Debate & Comments

 

The text “Reproducibility, propagation of attack against
power and some related points” coming from Mexico
raises, in my opinion, important issues about anarchist
action. The debate is certainly not new and has always
accompanied the revolutionary movements through
their tumultuous history. How to propagate direct action
and attack while avoiding that these practices will be
locked up in the cage of an Organization, of a Group, in
structures which, over time, stiffen and eventually erect,
beyond the will that can animate those who are part of it,
obstacles to this propagation of the attack. The Mexican
comrades pointed clearly to its obstacles: fetishism of
the instrument of attack, delegation, centralization, the
pursuit of representativeness, the pursuit of hegemony.
And indeed, it is not enough to be an anarchist to avoid
falling into such traps.

I would like to take advantage of the space of discus-
sion opened by this contribution of Mexican comrades
to deepen some points. The first is, in my opinion, repro-
ducibility, which the Mexican comrades describe as the
fact that “acts of sabotage are carried out with means
easy to devise, to use, to obtain and therefore within
reach of and available to anyone”. I can only agree with
this definition, while thinking that it also lacks some-
thing. For, in my opinion, reproducibility is not an invari-
able recipe for the insurrectionary anarchist struggle.
Not all acts, not all attacks are reproducible, which does
not negate the need to nevertheless realize them. Cer-

The reproducibility of
attack and informal
organization

 

October 2016 - Belgium

tain interventions of anarchists may have a specificity,
whilst being totally linked to the social conflict, which
does not allow us to speak of “reproducibility”. We think
of certain sabotage actions, precise and not necessarily
“easy” to carry out, or of attacks that target specific pro-
tagonists of power. What I mean is that the idea of re-
producibility can not cover the whole range of anarchist
action. Sometimes we are going to have to do things that
are not reproducible, which might very well not be much
appreciated or understood by “the exploited”, but which
contribute just as much to the insurrectional perspec-
tive. The action of active minorities can aim at repro-
ducibility, may stimulate the spread of attack, but, and
this seems paradoxical but is not, on reflection, not at
all, can also take upon itself, and only upon itself, to do
certain things that must be done to prepare the ground,
to remove obstacles, to spark off the rupture.

Having said that, I therefore believe that reproducibility,
rather than being a principle that should guide insur-
rectional action, is a method of insurrectional struggle.
And the method takes its meaning inside a project of
struggle. The method also already contains the pur-
pose of the struggle. One can not fight authority with
authoritarian forms of organization. Reproducibility as
a method then requires not only the identification and
use of tools within reach of all, but also a whole work of
identification of the enemy. Because reproducibility is
only possible when we are able to identify a multiplicity
of small power structures scattered over the territory.
This dissemination is also a necessary condition for
reproducibility. I find it difficult to imagine how a real
propagation of sabotage can be achieved if, for example,
in the struggle against the construction of a high-voltage
line, the comrades identify only the institution that has
financed the construction as the target of the struggle.
Reproducibility becomes possible when, precisely, the
view shifts and identifies the hundreds of pylons, scat-
tered along the new line, as potential targets for sabo-
tage. I realize that this is a somewhat banal and simple
example, but I think it allows us to grasp the need to
consider reproducibility, and therefore diffuse attack, as
an integral part of a project of struggle, And the proj-
ect, in turn, is composed of many elements (methods,
perspectives, organizational proposals or occasions,
knowledge, analyzes,...).

This brings me to another point that I wanted to touch,
and which touches on the eternal question of informal
organization and of which, under no pretext, should we
get tired, trying to deepen its theoretical and practical
knowledge. If I share the ideas evoked in the text of the
Mexican comrades in relation to the autonomy of action
of the individual, the search of affinity, the notion of infor-
mality, I believe on the other hand I diverge on one point,
and it is when they say “when we speak of informality, we
do not only speak of it as an organizational method of the
anarchist struggle, we speak of it as a way in which the in-
dividual acquires an absolute autonomy”. | do not believe
that informal organization (that is, coordination between
affinity groups for a specific, defined and temporary pur-
pose, and the possibility of this coordination acting within
the self-organization of the exploited in struggle and in-
termingling without losing oneself) necessarily implies
“the absolute autonomy of the individual.” Perhaps it is
a semantic question, but I think that if] engage in a proj-
ect of struggle, together with my affinities, and in addi-
tion, we coordinate with other affinity groups, I can not
consider myself to be “absolutely autonomous”. On the
contrary, we make agreements, make commitments and I
do not think that I can appreciate very much the one who
makes a commitment to then, all of a sudden, withdraw
this commitment. Otherwise, it’s not an informal “orga-
nization”, it’s just an informal milieu. When one forms
an organization (obviously informal), it is precisely to go
further than the sum of individual capacities. Such an or-
ganization must, in my view, always stimulate maximum
autonomy of action of individuals and affinity groups, but
it can not be absolute since it is defined by the purpose of
the organization. If I speak of informal organization, it is
to indicate a form of organization based on affinity, which
has a specific and temporary purpose which does not rep-
resent the “anarchist movement” and does not aspire to a
representativeness of anything, but which is only directed
towards the insurrectional aim. In a way, it is “the orga-
nization of tasks”.

Again, we must be careful, | think. For the utterly neces-
sary criticism of “specialization” does not mean that our

|24

 

condition for giving oneself, at a certain moment and
with a certain aim, an informal organization is that ev-
erybody does everything at the same time. I’m afraid
it’s just unimaginable. The organization will allow us to
put together, within a project, the different knowledge,
capacities and desires that exist. Criticism of roles is
important because it emphasizes that the journey of
development, acquisition of knowledge, search for af-
finity, deepening of ideas is a journey “for life”, that it
is a permanent challenge, that our individuality can not
be enclosed in an identity with the use of this or that
tool (the writer, the saboteur, the robber, the propagan-
dist,...). And it is not that this permanent quest stops
once one enters into an informal organization, but... the
organization of tasks does not mean to me that we all
do the same at the same time. While avoiding delega-
tion, it is in a coordination that one group will propose
to take care of this, another one of that, another will
provide support, etc. And every thing requires precise
knowledge, often matured through reflections, analyzes,
experiments, encounters, occasions,... To put it frankly:
it is not because we refuse specialization that when a
group to fire is needed to cover an action that one will
choose the one who never held a firearm in its hands
to take the responsibility. That said, to try to counter-
balance a little what I have just said and that may be
taken as a reduction of the informal organization to a
technical question: “Informal organization is not simply
a functional answer to a practical question. It is not the
magic word able to open all doors, nor is it one of the
many keys available in the toolbox. To deny its technical
role would be a hypocrisy, as much so to lessen the ethi-
cal dimension. It could be defined as the organization of
those who do not have and do not want an Organization
— as the preparation, predisposition and coordination of
those who are faced with the practical problems of ac-
tion, not only in the immediate present, but also in the
future, beyond and against any politics. Because being
alien to calculation does not mean forgetting the perspec-
tive, just as being sensitive to intoxication does not mean
indulging in bliss.”

Finally, one last thing I wanted to say is that the propa-
gation of attack also requires making available and
sharing knowledge of the instruments of attack. And
how can we do that? There are examples in the past
where in the revolutionary journals recipes and tech-
niques of sabotage were published, commented upon
and discussed. There were also technical studies that
detailed certain structures of the enemy, such as for ex-
ample an electric transformer, railways or a gas station.
Today, we still need to create these spaces for knowl-
edge sharing, especially when we think of all these new
power infrastructures such as fiber optics, data centers,
antennas and so on. The spread of such knowledge can
only have a beneficial influence on the spread of attack,
demonstrating that if there is willpower, determination
and some effort, the king is effectively naked.

An anarchist from Brussels