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The new generation booed Stalinist Bolshevism off the stage while enthusiastically cheering Maoism as the new star of genuine communism. Yet how critical was the inquiring mind of our contemporary Castro-Guevara-and Mao Tse-tung enthusiast?

The years covered by this pamphlet mark an important period for the whole of the movement against capital. It was at this time that the antagonist movement in Italy finally shed all its taboos concerning destruction, violence and the use of arms against the class enemy.

Facerias was one of those men that it almost comes naturally to write a biography about. All the essential elements of the legendary anarchist are to be found in his actions, his life as a whole and his death: the vindicator who rises up in struggle against the class enemy and refuses to accept any compromise. And this is certainly one way to read the volume we are presenting here, the first and, if you like, the least useful one.

This is not the first time we find ourselves faced with a similar dilemma. How can we transcend the limitation of means? Reach out beyond the constriction of roles? Encounter those who have begun their individual insurrection but find their path obstructed by a pile of blunt instruments? Those who have decided to venture into the abyss and have become exigent, want to invent their own methods, draw them forth from the conditions they are constrained to live in against their will, now, as the bosses’ calendar indicates the arrival of the third millennium. Those who want to dance with life in more than fleeting encounters, in the adventure of discovery that illuminates destruction in all its possibilities.

We are not the only ones facing the level of the clash. As anarchists we can have all the illusions we like, illusions of purity and being a voice in the desert, but sooner or later we must concede that we are in company, bad company.

Let us take heart. If hard times are ahead of us we know how we shall face them. It is precisely in these times that the sheep discard their wolves’ clothing. The time has come to put the chatter aside, and fight. Let us take courage and go ahead. And then, because as always the best form of defence is attack, let us begin by attacking first. There is no lack of objectives. May the bosses and their servants feel how hard it can become to carry on their jobs as exploiters.

The question always before anarchists is how to act in the present moment of struggle against capitalism and the state. As new forms of social struggles are becoming more clearly understood, this question becomes even more important. In order to answer these questions we have to clarify the relationship between anarchists and the wider social movement of the exploited and the nature of that movement itself.

Why take the trouble to criticize the theses of Empire, when reality has so generously seen to it? Certainly not because it is a successful book, talked about in universities and on television. Discussions of opinion don’t interest us. We criticize the ideas of Negri (and Hardt) because they are a practical force, since they represent the most lucid version of the program of the left-wing of capital today and influence a movement — the “disobbedienti” — capable of supporting such a program. “Disobedient” politics, in fact, represents an excellent terrain of experimentation for the democracy of the future.

This talk at the anarchist conference on Malatesta in Naples, December 2003, is a perfect example of how any attempt to justify or condemn the concept of revolutionary violence is a failure from the outset. Revolutionary violence has no need of my justification and cannot be affected by any kind of condemnation, even if it comes from the ranks of the anarchists themselves.

Putting aside for the time being the problems raised by the popular insurrection in China, limiting ourselves to as objective as possible an analysis of the insurrectional processes in course of development in various countries in Eastern Europe and the borders of the Soviet empire, we must make one further distinction right away.