Full list of texts

This book is about living in hiding. It pierces the darkness and leaps into the secrecy of the incognito, a parallel dimension in which even what could be said often is not. Out of excess of tact, fear or because one thinks it is not relevant. Or, in certain milieux and in the worst cases, due to mere political tactics. But, even at a glance, the world of clandestine people is not a desert land; on the contrary it is populated by living beings, experiences and ideas that are very close to ours, in both the most miserable and the most fascinating aspects of our lives, close to our most ardent desires and passionate daydreams.

Behind every aspect of anarchist insurrectionalist theory there is a project. I do not mean a lifeless picture complete in every detail, but a sufficiently identifiable project far beyond these pages and the many others that I have written on this tormented subject in my lifetime. Without taking this into account no analytical explanation will do much, it would risk remaining what it is, a set of words claiming to contest reality, an incongruously idealist claim. The fat plants of classical German philosophy have done all possible damage with their enticing stings, I hope that these are now no more than mere decoys.

If we refuse to let our lives be organised by others we must have the capacity to organise ourselves, that is, we must be able to ‘put together the elements necessary to act as a coherent functioning whole’. For anarchists, individuals who ardently desire the elimination of every trace of tyranny and domestication, this has been experimented in a myriad of forms according to prevailing social and economic conditions, and marked by each one’s particular concept of wholeness.

As G8 summits have become annual appointments attended by thousands of demonstrators from all over the world, this article presents a few points of reflection on how the struggle against power can be really effective: do the protests carried out during the big events set by the leaders of the world bring any real attack on power? Do they really express solidarity to the oppressed? Do they really pose any significant obstacle to the destruction of the planet towards which we are all heading?

Once again in history Anarchism is singled out by every reactionary force as its main enemy. World Governments, moving closer together against the common threat of the common people, fear a socialism unfettered by government ties, a class struggle without the limitations imposed by the parliamentary game, a working class without a leadership that aims at imposing authority either by a new dictatorship or by bourgeois parliamentarianism.

Laudelino spent 25 years in prison between October 1980 and August 2004. Of those 25 years, he spent 13 in isolation. He inaugurated the archive for internal prisoners under special observation in the FIES, in 1991.

No one at all capable of an intense conscious inner life need ever hope to escape mental anguish and suffering. Sorrow and often despair over the so-called eternal fitness of things are the most persistent companions of our life. But they do not come upon us from the outside, through the evil deeds of particularly evil people. They are conditioned in our very being; indeed, they are interwoven through a thousand tender and coarse threads with our existence.

We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the rule of a law, which regulates every event in life—our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship—that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves.

The old work ethic has disappeared along with the massive obsolete structures of capital which required a permanent army of producers, yet work still has far more implications than mere survival. Millions of people still compete for the privilege of turning up day after day, year after year, to surrender body and soul in exchange for a wage. The alternative: to encounter one’s real desires and create the means required to realise them, could present some surprises and lead to undreamed choices. A job, boring or arduous as it might be, is the easy way out. It gives structure to our day and puts order in our expectations, giving us just enough in our pockets to acquire instant sublimation and quell any sudden surge of hatred towards what is stealing our time and our lives.