The following is part of the 2019 May Poetry Feature at C4SS.  

Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.
I wanna promise, I’ll come home. But if I don’t-
If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

Someone needed to do this. It had to be me, okay?
They’ll maybe try to make my corpse say what I won’t.
Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

If I do though, just know that I wouldn’t go another way.
Ask me to stop giving you nightmares, but I don’t.
If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

All I did was make bits of color in a world of gray-
I don’t apologize for that. I’m sorry, but I won’t.
Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

Sometimes by writing, sometimes fighting, I took any way
to know I was alive. I dreamt, as the dead don’t.
If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

I ain’t sorry. I wish I’d do it every day
Someone needed to do this. Who will, if I won’t?
Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.
If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

The following is part of the 2019 May Poetry Feature at C4SS.  

I love too hard comforted by touch, hearts warmed through passion, people, animals, places, things.

I feel too hard and I always take it personal, never accepted society’s expectations of hardness, never cold, distant, or afraid to take the leap.

Nothing is trivial, every person, thing, idea a burning revolution, these my sacred things. I crown my head with fanciful ideas of utopia, fairy tale ending, and vulnerability. I yearn to let out every feeling to act on love and being completely transparent, to let go and fall, to break free of others biases to shed innuendo and do away with flirting a tedious manipulative thing.

I do my best to be, to yearn openly and without humility, to trust and just be, anarchy truth, love and choice, radically soft is how I chose to live my life, my modus operandi.

Di Zachary Woodman. Originale pubblicato il 30 aprile 2019 con il titolo Avoiding the Excesses of Violence and Pacifism. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Gli anarchici sono facilmente irritabili, anzi l’irritazione è forse ciò che spinge ad essere anarchici. Gli anarchici sono contro la politica convenzionale, come tutte le frange, e questo crea risonanza. Le due cose non sono necessariamente un male. Un po’ di rabbia spinge a indagare e smascherare le bugie che vengono diffuse, mentre la contestazione fa la differenza tra un movimento estremo e uno convenzionale, serve a segnalare la propria posizione ad altri anarchici, a rafforzare la critica radicale della contingenza.

Capita però che, nella foga di contestare lo status quo, la rabbia prenda il sopravvento, che ci si lasci prendere da propositi che vanno contro ciò che sta al cuore dei fondamenti che rendono affascinante l’anarchismo. Ne è un esempio il recente “Pacifismo e Inerzia” di Black Cat. Secondo l’autore, a fronte di tanti anarchici non esplicitamente pacifisti, ce ne sono tanti altri, troppi, che sono affetti da un pacifismo patologico che blocca la persona e le impedisce di esprimere la propria opposizione in maniera violenta. L’autore racconta il caso di una protesta contro la violenza poliziesca in cui gran parte dei manifestanti si è bloccata davanti ad alcuni poliziotti che presidiavano l’ingresso del palazzo comunale. Secondo l’autore, questo esempio di riluttanza sarebbe un sintomo di quell’inerzia pacifista patologica che taglia le gambe ai movimenti anarchici. Troppi sono gli anarchici, dice, che hanno ancora il “poliziotto nella testa” che impone l’obbedienza all’autorità. Black Cat conclude poi con un argomento forte denunciando l’incapacità del pacifismo di capire che “tutta la politica è violenza”.

Ci sono tre punti problematici. Primo, l’articolo sembra implicitamente dar credito alla falsa affermazione secondo cui occorre reagire all’autorità con la forza. Secondo, l’analisi dell’esempio fornito confonde un problema proprio dell’attività collettiva di ogni movimento (violento o no) con l’impulso pacifistico in sé. Terzo e più preoccupante è il fatto che l’autore pensi che, rifiutando il pacifismo si debba per forza adottare il punto di vista Schmittiano, profondamente illiberale, secondo cui la politica deve necessariamente essere violenta.

Il primo problema è che Black Cat apparentemente salta da un punto, corretto, ovvio e condiviso da quasi tutti gli anarchici, ovvero che è lecito opporsi con la forza all’autorità politica, ad un altro, molto più forte e spesso erroneo, secondo cui ognuno deve reagire all’autorità politica con la forza. Forse sono io che capisco male, ma dall’uno non deriva l’altro. Il primo è il risultato di un anarchismo filosofico ma non pacifista. L’anarchismo filosofico è quello che non riconosce né la legittimità dell’autorità politica né l’obbligo del cittadino di seguire la legge. Accettare l’anarchismo filosofico significa pensare che esiste parità morale tra rappresentanti dello stato e tutti gli altri. I rappresentanti dello stato non possiedono una moralità speciale che dia diritto ad un trattamento diverso. Chi rifiuta il pacifismo pensa che ci siano momenti in cui la forza è giustificata in difesa di se stessi o altri. Ad esempio, quando si uccide una persona perché si è ragionevolmente convinti che sia sul punto di assassinare qualcuno. I due punti citati significano che è lecito opporre violenza ai rappresentanti dello stato per la difesa propria o altrui. Il fatto che siano rappresentanti dello stato non modifica il diritto all’autodifesa.

In questa tesi, però, niente sottintende l’esistenza del diritto di usare la violenza, sempre o anche solo saltuariamente. Ad esser sinceri, credo che si tratti di casi rari. Un esempio: vedo un poliziotto che sta per uccidere un ragazzino indifeso, e capisco che per evitare la tragedia non c’è che la morte del poliziotto. Credo che sarei costretto ad agire (più o meno) così per la stessa ragione per cui mi butterei in piscina per salvare un bambino che annega. Ma nel contesto di una protesta politica aggressiva, è strano affermare che tutti hanno l’obbligo d’intervenire con la forza. Nel caso del poliziotto che punta una pistola contro un ragazzino indifeso, 1) il pericolo è imminente e 2) l’esito finale dipende unicamente dalla mia (in-)azione. Se io non agisco, c’è la quasi certezza che una persona venga uccisa all’istante; questo è il risultato della mia inazione. Nel caso della protesta aggressiva, il pericolo è ugualmente reale ma non altrettanto imminente, e nessuna azione individuale può evitarlo.

Intendiamoci, credo fermamente che i manifestanti abbiano il diritto di sfondare le porte e opporsi alla polizia. Lo stato non è il proprietario legittimo del luogo in cui si protesta e non c’è alcun obbligo morale di obbedire alla polizia. L’azione violenta diventa un diritto quando si ritiene ragionevolmente che questo sia l’unico modo per limitare l’ingiustizia dello stato, come nel caso della violenza poliziesca contro le comunità di colore. Questo non significa, però, che tutti siano moralmente obbligati ad agire così. Ci sono ragioni prudenziali che spingono certe persone a scegliere di non protestare in questa forma. C’è il rischio di subire la reazione violenta dello stato, essere arrestati, o pestati dalla polizia che è solitamente molto meglio armata e può chiedere rinforzi e soffocare un’aggressione in tempi relativamente brevi. L’arresto può significare la perdita del lavoro, non poter dar da mangiare alla famiglia; anche se mascherarsi può servire a limitare il rischio. Nessuno è obbligato a correre questi rischi semplicemente per un’azione di protesta, per quanto veemente.

Quindi sarebbe meglio se chi protesta ne sostenesse i costi più spesso? Ne dubito, perché l’azione politica, violenta e nonviolenta, ha spesso costi imprevedibili nel lungo termine. Ma non è tra gli scopi di questo mio scritto determinare empiricamente quando e dove si può agire con la forza. E qualunque sia la mia opinione personale, l’obbligo di agire con la forza non esiste.

Qualcuno obietterebbe dicendo che abbiamo l’obbligo di reagire all’ingiustizia. Probabile, ma ciò non significa che siamo obbligati a partecipare ad una manifestazione violenta. Il ragionamento ricorda quello di chi crede nell’obbligo del voto (che semmai è inutile). Pur riconoscendo un generico obbligo di reagire all’ingiustizia, si può adempiere a tale obbligo in tanti modi non esplicitamente violenti. Esiste il mutuo soccorso, le mense per i poveri, si può praticare l’agorismo per rendere irrilevante lo stato, si può protestare pacificamente, o anche scrivere articoli che sensibilizzano la gente e denunciano l’ingiustizia diffusa. Le ragioni per non partecipare all’azione violenta sono spesso valide e dettate dalla prudenza: uno può ragionevolmente ritenere di non essere fisicamente adatto, pensare che la violenza impedisca altri modi di combattere l’ingiustizia (si rischia l’espulsione dal volontariato, ad esempio), o giudicare eccessivo il costo. Occorre diversificare l’azione; è ingenuo pensare che per combattere l’ingiustizia non ci sia che pestare un poliziotto.

Ma forse Black Cat non vuole dire che si è obbligati a contribuire alla protesta violenta. Forse sono io che lo immagino arrogante mentre invece vuole dire semplicemente che occorre rifiutare la violenza più spesso. Forse, ma allora mi pare esagerato dire cose come: “Questo pacifismo deve essere rifiutato non solo a parole, ma anche con gli atti. Abbiamo rinunciato al pacifismo, ora dobbiamo rinunciare ad essere pacifisti inerti.”

Il secondo problema è che l’analisi dell’esempio citato sembra fuori luogo. L’esitazione dei manifestanti sembra più un risultato dell’azione collettiva, cosa che riguarda tutti i movimenti politici, che si esprimano violentemente o no. Non necessariamente si tratta del “poliziotto nella testa” o di un qualche impulso pacifista. Ammetto però che non ero presente alla protesta in questione, e forse Black Cat avrebbe potuto aggiungere qualcosa per specificare meglio il suo ragionamento. Da quel che si legge sembra probabile che l’esitazione derivasse dal ritenere l’azione violenta troppo costosa in termini individuali. Forse avrebbero avuto una chance se tutti, o almeno la maggioranza, avessero reagito in blocco alla polizia, laddove singolarmente la sconfitta era assicurata. Black Cat stesso lo afferma esplicitamente. Infine, se anche tutti fossero stati convinti della liceità di agire violentemente, avrebbero potuto esserci pareri discordi sull’opportunità di usare la forza in quelle circostanze. Sembra altrettanto probabile che questa protesta fosse l’ennesimo caso di dilemma del prigioniero originato dagli incentivi della situazione, un fatto che ha indotto le persone a considerare in qualche modo sbagliata l’azione violenta.

A prescindere dall’accaduto, il problema di azioni collettive di questo genere non è l’eccesso di pacifismo. Pacifisti e non pacifisti possono concordare sul fatto che non esiste alcun dovere di obbedire alla legge, l’unico disaccordo riguarda l’uso della violenza contro la legge. E c’è da dire che anche i nonviolenti corrono rischi enormi quando rifiutano passivamente il rispetto della legge. Un pacifista che, seguendo la propria coscienza, non paga le tasse o non risponde alla chiamata alle armi, può finire in galera. Una movimento che durante una protesta pacifica o un sit-in disobbedisce all’ordine di sgombero rischia la violenza poliziesca e l’arresto. Basta pensare all’arresto di Thoreau, o alle famose immagini della protesta in piazza Tienanmen, agli innumerevoli pacifisti arrestati per aver evitato la naia, o alle tante proteste nonviolente del movimento americano per i diritti civili. Il pacifista è solo una persona che rifiuta l’azione violenta contro la legge, non uno che pensa di dover obbedire in virtù di un qualche “poliziotto nella testa”. Ci sono maniere diverse, alcune buone e altre cattive, per risolvere questi problemi legati all’azione collettiva, e i pacifisti, dato il loro maggior numero di possibilità, potrebbero essere i più adatti a risolvere il problema in certe circostanze. La questione, comunque, non dipende dal fatto di ritenere l’azione violenta lecita o meno.

Ultimo problema, il più critico, riguarda l’affermazione “Tutta la politica, compresa quella anarchica, è violenza organizzata.” Qui l’opposizione allo stato pregiudica una coerente adesione ai principi dell’anarchismo. Black sostiene che tutta la politica è violenza perché se si vuole impedire la disgregazione della società occorre o far capire a tutti che ci sono principi condivisi oppure incentivare materialmente le persone a obbedire ad una determinata struttura della società. Ad ogni incentivo, quindi, deve corrispondere la minaccia della violenza, che si tratti della violenza dello stato o di quella che spinge ad agire contro lo stato.

Ma non è così. Se c’è un’intuizione importante del liberalismo che vale la pena preservare è che anche quando non c’è accordo su tutti i principi riguardanti la giustizia, c’è sempre la possibilità di generare sufficiente consenso su un insieme ristretto di principi secondari, indipendenti, dedotti dalle tradizioni culturali e filosofiche, così da rendere possibile la cooperazione sociale senza ricorrere alla forza. Come dice Jason Lee Byas, in una società giusta, tra individui c’è una “naturale armonia di interessi reali”. Anche quando i propri principi mancano di un appoggio razionale, quell’educazione che spinge a vedere il valore della vita altrui anche in caso di disaccordo totale e persistente diventa lo strumento potente che incoraggia la cooperazione sociale senza fare ricorso alle minacce di violenza.

Black Cat potrebbe rispondere dicendo che argomenti razionali, consenso e educazione non bastano. Potrebbe ritenere la mia una deriva idealista. Potrebbe obiettare che la cooperazione sociale ha bisogno delle minacce. Può darsi che abbia ragione a dire che per mantenere la cooperazione sociale occorre ancora la violenza, anche se solo in forma di minaccia. Anche gli anarchici di mercato vogliono le agenzie di sicurezza per difendere la propria clientela, dopotutto, purché non diventi un monopolio. Io non credo, come i pacifisti, che si possa eliminare completamente la violenza. È però vero che ci sono molte altre possibilità oltre alla violenza quando la ragione non ha effetto. Ciò che rende questa società così attraente è proprio il fatto che sia poco violenta, che preferisca la gestione consensuale alla minaccia dell’uso della forza da parte dello stato. La violenza, anche quando necessaria, dovrebbe essere l’ultima cosa. Dobbiamo cercare di edificare istituzioni che ne limitino la necessità il più possibile.

E se è vero che “tutta la politica è violenza”, allora crepi la politica. L’obiettivo unico dell’anarchismo (nonché il pio desiderio del liberalismo) è l’abolizione della politica come violenza, o almeno l’attenuazione del suo dominio sulla nostra vita. Anche quando la violenza è necessaria, dobbiamo sforzarci di ridurla al minimo, dobbiamo portare la vita sociale, per quanto possibile, nella sfera della cooperazione, eliminando la minaccia dell’uso della forza come strumento di controllo. Abbracciando, esaltando la violenza a semplice giustificazione di certe forme resistenziali, gli anarchici sociali scivolano nello stalinismo e gli anarco-capitalisti nel fascismo. Non dobbiamo glorificare la violenza, che si tratti di far emergere una società meno violenta o del nostro benessere, perché la patologia di chi esalta la violenza è una patologia che alimenta l’autoritarismo. Questo non significa diventare pacifisti fingendo di rinunciare alla violenza, cosa che rende così frustranti gli eufemismi statalisti dei liberal in materia di violenza. Ma possiamo, dobbiamo, coltivare le virtù della pace evitando di scadere nel male dell’autoritarismo violento o del pacifismo ingenuo.

The following is part of the 2019 May Poetry Feature at C4SS.  

Sometimes things need fixing;
The cogs are all mucked up,
Founded on an outdated design,
Money thrown to keep ’em spinning.

Flaws get lost in rhetoric, and —
Distracted by chauvinist conflict —
We don’t realize that it just keeps breaking,
Gears ground to rust as bones to dust.

Sometimes things need fixing
And sometimes shit’s just fucked.
Sometimes you bring in someone for repairs,
And sometimes you scrap the parts for spares.

But old machines don’t break easy,
And apathy cuts both ways,
So stay angry, fam!
One cog can’t change much…

But many, many can.

I often have difficulty expressing an opinion on the gun rights movement, because my views are so ambivalent.

Principled arguments for gun rights based on resistance to unjust authority resonate strongly with me. I’m very aware of the historic association of limitations on gun ownership with issues of social control of the working class, going back to the Game Laws in Britain, to racial policing in the American South under slavery and Jim Crow to the present, and the role of armed worker self-defense in a host of confrontations with cops, soldiers, and Pinkertons. I acknowledge the role that armed self-defense has played in situations ranging from the workers’ militias that thwarted Franco’s July 19 coup in half of Spain, to Robert William’s defense of the NAACP in Monroe, NC, to the Pink Pistols today.

Unfortunately, such cases are almost totally obscured in mainstream U.S. culture. The groups that scream the loudest about government tyranny are, objectively, the most privileged, and have the least reason to complain.  They are, overwhelmingly, white dudes who think they’re being “oppressed” because they have to see women in hijabs, people of the same sex holding hands, people speaking Spanish, etc., in public places, and aren’t allowed to kill them. Hence the politics of “Take America Back.”

What’s more, these self-designated denouncers of government tyranny and upholders of the right of resistance are hypocritical beyond belief when it comes to real-world cases of government abuse of power. Groups like the NRA and Oath Keepers are the first to stand up for the police when they murder unarmed black people — not to mention when they murder black people like Philando Castile exercising their right to bear arms in open carry states. And of course, we all know that “stand your ground” applies only to white people.

On top of all that, US gun culture — as you might expect, given its overwhelming whiteness — is also associated with a lot of other toxic baggage. This culture is not informed by the history of legitimate armed resistance, but by American Exceptionalism, settler history, all the messianic weirdness coming out of the Second Great Awakening that makes America a travelling religious carnival freakshow, and the whole Scots-Irish “culture of honor” thing, as well as with the amazing level of violence in American society.

So fuck the so-called gun rights movement up, down, backwards, and sideways, every day of the week — and twice on Sunday.

Against this background, Setting Sights is an especially great achievement. Setting Sights, as editor scott crow writes, “covers people and communities who have resorted to armed self-defense as part of their struggles for liberation, justice, or basic human rights.” It’s an anthology of commentaries on the issue from representatives of the marginalized groups whose voices are usually drowned out by mainstream American gun culture:  People of Color resisting police abuses, women, workers, and the LGBT community.

As American Indian Movement activist Ward Churchill argues in his Foreword, the “founding fathers” who wrote the Second Amendment, and the white slavers and settlers who are so centered in the historic gun culture, were themselves the government tyranny against which armed self-defense was and is needed, right up to present-day Y’all Qaedists like Cliven Bundy:

It can be argued, and rightly so, that since the society on behalf these principles were set forth was composed all but exclusively of white settlers — this is to say, invaders — it was everywhere and always the aggressor, and consequently had no basis upon which claim [sic] a right to self-defense, armed or otherwise.

In every case, it was the other side — the Natives killed or driven off their land, the African-Americans hunted down by slave patrols or terrorized by white paramilitaries under Jim Crow — who had the right of self-defense, and the side celebrated in the mythology of American Westerns who deserved to be shot down like dogs.

Churchill also raises the question of how armed self-defense ties in with diversity of tactics in contemporary justice movements. These two themes — the historic legacy of armed resistance by marginalized groups, and their role in present-day resistance to structural oppression — are the themes of most of the writings collected in this book.

But armed resistance is only one half of the picture. The other half is building, here and now, the counter-institutions that will grow and coalesce into the successor society. Armed resistance exists only as a means to an end: protecting our right to engage in the act of building, and protecting our counter-institutions from the capitalist state’s attempts to destroy them. This process of construction is that end.

It of course remains possible to counter the worst conditions structurally imposed by the existing order through a process of consciously detaching from it. This devolves upon the (re)building of subjugated communities through the organization of grassroots initiatives to maximize their capacity to approach or attain self-sufficiency on the basis of local resources, human and otherwise. Food production — community gardening even in “hard core” urban areas, as is being done in Baltimore, for example — to improve nutrition and reduce living expenses in inner city “food deserts” has been successfully taken on as an organizing focus in a number of locales. So too has the refurbishing of unlivable dwellings and dilapidated or abandoned public use facilities, establishing community-based health care services and educational programs ranging from mentoring and tutoring to whole schools, building or acquiring alternative energy sources such as solar panels and wind generators, revitalizing local parks and establishing recreational centers, providing both childcare and eldercare, as well as neighborhood transport and security services.

Much of this effort has been undertaken and often expanded through the organization of co-ops both within and between communities pursuing similar agendas, facilitating trade in a variety of locally produced foodstuffs and other commodities as well as the pooling and sharing of technical skills, experience, and labor. The co-op model has also been used in (re)establishing small shop manufacturing and corresponding job opportunities within largely disemployed communities, thereby reducing the burden of necessarily participating in the broader cash economy.

It’s worth mentioning that editor scott crow was also the author of Black Flags and Windmills, which among other things devotes considerable space to a first-hand account of the terror tactics used by law enforcement and corporate mercenaries against the predominantly black population of post-Katrina New Orleans. So his interest in the subject of this anthology is not merely academic.

This is not a didactic book in the sense of lionizing armed community defense in particular. As crow writes at the outset, it may be a relatively minuscule part of the entire range of community tactics, compared to the prefigurative institutions Churchill mentions in the block quote above; the anthology simply aims at a thoughtful consideration of such self-defense efforts as part of the mix, and surveys some important examples of their use in the past.

In his kickoff essay, crow emphasizes among other things the anarchist principles that should guide armed community self-defense: that “the armed component should never become the center,” and it should never be aimed at taking state power.

The first part of the book consists of general essays aimed at defending the principle of armed self-defense, and recuperating libertarian arguments for gun rights from the right-wing white chuds who have misappropriated them.

The second part is a series of case studies ranging from the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars, to the Wobblies at Centralia, to the Black Panthers, to such contemporary movements as the Zapatistas, the self-defense militias of the Venezuelan Barrios, and the Kurdish fighters in Rojava. And, as we might expect, New Orleans in 2005.

I highly recommend this book. The general analysis is thoughtful. Although some of the topical chapters on the earlier part of the 20th century — particularly those on Russia and Spain —  cover fairly well-worn material, it’s always worth another look. And some of them deal with subjects — like Redneck Revolt — that don’t get nearly enough attention. Questions of diversity of tactics, the pros and cons of pacifism, and civilian resistance are major topics of debate these days, and Setting Sights is an excellent contribution to the literature.

Nativi, migranti e sinistra anglo-americana

Di Ruairi McCallan. Originale pubblicato l’otto aprile 2019 con il titolo Red & Brown Alliances: Nativism, Migration & the Anglo-American Left. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

In America come in Gran Bretagna, il discorso politico si è arenato tra due fenomeni connessi tra loro: Brexit e Trump. È ormai chiaro che alla base di entrambi ci sono perlopiù due fattori. Il primo è la rabbia per la disuguaglianza generata dal capitalismo, e il secondo è la paura degli immigrati, dei rifugiati e in genere degli “altri”. Quest’ultimo è un fattore che sia il movimento dei lavoratori che la sinistra in generale dei due paesi hanno cercato di combattere.

Qualcuno obietterebbe che sia il movimento dei lavoratori in generale che i socialdemocratici e gli altri partiti di sinistra si sono in gran parte arresi alle richieste della destra populista e le sue posizioni antimigratorie. Ma a ben vedere, questa retorica e questa politica non sono una novità per la sinistra. Se, da un lato, la sinistra giovanile tendenzialmente è a favore dell’immigrazione (vedi gli appelli alla libertà di movimento e la proposta di abolire l’ente che controlla l’immigrazione), dall’altro sia la “vecchia guardia” che i politici eletti sono sempre più scettici o hanno sempre avuto un atteggiamento ostile al riguardo.

Solidarietà e Amici (quelli Vicini, non quelli Lontani)

Il partito laburista britannico ha sempre avuto relazioni ambigue con l’immigrazione. Se leader come Tony Blair inizialmente erano favorevoli all’immigrazione dai paesi del cosiddetto “est europeo”, con i politici che lo hanno seguito, in particolare Gordon Brown e Ed Miliband, il tono si è fatto molto più ostile.

Proprio Miliband è stato fortemente criticato per un prodotto propagandistico che dichiarava le restrizioni migratorie in linea con i “giusti” valori laburisti. Critiche giustificate sono arrivate dall’ala sinistra del partito, che considera puro cinismo elettorale sia la propaganda che le parole di Miliband sui migranti, bollati come rubalavoro. È stata proprio l’ala sinistra del partito a spingere Jeremy Corbin al vertice del partito. Inizialmente, Corbyn ha fatto un po’ di rumore. Non ero d’accordo con la sua linea generalmente protezionista, economicamente nazionalista, ma le sue opinioni riguardo l’immigrazione mi sembravano molto meglio di quelle dei suoi predecessori.

L’illusione è durata fino al referendum sulla Brexit e il successivo voto sull’uscita dalla Ue il 23 giugno 2016. Con un atto non meno cinico di quello dei suoi predecessori, Corbyn definì “distruttiva per i lavoratori” la libertà di movimento della Ue, e disse che un governo laburista avrebbe posto un freno “all’importazione di lavoro a basso costo”. Di recente, il partito ha annunciato la ferma intenzione di mettere fine alla libertà di movimento di persone e lavoratori provenienti dai paesi dell’Unione Europea tramite la “gestione statale delle migrazioni”. Qui, oltre al fatto che lo stato non può “gestire” le migrazioni, bisogna dire che la mossa è un insulto non solo verso quegli attivisti laburisti che hanno fatto propaganda a favore della libertà di movimento, ma anche verso i lavoratori stranieri, gli studenti e le loro famiglie a cui il partito aveva dichiarato “la propria solidarietà”.

Sulla stessa linea la sinistra in generale e i sindacati. Paul Embery, rappresentante del sindacato dei pompieri, si è unito al partito nel chiedere la fine della libertà di movimento delle persone. E snocciola il solito stanco cliché: l’Unione Europea e la politica delle frontiere aperte colpisce e “tradisce” la classe lavoratrice abbassando i salari (nonostante le prove contrarie). Anche membri di partiti tradizionalmente di centrosinistra, come il partito socialdemocratico, hanno mostrato le loro simpatie sostenendo la necessità di gestire l’immigrazione ponendo un limite di 100.000 immigrati l’anno se non si vuole che “la classe lavoratrice tradizionale” sia cancellata.

Vita, Libertà e Felicità (per chi è Nato qua)

Le stesse cose, anche se più di rado e in maniera meno esasperata, si dicono oltreoceano. Tra i più decisi nel chiedere l’eliminazione di quella disprezzabile organizzazione nota come ICE e l’apertura delle frontiere in tutto il mondo ritroviamo molti socialisti, libertari di sinistra e anarchici.

Ma se molti a sinistra chiedono l’eliminazione della ICE (l’ente americano che gestisce l’immigrazione, es) e delle restrizioni migratorie, i loro “eroi” sembrano pensarla altrimenti. Come Bernie Sanders, ad esempio, generalmente considerato un simpaticone progressista che vuole la felicità per tutti, di tutte le classi e origini. Ma come nota l’amico e collega di C4SS Cory Massimino, quanto a frontiere aperte e immigrazione in generale Sanders smentisce se stesso affermando di volere che tutti siano trattati più equamente.

In effetti, Sanders ha un lungo passato antimigrazioni alle spalle. Durante la corsa alle presidenziali del 2016, dice la rivista Reason, cercò di presentarsi come il candidato buono e cortese, mentre la sua opposizione al programma sugli immigrati lavoratori diceva il contrario; già nel 2007 affermava di “non capire” perché gli Stati Uniti dovessero accettare “milioni di lavoratori immigrati” che a suo parere avrebbero abbassato i salari e rubato il lavoro. E quando Ezra Klein su Vox Media gli chiese se l’apertura delle frontiere fosse una buona cosa, Sanders rispose dicendo che l’apertura delle frontiere era “una proposta dei fratelli Koch”, che significava importare manodopera a basso costo e l’abbassamento dei salari per tutti.

Quello che dice Sanders, così come quello che dicono le sue controparti inglesi, è il solito cliché antimigrazione più volte smentito. La realtà è che l’apertura delle frontiere raddoppierebbe il pil mondiale e diversificherebbe l’economia di tutte le nazioni. L’apertura delle frontiere americane non significherebbe affatto la distruzione dell’idea di stato nazionale, ma la rafforzerebbe grazie alla crescita della competitività e renderebbe il paese nel suo insieme più ricco.

Conclusioni

Che a sinistra si spaccino teorie antimigrazioni non è una novità. Si potrebbe obiettare che dopo il patto Molotov von Ribbentrop il concetto di alleanza “rossobruna” sia legato alla sofferenza di tanti migranti, rifugiati e minoranze. La (preoccupante) novità è che questo appoggio, questa resa pressoché totale al relato antimigrazioni è guidata dal calcolo elettorale. La sinistra farebbe meglio a stare con i libertari, gli anarchici e i georgisti nella lotta contro queste idee; altrimenti le loro sono parole vuote, dette soltanto per arrivare al potere a spese di quei migranti e di quei rifugiati a cui dicono di voler bene.

The following poem was inspired by the children of Palestine. It is part of the 2019 May Poetry Feature at C4SS. 

I am a clown dwelling beneath rockets

Oh land, mourn, mourn this clown’s breath

Red wine and tears will crawl along

Let them impregnate the dirt

New beautiful children will grow strong

Becoming clowns, hallowed irreverence

Oh land, celebrate, celebrate these clowns’ breaths

Loud laughter: power, stupidity performed

May these sacred children become nothing

Oh tormented mother, resisting the plague of irrational power

A clown is all that I can be

Когда человек с благими намерениями пытается проникнуть в государственно-непотическую капиталистическую систему, то его ожидает один простой сценарий. Сначала его проглотит эта система, у нее начнется несварение и в итоге систему вырвет остатками всего благого в этом человеке. Система, которая нацелена с самого начала на гниение будет существовать лишь в хаосе. Правила этой игры никогда не позволят изменить систему, потому что сама система готова поощрять уничтожение ее противников.

Ги Дебор правильно подметил, что крушение СССР и становление рыночной экономики приведет к торжеству нового вида спектакля — интегрированного, который будет совмещать в себе диктат потребления и сильный репрессивный аппарат. Тотальное разрушение рыночной экономики привело к дальнейшему корпоративизму. Диктатура Путина построилась благодаря тому, что обнищавшие граждане обменяли свои права и свободы на потребление. Любящим свободу людям приходиться сталкиваться с больно бьющими дубинками, властью супермаркетов и клептократов. Созданный еще на конце жизни Советов спектакль «социализма» подготовил почву для торжества любителей огромных мешков денег и насилия. Пример современной России является хроникой предательств народа и лицемерного восхваления спектакля. Пока люди находились в розовых очках, спектакль смог уничтожить почти все альтернативные мнения, благородных людей и ввести дополнительную дозу наркоза.

А что делать?

Самое лучшее противодействие это попытка перехитрить изворотливую систему. Обычна коррумпированная система доходит до такого уровня деструктивности, что возможная альтернатива станет ожидаемым вариантом среди высвобожденных (detournement) людей. Создающий альтернативу должен и учесть желание людей, свои идеалы лучше всего поставить на второй план. Если Вы будете бороться с олигархией, то Вы должны будете учесть классовые интересы угнетенных и их желание улучшения социальной защищенности. Такие поставленные цели моментально снимут розовые очки с людей, может быть Вы будете удивлены, но не каждый «аутсайдер» или даже представитель системы имеет продуманный план. Большинство людей пытаются гнаться за повесткой, но не создают ее.

Наилучшим ожиданием скорее всего станет демократическое общество, которое будет раздавать привилегии и улучшать потребление. Очевидно, что это не верно, ослепленным спектаклем людям стремятся привить принцип «бояре плохие, но более добрые бояре — хорошие». Нужно сразу дать понять людям, что этот аргумент является беспочвенным и деструктивным. Если люди начнут понимать, что управленцы в большинстве случаев принимают плохие решения, то у них появится мотивация самоорганизовываться.

Децентрализация и плюрализм мнений — ключ к решению любых проблем с государством.

Сущность самоорганизации и ее реализуемость

Что бы Вы сделали, если бы ваш город захватили бы олигархи и их корпорации? Как бы выглядела альтернатива официальной власти?

«Наше решение — самоуправление!» — один из известных анархических лозунгов.

Кропоткин охарактеризовал общество как «очень сложный результат тысячи столкновений и тысячи соглашений, вольных и невольных, множества пережитков старого и молодых стремлений к лучшему будущему». Нам важно признать, что взаимопомощь и самоорганизация являются главными столпами анархического общества, без которых оно невозможно. На этих фундаментальных понятиях отношения между людьми станут крепкой связью, на которой может быть выстроена огромная неразрывная цепь взаимодействий.

Люди, которые хотят нести определенные идеи и интересы должны объединяться в децентрализованные группы. Можно ли представить объединение жильцов одного дома, которые будут принимать взаимовыгодные решения по благоустройству своих квартир, дворов и улучшению подъездов? Такое единство людей является разумным. Данный пример является наиболее минималистичным и наиболее вообразимым. Более сложные структуры способны образовываться органически вместе с малыми, или же на них оказывается влияние иных органических структур.

Децентрализация не означает того, что объединения не могут соединиться в более крупный территориальный орган. Главное, чтобы все объединения не съело одно лицо, которое может обладать авторитетом и влиянием. Такая ошибка возможна, но в этом могут быть виноваты сами объединения.

Федеративная система является противоположностью правительственной централизации. Власть и свобода, два вечно борющихся принципа, вынуждены всегда идти на соглашение друг с другом. «Федерация разрешает все трудности, возникающие из соглашения между свободой и властью. Французская революция заложила предпосылки нового порядка, секретом которого обладает ее наследник, рабочий класс. Этот новый порядок, новое устройство, заключается в следующем: объединить все народы в конфедерацию конфедераций». Выражение употреблено неслучайно: «всемирная конфедерация» было бы слишком огромно; нужно, чтобы крупные объединения федерировались бы между собой.

Бакунин лишь развил и усилил федералистские идеи Прудона. Подобно Прудону, он признавал превосходство федеративного единства перед единством «авторитарным»: «Когда ненавистная мощь государства больше не будет принуждать личности, объединения, ассоциации, коммуны, области, районы жить вместе, они будут гораздо более тесно связаны и образуют значительно более живые, более реальные, более мощные единства, чем те, что их заставляют образовывать сегодня под одинаково давящим и изнурительным для всех гнетом государства». Авторитарии «вечно смешивают (…) формальное, догматическое и правительственное единство с единством живым и реальным, которое может возникнуть лишь из наиболее свободного развития всех личностей и всех коллективов и из федеративного и абсолютно свободного союза (…) рабочих ассоциаций в коммуны, а затем коммун в регионы, регионов в нации».

Альтернатива существующей экономике

Для практического примера построения самостоятельной экономики стоит обратить внимание на заметки Петра Кропоткина. В Дмитрове Кропоткин увидел проявление революционной перестройки, обратив внимание на возникновение и успешную деятельность местной кооперации.

Собственно, кооперативный путь строительства социализма привлекал его давно. При этом Кропоткин обращал внимание на бурное развитие кооперации в России в начале века. В письме к Марии Гольдсмит он отмечал в декабре 1912 года: «Крупное движение в России – это кооперация. Я получил из Кургана Томской губернии газету Союза маслодельных артелей. Это нечто поразительное… В 625 селах – кооперативные лавки, около 1000 артелей…». Идею кооперации Кропоткин «вывез» из Англии. Собственно, там она и родилась. В 1844 году 28 ткачей образовали «Общество рочдельских пионеров», по сути потребительский кооператив. Они опубликовали свой манифест, положив начало движению, на исходе XIX века охватившему большинство стран мира.

Все дело здесь, как понял Кропоткин, – в следовании присущим от природы человеку качествам – общительности, солидарности, взаимопомощи. В кооперации видел Кропоткин воплощение своих этических идей.

Можно ли воплотить идеи в реальность?

Оптимистично говоря: конечно. Все зависит от людей, окружающей среды и иных условий. У людей должна быть выработана традиция отвращения к авторитетам, иначе их конформизм и лояльность станут деструктивными. Чем больше люди погружены в спектакль, тем легче их вытащить и дать правильный путь. Когда все люди добровольно откажутся от государства, тогда анархисты всего мира перестанут ругать этатистов.

Democracy¹, a sluggish and painful example of attempted cooperation, is often a heap of flaming garbage. Obviously, the “democracy” of the Zapatistas or Rojava are far different than that of the US, but self-styled democracies also elected Bolsonaro, Trump, and Hitler. Aside from things like democracy’s potential for corruption and inherent efficiency throttles, it forces people to either (impossibly) know about everything or (more likely) to have a stake in things they know little about and are not best suited to determining for each other. And yet, the alternative is seemingly just factionalism and reliance on “experts.” These trusted experts form cults of personality and vanguards to protect their privileges. They strengthen their internal ties at the expense of others, coupling economic and other incentives to create and maintain ivory towers and good ol’ boys networks. Democracy is really bad. It brings out the worst in us. We control each others’ lives and we’re bad at it because no one can possibly know everything they need to know to be rulers of each other. But here’s the kicker. Although we can dream far greater than democracy as it’s currently conceived, we still need down-to-earth methods for cooperation on a bunch of things in the short and long-term. We need to organize our movement ethically. We need to plan our date-night. We need to make global changes that involve buy-in from huge masses of people. We rely on large and small scale cooperative democratic processes to stave off a bunch of worse possibilities despite the inadequacies of these mechanisms.

Let’s face it. Our lives are deeply interdependent. The networks in our brains aren’t even totally separate from each other as we influence each other’s thoughts, feelings, choices, and ultimately memories. But nonetheless our individual sphere, ourselves, is an important concentration of knowledge and control. So, our selves are myths, but they teach us about the world. Similarly, our communities, big or small, are lies, but they allow us to get closer to one another and leverage the potential of our interdependence through cooperation.

We could always sabotage each other, and we do, both on purpose and on accident — thanks to the gaps in knowledge inherent in collective decision making. But nonetheless, we still have to face some problems collectively, because they are so complicated that no one person or core vanguard could possibly know enough to solve them. It’s just structurally impossible. We need huge amounts of people thinking together to even attempt to minimize the wide-scale destruction of something like climate change. We can hope for expert enterprises and scientific advances at the margins to make sustainable living more palatable for the masses, but no individual or small group effort is going to solve the problem alone. So because of that need for massive collaboration in things like planet-wide emergency relief, mutual aid networks, and infrastructure, we have no choice but to damn ourselves to the traps of group decision making and the mental shortcuts that come with inefficient modes of mass coordination. For example, working within any collective identity can lead to clique-ish ingroup preferences which miss the point of larger transformations. But this is the risk of any form of bonding, much less collective action. So, even though organizations are inherently plagued by problems intrinsic to their very structure, we still need to figure out how to use them in the most effective and ethical ways possible.

Even if liberal-democracy is 278th on your list of ideal governments, it should still be above fascism. Although statist liberal-democracy is horrifyingly bad, and so much worse than what we could build for each other, it is still better than a lot of other things, for example: authoritarian right-wing regimes (Pinochet, Bolsonaro, or in weaker form, Trump) or red-brown populist dictators (like nazis with communist economics, or in weaker form, Assad or Putin). It makes sense to prioritize efforts to transcend awful things like dictatorship and populism even while building beyond the prevailing liberal order.

So, we need to find a way to move forward without preserving exploitative, imperialist, capitalist democracy. We will work to destroy it and transform its evils. However, we must also simultaneously protect basic things like the vague international prohibition on torture, or whatever pretense of accountability that does exist for police (however widely flaunted). As bad as it is in the US, proper self-actualized fascism can make it so much worse. Fascism could make the US or any nation exponentially more miserable than its current degree of not-fascism. Also, because fascism and authoritarian centralism actively repress complex grassroots coordination or even truth-telling in general, these structures obscure their own ability to prepare for coming existential threats like climate change. When you suppress complex cooperation with heavy-handed centralist violence, you can’t create complex solutions. This is why no one wanted to be the one to tell Stalin the truth about anything and why the CIA never expected Chinese troop movements into Korea. “Whoops! We threw all the physicists in prison for their bourgeoisie/Jewish formulas and the ones that escaped went to work for our enemies!” We don’t just need complex coordination though, we also need ethical complex coordination.

For the things that we need collective decision-making for, such as what our crew should eat for dinner after a hangout, we need to get better at making those decisions ethically. That means we have to do the hard work of building horizontal collective intelligence and feedback mechanisms while at the same time undermining the types of mental viruses that lead to dangerous in-group dynamics. We need to make friends and also not place our friends above other people that we don’t know. We also need all of those people we don’t know in order to solve the complex problems we all face.

Democracy is a sad stand-in for working in groups with overlapping affinity networks. It’s tepid, but there’s something like it that we have to do better or we will fail to meet our challenges. I’m not advocating for more meetings or endless consensus hell, but there’s really no short term way around that for many things. Aside from all the corrosive social capital style politics of groups, organizations, or movements, these forms of organization do have a lot of potential.

For the things that cannot be solved by individuals working alone, in tight crews, or expert vanguards (which is most things), working together to varying degrees can help us to scale up our positive impact. We can work together to create non-zero sum environments for ourselves and others that encourage further cooperation. In working together to build feedback loops of positive reputation we can create a safer and more rewarding environment in which others can engage in meta-cooperative behavior. This can be witnessed to some degree in the sort-of mutualist style coordination of networks like Enspiral and the horizontal decision-making tools to emerge from it such as Loomio but also just in the long and messy history of anarchist organizing.

Better cooperative networks can soften the short-term risks and strengthen the advantages that come with meta-cooperation. For example, a group of people pooling their money in a savings pool, and co-budgeting its allocations and norms, can allow each other to pay off predatory credit debt (YOU AND YOUR BUDS CAN BUILD A SAVINGS POOL!). This softens the risks and difficulties of paying something off individually while strengthening the collective power of the network simultaneously. This is basically a form of unionization against capitalism writ-large (with all the problems of unions in tow). But it isn’t just economic. Groups practicing emotional anarchism and feelz mutual-aid can make the risks of others healing softer, and the benefits of support greater. Together these all take the form of micro-solidarity. So, while the local is a lie like any collective identity, it’s an arena that we know intimately and in which we are able to make better decisions, and it’s small enough that we can avoid the coordination problems of scaling. All of these forms of mutual-aid can couple with the kind of radical direct action that many networks and individuals do in order to maximize the net-collective benefits of these kinds of micro-social advances.

By getting better at working together on the things we must at the level of micro-solidarity, we are able to test and practice ethically scaling that complexity to larger and larger problem-solving or relative abundance creation. Because of course, for every difficulty transformed, there is also a possibility of ratcheting up our networked freedom and agency too. That means that it is possible to not just beat big problems, but also gain the benefits of having figured out meaningful solutions. The benefits of increasingly large and swarming networks are that we get the chance to popularize and test new ideas together with relative safety and consent. But at the level of earth itself, it’s trying to thread the finest needle with 7 billion hands and countless other sentient and non-sentient forces alike. This tension between needing cooperation and it being intrinsically difficult applies at every scale, from the self, to friendships, to crews, to networks, to the planet, and to the galaxy. We need to set each other up for success at every level!

Building a solarpunk future doesn’t only start at the local, it starts at every level all at once. Connections teeming through the spread of new practices and ideas. The vitality of cooperation is vibrant even while we stare-down its risks of failure through the profound inherent difficulties that plague it. So we don’t grunt like cavepeople with our imaginary ingroup of perfect interconnectedness, we reach across and out with humble and audacious hands. We support each other in our in-group to safely betray our preference for each other to share and scale our successes. That’s the only way we can do this thing.

1. Note: I’m using an incredibly vague definition of democracy here to basically be, “people making decisions together at any scale and degree of directness.”

First off, I want to thank everyone who answered the call and submitted poems for our first ever May poetry feature! I’ll admit I was a little scared about going off the beaten path here, but you all delivered, and it’s been a real pleasure to review the poems we’ve received. I also want to give a special thanks to those of you who chose to donate your writer’s fee to Chelsea Manning’s personal support fund. It’s going to do a lot of good! You can read more about her continued resistance to state intimidation here.

This is just a quick update to say that we’ll be publishing the accepted poems (ten in total) throughout the month. The first will be published next Monday, May 6th, and we’ll go from there with the last poem wrapping things up on Thursday, May 30th. I’m happy to report there’s a lot of variety in the style and subjects, so it should be an exciting few weeks.

Finally, with May Day yesterday, I want to note that this project was partially inspired by the anarchist tradition of May Day remembrance. That tradition both celebrates and mourns the lives of those who came before us, and who have sacrificed much for the cause of anarchism. Such occasions can stir intense and complicated emotions, so I wanted to give people a space in which to express these feelings and a reminder that intensity of emotion is not a weakness, it is a reflection of our strength. I hope those who submitted poems felt some release in writing them, and that we all continue to embrace our own emotional depth. Look out for that first poem on Monday!

The following piece was originally published at the blackstarwritings blog and is the first part of a continuing series on war and anarchism.

The subject of warfare has been one that I have held a great interest in for some time. With roots in early humanity about five thousand years ago, it is a factor that has influenced not only human beings but the entire world. It has been the subject of analysis and theory by men, quite literally, over the course of human history. From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, Jomini, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Mao, Che Guevara, and countless others who have contributed to it, through its perpetuation and theoretical discussion, war has had as many commentators and participants as one might find studying the theory and application of art.

However, I find something lacking in the majority of the analysis presented on warfare, both historically and theoretically. Definitions for warfare can vary widely from time, place, and point of view creating a nexus of sometimes similar and yet quite different ways of defining and understanding warfare. However, within this nexus exists a particular notion about warfare that seems to pervade its study. That being a particularly hierarchical approach to the theory of warfare.

One of the earliest to write about the subject of war was Sun Tzu, a military general under the king of Wu around the 5th century. The very first line from their book “The Art of War” under the chapter titled “Laying Plans” states:

Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the state.

A simple statement, yet profound in its implications. One of which being that the governance of warfare is specifically a concern for that of state authority. It is something that is considered not only vital to the state in that warfare is what allows for the imposition of state will against those who would seek to harm or destroy that will, but also in the sense that the knowledge and skill of conducting warfare must be kept within the hands of the state itself, otherwise such knowledge could be used against it despite its own will.

Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) would agree with this general sentiment, both the usage of war to compel others to do our will, but also in that war is the concern of the state:

Violence, that is to say, physical force (for here there is no moral force without the conception of state and law), is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object.¹

I do not mean to make any direct comparisons between the theories of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, as these two individuals lived in different times and places, as well as approaching warfare in almost entirely different ways. However, the consistent theme of warfare as the concern of the state, knowledge of war held within a hierarchical position, is a thread that connects the two theoretically. I would go so far as to argue that almost the entirety of war theory is concerned with a hierarchical, statist application of warfare.

Even among the radical left, the purveyance of hierarchical war theory dominates the discourse. One of the most popular writers on the subject of guerrilla warfare, Mao Tse-Tung, wrote much on the need for cooperation between the professional revolutionary army and the spontaneous guerrilla formations of the people. However, as much as Mao may have understood the need for such cooperation with respect to the fighting capabilities of the average person, he did so with the emphasis that ultimately the tactical and strategic decisions remained within the hierarchy of the Red Army itself:

(3) In the enemy’s rear, we choose some young, strong, and courageous elements among the local population and organize some small groups who will accept the leadership of the experienced and trained persons we send out or of experienced persons whom we had trained previously in the place in question. The secret activity of these small groups involves moving from their own area to another one, changing their uniforms, unit numbers, and external appearance, and using every method so as to cover their tracks to the utmost.

(5) Guerrilla units can be classified according to their nature. Those formed of selected volunteers are called special guerrilla units. Those organized generally from a part of our army are called basic guerrilla units. Those organized from the local population are called local guerrilla units. When basic and local guerrilla units engage in combined actions, they are subject to the unified command of the commander of the basic unit.²

Essentially the command of the ad-hoc guerrilla formations was to be subjected to the hierarchy of the Red Army. Encouragement of self-organized guerrilla formations was less out of principle per se, and more out of tactical and strategic necessity. Even then, such self-organized forces were not meant to be permanently so and their integration into the command of the Red Army was seen as vital for cohesion within the burgeoning Communist state.

Some have seen the violence of the state, whether through acts of war or policing, and have chosen to reject violence as a whole outright. Based on what has been discussed so far, this may seem like a fairly logical conclusion. If one seeks a society free from oppression, then one would want to see an end to the violence perpetrated by the state and, therefore, reject violence to moralistically stand above the violence of the state. However, the ironic paradox of this approach is that, in rejecting violence, one ends up inherently legitimatizing state violence:

A colorful, conscientious, uncompromising, passive protest in front of a military base that does not threaten struggle with the police protecting the military base’s boundaries, nor promise midnight visits by saboteurs, only improves the PR image of the military, for surely only a just and humane military would tolerate protests outside their front gate. Such a protest is like a flower stuck in the barrel of the gun. It does not impede the ability to fire.³

So long as opposition to the state remains nonviolent, it will continue to legitimize the state’s centralization of violence. If we seek to appeal to the morality of the state, we are assuming that the state is a generally benevolent institution and that current systems of oppression are simply moralistic defects of the state, rather than inherent characteristics of a hierarchical system of authority. The problem with nonviolence is that it takes for granted the very systems that in many ways either cause or inflame oppression and domination generally.

So we find ourselves at what appears to be an impasse. On the one hand, it seems that war is largely the concern of hierarchical forces, while the rejection of it paradoxically reinforces war. Which begs the question, in what way are we to understand war? As stated from the beginning, war has held many sorts of definitions and does not hold a generalized understanding. However, within that paradigm, there exist certain threads of continuity between theoretical forms of war. Not enough to unite them into a generalized theory, but enough to unify them on certain basic, theoretical grounds. We have already identified one common thread, that being hierarchy of war. However, I am of the idea that another thread exists, one that for our purposes poses a much greater possibility of understanding the root commonality within war. From this common thread, I hope to extrapolate a new, specifically anarchist, historical and theoretical analysis of war.

Let us return briefly to Clausewitz. In the formerly mentioned quote, Clausewitz, in defining war, does so as “. . . the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will . . .” specifically through the application of violence. Here, war is not simply a fight between two singular individuals, but rather, groups of people. These groups both attempt to use violence in order to force the other into submission by the more coercive group. As such, I contend that war can best be understood as the mutual, collective violence by groups of peoples against one another.

From this basic definition of war, we can both break with the hierarchical understanding of war, without necessarily contradicting the greater body of war theory as such. In breaking with the hierarchy of war, we are able to forge a new analysis of war, one that specifically lends its focus to the struggles of peoples against oppression and domination throughout history. From the earliest slave rebellions, to the collective struggles of women, indigenous populations, peasant revolts, worker uprisings, piracy, peoples revolts, riots, and insurrections that have been used by the oppressed to wage their own wars against their oppressors.

That is why I have chosen the title “War Anarchic” in order to describe the theoretical lens under which I hope to understand the long historical struggles, the ways in which peoples have throughout the ages waged war for their own freedom, struggling against the various social, political and economic hierarchies of their times. The title is not to imply that such struggles were specifically anarchist in their nature, though some much closer to our own time could be defined as such. Rather the “Anarchic” nature of these wars is present in that they specifically are collectively violent struggles against a dominating, hierarchical force in order to secure some sense of what we would understand in some sense to be freedom and equality, at least in the terms that would be understood in their own historical context.

This to me is the ultimate goal of this War Anarchic. To provide a historical continuity to the ways in which people, throughout history, have waged war against systems of oppression and domination in their own times to that of our own. In doing so, I hope to create a body of theoretical, historical knowledge that can be drawn from in order to better begin to understand how it is that we, at least theoretically, might wage war against our own systems of domination and oppression today.

1. Carl von Clausewitz. “What Is War?” On War, 1873, pp. 1–2.
2. Mao Tse-Tung.“Basic Tactics: IV Organization.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, 1937
3. Peter Gelderloos. “Nonviolence is Statist.” How Nonviolence Protects the State. Detritus Books, 2018.

Di Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Originale pubblicato il 19 aprile 2019 con il titolo Green Market Agorism. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Da quando è stato formulato per la prima volta da Samuel Edward Konkin III, l’agorismo ha fatto passi enormi. Grazie agli scritti di visionari come Karl Hess, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Defense Distributed e Derrick Broze abbiamo visto crescere l’agorismo, in teoria e in pratica, come non sembrava neanche possibile. E la cosa è destinata a crescere adattandosi ai tempi, alle circostanze, alle nuove tecnologie eccetera.

Se Samuel Konkin si occupava specificamente dei mercati nero e grigio, con Hess l’attenzione si sposta sugli aspetti localistici, le tecnologie giuste e la sostenibilità. Temi ulteriormente ampliati da Broze negli ultimi anni, soprattutto con il concetto di agorismo orizzontale e verticale. Il primo è il tradizionale agorismo illegalistico konkiniano che tutti noi conosciamo e amiamo, che comprende cose come lo sciopero fiscale, il commercio di droga, il professionismo del sesso, il traffico d’armi, il contrabbando e l’aiuto agli immigrati clandestini. Il secondo riguarda più i mercati grigio e bianco e comprende cose come la vendita diretta di prodotti agricoli, le cooperative di lavoratori, le tecnologie ambientali e il sindacalismo di base.

L’attenzione per l’ambiente rientra soprattutto nella tradizione agoristica verticale. Gli esperimenti sulla sostenibilità portarono Karl Hess a sostenere cose come le colture idroponiche, gli orti cittadini, l’allevamento ittico casalingo, l’energia eolica o solare, le officine di quartiere, le officine comunitarie, gli spazi per la condivisione, le librerie degli strumenti e altro. Da queste ultime, in particolare, è nata l’idea di condividere quegli strumenti che nelle mani di un singolo proprietario resterebbero sottoutilizzati. Nelle sue lezioni agoristiche, Broze pone particolare accento sul principio della settima generazione e su concetti come zero rifiuti, oltre a promuovere gli orti di comunità, la permacultura, il minimalismo e altro simile. E di tutto ciò c’è bisogno urgente in un momento in cui la devastazione ambientale cresce e preoccupa.

Seguendo l’ispirazione di Broze e inquadrando l’agorismo in senso olistico, non si può considerare unicamente il consumo, ma occorre prendere in esame tutto il ciclo vitale di un prodotto. Come spiega il video The Story of Stuff, la catena va dall’estrazione alla produzione alla distribuzione fino al consumo per poi finire nella spazzatura. Visto olisticamente, il processo può evolversi in una forma di economia circolare. Molti agoristi hanno già adottato questa mentalità riguardo la produzione alimentare basata sul prodotto locale, biologico e sostenibile, incoraggiando la vendita domiciliare, in orti comunitari, o illegali, o da balcone, in aziende a conduzione famigliare, con la permacoltura, la produzione diretta, l’agricoltura civica, il compostaggio e altro simile. Ma come movimento, dobbiamo anche pensare agli altri prodotti che consumiamo.

Si dice sempre: “Sotto il capitalismo il consumo etico non esiste”. Ed è vero. Il mercato è truccato, noi consumatori siamo tenuti all’oscuro di gran parte delle informazioni su ciò che consumiamo. L’agorismo, in particolare quando enfatizza il localismo, offre un’alternativa efficace al consumo etico. Comprare dal vicino significa sapere immediatamente cosa si compra, il consumatore acquista informato. Ma non tutto si può trovare a livello locale, e a volte ciò che si trova non è eticamente sostenibile. Può capitare, ad esempio, di acquistare una maglietta stampata ma il laboratorio locale utilizza magliette fatte in fabbriche che sfruttano i bambini, con fibre sintetiche, o con fibre naturali ma coltivate e lavorate da detenuti ridotti in schiavitù, tinte con coloranti sintetici prodotti da aziende che scaricano a mare i reflui. Anche quando ci troviamo davanti prodotti spacciati per etici (biologico, commercio equo, nel rispetto dei diritti dei lavoratori, eccetera), non è detto che non ci siano altri problemi (salari da fame, monocolture con uso di pesticidi, lobby e così via). Ma se si vuole acquistare praticamente tutto eticamente senza dare soldi alle aziende capitaliste una soluzione si trova.

Gli agoristi parlano spesso di mercato bianco, nero, grigio, o rosso; manca un colore, che però si sta imponendo: il verde. Non la cannabis, le energie alternative o la fregatura del consumismo tinto di verde. Parlo di un mercato che comprende tutti gli altri, bianco, grigio e nero, e che riguarda cose usate, riparate, riattate e/o riciclate per poi essere reimmesse sul mercato. Parlo di mercatini dell’usato, dello scambio di indumenti usati, di laboratori di riparazione e riciclaggio, ma anche del movimento per il diritto a riparare, di pezzi di ricambio cannibalizzati, del recupero degli avanzi sulla scia di Food not Bombs, e di molto altro.

Riparare cose, fare commercio tra conoscenti, comprare al mercatino dell’usato, riciclare proficuamente, riusare e riattare, tutto ciò fa parte del mercato verde agoristico. Ora, certo, tutto ciò riguarda la distribuzione, il consumo, talvolta anche lo smaltimento, e non le materie prime e la produzione in sé, ma è anche vero che acquistare sul mercato verde riduce di riflesso la produzione di nuovi beni. Occorre ridimensionare in generale l’attuale modo di produzione per limitare il degrado ambientale; ridurre, riutilizzare, riparare, riattare e riciclare sono passi obbligati. Il mercato verde ci dà la possibilità di analizzare il modo in cui consumiamo, capire che possiamo utilizzare l’esistente invece di continuare a produrre nuove cose. Certo ci sono cose che bisogna acquistare nuove, come i prodotti per l’igiene o le nuove tecnologie, ma rivolgendoci al mercato verde possiamo ridimensionare l’estrazione di materie prime e la produzione portandola a livelli gestibili. Non solo commercio etico, quindi, ma anche estrazione di risorse e produzione di beni necessari secondo principi etici.

Ora le soluzioni sono più facili, sappiamo come produrre l’indispensabile. Si possono ricavare prodotti per l’igiene da specie vegetali disponibili localmente, o produrre spazzolini da denti con la stampante 3D, o pettini con plastica riciclata, magari come fa Precious Plastic con sistemi open-source. A questo si unisce la lotta per i diritti di chi lavora all’estrazione dei metalli preziosi indispensabili a produrre le stesse stampanti 3D; ma si possono anche formare cooperative per l’assemblaggio, inventare sistemi più efficaci per riciclare i rifiuti che si continua a produrre, e fare tanto altro. La fantasia per fare tutto ciò non manca. Ma prima dobbiamo ridimensionare il problema, e per questo dobbiamo ridimensionare il consumo di nuovi prodotti. Per questo dobbiamo diventare agoristi e sostenere il mercato verde.

The state depends on its cops to enforce private property. Without them present, the owners would have to hire private security to protect their property from seizure, and that is (due to economies of scale of which the state takes advantage) massively more expensive on the whole. So, one of the most effective ways to be anti-state would be to decrease the labor supply for police officers — and thus, increase the cost of hiring police officers. The state would then be forced to either spend more on policing or to hire fewer police officers.

There are two obvious ways to decrease labor supply of police: arming the masses and letting cops know that we hate them.

Many radical and even liberal thinkers have written on the importance of maintaining an armed populace, so I won’t say much more on that here. I’ve written about it previously. It is worth noting, however, that there are a lot of homeless people in American cities — and that a shocking portion of those homeless are veterans. We are in no short supply of people with combat experience and every reason to hate the state and capitalism. Guns can be printed. I can’t imagine anything that might undermine the institution of private property more cheaply.

On hating cops, though, there’s also a surprising amount of promise. Being hated gets cops to quit. They go elsewhere or they get real jobs. Either way, there are fewer cops in that particular city. And fewer cops means that the owners need to pay their cops more to ensure that they can recruit enough of them. There are limits to how much they can pay their police, and those limits are defined by how much they can extract from us in economic rents (on housing, IP, ownership of productive capital, ect.) — rents that are fixed by supply, demand, and productivity, and that cannot be easily raised in response to this. In fact, as our ability to fight back increases, they will be incentivized to lower the amount that they collect to avoid our wrath.

If the cost of maintaining private property begins to approach the revenue derivable from owning that property, it becomes less and less worthwhile to be an owner — it will make simple, economic sense for at least some of the owners to give up their ownership and become workers. This would happen at the margins, first, as the small owners find that their taxes are too high for it to be worth it for them to be owners. The only response that the state would have would be to extract less revenue from the small owners, to keep them in business, and thus producing revenue at all. If they do that, the state still ends up with less and less revenue. This also shifts a greater portion of the increased cost of policing onto the bigger and more successful owners, and moves the margin up — causing the cycle to repeat on up the hierarchy of wealth.

The only way that the owners and cops would have around this would be to extract greater and greater taxation from the workers. The problem with this is that it only gives the workers more incentive to move their economic activities outside of state legibility and to give greater social and violent penalties to the cops — that is to say, the state scrabbling to steal more from the workers means that the workers merely hide a greater portion of their income from the state and engage in actions that push the cost of hiring police higher and higher.

However, even if the state managed to extract everything that the workers make, there’s no reason that this would necessarily be enough to cover the cost of policing them. The lower labor-share is —and thus, the higher capital-share is— the less there is for the owner’s state to try to extract from the workers to fund itself. As we all know, the labor-share has been shrinking around the world (and especially in America) since the 1970s. The owners will either have to reverse very long-term trends to our benefit, or they will be unable to extract enough from us to be able to afford to keep us from taking their property. Even if they do the first, that just gives the workers more resources with which to fight back, and less reward for being an owner — leading, again, to owners giving up being owners as simply being not sufficiently profitable.

This process, though, is not a revolution. It does not happen all over the world at once, or even all over the same city at once. This is an insurrection. A single city can have this process active in it, or even —though to a lesser extent— a single neighborhood. As the cost of policing rises, fewer cops will be employed — at least to some extent, unless they temporarily redouble their efforts in a futile attempt to stop our virtuous cycle. Fewer cops employed means slower police response times — and that, when they do come, they come in fewer numbers. This can already be seen in the “bad” parts of cities across the world. Zones of greater and greater freedom can open up, propelled by largely autonomous and spontaneously organized social processes.

Chiapas, perhaps, is something like a look at a mid-way point. In Chiapas, there is certainly still someone who calls themselves governor, and there are still police who say that they patrol the area. They even go in there sometimes! But they don’t stay there. Collection of taxes is difficult, if not impossible. Laws are unenforced. Economic organization is free, or at least free enough.

Insurrection isn’t an all or nothing thing — it is a gradual process, with more immediate gains. We don’t have to topple all the governments at once — we can work on just local ones. We don’t even have to topple them — we can just make them ignore our presence as too bothersome. We don’t even have to do that — we can just make an hour of a cop’s time a dollar more expensive, or even just a cent. Every little bit helps.

As the Haymarket Martyrs went to their deaths they were resolute, in no small part because they knew future generations of anarchists would remember them.

This sentiment extended from August Spies, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today,” to Louis Lingg, “I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then—mark my words—they will do the bombthrowing! In this hope do I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!”

Try as the forces of power have, they have not succeeded in stomping us out. The movement struggling in the streets of Chicago in 1886 spread around the world. As the saying goes, they tried to bury us, they didn’t realize we were seeds. They tried to pull us apart, they just cast our net wider. We are still here.

Every strand of anarchism, every one of our struggles, is woven together. Market anarchists like Dyer D Lum smuggled Lingg his dynamite, still others like Voltairine de Cleyre kept the secret of the actual bomber. For all our differences and distances we are a single unruly riot. Every color ultimately united in our campaign against power; no corner of the world cut off from any other.

Part of what gives us strength, what has enabled us to weather all manner of repression is our memory. We persist through remembering each other.

Every year we lose more friends and lovers to repression, and every year on this day we remember that despite everything we are still here.

Since last may day anarchists have been killed, we have been arrested on serious charges, and we have been sentenced. But we can staunch what is lost by remembering them and by staying connected to them. Here is an incomplete accounting since May Day 2018:

Deaths:

Lorenzo Orsetti (Tekoşer Piling), an Italian anarchist died fighting in Kurdistan

Farid Medjahed (Şehîd Şahîn Qereçox), a French anarchist died fighting in Kurdistan

Mikhail Zhlobitsky, a Russian anarchist died bombing FSB officers.

Dimitris Armakolas, a Greek anarchist died hanging a prison solidarity banner in Athens.

Arrests, Sentencing & Other Serious Repression:

In Bolivia Cesare Battisti, originally Italian and on the run for 38 years, was arrested and extradited.

In Belarus Yevgeny Chulitsky was arrested in Minsk. Additionally police attacked a forest campsite with 20 anarchists.

In Canada seven more anarchists were arrested in Hamilton in connection to Locke St protest and setenced with non-cooperating plea deals. Eventually two were imprisoned, one placed under house arrest. (Two got conditional discharge and the other three got their charges withdrawn.)

In Chile Miguel Ángel Varela Veas and Felipe Ríos Henríquez despite being on the run were sentenced in their absence to 15 years. Hugo Barraza Araya, Nicolás Bayer Monnard, and Rodrigo Araya Villalobos were each sentenced to 10 years in Valparaiso.

In Greece Giorgos Kalaitzidis was sentenced to another year and four months in prison. Pola Roupa was sentenced to life plus 25 Years. N. Maziotis sentenced to life plus 129 years. Additionally a police squadron kidnapped and tortured an anarchist migrant.

In Indonesia 69 were arrested during mayday 2018 in Yogyakarta, 11 kept in prison.

In Italy a number of waves of repression now including Operation Scintilla have wrapped up a large number of anarchists. Leonardo Landi was re-arrested to serve an extended sentence of 2 years, 8 months. Seven anarchists were arrested in Tretino and imprisoned — Agnese, Giulio, Nico, Poza, Rupert, Sasha, Stecco. A Torino squat was attacked and six arrested: Silvia Ruggeri, Giada Volpacchio, Antonio Rizzo, Lorenzo Salvato, Niccolò Blasi, and Giuseppe De Salvatore. In Turin the prosecution requested the following sentences of those already captured: Alfredo Cospito (30 years), Anna Beniamino (29 years), Gioacchino Somma (7 years and 6 months). And Valentina Speziale, Marco Bisesti, Pasquale Valitutti, Omar Nioi, Erika Preden, Alessandro Mercogliano, Stefano, Daniele, Claudia, and Sergio got 6 years and 6 months. Alessandro A. and Francesca G. got 8 years. Nicola Gai got 10 years. Danilo Cremonese got 10 years. Patrizia Marino got 7 years and 3 months. Carlo Tesseri got 8 years and 3 months. Gabriel Pombo Da Silva, Stefano Fosco, and Elisa Di Bernardo got 7 years

In Mexico, or more precisely Oaxaca, Miguel Ángel was sentenced to 50 years.

In Russia Ilya Romanov was sentenced to another five and a half years in prison.
Mikhail Kulkov and Maxim Ivankin were charged with “terrorist association” and drug charges. Viktor Filinkov, Yuli Boyarshinov, Igor Shiskin, and eight residents of Penza were put in custody, charged with terrorism, and tortured. Yevgeny Karakashev was sentenced to 6 years.

In Spain two were arrested in Madrid Oct 29th 2018 for ATM burning during solidarity actions with Lisa who is still imprisoned.

In Switzerland 15 anarchists in Basel were sentenced to 20-27 months in prison.

In Ukraine two houses were raided and threatened in Kiev by agents of the state looking for three people. Taras Bohay and Oleh Kordiaka were likewise searched in Lviv. Additionally an anarchist summer ecologist camp was invaded and interrogated by police and military. In Lviv a group of Nazis violently attacked four anarchists of the Black Flag collective with knives and hammers, leading to hospitalization.

In the USA, Chelsea Manning was arrested and held in solitary for contempt of court, engaging in grand jury resistance. Joseph Mahmoud Dibee was arrested in Cuba and extradited to Oregon for 90s green scare charges.