This question must be examined from the many angles so that we have a clear picture in our minds what it is we view as necessary direct action in order to be able to proceed in a principled revolutionary fashion. But to arrive at the answer of this question anarchists must first truly understand what is anarchism? We must continue to ask the question, what does it mean to be an anarchist? Why, you may ask? Because it is not a definition which can be made and put away safely and only retrieved in parts. Professing to be an anarchist doesn’t mean we have reached a point of certainty, or deliverance. It also doesn’t mean we have suddenly obtained all the truths and as such, are now privileged. Anyone who thinks like this is, in my view, a "lip-professed" anarchist, in words alone. The anarchist from the heart is someone who places themselves in question and as such, asks themselves: What is my life according to what I do and in relation to what I think? What connection do I hold on to daily, and what agreement or concessions made for my existence have I compromised, etc.?

Too many have taken anarchism and have attempted to lock it up in a bottle to preserve it. What many have failed to understand is that it is not a political theory per se. It is not a college curriculum but a way of life.

Our anarchism begins the moment we wake up and put our feet on the ground and from that point we must have a good reason for getting up, or it would not matter what we profess to be. We must know what we want to do because for anarchism for the true anarchists, there is no difference between what we do, what we think, but there is a continual reversing of theory into action and action into theory. That’s what makes the anarchists unlike anyone who has another concept of life and crystallizes this concept into political practice or theory.

As a conscious practicing anarchist we never separate thought from action, the things we do, the things which we carry out our actions are perpetual. The comrade who carries out these actions, succeeds in making them become an expressive moment of their lives, a specific characterization, meaningful, joyful, desiring the essence of beauty, not to practical realization, not the sullen or morbid realization of a deed that had a mortal end. No! It continues and gives the breath of continuation which sustains our passion and gives us the thought that says "i have done something today." This moment! This present!

Therefore, direct action is predicated on the spontaneous NOW! The action needed NOW, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is not a reality for the anarchist but an abstract. Only the moment … the present exists and it is from this existence we act and act directly and precisely to the point in question.

The Italian anarchist, Alfredo M.Bonnano, stated in the book "The Anarchist Tension"; "…[I]f it is true that for anarchists there is no difference between theory and action, as soon as the idea of social justice lights up in us, illuminates our brain, even for a split second, it will never be able to extinguish itself again. Because no matter what we think we will feel guilty, will feel we are accomplices, accomplices to a process of discrimination, repression, genocide, death, a process we will never be able to feel detached from again. How could we define ourselves revolutionaries or anarchists otherwise? What freedom would we be supporting if we were to give our complicity to the assassins in power?"

This is a very strong argument and one that we must think critically over. Have we reached the point of our own responsibility? And if so, to whom have we been responsible to? Direct action is not an issue predicated on winning news reports or tv coverage. It is not about gaining masses of people for the sake of gaining masses of people. It is about the total eradication of all that is a hindrance to the substance of life and by substance I mean, the ability to live freely without someone else’s control or infliction on my being. For the most part, many who claim anarchy are not fully grounded on what anarchism is and think it is a part-time reality, when it is a practice that must be lived daily and perpetually, thus direct action must be carried out daily and without cease until there is total destruction of what was and allow the new to create from the ashes. This is life. This is the real purpose of being anarchist! The substance of nothingness "becoming" and "evolving" into being from collective creativity. And collective creativity cannot be a reality with restrictions or when one group of people are denied while another is privileged.

Today, kapitalism requires a different kind of person to those it required in the past. It used to depend on people with professional abilities. Now it thrives on non-people, with machines controlled by the few who own all the wealth of the world. There is no more pride in having acquired knowledge for employment, which was an extension of kapital’s ownership and class in the first place to create a division between workers. Today, kapitalism is its own force and the people are subject to this force. The machine has become the real entity and the people have become slaves or subservient to the machine, thus making the need for its total destruction more viable and needed today than at any time prior.

Huge production units based on assembly lines, for example, use robots or are built on the conceptual basis of islands, small groups together who know each other and control each other and work in accord. The "new worker" isn’t the people but the replacement of the people. Thus, all profits rest in the hands of the limited few.

As anarchists we have an obligation to destroy and create from our destruction a "new" groundwork. A new workplace, a new home, a new living standard. This can only be done by understanding the profoundness of sustained direct action against those that refuse to allow the people to live in a mutual and cooperative way. Those who refuse to allow the free association of people who have placed artificial barriers to keep us away from one another and thus alienated where we create our won unjustifiable fears about the next person, which has caused races not to know or trust one another. Which has caused the Kapital market… a new market in that it resurrects subdivision communities while systematically destroying other communities to support alienation and make profit.

Yes, direct action is essential and the only way we can obtain liberation is by applying direct action on a daily sustained basis.

Ali Khalid Abdullah

June 2000