Alfredo Bonanno
From "Insurrection", Issue Six, September 1989, London, UK
If anarchists have one constant characteristic it is that of not letting themselves be discouraged by the adversities of class struggle or to be enticed by the promises of power.
It will always be difficult, often impossible, to find an anarchist comrade who has given into power. This might happen as a result of torture or physical pain, never by long spells of repression or loss of heart. There is something in anarchists that prevents them from becoming discouraged, something that makes them optimistic even in the worst moments of their history. It makes them look forward to possible future outlets in the struggle, not backwards to past mistakes.
An anarchist's revolutionary work is never exclusively aimed at mass mobilization, otherwise the use of certain methods would become subject to the conditions present within the latter in a given time. The active anarchist minority is not a mere slave to numbers but acts on reality using its own ideas and actions. There is obviously a relationship between these ideas and growth in organization, but the one does not come about as a direct result of the other.
The relationship with the mass cannot be structured as something that must endure the passage of time, ie be based on growth to infinity and resistence against the attack of the exploiters. It must have a more reduced specific dimension, one that is decidedly that of attack and not a rearguard relationship.
The organizational structures we can offer are limited in time and space. They are simple associative forms to be reached in the short term. In other words, their aim is not that of organising and defending the whole of the exploited class in one vast organisation to take them through the struggle from beginning to end. They must have a more reduced dimension, identifying one aspect of the struggle and carrying it through to its conclusion of attack. They should not be weighed down by ideaology but contain basic elements that can be shared by all: self-management of the struggle, permanent conflictuality, attack on the class enemy.
At least two factors point to this road for the relationship anarchist minority and mass: the class sectorialsim produced by capital, and the spreading feeling of impotence that the individual gets from certain forms of collective struggle.
There exists a strong desire to struggle against exploitation, and there are still spaces where this struggle can be expressed concretely. Models of action are being worked out in practice, and there is still a lot to be done in this direction.
Small actions are always criticized for being insignificant and ridiculous against such an immense structure as that of capitalist power. But it would be a mistake to attempt to remedy this by opposing them with a relationship based on quantity rather than extending these small actions, which are easy for others to repeat. The clash is significant precisely because of the enemy's great complexity which it modifies constantly in order to maintain consensus. This consensus depends on a fine network of social relations functioning at all levels. The smallest disturbance damages it far beyond the limits of the action itself. It damages its image, its programme, the mechanisms that produce social peace and the unstable equilibrium of politics.
Every tiny action that comes from even a very small number of comrades is in fact a great act of subversion. It goes far beyond the often microscopic dimensions of what took place, becoming not so much a symbol as a point of reference.
This is the sense in which we have often spoken of insurrection. We can start building our struggle in such a way that conditions of revolt can emerge and latent conflict can develop and be brought to the fore. In this way a contact is established between the anarchist minority and the specific situation where the struggle can be developed.
We know that many comrades do not share these ideas. Some accuse us of being analytically out of date, others of not seeing that circumscribed struggle only serves the aims of power, arguing that, especially now in the electronic era, it is no longer possible to talk of revolt.
But we are stubborn. We believe it is still possible to rebel today, even in the computer era.
It is still possible to penetrate the monster with a pinprick. But we must move away from the stereotypical images of the great mass struggles, and the concept of the infinite growth of a movement that is to dominate and control everything. We must develop a more precise and detailed way of thinking. We must consider reality for what it is, not what we imagine it to be. When faced with a situation we must have a clear idea of the reality that surrounds us, the class clash that such a reality reflects, and provide ourselves with the neccesary means in order to act on it.
As anarchists we have models of intervention and ideas that are of great importance and revolutionary significance, but they do not speak for themselves. They are not immediately comprehensible, so we must put them into action, it is not enough to simply explain them.
The very effort of providing ourselves with the means required for the struggle should help to clarify our ideas, both for ourselves and for those who come in to contact with us. A reduced idea of these means, one that limits itself to simply counter-information, dissent and declarations of principle, is clearly inadequate. We must go beyond that and work in three directions: contact with the mass (with clarity and circumscribed to the precise requirements of the struggle); action within the revolutionary movement (in the subjective sense already mentioned); construction of the specific organisation (functional to both work within the mass and to action within the revolutionary movement.)
And we need to work very hard in this direction.
Editorial from the Journal "Insurrection"
Jean Weir
From "Insurrection", Issue Six, September 1989, London, UK
Anarchists and revolutionaries are such not because they say they are or write articles and programmes ending them with slogans or symbols of anarchism. They are such because they want to do something against oppression, ie, they want to denounce and attack the repressive systems and all those who hold them together.
To fully understand this simple statement, we must take a step further. Before attacking it is necessary to know whom and what to attack and to understand why to attack.
Otherwise one ends up acting like a mad bull charging about wildly, and which gets slain sooner or later.
What can we do in order to know whom and what to attack? Simply inform ourselves. Capital and the State are transforming themselves rapidly. With developments in electronics, a vast restructuring is taking place in production and control. The huge industrial complexes are now spreading over the whole social territory, linked together by electronic and telematic cables. The whole planet will soon be covered in a thick network of communications that are at the basis of the present system of production, consequently also present day exploitation. So we know what and whom to attack.
What can we do to understand why to attack? This is quite simple. The industry of the past could have been conquered by the revolution and put to peaceful productive use. Today's industry is mainly electronically operated by people who have no real operative knowledge. It will never be usable for social good except except in minimal part. The huge electronic communications systems on which present-day production-repression is based will certainly never be usable, that is why it is necessary right away to begin to attack at the present time.
Between moving and staying still, we prefer to move. The restructuring that has reinforced capital's capacity to produce has also opened new cracks. The enourmous communications network that runs through the territory of every advanced industrial nation is certainly one of those cracks.
We must strike inside this. With small actions, not big military operations that are beyond our material possibility and outside the logic of the new capital. It is precisely small destructive actions, sabotage spread over the whole territory, that is the most fitting arm with which to fight the class enemy today.