an image and excluding the
individual, the law will never be abolished even
though its functions may be entrusted to another
entity that is not above people and is far more
maleable, revocable, submitted to elections, or
controlled by popular assembly. A spontaneous form of
justice with flexible laws or even without any text at
all would not for that cease to be machinery dividing
good from evil independently of and against social
relations. It makes no difference to us whether judges
be bureaucrats or not, the penal Code rigid or
adaptable. It is the very notion of law that we want
to destroy Even if the law changes daily with the
"evolution of customs" it does not change its
function.
No matter what the opinion folk say, the social
order wins every time one votes, in the Same way that
no matter what the jury vote, the very existence of
the law is what constitutes the victory: it does not
need anything else.
Just good boys and girls?
The modern legal apparatus is extremely rational and
scientific as it ostentates its superior
"impartiality" through the application of procedures
which weigh up the possibilities conceded to the
accused and their defence almost to the milligram. It
can even allow itself to be scrupulous to the
individuals who are obliged to submit to it: it
controls them, despoils them completely, having
acquired full powers over their existence. Its very
existence is a victory as it constrains everyone,
including those like us who contest it, to play
according to its rules.
Only the incorrigible political lefty zealot can
consider a sentence or an acquittal to be a victory or
defeat of justice. And it is no wonder that it is
precisely those who refuse to criticise the law as
such who do not understand or accept the nature of
Democracy, Fascism, Antifascism, and so on. Just as
they participate in elections or claim immigrants�
right to vote. They call for working class juries
instead of "bourgeois" judges. Their perspective is
not at all that of destroying justice as such, but of
democratising it like everything else. However, one
sees there, tragically or comically, the reproduction
of the characteristics of justice and its prison
corollary. This often takes place among the exploited
themselves, which gives an idea of the extent of the
problem.
At times some might feel obliged to pass over to
the enemy camp and argue in legal terms, but that
never constitutes a victory And anyway it is always a
task that is best left to the lawyer. For example, a
public action capable of raising doubts, waving the
scarecrow of a clamorous "legal" error and some good
work by the lawyers during the debate can even Force
the judiciary to renounce coming down heavily an the
accused, but that does not alter the fact that in any
case the law has acted according to its own rules by
obliging us to respect them. Moreover, an institution
that is capable of admitting its mistakes is an
institution that strengthens itself.
In the same way a Court that acquits, like one
that convicts, is still a Court. It would be hard to
imagine anywhere that the disinherited have less power
than in a court. An exceptional case could arise from
pressure exercised on the judiciary by a social
movement, for example when a crowd gathers demanding
an acquittal precisely in the same way as a police
station can be besieged by hundreds of demonstrators
demanding that those arrested be freed, but this
pressure is external. It is always elsewhere that the
strength of the exploited can constitute itself.
All the same, eradicating the conviction that the
only way to obtain benevolent treatment by the legal
apparatus is to busy oneself from the inside to show
up the social inoffensiveness of those caught up in it
is often an arduous task
Yes, and in theory we are all convinced that the
best way to solidarise with an act of revolt is to
commit another. Many are capable of applauding and
praising a successful action, and there is no lack of
comrades ready to put this maxim into practice by
reproposing it, thereby contributing to its
generalisation. Any act of subversion goes far beyond
its actual outcome, in good as in evil. On the
contrary, regularly when things "go wrong" and the
authors of the act of rebellion are singled out or
arrested, it does not occur to anyone to act in turn.
Solidarity no longer concretises in our action but in
the reaction to the actions of others, in this case,
those of the judges.
So we prefer to wait, listen to lawyers� advice,
the arrested comrades� declarations, the completion of
investigations. We wait to see how things are going as
though what mattered before was our desires and our
attempts to realise them, and now it is simply a
question of getting our comrades "out".
Not intending to act instrumentally, getting
comrades out of prison is undoubtedly our primary aim.
All the same, it is necessary to evaluate the means
one intends to use and to be aware of their nature and
Limits.
Instead it turns out that it would seem more
becoming to put the usual critiques of the law aside.
Forget the bellicose declarations of war against
society, and limit oneself to being just, and
consequently to having an innocent person acquitted,
freeing a sick comrade, or considering what in other
circumstances we would accept as gestures of revolt,
as nothing but childish pranks. But is that really
what we want? To appeal to the humanitarian sentiments
of those we despise?
In the face of the law and the fear it arouses, it
seems that we are incapable of doing anything other
than recanting ourselves and what we say we desire.
Rebels and revolutionaries when we are free, once
we are in the hands of the enemy we are only capable
of showing the innocuousness of the actions we carried
out.
Power puts subversives, anarchists, in prison
because as such they are "socially dangerous". Is
painting them as inoffensive lambs all we can do to
get them out?
Are we cynical? Are we making an apology for
sacrifice? Nothing of all that. We are simply
tormented by a question that is beginning to worry us
- are we just good boys and girls?
Aldo Perego
Of course we are far from the times and conditions in which the tragedy of Sacco and Vanzetti took place. But have the problems concerning the way the movement of democratic opinion all over the world reacted changed all that much? Why? Perhaps due to lack of clarity and certain misunderstandings? These are the questions that led to the notes that follow
Why these notes?
I read "Acts on the study day an Sacco and
Vanzetti" held in Villafalletto an September 4 and 5
1987, and asked myself how much did the fact that
these two comrades were innocent count at the time and
still today concerning this affair? If the two
comrades had declared themselves responsible, or had
just as incontrovertibly been considered responsible
for the actions attributed to them would they still
have been defended by the international anarchist
movement? What would the reaction of the world
movement of opinion that took over the whole affair
have been in that case?
Of course, history isn�t built with "ifs",I know
that perfectly well. And it is not my intention to
make a contribution to the "history" of Sacco and
Vanzetti. I have a strong suspicion of all more or
less professional historians, have more than a little
suspicion of history itself, and obviously suspect all
politicians old and new and their good faith in taking
up historical "cases".
On the other hand, I have no doubt about the fact
that Sacco and Vanzetti were quite extraneous to the
specific acts they were accused of. But this certainty
is personal and quite foreign to facts that can be
ascertained or obscured in the event of a trial and
does not prevent me from asking myself, and 1 hope the
few comrades who read me, a few disturbing questions.
To die innocent means more rage
Of course, it must be terrible to die innocent, and that is because the moral value of justice is rooted in Beach one of us. Not the sacrosanct justice of proletarian rebellion that upturns everything and settles accounts in a collective thrust of destruction but the technical, judicial, traditional one. The old justice with the blindfold eyes we unmask to discover with horror are all rotten. But although we have read about and are aware of all this, we are still convinced that justice should work! Christ! How can you send two innocent men to death! The holy indignation of so many anarchist comrades goes hand in hand with the lay indignation of the communists, democrats and possibilists of every shade. The glorious crusade of the left reassembles unequivocably each time the names of Sacco and Vanzetti are mentioned. And what links them is precisely the general and objectively justifiable question of innocence. But the rage that is at the root of this, the rage for two comrades murdered by the State, cannot let us shut our eyes to other problems.
The inopportune presence
It seems to me that the flux of democratic
personalities, the artistic and literary ones even
more than the judicial or academic ones, greatly
contributed to spreading the Sacco and Vanzetti
"case". This led to vast propaganda at world level,
but also to lowering the level of the clash that was
undoubtedly taking place in America, and more
specifically in Court, at the time. Too much talk, too
many theatricals, too many democratic journalists, too
many politicians. And this, like a continuous,
perverse thread still is going on today with attempts
to recuperate by the contender to the White House,
Dukakis.
But how do you decide otherwise? Take the case of
piazza Fontana [1967 - a bomb in the Banca
D�agricoltura. Milan, kills 17 people. anarchists are
accused of this State massacre which was denounced by
the whole of the left] - could you have told the
Communist Party to get lost and drop their support? If
anarchists do everything to spread their propaganda in
order to involve people and have themselves heard by
the widest number possible, how can they refuse the
collaboration of the political and intellectual forces
even though they know perfectly well where they lead.
This is not an easy problem to answer. At the time of
Sacco and Vanzetti, could they have refused the
support of people like Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O�Neill,
Walter Lippman, John Dos Passos, not to mention the
various Roman Rollands, Thomas Manns, Albert Einsteins
etc., all over the world who supported the anarchists�
innocence? Yes, it would have been difficult.
But I don�t want to bring up the quite legitimate
point of view that the comrades should only have been
defended within the international anarchist movement,
with propaganda limited to the latter�s motivations
accepting only the outside forces who were willing to
keep the question within these limits. I just want to
say that the kind of collaboration imposed by the
lawyer Moore necessarily had to have the stamp of
approval of both the Defence Committee and the two
comrades in prison. It wasn�t foreseen how much the
innocence of the two comrades would be underlined and
how neglected their guilt on principle due to their
militancy, their belonging to a specific part of the
American and international anarchist movement, would
be cast into the Background. That was the price of
that collaboration. After all, one could play on the
doubt, and this still happens today, that it was a
question of two immigrants, two honest workers, and
underline the nationalist and class element which
certainly produced results at the time but did not put
any light on the anarchist and revolutionary
personalities of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Was the presence of the forces of the
international "left" useful to the aim of saving their
lives? One must conclude that they were not, given
that the two comrades were assassinated all the same.
The fact that it reduced any possibility of their
anarchist activity emerging is also negative.
What would have happened if that presence had been
refused? The two comrades would have been defended in
the same way as the others who ended up on the
scaffold, some innocent, some guilty, were by
Galleani�s paper. And here we come to the question:
but does this differentiation between "guilty" and
"innocent" make any sense?
Frankly, I don�t know. I reread the "Acts" we are
talking about here, and saw that both Sacco and
Vanzetti contributed to "Cronaca Sovversiva" So they
must have been aware of Galleani�s position on this
false problem. The fact that they were "innocent�
could not make them go back to a total acceptation of
the innocentist road, at least in the terms developed
in the trial. I agree with Pedretti therefore when he
writes "Bartolomeo Vanzetti was not an acritical
one-dimensional person, he denounced the mechanism
that led to heroising his defeat to the bitter end: he
was essentially a communist anarchist, profoundly
convinced and extremely proud of his political and
existential choices... in fact he never concealed his
hatred of the injustice he was a victim of and his
desire to be avenged". (p. 130) In a sense, once the
decision had been made it was necessary to go an to
the bitter end, right to the point of making the fact
(imposed by the "frightened progressives" who made up
the great mass of the supporters of Sacco and
Vanzetti) that they were anarchists appear between the
lines.
"Innocent" or "guilty"
The fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered
although obviously innocent proves one thing only:
that the concept of innocence and guilt is not an
objective fact but is a measure imposed by the class
struggle. The legal techniques and police procedures
which establish whether a person is guilty or innocent
are part of the culture of power.
For an anarchist revolutionary the procedures that
come to be pushed as logical "evidence" are worth
absolutely nothing. It is to one�s revolutionary
conscience that one must respond, not the evidence of
a situation orchestrated by an enemy who makes and
breaks the rules of the game at its pleasure. For a
"democrat" on the contrary there is a net difference
between being guilty and being innocent. Guilty is he
who has broken the law in a precise way, in the
context notified to him and for which legal
proceedings are commenced. On the contrary, the
innocent are those who did not do what for various
reasons they have been accused of The great mass of
those who still cringe in horror when they think of
the end Sacco and Vanzetti came to, do so because
these two comrades of ours were innocent, i.e. did not
carry out the robbery or kill the people they were
accused of and which they died for an the electric
chair. A small minority, and among them there must
have been anarchists, cringe in horror not only
because of the ignominous incredible atrocious method
in which the prosecution succeeded in maintaining
their responsibility concerning the specific events,
but because Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered by the
State. Would the horror we are talking about have
existed, apart from in this small minority which for
one reason or another did not take any notice of the
objective fact of their innocence, if the two
anarchists had had a more dignified trial (from the
point of view of establishing proof) and it had turned
out that they had committed the robbery? We are sure
things would have been quite different.
The great mass of those who are respectable by
profession would all have been in favour of a
sentence, and we understand this. On the other hand a
small minority including anarchists would, like
Galleani, have stated that there is no difference
between innocence and guilt.
Had Sacco and Vanzetti really been responsible for
these deeds there would only have been a modest show
of defence at the level of opinion by comrades, such
as that which existed some time before the tragedy of
Sacco and Vanzetti, for Ravachol for example. On the
other hand, comrades who put themselves in the optic
of expropriation cannot believe they have a movement
behind them, no matter what its objective conditions
are and the level of theoretical awareness within it.
Why can we not expect such a thing? For at least
two good reasons: First, because the decision to carry
out particular actions, including those aimed at
participating through a precise effort in increasing
the availablity of certain revolutionary instruments,
is always a personal decision and must be borne, in
good as in evil, by the individual comrades and their
matured awareness. Secondly, because a movement, even
a revolutionary one, needs to develop, has divergences
of opinion, certain legitimate reservations that
cannot all be cast aside in one go.
Put this way, correctly as far as I can see, there
is nothing strange about taking a distance in such
cases, thus clearly showing one�s extraneousness to
the question. Whyever should one let oneself become
involved a posteriori in something one does not agree
with? The only criticisable position is the moralist
one, which necessarily ends up in the realm of the
morals of power produced and imposed by the bosses.
This brief reflection should help us to see
various situations more clearly, in the first place
that of Sacco and Vanzetti. If being innocent is no
more than an external factor that might or might not
exist - and in the case of the two comrades murdered
in America, Sacco and Vanzetti, they were innocent -
comrades should be defended everywhere, even if they
are "guilty". Now, if this so, we cannot constitute
wide fronts when comrades are innocent, then limit
ourselves to a small part of the anarchist movement
when comrades are "guilty". The thing should be
approached in the same way, at least theoretically, if
we admit in the first place, as should be obvious,
that there cannot be "innocent" or "guilty" except in
the logic of power.
How can we get out of this dilemma? Quite simply.
By always starting from the fact that for us the
technical aspect is secondary, and if comrades are
accused, imprisoned and in some cases even killed this
happens, apart from the objective event that
constitutes the element of debate in court and which
is of marginal interest to us, because they are
anarchists. We cannot make technical points become the
central elements of the defence campaign.
Many comrades, even those in good faith, think
differently because they are prey to the banalities of
dominant ideas. The claim to objectivity is one of the
cornerstones of the philosophy of the conquerors.
It is important to understand this because it
always takes us by surprise, reappearing where we
least expected it. That reality is something that can
be determined in a precise way is one of the many
myths at the basis of the new scientific thought, just
as when it emerged from the complex conditions of the
Renaissance, let�s say, in the ideas of Galilei:
rationalism reduced to description, no longer as
essence.
And contemporary law is a worthy heir of
enlightenment rationalism, not having changed the
certainties concerning the "way" in which things went
much. One still assists today in comical
"reconstructions" and other such things in court. We
have become so used to this way of thinking that we do
not even notice it.
When we say that Sacco and Vanzetti were not
innocent but an the contrary were guilty, but only of
being anarchists, we insert in the trial that claims
to be objective (therefore of a quantitative nature),
an element that is extraneous to the trial itself (or
at least, considered so by judicial science), an
element of a qualitative nature.
And yet this is not so. Reality is precisely this
complex thing that cannot be reduced to the result of
a legal procedure. The latter will always be arbitrary
and founded not an evidence but an strength, not an
logic but on power.
A difficult way of reasoning? Perhaps, yes, but if
you do it once you never forget it.
Alfredo M. Bonanno
What follows is no more than a few points that all
the anarchists present agreed upon at the end of the
two days. Each one of them, although strongly linked
to the others, deserves to be examined individually
because of the profound theoretical and methodological
problems it raises. The circulation of this text
should therefore serve to stimulate further moments
capable of bringing forth new ideas and, above all,
new instruments for practical intervention.
The present writer is convinced that the foul war
unleashed by the statist counter-position in
ex-Yugoslavia is, in its complexity, a great acid test
for anarchism in that it involves many of its
theoretical assumptions, historical experiences and
practical proposals (the problem of the national
liberation struggle to give but one example). Perhaps
the most important point of the discussion was the
consideration that it is impossible to make a
distinction between the state of war in ex-Yugoslavia
and, more generally, the context of armed peace it is
taking place in. The importance of this lies in the
fact that proposals for concrete intervention cannot
fail to conform to this kind of analysis of the
situation in the Balkan area. If one were to consider
the war as a thing in itself the actions proposed to
contrast it would tend to re-establish conditions of
normality, therefore favour-even indirectly-the forces
who want to restore Peace. Whereas if the bellicose
event is inserted into the reality of dominion where
(and only where) it belongs, it becomes possible to
identify a much wider field of practical intervention
and single out objectives linked to far wider
responsibilities. The question is far less banal that
it might seem. To say war is also that which States
and economic structures put into act daily all over
the world through oppression and exploitation does not
deny that there is a difference between the situation
in Italy for example and that in ex-Yugoslavia (in
fact, dominion-within which however divisions cannot
be traced-determines the cohabitation of the most
refined instruments of technological control with the
most cruel barbarity). Just as it does not mean one
considers (as it seems some do) that a formation of
opposing ethnic groups could materialise in Italy.
What we want to bring to light are the
responsibilities of external governments and
international political and military organisms.
What is happening in ex-Yugoslavia cannot
therefore (and here we come to the second point) be
carried out in a logic of aid. To limit proposals to
the creation of structures for receiving refugees and
deserters means to accept the logic of emergency which
is no more than one of the many mechanisms which the
war, when it is considered as a separate event,
produces. Someone has pointed out how aid is, over and
above the good intentions, a spectacular expression of
statism. Is it by chance that the associations which
carry it out are often directly related to the armed
forces and that they tend to absolve external
responsibilities (such as for example those of the
UN)? Is it possible then for aid to contradict its
very nature if it is organised by anarchists? Or would
it continue to favour, instead of damaging, the
structures that have every interest in fomenting the
war? The idea of creating an aid network by getting in
touch with local councils to rig up areas of welcome
for deserters put forward by some of those present is
even further removed from autonomy from and
conflictuality against power. It is obvious then, it
was pointed out, how the ideology of emergency leads
to allying oneself with the internal power structure
(even in the form of local administration) in order to
"resolve" an external situation that has in part been
created by the latter-or at least in collaboration
with it.
Instead of "aid" (third point) "complicity" was
spoken of, by that meaning the will to develop,
through collaboration with groups and individuals in
ex-Yugoslavia (and other countries) active against the
war, moments of action that are really anti
militarist. In this sense the practice of direct
action against the military structures (and not only
military ones) that exist in our own country was
proposed.
In order to create these relations of complicity
the circulation of ideas and information is essential
(for example through meetings such as that held in
Pordenone and other more informal ones) and the
spreading of this material (for which the publication
of a "bulletin" was suggested).
In such a context, the proposal (still to be verified)
to concretely support the actions of deserters through
a network between libertarian individuals and groups
active in Italy and other countries takes on a
different perspective. (fourth point)
A theoretical and methodological approach of this
kind could, I believe, supply useful instruments for
reflection and practice concerning a situation such as
that of the Balkan peninsula, which there has been a
time-lapse in understanding an the part of anarchists.
In fact (and here we are facing the last question
under discussion), the complex task of singling out
responsibilities has not led to a "peace" movement
such as the one that was created, for example, during
the Gulf war.
For anyone who has refused to take sides with any
one of the ethnocracies involved in the conflict (and
this is obviously not the case of the authoritarian
groups "against" the war) a widening of the objectives
against which to address their actions cannot fail to
be an important step forward.
Massimo Passamani
Pierleone Porcu
Elephant Editions
B.M. Elephant
LONDON WC IN 3XX
Translated by Jean Weir
Original titles:
La virt� del supplizio, "Anarchismo" n. 74,
September 1994; pp.7-12
Noterelle su Sacco e Vanzetti. In margine a un Comegno
di studi. "Anarchismo" n.63, July 1989, pp.36-40
Solidariet� rivoluzionaria, "Anarchismo" n.72, May
1993, pp.8-9
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