NOTES ON SUMMITS AND
COUNTER-SUMMITS
The Illusion of a Center
Capitalism is a social relationship and not a citadel for the powerful. It is
starting from thins banality that one can confront the question of summits and
counter-summits. Representing capitalist and state domination as a kind of
general headquarters (it�s a question of the G8, the WTO or some other such
organization) is useful to those who would like to oppose that managing center
with another center: the political structures of the so-called movement, or
better, their spokespeople. In short, it is useful to who propose merely a
change in management personnel. Besides being reformist in essence and purpose,
this logic becomes collaborationist and authoritarian in method, as it leads to
centralization of the opposition. This is where the concern of these leftist
adversaries, so anxious to make themselves heard by the �masters of the world�,
in investing money and political hype on the summits in which those in power
more and more frequently set the dates with them comes from. In the course of
these summits decisions that were made elsewhere are merely formalized, but this
certainly does not disturb the various representatives of the social forums;
after all, their opposition is also completely formal, consisting mainly of
paid seminars in which it is shown that neoliberalism is wrong and humanity is
right, or, for the more lively, in some combative performance opportunely
agreed upon with the police. Besides, how could an opposition subsidized by
institutions, represented by municipal and parliamentary councilors and
protected by the grave-diggers of the workers� movement (we�re referring to the
monitoring patrols entrusted to the CGIL* in collaboration with the cops) be
real? The paradox is that people are called into the streets in the name of
another possible world, but with the intention that� absolutely nothing happens.
Every time that a more or less oceanic crowd moves peacefully, visibly
supervised, it is proclaimed to be a great victory for the movement. And yet
these social pacifiers know quite well that their capacity to pose as
negotiators with the institutions doesn�t particularly depend upon the number
of people that they lead into the streets (millions of demonstrators opposed to
the latest military aggression against Iraq have not greatly worried the
governments involved in the war), but rather upon the power of mediation and
repression they manage to put into practice � or to justify � against all
social rebellion. In fact, if summits and counter-summits are so frequently
talked about, if the representatives of the social forums have come together at
the negotiation table and been flattered by the mass media, it is only because
in Seattle first and later on other occasions, something happened: thousands of
comrades and poor youth attacked the structures of capital and the state, upset
police city planning schemes by opening up spaces for communication and clashed
with the uniformed servants. Without this subversive threat � together with the
many insurrectional explosions that have shaken up the last few years, a mark
of the times we have entered � the masters would have nothing to do with the
various Casarinis and Agnolettos**. Hasn�t something of this sort happened with
the unions? Listened to and bribed by capital in times of great social conflict
with the aim of dividing, demoralizing and denouncing revolting proletarians,
in more recent times, they have been put in storage. For the time being, they
are forced to again raise a loud voice against the very attacks of the bosses
that they themselves once justified and ratified.
The �disobbedienti� spokespeople must then distinguish themselves from the bad
ones, the extremists, the violent ones (i.e., those who practice direct action)
and give political visibility to the others. On the one hand, therefore, the
slogans of the social forums end up being perfectly suitable for the
enlightened bourgeoisie: taxation of finance capital, democratic and
transparent regulation over global trade, more state and less market, critical
consumption, ethical banks, pacifism, etc. On the other hand, what they sell
with their �democratic mobilizations� is a valuable commodity: the illusion of
doing something against the injustices of the world. In this sense,
counter-summits are a juicy spectacle. The bad few repressed and the good ones
heard in their just demands: end of story?
Power knows that it isn�t so simple. The disgustingly realistic proposals of
the domesticated opposition have nothing to say to the millions of poor people
parked in the reservations of the market paradise and repressed by the police.
There was a bit of confirmation in
A Gust of Unpredictability
There is no doubt that in
We know very well why many comrades go to counter-summits: wide-spread direct
action and the generalized clash with the cops is only possible in mass
situations. Since the perspective of attacking elsewhere is extremely
minoritarian, only in greatly expanded situations can a certain sort of street
guerrilla warfare be tested. Other actions can be realized at any moment that
are not in any way incompatible with certain practices in the streets during
counter-summits. And yet we think that in the long run such a practice limits
autonomy of analysis and action (in the face of how many social conflicts have
we just stood there looking?) transforming it in spite of itself into a sort of
extremist model within the �disobedient� caravan. Not to mention that it would
still be a matter of asking why on earth power publicizes so many summits in
which decisions that have already been made are ratified. All this seems to us
to be a great terrain for the police to study and experiment with anti-riot
techniques. A kind of homeopathic treatment: power is inoculated with tiny
doses of the virus of subversion in order to reinforce its immune system in
view of much broader social plagues. It must know how the bad ones move and
organize themselves, and with which good ones it is possible to dialogue in
such a way that nothing really changes.
An Experiment in the Open Air
But above all, summits constitute another form of experimentation: seeing what
level of oppression the population is willing to put up with. Bringing a bit of
Summits are the concentrated representation of all this, the legal suspension
of every right. �What�s going on?� the average citizen asks, forced to take a
detour in order to go shopping. �Nothing, it�s just the anti-globalization
people,� the woman at the supermarket responds. Meanwhile, they ar even
privatizing the drinking water, while the police are everywhere.
But precisely because it is a concentrated representation of a daily situation,
the practical critique must be widespread and constant, for example through the
destruction of video cameras and other systems of electronic surveillance. It
is important to map out the locations of the instruments of control, spreading
awareness of them and theoretically supporting the necessity of attacking them.
The New Ugly Face of Domination
Power is increasingly brazen. On the one hand, the masters know that the
current social conditions, increasingly marked by precariousness and dependence
on commodities, can be imposed only through terror: such terror is manifested
in the exterior in the form of war and in the interior in the form of fear for
the future (for example, fear of remaining without work) or through the
repression of increasingly widespread social groups. On the other hand, decades
of social pacification � in which every despicable act has occurred simply
because nothing has been done to prevent the preceding ones, an incredible
acceleration of degradation � have given power an arrogance without precedence.
We have seen it at work, for example, in
Acid Rain and Fig Leaves
The foreign ministers who will be meeting in Riva on September 4 through 6 must
achieve a common platform to present at the WTO summit in
On the one hand, they indicate the causes of these disasters to be the
industrialization of agriculture, the concentration of populations in
increasingly gigantic cities, the pollution produced by factories, the waste of
drinkable water for industrial machinery and for cultivation intended for the
intensive breeding of animals; in short, the very essence of the
techno-industrial system. On the other hand, they propose� new laws,
transparent rules, even citizen participation in the form of short term
treasury bonds in the S.P.A.s* that privatize water. Thanks to the marvels of
progress, there are whole countries in which a collapse of the banking system
would leave the countryside without water, and these citizen, so proud of being
so, want different laws. Somewhat as if, in the face of a downpour of acid
rain, one were to suggest covering the head with an organic fig leaf. The
proposals of the various social forums, reasonable in terms of political and
economic rationality, are simply crazy from a concrete ad social point of view.
It is not a question of denouncing a world in ruins, but rather of snatching
the space for resisting and the time for attacking. It is not just a question
of how radical one is in the streets. The point is what sort of life one
desires, how much one has submitted her or himself materially and spiritually
to an increasingly inhuman and artificial social order or, on the other hand,
what relationships one is ready to fight for.
There is no need to go to Riva to oppose the water racket. Those directly
responsible for this absolute commodification (for example the big businesses
that bottle mineral water) are just a few steps away from us at all times. If
the civilized can�t even defend the water they drink � or at least understand
that others do so in a clear and direct way � we can all just go to bed. In
this case as well, it is a long chain of dependence and oppression that now
presents us with an exorbitant bill. Only through autonomy toward industrial
mass society and through open revolt against the state that defends it could
something different be born.
The same is valid, for example for the question of patents, including those on
the genetic code. It is simply idiotic to claim protective laws are of any use
in confronting the entry of capital into the human body. Techno-scientific
delirium, which consists of wanting to transform nature and human beings into a
sort of variable of the computer, passed the point of no return some time ago.
Any illusion of reforming a science that is entirely in the service of power is
only a dismal hoax. The actions that have happened in most countries against
transgenic cultivation or against private and state laboratories that
experiment on the human genome have shown quite well that the critique of
mercantile reason has no need of spectacular dates.
More generally, what is euphemistically described as globalization would be
unthinkable without the material basis furnished by the technological
apparatus. We simply think about the things that are presented as principle
factors in development and economic and military conflict: energy and information.
This thing that can appear to be an unassailable Moloch is in reality a
gigantic web formed by cables, antennas, substations, trellises and
transformers that can be easily struck.
Riva Is Everywhere
The CGIL will be taking care of monitoring during the counter-summit in Riva.
The outgoing police chief of
After long negotiations between the social forum and the police force (managed
obviously by national leaders), it seems that the Municipality will make a
villa outside of Riva available to the Disobbediente and their associates,
granting them the right to demonstrate (always outside of town, in deserted
streets) through Sunday. Riva will be closed, which means that the cops will
simply block three access roads. The government commissioners� office has
passed an order prohibiting and suspending every exhibition or demonstration
(including sports and cultural exhibitions) in more than twenty municipalities
in the Trentino region. The police want empty streets, the population must
understand that Big Brother is not just a televised transmission. And us?
Let�s again take up a thread that comes from far away. G�nther Anders wrote in
the 1950�s, �
Some Roveretan anarchists