Full list of texts

Rigor and precision have finally disappeared from the field of human procrastination. With the recognition that a strictly organisational perspective is not enough to solve the dilemma of ‘what is to be done’, the need for order and security has transferred itself to the field of desire. A last stronghold built in fret and fury, it has established a bridgehead for the final battle. Desire is sacred and inviolable. It is what we hold in our hearts, child of our instincts and mother of our dreams. We can count on it, it will never betray us.

The human’s true weapon is its hand. The human is an animal that nature has selected with a hand whose thumb is opposite the other fingers. An animal that grasps, wants to take, hold, make its own.

Introductory talk at the Days of Informal Anarchy, International Symposium, Mexico D.F., 27, 28, 29 December, 2013.

Anarchists have tended to shy away from the problem of the national liberation struggle or rejected it entirely because of their internationalist principles. If internationalism is not to be merely meaningless rhetoric, it must imply solidarity between the proletariat of different countries or nations. This is a concrete term. When there is a revolution, it will be as it has been in the past, in a precise geographical area. How much it remains there will be directly linked to the extent of that internationalism, both in terms of solidarity and of the spreading of the revolution itself.

The book we are presenting here is an interesting attempt by Osvaldo Bayer to reconstruct the activities of the Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni in Argentina in the 1920’s. It also bears all the consequences of such a difficult task undertaken with the thorough but limited tools of the journalist.

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.

Anarchists are not slaves to number but continue to act against power even when the class clash is at a low level in the mass. Anarchist action should not therefore aim at organising and defending the whole of the class of the exploited in one vast organisation to see the struggle from beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle and carry them through to their conclusion of attack.

At the risk of passing as a simpleton, I confess that I would never have believed it possible that Socialists—even Social Democrats—would applaud and voluntarily take part, either on the side of the Germans or on the Allies, in a war like the one that is at present devastating Europe. But what is there to say when the same is done by Anarchists—not numerous, it is true, but having amongst them comrades whom we love and respect most?

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.