Anarchist Pamphlets

Against the State. Well? For an anarchist these words are clear and simple, a prerequisite of anarchy you might say. But what if, rounded off with ‘and its massacres’, they are plastered on colossal city walls in posters and echoed forcefully in the shadow of a church by a stirring old man with a beard, microphone in hand? Who is this individual who dares bare his soul to the respectable citizens of Trieste?

After all, isn’t the great desire of each one of us to find ourselves prepared when the next revolt breaks out? What better then than to contribute to making these revolts spread wherever they start up, as well as revealing the premonitory signs of rage and hatred of exploitation in all its forms, concretely, now?

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.

What is anarchism? It might seem strange that I should take up such a problem in this situation as I know for certain that there are many anarchists here, because I know them personally. And if nothing else, anarchists should at least know what anarchism is.

The Italian State had taken care to manage the vacuum left by the broken revolutionary movement long before revolutionaries started thinking about it. So anyone who starts shouting that any means are valid in order to free comrades from prison, should not complain afterwards that they find themselves standing alongside docile creatures who are no more than tools in the hands of power.

The appeal trial in Rome in which anarchists were accused of belonging to a clandestine armed organisation has concluded with higher sentences than those meted out on the previous occasion. That was in the logic of things. In my case I was sentenced to six years, i.e. an increase of two and a half years for a robbery in Rome which, needless to say, I know nothing about. If on the one hand the fact that there was no sentence for ‘armed organisation’ or ‘terrorism’ — to use the terms of the law — can be considered a defeat for the dogged zeal of general prosecutor Marini, the above-mentioned personage has every reason to feel pleased concerning the diatribes that this trial has led to within the anarchist movement.

Why on earth did these dear children shoot Montanelli in the legs? Wouldn’t it have been better to have shot him in the mouth? Of course it would. But it would also have been heavier. More vindictive and sombre. To lame a beast like that can have a deeper, more meaningful side to it that goes beyond revenge, beyond punishing him for his responsibility—fascist journalist and bosses’ lackey that he is.

One part of this society has every interest in continuing to rule, the other in it all collapsing as soon as possible. Deciding which side one is on is the first step. But resignation, the basis of agreement between the parts (improvers of the existent and its false critics) is everywhere, even in our own lives — the authentic place of the social war — in our desires and resoluteness, just as in our little daily submissions. With all this it is necessary to draw daggers, to finally draw daggers with life.

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.

In our time when the “great dusk” of bourgeois democratic society that is heralded in this text seems to have become an eternal dusk making the entire world a dull grey nightmare of survival, Novatore’s call to a destructive revolution based on great passions and ideas, on the dreams and desires of a mighty and strong-willed “I” seems more necessary than ever if we are to move beyond this pathetic swamp of mediocrity. Of course, no revolution can go very far without the insurrection of the exploited against their condition. But this is precisely the point: when the proletarians rise up against their proletarianization, this means taking their revolt beyond the demand for full bellies to the active appropriation of full lives.