Proposal For An International Debate About Repressive Restructuring
For an international insurrectional perspective
From avalanche.noblogs.org
Analytical elements about the ongoing repressive restructuring
If it would be, beyond doubt, a mistake to continue talking about the “crisis” of capitalism or the management of the state, we are nevertheless experiencing a vast restructuring which touches all fields of society. Concerning Europe we can talk about the death of the social democrat model which over decades was meant to guarantee social peace and serve as a horizon for the whole of the reformist and recuperating movements. This announces the end of a time period, the beginning of a new era in which the revolutionary confrontation will take place on an increasingly hostile and controlled ground. The profound penetration into all social relations which capital and state are trying to realize in particular through the massive spreading of technologies clearly isn’t announcing easy times ahead, but nevertheless the times are not lacking an insurrectional potential. The road signs indicating what will come after this restructuring in Europe are present: the current situation of social cannibalism in Greece, with the intensification of exploitation, the “return” of hunger and illness and the eradication of the small dreams about a guaranteed consumption maintained by the disappearing middle class. This economic restructuring doesn’t always take up the same shape and neither does it happen in the same rhythm, but the logic imposed counts for all of the European Union states. The return of backyard nationalism and of patriotism lamenting the fate of one or another country as can be noted in the southern countries, the first ones touched (“it’s the fault of the countries in the north”), but also in the northern countries for the opposite reasons (“not to get into the same situation as the southern countries”) -thoughts which are also slipping into the discourses of some anarchists and revolutionaries-, is the veil that hides the potentiality of inflaming the social war.
Every system that is going through a restructuring is as well passing through a period of relative instability. In order to heal, the human body makes its temperature rise, going through a period of fever and thereby killing the microbes. The social temperature is rising, because of reasons which for sure stay with one foot, maybe even two, inside of the restructuring foreseen and programmed by the engineers of capital. But every rising of the temperature is for anarchist revolutionaries as well a possibility. Not to direct and orient this instability towards a program, as is proposed by the dying left. Neither to calm things down and transform them into something “positive”, as proposed by the builders of alternatives. And neither in order to federate all of the revolted in the big anarchist mass organisation fatally inclined to put a brake on all free initiative, to destroy autonomy, to reproduce bureaucratic and political deficiencies. But to pour oil on the fire making the conflict reach past a certain limit after which the events can go out of control.
The state is not blind and is well aware of this possibility. Bearing in mind that the classical forms of political mediation are becoming less and less apt at preserving the established order, the state is obliged to enlarge and reinforce its repressive arsenal. A common logic is at work inside of the European space, translating itself according to local context into vast programs of constructing prisons, closed migrant centres, specific detention structures as psychiatry, as well as renovating and extending existing prisons, massively introducing diffuse detention in the form of electronic and technological control. But if mass detention has always been an important weapon of the state to deal with social troubles in the heart of a society of industrial exploitation, it is far from the only one. The repressive restructuring can as well be felt in the extension of the measures of control and surveillance, in the increasingly vast application of technologies to manage, control, repress and contain the human masses, the militarisation of the borders, the vast investments into research, private and public, linked to security and defence, the redefinition of the judicial and policing apparatus as well as the formation of a European police to help the local forces of order in case of trouble and the counterinsurgency training of police. In this way the restructuring seems to advance towards an integration of the different aspects of repression and control. As the border between inside and outside always becomes more blurry, the differences are also fading between military management and police repression, in between counter insurgency tactics and contemporary urbanism, in between the control at the borders and the control on the axes of transport. It goes without saying that this restructuring doesn’t forget about the enemies of authority, spinning tight webs of surveillance around revolutionaries, introducing special regimes in the prisons destined for them and complicating revolutionary action on every level, but it is important to understand that repression is aiming at all of the exploited and oppressed.
For this reasons we want to launch an international proposal. If the ongoing restructuring involves all aspects of society (economic, political, social, cultural), we think that the advancements made on the repressive field open up important possibilities for revolutionary intervention. These advancements are actually exemplary for the road that power is taking, and they are programmed and realized according to a counter insurgency logic adapted to the interests of capital and state: the model of social democracy, submitting all subversive and wild spirits, is being replaced by the model of the open air prison.
Concerning the possibility of a revolutionary imagination and an anarchist practice we think that progress of domination is rather than producing contradictions which would lead to an inevitable collapse generating more control, more massacre, more genocide, more terror, and therefore we think that no occasion to launch an assault should be neglected. Waiting is only in the interest of our enemy, which is programming an increasingly domesticated future inside of its laboratories and its research centres. In other words: it certainly is more imaginable to destroy a prison under construction than to destroy one that is in function, and this counts for all of the advancements of domination.
An international proposal
If, as we said, the details of this restructuring vary according to the differing contexts, and therefore modify the axes of intervention, the logic at work is the same everywhere and so the conditions are present to imagine struggles and interventions which attack this logic, in different places and in different ways. But apart from the analysis of the current conditions, the launch of this international proposal of a struggle against the repressive restructuring requires a much more important element, namely some specifications of the characteristics of the initiatives of the struggle.
The characteristics of this international proposition are the following:
Insurrectional
We consider that the struggles and fights against the construction of new prisons, against the security and military industry, the implantation of systems of control and surveillance, the increasing scientific research concerning the protection of the established order, the international collaboration between states, should be insurrectional:
A. This restructuring is a social question, a problem that touches the existing social relations based upon authority and exploitation, the insurrectional initiatives inscribe themselves in a perspective of subversion of these social relations which are the foundations and the object of this restructuring.
B. They put into practice the insurrectional method, which is self organisation, attack and permanent conflictuality, considering these to be the best way to create the material and mental conditions to reach the destruction of the enemy's goals. It is based on the multiplicity of anarchist practice, putting forward the autonomy of action and free initiative as propulsive elements of all struggles' dynamic.
C. This method is not uniformed and nor is it a recipe. It can have the perspective of a specific struggle against the construction of a new prison, but can also take the form of a practical and immediate critique of the structures and people that enable this repressive restructuring. On the other hand, it is always going towards destruction and not towards reform, the gradual transformation or the converting of spaces into alternative islands in an ocean of statist horror.
D. Rather than waiting or cherishing the illusion of quantity, the insurrectional method bases itself on the quality of the struggle or the revolutionary intervention, meaning on its theoretical and practical capacity to undermine the foundations of the enemy and to attack him. This is where it differs with the – to our opinion at least obsolete - syndicalist or assistentialist methods, principally based on the defence of the interests of a certain social category or class
Informal
At an organisational level, we think that informality and informal organisation correspond most closely to this proposal, and more generally to the insurrectional antiauthoritarian struggle. As a consequence: no congresses, no programs, no bureaucracy, no delegation or spokesmen.
This international proposal doesn’t aim at the creation of some organisation, but at the opening of spaces of exchange, of mutual knowledge and debate. We won’t doubt this will permit a better knowledge of what is going on elsewhere, creating the conditions for interventions considered in the perspective of international solidarity and common struggle, to give birth to temporary coordination between different struggles and fights, to deepen the informality out of which, according to affinities and projects, create initiatives. In this way, through the mutual knowledge of the projects of struggle, this international proposal aims at stimulating “organisational occasions”, not with the aim of a growth in quantity but of the quality of revolutionary intervention.
International
We think that no act, no struggle, no combat has only a local dimension, and even more so, that the states have a big interest in limiting the space to manage it more easily. If the restructuring is operating according to the same logic and following similar models inside of the European Union, we think that the fight against the repressive restructuring can and must be fought at an international level, doubtless with differences in intensity and with different modes. Besides that we are also convinced of the fact that the creation of spaces of international struggle will reinforce the different struggles which are taking place in a specific context.
... to go where?
If everyone has off course some ideas in mind concerning where a proposal such as this one could lead to, it seems nevertheless sure that this will take up different forms and that the degrees of exchange and cooperation across borders and between different struggles and fights will vary. We are absolutely not talking about creating a uniform intervention, but on the contrary about promoting the rise of a multiplicity of spaces of reflection or exchange. So we invite the comrades interested by this proposal to discuss around them and to contribute with more precise analyses, thoughts and criticism.
If in the past there have been similar experiences and attempts, with positive and negative aspects, we think that facing the ongoing restructuring and taking into consideration that there are struggles and fights on this terrain going on in different regions of Europe (against the construction of new prisons, against the introduction of new regimes, against technology of control, military bases, closed migrant centres,...), this proposal could strengthen the existing dynamics of struggle and contribute to birthing new ones.
What we want is to think, to experiment and to put into practice the methods of insurrectional struggle, and at an international level.