Posted on CrimethInc
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So do we—a total break with domination and hierarchy in all their forms, involving an armed uprising if need be. Until that’s possible, we’ll settle for recurring clashes in which to develop our skills, find comrades, and emphasize the gulf between ourselves and our oppressors.
But how do we bring about these confrontations? How do we ensure that they strengthen us more than our enemies? What pitfalls await us on this road? And what else do we have to do to make our efforts effective?
Over the past few years, a small current has gained visibility in US anarchist circles prioritizing the themes of insurrection and social conflict. Like any ideological milieu, it’s a lot more diverse than it appears from a distance. Some strains emphasize confrontation for its own sake, rather than as a means of achieving reforms; others frame revolt as a means of building the power of the oppressed outside static organizations. The common thread is that all are critical of formal institutions and focus on attack as their central theme.
How effective are these strategies at achieving their professed goals? To answer this question, we can’t simply study insurrectionist theory in a vacuum; we have to look at the activities associated with it in the US context. In practice, it’s not always easy to tell where strategic considerations leave off and matters of emotional and psychological temperament begin; in this case, both are relevant. Much of what we will discuss below is not so much a matter of what insurrectionists say but of what they do.
This subject is of particular interest to us because we are insurrectionists of a sort, whether or not we use that adjective. For well over a decade, we’ve focused on confrontational struggle based in individual initiative, informal networks, and ad hoc organization. Starting with shoplifting and vandalism and working up to streetfighting and clandestine direct action, we’ve learned the advantages and disadvantages of this approach on our own skin. One is always most critical of what is closest to one’s heart: most eager to see it succeed, and most concerned about potential errors.
In some ways, this is a very old line of thinking—perhaps older than some of its adherents realize. One genealogy traces its origins to the dispute between Marx and Bakunin over the organizational forms of the Paris Commune. Some insurrectionists see precedents in the propaganda of the deed carried out by Nineteenth-century assassins and the illegalism associated with Jules Bonnot and his fellow bank robbers. We can trace the lineage of current insurrectionist theory from Errico Malatesta and Luigi Galleani through the works of Alfredo Bonanno, Jean Weir, and others who attempted to distill lessons from the social struggles of the 1960s and ’70s.
At the same time, the latest wave of insurrectionist ideas is something of a new phenomenon in the US, where the high turnover rate in most anarchist communities often dooms them to relearn the same lessons over and over. One can hardly blame the new generations for this—if anything, the older generations are to blame for dropping out or refusing to communicate. Seasoned anarchists have to be especially cautious not to be dismissive and hostile about the enthusiasms of their young comrades. Ten years ago, we were the upstarts whose new energy and muddled ideas provoked all the testy veterans; we were able to learn from some of their criticisms, no thanks to them, but their disdain contributed to our defensiveness and their marginalization. If we accept roles on the opposite side of this dynamic now, we may doom those who come after us to repeat the same pattern.
In that spirit, let’s start with the advantages of insurrection as a point of departure.
Starting from Revolt…
“Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise in struggle. It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection, although analysis and discussion have a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.”
-“Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack,” in Do or Die #10
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The answer is always no.
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Many organizations and movements, including some that are explicitly anarchist, promise to challenge the powers that be as soon as the groundwork has been prepared; but the world is always changing, and one may lay a foundation only to discover that the terrain has shifted. Once one gets used to waiting, even if it is only a matter of needing to prepare a little more, it is always easier to go on waiting. Revolution, like parenthood and everything else momentous in life, is something one can never be adequately prepared for.
Often, this preparation is framed in terms of the need to do more outreach and education. But until there is a clash, until the lines are drawn, there is nothing to talk about. Most people tend to remain aloof from theoretical discussions, but when something is happening, when the stakes are high and they can see concrete differences between opposing sides, they will take a stand. In forcing such ruptures, one can compel those who hide authoritarian and capitalist allegiances to show their true colors, while offering everyone else the opportunity to form other allegiances.
Sometimes one has to aim beyond the target in order to strike it. Perhaps in the pacified US, some have to decry all compromise and deliberation to resist co-optation and paralysis. By interrupting the apparent consensus and social peace, confrontations make injustice visible and legitimize the rage others feel as well. When the fog of apparently universal submission is dispelled, those who wish to fight can finally find each other—and readiness to fight is a better basis for allegiance than merely ideological agreement.
The form of one’s immediate actions should match one’s long-term goals. Theoretical elaborations give rise to more of the same. Focusing on winning reforms tends to contribute to the development of reformist logic. If you want to destroy all forms of domination, it’s best to confront them all from the outset.
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… and Spreading to Resistance
“Insurrectionary anarchism, therefore, places particular importance on the circulation and spread of action, not managed revolt, for no army or police force is able to control the generalised circulation of such autonomous activity . . . What the system is afraid of is not just these acts of sabotage themselves, but also them spreading socially.” -ibid.
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Every action that dispels the illusions of order and resignation
is a spell cast for more of the same.
Almost all strains of insurrectionist thought emphasize the importance of revolt spreading. This is one of the best standards, then, by which to evaluate insurrectionist efforts.
If both postponement and action tend to give rise to more of the same, then in acting oneself, one extends an invitation to others. This is an argument for carrying out actions that others can easily emulate, in hopes that they will catch on.
That’s the idea, anyway. Sometimes, of course, anarchists carry out an action others could easily emulate, but no one does. What other factors enable an action to inspire more actions?
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Even if the Time Is Not Ripe
“We are insurrectionalist anarchists… because rather than wait, we have decided to proceed to action, even if the time is not ripe.” -Alfredo Bonanno, The Insurrectional Project
It is an article of faith among most insurrectionists that one should not wait for the appropriate material conditions, but should attack immediately. As a defense against the sort of postponement described above, this makes perfect sense; as a moral obligation or an axiom to govern every decision, it can be dangerously counterproductive.
Insurrectionist theory allows for this, but in practice insurrectionists do not always make the wisest choices. This is one of the cases in which it can be difficult to differentiate between insurrectionism as a program with concrete goals and insurrectionism as a matter of disposition. To react immediately against oppression without thought for the consequences is beautiful, and perhaps a way to recover one’s humanity in a desensitizing world—but it is not always strategic.
This does not stop some from posing it as strategic. People who grew up in a society founded on Christian notions of moral law often argue for their own preferences as universally valid prescriptions. It’s surprising how judgmental people who claim to reject morality can be!
So is insurrectionism a religion, or a strategy? If it is a religion, its precepts are timeless and unconditional: categorical imperatives. If, on the other hand, it is a strategy, developed under specific conditions, we should think hard about how those conditions might be different from ours, and how we should adjust it accordingly.
When Bonanno originally formulated his analysis in the 1970s, Italy was in the midst of an upheaval that threatened the entire social order; authoritarian and anti-authoritarian currents intermingled and contended in the course of struggling against the government. He was not making an argument for precipitating clashes where there were none so much as proposing an organizational strategy to ensure that ongoing clashes would promote liberty and autonomy. Contemporary US anarchists reading texts such as Armed Joy do not always understand this, interpreting them instead as a challenge to escalate tactics on a personal basis.
Of course, in a society based on competition and exploitation, there are always clashes, however subtle. One doesn’t have to precipitate new ones; it is enough to fight where one stands. Unfortunately, the insurrectionist imagination is often limited by the most well-known models for attack. Imagine an insurrectionist who goes to work or school during the week but smashes bank windows on the weekends—hesitating to create a rupture in the fabric of her own daily life while willingly risking felonies to destroy things outside it. If such a lifestyle could make sense, it is an admission that one must still choose carefully when and how to “proceed to action.” We’re not convinced it does make sense, but that doesn’t mean the insurrectionist in question would be better off immediately smashing the windows in her own workplace.
If “proceeding to action even if the time is not ripe” doesn’t mean picking up the closest heavy object and attacking the nearest person in a uniform, what does it mean? How do we decide what kinds of action are most worthwhile?
On Mayday, several dozen masked hoodlums rampage through an upscale shopping district in downtown San Francisco, smashing windows and setting off fireworks. Afterwards an anonymous statement on Indymedia reads, in part:
“De Beers, Prada, Coach, Tumi, Wells Fargo, Longchamp, Macy’s, Armani, Crate and Barrel, Montblanc, Urban Outfitters and Guess were all targeted for all kinds of boring ass political shit, but primarily because fuck them. Exploitation is the norm of economic activity, not the exception. We see no need to reveal our laundry list of grievances and solidarity.”
Much has changed since the communiqué from the ACME collective following the black bloc at the WTO protests in Seattle. In 1999, the ACME statement was widely read and debated, influencing the politics of a new generation that saw more sense in opposing corporate power with crowbars than with signs or lockboxes. A decade later, black-clad anarchists are miraculously still finding ways to smash windows, despite ever-increasing surveillance and repression—but the communiqué, if not the action itself, seems to be directed only to those who understand and approve of the tactic.
Elsewhere in the US, local media outlets report that a smaller number of “suspected anarchists” have smashed the windows of four downtown businesses. Over the preceding years, such actions have occurred repeatedly in this city, causing much merriment among radicals and resulting in no serious convictions. But immediately afterwards, police arrest a young man, alleging that his car was seen leaving the scene of the vandalism. He is released without charges, but rumors circulate of investigations, grand juries, trouble on the horizon. Local anarchists are already facing felony charges from actions in other cities, and the strain is starting to take its toll.
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Against Subculture
“Particularly to be avoided are the cultural and activist circles… All milieus are counter-revolutionary because they are only concerned with the preservation of their sad comfort.” =The Coming Insurrection
Historically, insurrectionist anarchism has centered around a rejection of static organizational structures. In the US, where long-standing anarchist organizations are not particularly common or powerful, it has recently come to be framed more as a reaction against cultural factors. Some insurrectionists conceptualize their position as a break with what they consider to be hopelessly passive and assimilated anarchist subcultures—bicycling as an end in itself, potlucks that never end in streetfighting, and so on. Some take this further, dismissing the very idea that subculture could have any radical potential.
What does it mean to dismiss subculture? Culture is as ubiquitous among human beings as language; you can challenge it, you can even destroy it, but you generate new culture in the process. In general, this dismissal does not seem to proceed from some mystical doctrine that we could escape culture per se, the way that John Zerzan preached a primitivist utopia without language, but rather from a reaction to the subcultural identifications of the preceding generation of anarchists. As explored in Rolling Thunder #8, by the time today’s young anarchists came of age, the punk scene that sired so many of their predecessors had come to be dominated by reactionary elements. Faced with this, rejecting one subculture was not enough—why not reject subculture itself?
Young insurrectionists are not the first to attempt this: one can find similar rhetoric in books like Days of War, Nights of Love. Before an idea wins many proponents, it’s easy to declare that it transcends subculture, as it is not incarnated in any particular social context. Once it gains adherents, however, things get more complicated. In all likelihood, the proponents will share subcultural reference points—how else would they have encountered the idea?—and failing this, they are bound to create common points of reference in the course of attempting to put the idea into practice. Culture is simply a matter of points of reference, and the more obscure they are, the more “subcultural”—in this regard, ideological insurrectionism is a significantly more subcultural current than, say, the vegan straightedge scene.
Actual insurrections can transcend subcultural boundaries in ways that theories do not, of course; likewise, cross-cultural spaces can sometimes create fertile ground for uprisings. There’s a lot to be said for forging bonds between different communities in struggle, demonstrating that resistance is not the sole province of any one demographic. Were it not for the homogeneity of most insurrectionist circles, it would be possible to read this criticism of subculture as an argument for cross-cultural spaces, rather than as an underhanded way to promote yet another new subculture. There is no such thing as a zone free of cultural identifiers—efforts to stay free of cultural limitations must begin by integrating multiple cultural contexts rather than pretending to be outside all of them.
Perhaps, like the authors of the aforementioned Days of War, some people have to espouse a grandiose opposition to culture itself just to feel entitled to get something new off the ground. But eventually, when that new something has gotten going and become subculturally identified, they will need a critique that acknowledges this—otherwise, they are bound to be quarantined and neutralized like their predecessors. Those who think they can discount culture entirely are trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater—an especially difficult project when you’re the baby.
This dispute about culture parallels the much older dispute between insurrectionists and anarchists who believe in building long-term institutions. The latter argue that insurrectionist criticism of institutions is founded on the notion that formal structures are inescapably hierarchical, but counter that this analysis provides insurrectionists with no tools to challenge the subtle hierarchies that develop in informal networks. Decrying authoritarian tendencies and cultural complacency in competing ideological milieus is no proof against falling prey to them oneself.
So, are all subcultures “only concerned with the preservation of their sad comfort”? Perhaps this is simply a matter of semantics, of calling social circles that are only concerned with preserving their comfort “milieus.” Is there a positive role that subculture could play in fomenting insurrections?
Let’s return to the question of how action proliferates. As pointed out above, simply doing things that “anyone else can do” is not itself enough to spread resistance. The premise of this approach is that others who share similar frustrations will see the actions and understand the strategy embodied in them, and that this alone will move them to action. But this takes for granted that the actions will be visible and the strategy comprehensible across cultural lines; it also disregards the ways that desire is determined by culture as well as class.
Many of the assassins who killed presidents and tsars over a century ago passionately believed that these actions would inspire the oppressed to rise up. Clandestine “armed struggle” groups have sometimes used the same logic. One common insurrectionist critique of these groups is that their actions are too specialized; but this does not explain why more easily reproducible tactics often fail to catch on. Another critique of armed groups is that they separate themselves from others so energy and ideas cease to flow; this seems more to the point. One could argue that the circulation of insurgent desires and values—essentially a cultural phenomenon—is as indispensable for the proliferation of revolt as gasoline is to a Molotov cocktail.
For example, over the past few years, North American anarchists have carried out clandestine attacks on ATMs, bank windows, and other targets; this is currently one of the best-known templates for insurrectionist activity. Such nighttime attacks don’t seem to have spread widely outside the anarchist subculture in most of the cities in which they have occurred, but they have given rise to copycat actions in other anarchist communities. This indicates the importance of a common cultural context—shared values, points of reference, and venues for communication. Acting sincerely can be contagious, but our actions are always modeled on the examples we know and driven by the values fostered by our communities.
People seem to be most likely to join revolts when doing so can help them meet their needs. But needs themselves are socially produced: nobody needed cell phones to maintain contact with their friends until a decade ago, for example, and countless indigenous communities chose resistance over all sorts of amenities until their lifeways were destroyed. The existing power structure is generally at least as capable as radicals are of offering opportunities to meet the needs it produces, whether through individual competition or institutional reforms. A real counterculture fosters needs that capitalism and democracy can never accommodate, such as the desire for human dignity.
Efforts to spread resistance must take this into account. Over the past half century, insurrectionists overseas have frequently been subculturally identified—for example, the Italian insurrectionist milieu of the 1980s and ’90s was based in a network of autonomous social centers. In criticizing long-term infrastructural projects and countercultural milieus, some US insurrectionists reveal that they are unaware of the context behind the overseas rioting that inspires them.
In response to the extravagant notion that we should jettison culture as a site for mobilizing resistance, we counterpose the project of building a culture of resistance, a space in which people of multiple cultural backgrounds can develop common reference points in order to attack hierarchy in all its forms.
Against Anarchist Identity
A variant on the rejection of subculture is the rejection of anarchism as an identity. This calls to mind another old question: should we organize specifically as anarchists, or are other approaches more likely to produce anarchy?
There is a lot to be said for resisting quarantine in closed circuits of the converted. Picture a molecule that bonds with other molecules by sharing electrons with them. If it has loose electrons, it is prone to creating new connections or disruptions; on the other hand, if all of its electrons are in stable bonds, it is unlikely to introduce new dynamics to the molecules around it. Similarly, anarchists who seclude themselves in the company of committed ideologues tend to become static and predictable, while those who limit their participation in explicitly anarchist circles to stay open to other relationships can sometimes catalyze waves of transformation.
At the same time, organizing on the basis of a social rather than ideological position—for example, as queer youth, as a neighborhood, or as working class people who like to break things—can be extremely challenging. Anyone who has worked in coalitions knows how hard it can be to accomplish anything in the face of massive internal differences in goals and values. This is true even without centralized decision-making—think of the instances when presumed comrades have pulled newspaper boxes back onto the sidewalk during street confrontations. Perhaps the best approach is to organize at some intersection of social position and ideology: for example, a gang who grew up together discovers anticapitalist resistance, and sets out to introduce the possibility to other gangs.
Often the ones at the forefront of clashes with the authorities are not self-identifying anarchists at all, while anarchists with carefully articulated political positions avoid conflict or even sabotage resistance. People adopt political stances for all sorts of reasons, and these stances frequently have nothing to do with how they actually conduct themselves. This phenomenon corroborates insurrectionist skepticism about the importance of ideological positions, but it also means that those who identify as insurrectionists are no more likely to practice what they preach than anyone else.
Despite the fact that avowed anarchism does not always correlate with active resistance, there’s no reason to believe struggles that are not identified as anarchist are any more likely to produce anarchic situations or relationships. If you’re opposed to all forms of oppression, you may as well say so from the outset, lest you leave an opening for authoritarians to hijack your efforts.
Not Just Insurrection, but Anarchist Insurrection
“‘Armed struggle’ is a strategy that could be put at the service of any project.” -At Daggers Drawn
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Fans of the LA Lakers celebrate a sports victory.
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In the US, where militant political conflict is rare, it’s tempting to assume that clashes with authority are inherently antiauthoritarian. Insurrectionist websites and magazines appropriate images from a wide variety of contexts; some hail all sorts of antisocial crime as manifestations of social war, without knowing the motivations of the protagonists. ([1] Assuming common cause with others of unknown political commitments on the basis of their apparently subversive actions is risky on multiple levels. The Situationists used the Watts riots to argue that their ideas were “already in everyone’s heads” at best, that was a stretch, and at worst a way to claim the right to speak for those who could only speak on their own behalf through action. We can celebrate rebellious actions from outside our communities, but meaningful alliances demand actual relationship
But rebellion and street violence are not necessarily anarchist. Resistance to oppressors is praiseworthy in itself, but much resistance takes place in support of other authoritarian powers. This is all too familiar in other parts of the world, where illegal violence on the part of fascists, paramilitaries, gangs, drug cartels, mafias, and authoritarian revolutionary movements is an essential aspect of domination. Aspiring authoritarians often take the lead in attacking reigning authorities precisely in order to absorb and co-opt popular unrest. Rioting per se is not always liberating—Kristallnacht was a riot too. Even if some participants have the purest intentions, insurrections can go any number of directions: remember what happened to the Russians following the insurrection of 1917, or the Iranians following the insurrection of 1978-79.
So anarchists must not only provoke confrontations, but also ensure that they contribute to a more horizontal and decentralized distribution of power. In this regard, glorifications of the superficial details of militant confrontation—black masks, Molotov cocktails, and so on—are largely beside the point, if not actively distracting. The flow of initiative among the rebels, the ways decisions are made and skills are shared, the bonds that develop between comrades: these are much more important. Likewise, one must strategize as to how social uprisings will contribute to long-term revolutionary momentum rather than simply enabling reactionary forces to consolidate power.
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Against Activism
A great deal has been said against activism: it is a specialized role that frames social change as the domain of experts; it is predicated on dialogue with the powers that be; it promotes inauthenticity and limits the scope of change. A lot of this is mere semantics—many people who do not deserve such accusations see themselves as activists. Some of it is projected class resentment: those who have time to mess around in everyone else’s business, “changing the world” rather than solving the problems of individualized survival, must have privileged access to resources, as the right wing has always alleged.
It’s not easy to distill the kernel of truth in this flood of vitriol, but one thing is certain: activism that does not explicitly challenge hierarchy fortifies it. Reformist struggles can win adjustments in the details of oppression, but they ultimately help the state maintain its legitimacy in the public eye—not only by giving it the chance to redress grievances, but by reinforcing the notion that the power to effect meaningful change lies in the hands of the authorities. It is better to struggle in such a way that people develop an awareness of their own capabilities outside all petitioning and bureaucracy. Reformist activism also tends to build up internal hierarchies: as if by chance, the best negotiators and media liaisons often turn out to be college-educated white people with good skin and conciliatory tones. Of course, certain insurrectionist practices may simply build up hierarchies according to different criteria.
Sustaining Confrontations
Unless it provides for the practical needs of the participants, insurrectionism is just an expensive hobby: activism with felonycharges and a smaller base of support.
The other lesson we can derive from a close study of activism is the importance of not overextending. Some activities produce more energy and resources than they consume; others cost more than they produce. Many activist projects ultimately founder because they fail to recoup the resources invested in them: one cannot carry on an exhausting undertaking indefinitely without deriving the wherewithal for it from somewhere. Of course, these resources can take a wide variety of forms: a Books to Prisoners group may consume a great deal of labor hours, but persist so long as the social connections it provides are rewarding; traveling around the country to participate in riots may be expensive in terms of gas and bail money, but if it is exciting and empowering enough, the participants will come up with the cash somehow. On the other hand, if a million dollars must be raised for court costs following every demonstration, this may prove prohibitive, unless each demonstration wins new allies with deep pockets.
Activities that cost more resources than they produce are not necessarily bad, but you have to strategize accordingly if you wish to participate in them. Ironically, despite insurrectionist hostility to activism, strategies that focus on confrontation are often at least as costly in this regard as traditional activist organizing. In dismissing goal-oriented struggles in favor of confrontation for its own sake, some US insurrectionists set themselves up for burnout. Symbolic clashes can help develop the capacity to fight for more concrete objectives, but not if they are so costly that they drain their social base out of existence. Breaking windows is a dead end unless it helps to generate a widespread social movement. (t is better to loot than to shoplift, to ambush than to snipe, to walk out than to phone in a bomb threat, to strike than to call in sick, to riot than to vandalize . . . Increasingly collective and coordinated acts against this world of coercion and isolation aren’t solely a matter of effectivity, but equally a matter of sociality—of community and fun.” -War on Misery #3—or at least provides access to enough of the commodities behind the windows to fund the vandals’ eventual court cases.
The most sustainable forms of confrontation seize resources which can then be employed in further struggle. The classic example of this is the European squatting movement of thirty years ago, in which the occupied buildings were used as staging areas for further social struggles. This approach supersedes both self-defeating reformist activism and self-destructive insurrectionist dogma. Unless it provides for the practical needs of the participants, insurrectionism is just an expensive hobby: activism with felony charges and a smaller base of support. Insurrectionists of other eras have recognized this and robbed banks rather than simply smashing their windows.
Revenge is itself a need, but it is hardly the only need. People who face enough challenges just getting by will not be much more attracted to gratuitous vandalism than they are to activism that has nothing to do with their daily lives; on the other hand, tactics that enable them to sustain themselves may be more appealing. Insurrectionists who are frustrated with the lifestyle-oriented anarchism of those they perceive as “subcultural” actually stand to learn a lot from them. The latter remain involved in their version of anarchist community not because of moral or ideological imperatives, but because it sustains them. For insurrection to spread, it must do the same.
Continue Reading Full Story: Insurrection
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