Post by DA Malatesta on May 16, 2005 19:00:36 GMT -5
The following is a selection from a critique of specialist armed groups. I think it offers an interesting counter-argument to the theorists like Ward Churchill who (basically) advocate specialist armed struggle and glorify leftist/nationalist groups like the IRA.
The bigger question this brings up is, what is the role of the revolutionary minority?
" ..For us the individual that rebels, the individual that revolts against this world that is too petty to contain his dreams, is not interested in limiting his own potentiality, but if possible, would extend it to infinity. Thirsty for freedom, greedy for experience, he who revolts is in constant search for new affinities, for new instruments to experiment with, with which to assault the existent and subvert it from its very foundation. This is because the insurrectional struggle should find stimulus and energy in our capacity to always fill its arsenal with new arms, outside and against any reductive specialization. The gun experts are like the book experts, or squatting experts, or any others; they are boring because they always talk and only about themselves and about their favorite means. And this is why we don't give privilege to any instrument over others, we love and support innumerable actions, use the most disparate means, that daily occur against the dominion and its structures. Because revolt is like poetry: and should be done by everyone, not by only one person, he who is the most expert.
Now, specific armed organization represents the negation of this insurrectional struggle, the parasite capable of poisoning its blood. Whereas insurrection incites pleasure and the realization of how much we have in our hearts, armed organization promises only sacrifice and ideology. Whereas insurrection exalts the possibilities of the individual, armed organization exalts only the technology of its soldiers. Whereas insurrection considers a gun or a stick of dynamite as only one of the arms available to it, armed organization turns it into the only instrument that it uses ("Long live the armed struggle"). Whereas insurrection looks to generalize and to invite all to participate in its party, armed organization is necessarily closed-except for its few militants --there is nothing left for the others to do other than to chant for it. Of that vast project that is the subversion of life, a project that does not know limits because it looks to shake up the totality of society, armed organization is capable of glimpsing only the marginal aspect of a military clash with the State--exchanging it for everything else. And therefore this clash, also the armed attack against the State, loses any liberatory significance, any breath of life, when all of its upsurge is reduced to the promotion of a program and an acronym that is bought in the market of politics.
Conversely, this is why in anonymity any political calculation disappears to leave in its place a thousand individual tensions and vibrations, and their possibility of meeting, uniting and dispersing. To he who doesn't have commodities to sell of what use are lit up signs? What about the accusation directed against those actions claimed with a circle A that expose the whole anarchist movement to the provocations of the police, this fear will be surely shared by other anarchists, terrorized by the idea that someone could come knocking at their door. Therefore for them and their comrades that sign this document, an eventual acronym will surely not resolve the situation. Instead of suspecting the anarchists having signed an action with a circle A, the police would suspect that they have made themselves part of that specific group."
The whole text - www.geocities.com/xs_ambi/STRUGGLE.HTM
The bigger question this brings up is, what is the role of the revolutionary minority?
" ..For us the individual that rebels, the individual that revolts against this world that is too petty to contain his dreams, is not interested in limiting his own potentiality, but if possible, would extend it to infinity. Thirsty for freedom, greedy for experience, he who revolts is in constant search for new affinities, for new instruments to experiment with, with which to assault the existent and subvert it from its very foundation. This is because the insurrectional struggle should find stimulus and energy in our capacity to always fill its arsenal with new arms, outside and against any reductive specialization. The gun experts are like the book experts, or squatting experts, or any others; they are boring because they always talk and only about themselves and about their favorite means. And this is why we don't give privilege to any instrument over others, we love and support innumerable actions, use the most disparate means, that daily occur against the dominion and its structures. Because revolt is like poetry: and should be done by everyone, not by only one person, he who is the most expert.
Now, specific armed organization represents the negation of this insurrectional struggle, the parasite capable of poisoning its blood. Whereas insurrection incites pleasure and the realization of how much we have in our hearts, armed organization promises only sacrifice and ideology. Whereas insurrection exalts the possibilities of the individual, armed organization exalts only the technology of its soldiers. Whereas insurrection considers a gun or a stick of dynamite as only one of the arms available to it, armed organization turns it into the only instrument that it uses ("Long live the armed struggle"). Whereas insurrection looks to generalize and to invite all to participate in its party, armed organization is necessarily closed-except for its few militants --there is nothing left for the others to do other than to chant for it. Of that vast project that is the subversion of life, a project that does not know limits because it looks to shake up the totality of society, armed organization is capable of glimpsing only the marginal aspect of a military clash with the State--exchanging it for everything else. And therefore this clash, also the armed attack against the State, loses any liberatory significance, any breath of life, when all of its upsurge is reduced to the promotion of a program and an acronym that is bought in the market of politics.
Conversely, this is why in anonymity any political calculation disappears to leave in its place a thousand individual tensions and vibrations, and their possibility of meeting, uniting and dispersing. To he who doesn't have commodities to sell of what use are lit up signs? What about the accusation directed against those actions claimed with a circle A that expose the whole anarchist movement to the provocations of the police, this fear will be surely shared by other anarchists, terrorized by the idea that someone could come knocking at their door. Therefore for them and their comrades that sign this document, an eventual acronym will surely not resolve the situation. Instead of suspecting the anarchists having signed an action with a circle A, the police would suspect that they have made themselves part of that specific group."
The whole text - www.geocities.com/xs_ambi/STRUGGLE.HTM
