CONTENTS

Introductory Note…Wolf1 Landstreicher

Millenial Bullshit: Y2k and the Creation of Social Consensus

More, Much More …Massimo Passamani

A Violent Proposition

The Question of Organization

Editorial from Insurrection, September 1989

Politics or Life?

Beyond the Structure of Synthesis

"We Do Not Want Modem Life"

Outsiders

Insurrection …Alfredo M. Bonanno

Individual and Communism

Technology and Class Straggle

The Informal Organization

Beyond Resistance

The Insurrectional Project

Some Ideas on Insurrectional Anarchist Organization

Why We Are Insurrectionalist Anarchists…Alfredo M Bonanno

The Palestinian Conflict

The Paltry Ideal of Democracy

Instrumental Logic and Anarchist Principles

Biotechnology and the Digitalization of Life

The Economy of Disaster

The Affinity Group

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This pamphlet contains the theoretical and analytical articles from Willful Disobedience, volume 2, # 1-6. Willful Disobedience is intended as a tool for developing an insurrectional anarchist projectuality. To grasp one's life projectually is to take it as one's own and determine what one is going to make of it, rather than conforming to the roles and relationships imposed by the social order. One's projectuality becomes explicitly insurrectional and anarchist when one recognizes that self-determination has to go hand in hand with destructive attack against all authority, every institution of power and every form of social control. Then the search for tools, methods and relations of affinity through which we can develop this projectuality begins. It must be clearly understood that this projectuality toward insurrection and anarchy is not a cause to which one sacrifices oneself, but the necessary practice of selfrealization in the present world. We fight exploitation and domination, because we do not want to be exploited or ruled. Our selfish generosity recognizes that our own self-realization can only be completed in a world in which every individual has equal access to all that he or she needs to realize her or himself as a singular being-thus, the necessity to destroy all authority, the entire social order, in order to open the possibility of everything life can offer. The practice of an insurrectional, anarchist projectuality works itself out in specific projects of action in which we begin to build the sorts of relationships we desire as part of the struggle against the present world and for the lives we desire. Obviously, this leaves no room for democratic dialogue, the arguments of opinion separated from life. Only projectual discussion of ideas that are to be lived is worthwhile in this context. I have brought these texts together here to be used for moving such discussions forward as a means for creating practical anarchist projects.

Wolfi Landstreicher

MILLENIAL BULLSHIT:
Y2K and the Creation of Social Consensus

As 1999 faded into historical oblivion and the year 2000 came on stage in this arbitrary game of measured time, anyone observing the media spectacle of the official millennial celebrations was witness to a vulgar display of selfcongratulatory smugness. The technological infrastructure and the social consensus of faith in this infrastructure had held. Everyone was happy, looking with joy and hope to the next millennium and the new "wonders" that it would bring. Or so the plastic faces on the television, the monotonously insincere voices on the radio and the empty phrases in the press told us.

Of course, there were moments of tension. When it was announced that three missiles had been launched in Russia, Peter Jennings' face expressed something faintly reminiscent of mild concern. Fortunately, a military expert reassured us that these missile launchings were "non-reportable", because they had traveled less than 599 kilometers. And furthermore, these were scud missiles that Russia had launched quite intentionally at Chechnya. So all is well-except for those Chechens caught in the crosshairs of those missiles.

It was shortly thereafter that blackouts hit several neighborhoods in Los Angeles including downtown L.A., South Central, East L.A., Silver Lake and the neighborhood where I was staying. A battery operated radio kept my friends and I informed of the smoothness of the Y2K transition. These blackouts, like those in Philadelphia were apparently caused by fouls weather, which also affected the communication between the various radio personnel. So though technology was breaking down on small levels here and there, all was well. The Y2K bug had been averted. These were just the normal crises of the cumbersome system.

When the electricity came back on the television presented images of the first ATM user in New Zealand (one of the first nations to "enter the new millennium", starting its new year many hours before Los Angeles) to show the triumph of technological banality. And the announcers regularly contacted the Y2K emergency center to inform us there were no major problems: the planes kept flying, the ATMs continued spilling out cash, production and consumption carried on apace. It was business as usual. Indeed.

Over and over, the media brought the message home: technology and capital have once again overcome a crisis (which, of course, they themselves created). The world is getting better every day. And everyone who is inn their right mind is happy with the present social order.

But in these same events, and even in the images used to portray them, I see something different. Whatever arbitrary change has occurred on the calendar, existence itself has not changed-not in any fundamental sense. States still launch bombs-and this is "non-reportable", of no real concern, certainly nothing that should upset our celebration. Capital continues to implement technological systems of social and biological control increasingly eroding the bases of individual freedom and self-determination. And the technological monster lumbers on never quite under anyone's control, not even that of its supposed state and capitalist masters. Thus, we are kept perpetually in crises which have no element of adventure, on the edge of disasters too banal and pathetic to call forth any sort of heroism.

The Y2K story served the powers that be well. It kept people's minds focused on one particular possible disaster, on one glitch in the system. But the most significant disaster of this social order, the one we all live through every day, is not a glitch, a mere malfunction in dating. It is the fact that we have all been made dependent on an enormous, lumbering juggernaut that none of us can control, and that every day it destroys more life and erodes more freedom. In such a situation, those who want to create lives based on their own self-determined desires and passions can find no joy in any future based on the continued development of the present reality. Rather our joy is found in the struggle to destroy this present reality and, in the process, create new ways of being in which individuals can make their own lives freely as they desire.

MORE, MUCH MORE

by
Massimo Passamani

The managers of passivity have always imposed the false alternative: either immobility or the armed band. Anyone who escapes the role of normality has to be brought back by force in an emergency. The game has its rules: one either accepts domination or imitates it. In addition to the powers that are in office, this all suits those who, though they call themselves revolutionaries, would like to build a new state. "There is no political power without military power" was-a catch phrase of order in the not too distant past. And military power is not just a hierarchical and authoritarian organization; it is also the performance of the conflict between the state and the armed party that would like all of us to be spectators, harmless fans ready to become a number around one or the other of the contenders-the stronger of which-the state-is certain of victory in the end.

The common terrain of this performed battle is that of sacrifice and of the slogan, of specialization and ideology. It is the loss of all joy and autonomy, the negation of every impassioned project of subversion. It is the separation that has occurred between daily life and the transformation of the existent, the fragmentation of the totality and its substitution with a supposed center to conquer and-the image reversed-to oppose. There is no political power without military power. Exactly. And the anarchists? If one wants to destroy political power itself, what does one do about military power? Nothing. Or better, one makes it the negative measure of the coherence of one's theory and practice.

Now, these discussions seem tied to a reality of the 1970's [in Italy] that since disappeared. Exercises of historical memory as they call them. Nonetheless, here they are presenting themselves again in the face of the machinations-as buffoonish as they are infamous-of the attorney general of Rome. If the aim of this judicial construction were only the repression of the arrested anarchists and, more generally, all those investigated, the discussion would only aim at dismantling the manifestly absurd charges set in motion by the judges. But it is not just this. The judges are well aware that the anarchist organization of which they speak does not exist. They know that the model of the "armed band"-obtained by looking at themselves in the mirror-cannot be applied to relationships between anarchists. Individuals who encounter each other on the basis of their affinity, which is to say starting from their differences, and develop initiatives without formalizing their unifies, individuals who organize themselves, certainly, but never in rigid and vertical ways, could never be an "armed band". And not just because they refuse clandestinity (a refusal nonetheless significant), but because they don't accept being recruited into a structure-with whatever acronym and whatever program-that makes aimed clash a separate reality with respect to the subversive totality. All this does not change when some anarchist, individually and taking on all his or her responsibility for her or himself, decides to use arms. On the contrary, going with the fantasy, even if all those investigated, or even all the anarchists in the world had-in addition to writing, discussing, making love, posting flyers, insulting the boss, deserting work, occupying spaces and plundering merchandise-used arms, this would still not make them an "armed band". It is the powers that be who need to invent this. But, as I said, that is not the only question here. To limit it to this means having only a partial understanding of the repressive project of the state.

What the judges hope to promote once again is the illusion that beyond survival and waiting the only option is the armed organization. In this way, the spectacle of the fighting parties, which is already itself worn out, puts any insurrectional discourse out of play. If anyone who wants insurrection is a Leninist in disguise (and the police theory of double levels is a real gem in this regard), change could only-on penalty of otherwise being made out to be "terroristic"-be gradual, in short, democratic. Here it is. From the immediate aim of hindering a few dozen anarchists for as long as possible, this construction moves on to the far more serious goal of extinguishing all subversive tension, every attack on the state and capital. This concerns everyone and no anarchist can be called safe. Luckily the insurrection is not what the repressive organs believe.

In a world in which the forces of domination and alienation are increasingly united together, in which commodity production, total control of space, advertising's fabrication of false needs and the systematic negation of desire are inseparable parts of a single process-in such a world of terror, insurrection increasingly has the concreteness of the totality and the joy of impatience. From the moment in which there is no center of work and class, of hierarchy and obligation in this society, there is also no center that could assault it. And this is why the masters of separation want to enclose us in a band, to replace real change with false images.

A revolutionary project is a collective movement of individual realization or it is nothing. Either it composes, as Fourier said, an immediate elevation of the pleasure of living, or it is a sham. Anyone who poses as a specialist in arms is an enemy. The revolutionary feast is not an "armed struggle", because it is much more. The more ample, conscious an impassioned the subversive transformation is, the less essential the military struggle is. It is passivity that creates the armed organization and vice versa. The theorem of the state is, therefore turned inside out. The false need for the armed band is born from political and union control, from the reformist ornamentation of daily misery. From the practical theory of insurrection creative action is born, the poetry of life that liquidates obedience to the bosses, that unites in difference and arms everyone against power, sacrifice and boredom. And desire armed will turn the world upside down.

As you see, master judges, the game is much more dangerous.

A VIOLENT PROPOSITION:
Against the Weighted Chain of Morality

When dealing with the question of how to battle the social order, there is no place for morality. Anyone who desires a world without exploitation and domination does not share the values of the society that spawned them. Thus, it is necessary to avoid getting drawn into its viewpoint-the dominant viewpoint with all that implies.

The dominant viewpoint in the present era is that of democratic dialogue. All are to come together to discuss their perspectives, argue over their claims, debate their opinions and negotiate compromises guaranteed to enforce the power of those who claim to represent us and to disappoint all parties (except those in power) equally. Isn't our democratic equality a beautiful thing?

Within this viewpoint, revolutionary action ceases to be activity chosen by individuals in terms of their inclinations, capabilities, situation and desires. Instead it must be reified into a dichotomous choice given moral connotations between violence and nonviolence. For anarchists, who-in theory, at least determine their own actions on their own terms, this should be a false and meaningless dichotomy.

The central aim of anarchist activity in the present world is the destruction of the state, of capital and of every other institution of power and authority in order to create the possibility of freedom for every individual to fully realize herself as he sees fit. This is not a moral principle, but simply-by definition-putting anarchy into practice. And it is a violent proposition. No apologies should be made about this. I am talking about the destruction of the entire social order-of civilization, if you will and such an upheaval is, without question, far more violent than any hurricane or earthquake.

But the significant question is how each individual will act, and that, for anarchists, is determined by each individual in terms of their desires, dreams, capabilities and circumstances-in terms of the life they are trying to create for themselves. In this light, it only makes sense that anarchists would reject morality, humanism and any other external value in deciding how to act.

Even efficacy would be rejected as an essential determinant, though, of course, one would try to succeed and would put all of oneself into any self-chosen activity in order to make it as strong as possible. But effectiveness is not the primary question-the desire to attack the institutions of domination and exploitation where one can is.

In this light it becomes clear that we who call ourselves anarchists have no use for dealing with such questions as: "Is property destruction violence or not?"; "Is this an act of legitimate self-defense?" and so on. We have no reason to try to make such artificial distinctions, since our actions are determined precisely by our desire to attack and destroy power. These distinctions between "violence" and "nonviolence" or between "legitimate self-defense" and the violence of attack are based in the hypocritical morality of power that serves no other purpose than to place weighted chains on our ability to act.

Since the demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle, representatives of the mass media have been looking for anarchists to question about violence and property destruction. We will never be able to win over the media or to be presented "fairly" through them. So speaking to them on their terms, using their moral rules as guidelines in determining how we speak about these matters and following their protocol when we speak to them is absurd. The best way to speak to the media on this question is shown by the action of three Italian anarchists Arturo, Luca and Drew-who beat up a journalist who dared to invade their comrade's funeral.

THE QUESTION OF ORGANIZATION

In developing an insurrectional anarchist projectuality, one is inevitably face with the question of organization. Such a projectuality is developed through specific projects of action and it is necessary to figure out how one will go about accomplishing these. Recognizing the necessity of individual agency in creating revolution-and further, taking the revolution as one's own realization, as necessary to the development of the freedom to create one's life as one desires-an individual developing such a projectuality will find a spontaneist perspective that merely waits for history to bring the uprising of the masses and denies the efficacy of conscious action aimed at the creation of revolution useless. Those organizations that seek members-unions, parties, federations and the like-and that equate the revolution with the power of their organization subsuming the individual into the group are equally useless to those who struggle for themselves, their ideas and desires.

Rather as one develops this projectuality through various projects of action, the question of organization is precisely the question of how one develops the tools and relationships one needs and applies anarchist methodologies in a way that allows one to accomplish the desired action. Organization in this sense is not a thing, but a process that can accurately be thought of as the relationship between my project and myself.

An essential component in the development of this projectuality is the acquisition of knowledge-certainly of the tools one learns to use and of the methods one learns to apply, but more significantly, of oneself, of others and of the surrounding reality. From this relationships of affinity can develop, affinity being precisely that mutual knowledge between individuals that makes it possible for them to act together. It creates relations in which delegation has no place, relations of mutual enhancement-relations that may easily develop an intensity and passion that goes beyond the project in which they originate.

From such relationships, affinity groups can form for the specific task of realizing a particular action. The group will be the gathering together of just those element necessary for accomplishing the task and will consume itself in the realization of the action. Thus the problem of the organization that subsumes the individual does not develop.

There are many other questions to be explored, discussed and acted upon, questions of the projectual relationship of anarchists to riot situations, to mass uprisings and other situations of large-scale revolt. We are certainly not evangelists or marketers of ideological commodities, so we cannot act the same way in such situations as the various political groups seeking cadres. Those of us who are seeking to create an insurrectional anarchist projectuality because the present world is too small for our desires and dreams, those of us who recognize that the destruction of the present reality is necessary to our selfrealization, need to deal with these questions seriously, because for us revolution is not a cause outside ourselves. It is our life, our fierce desire to embrace the fullness of existence that has been denied to us.

Editorial from insurrection,
September 1989

Anarchists and revolutionaries are such not because they say they are or write articles and programmes ending them with slogans or symbols of anarchism. They are such because they want to do something against oppression, i.e. they want to denounce and attack repressive systems and all those who hold them together.

To fully understand this simple statement we must take a step further. Before attacking it is necessary to know whom and what to attack and to understand why to attack.

Otherwise one ends up acting like a mad bull charging about wildly, and which gets slain sooner or later.

What can we do in order to know whom and what to attack? Simply inform ourselves. Capital and the State are transforming themselves rapidly. With developments in electronics a vast restructuring is taking place in production and control. The huge industrial complexes are now spreading over the whole social territory, linked together by electronics and telematic cables. The whole planet will soon be covered in a thick network of communications that are at the basis of the present system of production, consequently also present-day exploitation. So we know what and whom to attack.

What can we do to understand why to attack? This is quite simple. The industry of the past could have been conquered by the revolution and put to peaceful productive use. Today's industry is mainly electronically operated by people who have no real operative knowledge. It will never be usable for social good except in a minimal part. The huge electronic communications systems on which present-day production-repression is based will certainly never be usable. That is why it is necessary right away to begin to attack and destroy it, even in the proportions that are fitting to our capacity to attack at the present time.

Between moving and staying still, we prefer to move. The restructuring that has reinforced capital's capacity to produce has also opened new cracks. The enormous communications network that runs through the territory of every advanced industrial nation is certainly one of those cracks.

We must strike inside this. With small actions, not big military operations that are beyond our material possibility and outside the logic of the new capital. It is precisely small destructive actions, sabotage spread over the whole territory, that is the most fitting arm with which to fight the class enemy.

POLITICS OR LIFE?

Activism is not rebellion. Activists are specialists in political action, which is to say, they are a type of politician. Their actions are something separated from their lives, either a hobby or a career to which they dedicate a certain amount of time. The bases of these actions are causes and issues carefully separated from any total analysis or grand vision. In a very real sense, for the activist, whatever promotes the cause, regardless of its personal significance to the activist or its broader significance in terms of the social order, is legitimate. Thus, petitions, voting, delegations before whatever authority, lawsuits, civil disobedience, and the like are all equally acceptable as long as the aim of these actions remains the presentation of demands before the appropriate authority that then takes the decisive action on the matter, leaving the activists to continue their symbolic games. This makes it easy for some activists to embrace a nonviolent morality and turn their backs on those whose lives demand the fullness of struggle, if such a morality fits their limited political agenda.

The decision to rebel against the social order is a decision about the totality of one's life, a decision to refuse precisely that separation which creates politics and activism. Central to this decision is the refusal to let one's life be delegated, the refusal to make demands, because one has chosen to take what one desires, to create what one wants for oneself. The actions one takes are not separate from one's life, but are its passionate outgrowth, springing from the desires and dreams of a free spirit. These actions are aimed at the utter destruction of the social order so that new possibilities of living can be explored by everyone. Thus, they also aim at the destruction of every form of politics including that of the activist. Specialists have always been usurpers, taking an aspect of the fullness of life, draining it of vitality and turning it into a vocation separated from the flow of life. This is precisely what the rebel rejects, what the anarchist aims to destroy, favoring the fullness of life in revolt to the hollow, servile politics of activism.

BEYOND THE STRUCTURE
OF SYNTHESIS

Anarchists of all tendencies refuse the model of hierarchical and authoritarian organisation. They refuse parties, vertical structures which impose directives from above in a more or less obvious way. In positing the liberatory revolution as the only social solution possible, anarchists consider that the means used in bringing about this transformation will condition the ends that are achieved. And authoritarian organisations are certainly not instruments that lead to liberation.

At the same time it is not enough to agree with this in words alone. It is also necessary to put it into practice. In our opinion an anarchist structure such as a structure of synthesis presents not a few dangers. When this kind of organisation develops to full strength as it did in Spain in `36 it begins to resemble a party. Synthesis becomes control. Certainly in quiet periods this is barely visible, so what we are saying now might seem like blasphemy.

This kind of structure is based on groups or individuals who are in more or less constant contact with each other, and has its culminating moment in periodical congresses. In these congresses the basic analysis is discussed, a programme is drawn up and tasks are divided covering the whole range of social intervention. It is an organization of synthesis because it sets itself up as a point of reference capable of synthesizing the struggles taking place within the class clash. Various groups intervene in the struggles, give their contribution, but do not lose sight of the theoretical and practical orientation that the organization as a whole decided upon during the congress.

Now, in our opinion, an organization structured in this way runs the risk of being behind in respect of the effective level of the struggle, as its main aim is that of carrying the struggle to within its project of synthesis, not of pushing it towards its insurrectional realization. One of its main objectives is quantitative growth in membership. It therefore tends to draw the struggle to the lowest common denominator by proposing caution aimed at putting a brake on any flight forwards or any choice of objectives that are too exposed or risky.

Of course that does not mean that all the groups belonging to the organization of synthesis automatically act in this way: often comrades are autonomous enough to choose the most effective proposals and objectives in a given situation of struggle. It is a mechanism intrinsic to the organization of synthesis however that leads it to making decisions that are not adequate to the situation, as the main aim of the organization is to grow to develop as wide a front of struggle as possible. It tends not to take a clear and net position on issues, but fords a way, a political road that displeases the fewest and is digestible to most.

The reactions we get when making criticisms such as this are often dictated by fear and prejudice. The main fear is that of the unknown which pushes us towards organizational schema and formalism among comrades. This safeguards us from the search hinged on the risk of fording ourselves involved in unknown experiences. This is quite obvious when we see the great need some comrades have for a formal organization that obeys the requirements of constancy, stability and work that is programmed in advance.

In reality these elements serve us in our need for certainty and not for revolutionary necessity.

On the contrary we think that the informal organization can supply valid starting points for getting out of this uncertainty.

This different type of organization seems to us to be capable of developing -contrary to an organization of synthesis-more concrete and productive relationships as they are based on affinity and reciprocal knowledge. Moreover, the moment where it reaches its true potential is when it participates in concrete situations of struggle, not when drawing up theoretical or practical platforms, statutes or associative rules.

An organization structured informally is not built on the basis of a programme fixed in a congress. The project is realized by the comrades themselves in the course of the struggle and during the development of the struggle itself. This organization has no privileged instrument of theoretical and practical elaboration, nor does it have problems of synthesis. Its basic project is that of intervening in a struggle with an insurrectional objective.

However great the limitations of the comrades involved in the informal kind of anarchist organization might be, and what the latter's defects might be, the method still seems valid to us and we consider a theoretical and practical exploration of it to be worthwhile.

g. e.

"WE DO NOT WANT MODERN LIFE"

Although Europeans first set foot on the island of New Guinea in 1511, it remained largely untouched by civilization until recently. Its lush jungles and mountains made for a situation in which the people of one valley often had never even seen those of the next valley. As recently as the mid-1990's, there were 14 documented tribes that had never been contacted directly by outsiders; one can assume that there may still be several undocumented tribes as well. But modernization has begun to be imposed as the tentacles of expanding capital seek to reach into the most hidden niches for resources and people to exploit.

In 1963, Indonesia took control of West Papua-the western part of New Guinea. In a sham referendum called the "Act of Free Choice", which took place in 1969, 1025 tribal people were coerced into proclaiming that they chose to remain part of Indonesia-in fact, being manipulated into mouthing phrases in a language that they did not know. Thus, the Indonesian control of West Papua carne to be recognized by the UN in 1969.

Of course, Indonesia had not waited for official recognition of its control to begin the economic exploitation of West Papua. Mining operations run by Freeport MacMoRan, Inc., in conjunction with Rio Tinto Zinc and AMRO Bank, have been tearing up the earth and dislocating the Papuan natives since the early 1960's. In the Mamberano basin, which runs through some of the most beautiful and diverse forest regions on earth, numerous developments are being planned without a care for the environment or the people of the area. A complex of hydroelectric darns are planned which will supply energy for the development of heavy industry and agriculture. Other planned developments include a nickel processing plant, a copper smelter, a stainless steel industry and a project using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel for "green" cars-a good example of the relationship of "alternative energy" to industrialism in its most destructive forms. Freeport MacMoRan has already devastated the Aykwa River and forced the relocation of the Amungme people from their native highlands to lowland areas where they have succumbed to diseases that they never encountered in their home valley. Other companies involved in the development of the dam project and the subsequent industrial development of the area include Ferrostahl, Siemens and Hochtief of Germany. A number of Australian firms are also involved.

Exploitation of resources, environmental destruction and dislocation of people are essential for the expansion of capital, particularly in undeveloped areas. The people of these areas have created ways of living in harmony with the environment that make money and, therefore, jobs completely unnecessary to their existence. But in this condition, such people are utterly useless to capital. So it moves in and begins destroying the environment that provides for the life of the indigenous people. It forces them to move from their forest homes into towns where the abundance that surrounded them in the jungle is locked into an impoverished form only accessible through money. And how does one get this money? By selling oneself into slavery to the projects that stole one's home and life away. Forced from the leisurely existence of their forest into the social environment of capital, they encounter not only social degradation and alienation, but also a myriad of diseases their bodies never had to deal with in the valley where they were born. So. as with all such dislocations, those happening in West Papua are for all practical purposes a death march.

"We are not terrorists!
We do not want modern life!
We refuse any kind of development:
religious groups, aid agencies, non-governmental organizations.
Just leave us alone, please!"

Armed struggle against the exploitation in this area can be traced back to the 1500's, when the people of Biak Island of the coast of West Papua took up arms against colonialism. It is not surprising that this struggle would begin so quickly after encountering colonial power. It is part of the indigenous culture of these region to take up arms to fight that which one hates without hesitation. So among those who encountered colonial rule and exploitation, armed struggle has been consistent here.

Shortly after Indonesia took control of West Papua in 1963, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) started. This formalization of an armed struggle that has been going on for centuries is problematic. Can the OPM avoid the weaknesses of formalization? Can it avoid becoming a political entity based on delegation and open to negotiation and compromise? In fact, it is difficult to know from here to what extent the OPM is a formal organization and to what extent it is simply a rallying cry for the struggle. It is claimed that the OPM and the indigenous people of West Papua are the same, that the OPM is not a movement above or ahead of the people. Recent actions by various tribal groups in which they took over towns and halted commercial and governmental activities in order to gain specific objectives fits with this claim, as does the OPM's refusal to use the forms of hierarchical statist military structures, preferring to use traditional forms of tribal warfare.

The movement has also manifested a clarity about the nature of government, capitalism and the nation-state that is rare in such liberation struggles. A newsletter of the movement clearly states that the. struggling people are not interested in replacing one government with another because they are not interested in administering capitalist exploitation themselves. Rather they want to end exploitation. They say they do not want a nation-state called West Papua. Rather, "we want... to be left alone as we have been and as we are. It does not matter if we are regarded as primitives. It does not bother us if we are seen as cannibals. It is of course okay for us if we are just with penis gourds and illiterate. It is our life, and it is our business. And we want to live just as we are forever. We want to be battling among ourselves and it is fine. It does not destroy as much as modem community is doing... We do not want others to regard us as useless and then sell us to capitalists. We are humans and we are fighting back against exploitation." For those struggling in West Papua it is a matter of trying to maintain a way of life in which the state and capital have never developed against an external onslaught from these institutions. This provides a clarity that those rising up in the midst of well-developed capitalist and state structures often lack-a clarity based on direct knowledge of what is lost when the state and capital are imposed.

But there are also indications that the OPM is not completely free of nationalist sentiment. And a willingness to negotiate. One of the most frequent actions of protest there consists of the raising of the West Papua flag at official buildings-an action that certainly appears to symbolize a desire for a unified nation, not for tribes living traditionally. Can the artificial unity created in this way be readily dismantled when it is no longer useful to the movement? But more significant is the fact that OPM delegations have gone to talk with officials of the Indonesian government, the UN and other powers to try to negotiate West Papuan independence. Do they really think that these powers would allow West Papuans to return to their tribal existence in the forests with no government to administer this existence, to work out compromises with other powers and, in the end, to renew the destructive sell-off that Indonesia has pursued for the past 38 years?

The freedom movement in West Papua is in a difficult position. Its demands are not negotiable within the framework of capitalism, so the OPM's attempts at negotiation are futile. A stateless society without money or commodity exchange, without development or industrial exploitation has no place in the framework of capital, and that framework now encompasses the globe. Only in a world from which this framework has been eradicated can the infinity of possible ways to live, including that of West Papuans, blossom and flourish. From this it becomes clear that solidarity with the freedom movement of these people needs to take the form of clearly insurrectional attacks aimed at the destruction of the state and capital, the structures of civilization, in their totality, attacks that may indeed target specific exploiters of the land and people of West Papua as part of an attempt to bring an end to all exploitation.

OUTSIDERS

(The following text originally appeared in Italy in relation to the
proceedings by public prosecutor Marini against Italian anarchists.)

It is known that individuals tend to unite as life drives them to build relationships with each other.

But this union does not constitute a Community as such. For that to occur, the relationships between people must consolidate, crystallize, institutionalize themselves through established rules. People change from free individuals, who meet on the basis of their desires and the satisfaction of their needs, into members of a community, into citizens: "that public thing that has supplanted the human being".

The law welds these unions and links the citizens both in the sense that it maintains the unity between them and in the sense that it determines the limits of their movements, obstructing their freedom. So law is not at all a bulwark that his been built in defense of freedom, but is rather its negation. Where there is law, there cannot be freedom, because the task of the law is to is that of mediating relationships between individuals, sacrificing an infinity of individual freedom in the name of a single social utility. The amputation carried out by the law finds expression in the old adage, "my freedom ends where the other's begins, which indicates a fear of the possible expansion of freedom and pretty well suns up the meaning of community.

But Community, which emerges under the pretext of reciprocal convenience, very quickly gives itself priority over all other interests, making its own conservation its sole aim, so that its citizens become stunted due to the compromises and mediations accepted in the name of the good of all, but to the exclusive benefit of the customary few.

Now, since community in its state form does not concede the possibility of opting out to anyone, what happens when some one refuses to barter their freedom in exchange for citizenship in any community whatever? The answer is simple: exclusion.

The community excludes, but by distancing difference, bases itself upon it and justifies itself through it, so that difference comes to belong to the common space at the very moment in which it is expelled. There is no place beyond the state, no elsewhere in which to enclose anyone who does not follow the rules of the game. Everyone is inside.

The community does not seek acceptance on the basis of its results, but on the basis of its enemies. And since the enemies of the democratic community are terrorism, totalitarianism, the Mafia, madness and drugs, it sets itself up as the only alternative. This is why it continually needs to produce false enemies.

The community has to outlaw anyone who does not take its oath of loyalty-an oath which has no need of the solemnities of religion or of the old ideologies since it is repeated and confirmed in the choices of daily life.

The ban, a term from ancient Germanic law, means both the banner of power and the act of expulsion. Every authority requires a ban. And whoever does not accept submission, whoever does not call exploitation well being and repression security is banished from all communities of obedience.

But even those who are outside of the community are compelled to make a new community, a new band, of their exile so that one can be kept in it from the moment she is excluded. Power must bring troublesome and rebellious individuals back into the group.

The state always has a favorable attitude toward any group that demands its rights. Thus repression is avoided in this case, because it has already functioned as a preventative mechanism.

So there is no real difference between "reactionaries" who want to expel that which is different and "progressives" who invite the different into their homes, so long as they stay in their place and obey the rules. Only the label on the straightjacket changes. Furthermore, the "progressives" willingly help the "reactionaries" carry out their plans as is shown by their approval of the decree against immigration. First, an individual must show that he is not dangerous, then she must work and pay taxes. At this point, black or white, rich or poor, they become a citizen, welcomed by the community.

And anyone who doesn't desire to integrate herself will nevertheless find himself labeled in such a way as to incorporate her into a group. Thus, some anarchist individuals who want to rise up against this equality of slaves are presented as a "subversive association" or an "armed gang". If it is true that law and peace are necessarily linked (in the sense that every authority must defme the territory in which to enforce its power), the society that we are living in is one immense concentration camp. Only by rising up as individuals without belonging to any group, to any "gang" (armed or otherwise) can we turn our back on every enclosure.

INSURRECTION

by
Alfredo M. Bonanno

(The following text is taken from Insurrection #4, May 1988)

A part from a few not very significant fringes, the international anarchist movement shares theoretical positions of a revolutionary character. The liberal-democratic vein, important as far as it shows a possible line of involution remains on the margins.

In turn almost the whole of the revolutionary anarchist positions-with different nuances-see insurrection as a necessary phase along the road to revolution.

But this insurrection is seen as a mass revolt due to certain socio-economic forces that serve to set it off. The role of the anarchist movement is to limit itself to understanding these conditions and economic and social contradictions to make them more comprehensible to the mass. Basically a role of propaganda and counter-information. .

Often even the anarchist comrades who see the need for violent struggle against the structures of repression without half measures limit themselves to this part of the analysis and do not feel obligated to go further. The mass-they say-must do everything themselves. Anything else would be authoritarian on the part of the specific anarchist organization and could turn out to be disastrous.

This idea might have been logical when nearly the whole of the anarchist movement was in positions of synthesis, i.e., in the dimension of the big (or not so big) quantitative organizations. Through the instrument of the syndicalist organization they planned to address the whole of the social and economic struggle into a situation of waiting for a breaking out of the revolutionary moment.

There is a different way to envision revolution in an insurrectional key in our opinion.

We consider that the anarchist organization, so long as it is informal, can contribute to the constitution of autonomous base nuclei which, as mass organism, can programme attacks against structures of social, economic and military repression. These attacks, even if circumscribed, have all the methodological characteristics and practices of insurrectional phenomena when not left to the blind forces of social and economic conflict, but brought into an anarchist projectuality based on autonomy, direct action, constant attack and the refusal of compromise.

In a word, this is the insurrectional conception that we are inviting all comrades interested to assess with critiques, analyses and debates.

INDIVIDUALISM AND COMMUNISM

THE AIMS OF ANARCHIST REVOLUTION

The anarchist insurrectional project is a revolutionary project, that is to say a project that aims at the destruction of the present society and the creation of new ways of living. The aim of this revolution is the removal of every social limit that prevents individuals from creating their own lives in terms of their own desires and dreams and determining what relations they want to create in order to accomplish this. But such an aim implies other aims as well.

The social system of capital separates most people from the conditions of existence. This compels the vast majority to accept the mediations of work and commodity consumption in order to maintain a minimal existence at the expense of their lives, desires and dreams, of their individuality. The artificial economic scarcity imposed by capital leads to a competition that is often promoted in the United States as the basis of "individualism" in spite of the fact that it creates nearly identical mediocre existences in which life is subsumed in survival.

It is possible even within this social context to take back one's life, the conditions of one's existence, to a limited extent, by choosing to live on the margins as an outlaw. But such a decision can only be a first step if one does not want to isolate oneself. It puts one in the position of being at war with society as it exists. And one's enemies-the masters of this order-have far greater access to the means of existence than the marginalized outlaw. So if this individual revolt is not to fall into the realm of futile gestures, it must move toward a revolutionary perspective.

This perspective develops when one recognizes the necessity of destroying the social order, of utterly demolishing the state and capital. If all individuals are indeed to be free to create their lives and relations as they desire, it is necessary to create a world in which equality of access to the means and conditions of existence is reality. This requires the total destruction of economy-the end of property, commodity exchange and work. Thus we see that the generalized realization of individual freedom goes hand-in-hands with the best aspects of the anarcho-communist ideal and can only be achieved through a revolutionary transformation.

But such a revolution is not a gift granted by abstract History. Here the full significance of individual rebellion shows itself. When we reject every deterministic view of revolution, it becomes clear that the actions of individuals in conscious revolt against the social order are essential for building a revolution. Those individuals who reject all exploitation, who refuse to put up with a world that demands that one buy survival at the expense of one's dreams and desires, at the expense of life lived to the full, seek out the tools and methods to destroy this social order. From this the analyses, projects and actions that are the basis of an insurrectional anarchist projectuality can develop.

TECHNOLOGY AND CLASS STRUGGLE

The developments in technology over the past sixty years-the nuclear industry, cybernetics and related information techniques, biotechnology and genetic engineering-have produced fundamental changes in the social terrain. The methods of exploitation and domination have changed, and for this reason old ideas about the nature of class and class struggle are not adequate for understanding the present situation. The workerism of the marxists and syndicalists can no longer even be imagined to offer anything useful in developing a revolutionary practice. But simply rejecting the concept of class is not a useful response to this situation either, because in so doing one loses an essential tool for understanding the present reality and how to attack it.

Exploitation not only continues, but has intensified sharply in the wake of the new technology. Cybernetics has permitted the decentralization of production, spreading small units of production across the social terrain. Automation has drastically reduced the number of production workers necessary for any particular manufacturing process. Cybernetics further creates methods for making money without producing anything real, thus allowing capital to expand itself without the expense of labor.

Furthermore, the new technology demands a specialized knowledge that is not available for most people. This knowledge has come to be the real wealth of the ruling class in the present era. Under the old industrial system, one could look at class struggle as the struggle between workers and owners over the means of production. This no longer makes sense. As the new technology advances, the exploited find themselves driven into increasingly precarious positions. The old life-long skilled factory position has been replaced by day labor, service sector jobs, temporary work, unemployment, the black market, illegality, homelessness and prison. This precariousness guarantees that the wall created by the new technology between the exploiters and the exploited remains unbreachable.

But the nature of the technology itself places it beyond the reach of the exploited. Earlier industrial development had as its primary focus the invention of techniques for the mass manufacturing of standardized goods at low cost for high profit. These new technological developments are not so much aimed at the manufacturing of goods as at the development of means for increasingly thorough and widespread social control and for freeing profit from production. The nuclear industry requires not only specialized knowledge, but also high levels of security that place its development squarely under the control of the state and lead to a military structuring in keeping with its extreme usefulness to the military. Cybernetic technology's ability to process, record, gather and send information nearly instantaneously serves the needs of the state to document and monitor its subjects as well as its need to reduce the real knowledge of those it rules to bits of information-data-hoping, thus, to reduce the real capabilities for understanding of the exploited. Biotechnology gives the state and capital control over the most fundamental processes of life itself-allowing them to decide what sort of plants, animals and-in time-even human beings can exist.

Because these technologies require specialized knowledge and are developed for the purpose of increasing the control of the masters over the rest of humanity even in our daily lives, the exploited class can now best be understood as those excluded from this specialized knowledge and thus from real participation in the functioning of power. The master class is, thus, made up of those included in participation in the functioning of power and the real use of the specialized technological knowledge. Of course these are processes in course, and the borderlines between the included and excluded can, in some cases, be elusive as increasing numbers of people are proletarianized-losing whatever decision-making power over their own conditions of existence they may have had.

It is important to point out that although these new technologies are intended to give the masters control over the excluded and over the material wealth of the earth, they are themselves beyond any human beings control. Their vastness and the specialization they require combine with the unpredictability of the materials they act upon-atomic and subatomic particles, light waves, genes and chromosomes, etc.-to guarantee that no single human being can actually understand completely how they work. This adds a technological aspect to the already existing economic precariousness that most of us suffer from. However, this threat of technological disaster beyond any one's control also serves power in controlling the exploited-the fear of more Chemobyls, genetically engineered monsters or escaped laboratory-made diseases and the like move people to accept the rule of so-called experts who have proven their own limits over and over again. Furthermore, the state-that is responsible for every one of these technological developments through its military-is able to present itself as a check against rampant corporate "abuse" of this technology. So this monstrous, lumbering, uncontrollable juggernaut serves the exploiters very well in maintaining their control over the rest of the population. And what need have they to worry about the possible disasters when their wealth and power has most certainly provided them with contingency plans for their own protection?

Thus, the new technology and the new conditions of exclusion and precariousness it imposes on the exploited undermine the old dream of expropriation of the means of production. '^-his technology-controlling and out of control-cannot serve any truly human purpose and has no place in the development of a world of individuals free to create their lives as they desire. So the illusory utopias of the syndicalists and marxists are of no use to us now. But were they ever? The new technological developments specifically center around control, but all industrial development has taken the necessity of controlling the exploited into account. The factory was created in order to bring producers under one roof to better regulate their activities; the production line mechanized this regulation; every new technological advance in the workings of the factory brought the time and motions of the worker further under control. Thus, the idea that workers could liberate themselves by taking over the means of production has always been a delusion. It was an understandable delusion when technological processes had the manufacture of goods as their primary aim. Now that their primary aim is so clearly social control, the nature of our real struggle should be clear: the destruction of all systems of control-thus of the state, capital and their technological system, the end of our proletarianized condition and the creation of ourselves as free individuals capable of determining how we will live ourselves. Against this technology our best weapon is that which the exploited have used since the beginning of the industrial era: sabotage.

THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION

(This piece is taken from Insurrection, issue 4, May 1988)

The informal anarchist organization has nothing to do with programs, platforms or flags but is based on a common affinity between comrades whose objective is to intervene in struggles in an insurrectional direction. In that way it is possible to be present in and heighten the class struggle.

Anarchist groups and individuals are often spread over the territory with little contact between them and few ideas on methods and possibilities of intervention in social reality.

There is a certain presence in some areas, especially of a syndicalist nature. In others there is action against nuclear installations. The widest area of intervention is that of counter-information and propaganda.

An anarchist movement that is really active and incisive needs two main factors: an agile and effective instrument and an objective that is that is sufficiently clear in perspective.

We think the informal organization and insurrection are concrete possibilities that present themselves at the present time.

...The organization of synthesis, based on the congress and political program, is a structure that because of its internal characteristics and the mechanisms that support it, cannot be a valid instrument for comrades wanting to move in an insurrectional perspective. Political programs and platforms are organizational models which, from an insurrectional point of view have seen their day.

One thing that is indispensable in the informal anarchist organization is reciprocal knowledge between members. This and affinity among comrades is what characterizes the informal form of organization.

We have all reached anarchist positions through time, maturing certain convictions concerning social problems. We also have some idea of how to intervene in social reality and the relative strategic choices to be made. Well, let us go into these problems, ascertain whether we agree on certain points, show each other how we think.

Certainly, it is easy. It is nevertheless indispensable to confront one another. Without this no kind of informal structure or informal relationship is possible.

The informal proposal does not mean that one has to agree on every single problem that arises. Affinity does not possess a uniform level of intensity. Knowledge of another is an infinite process that reaches greater or lesser depth according to the circumstances and the objectives one is trying to reach.

The basic project of an informal anarchist organization has, in our opinion, the objective of intervening in struggles in an insurrectional logic. This organization does not give one area privilege over another, does not have a stable centrality. It singles out an objective which at a given moment presents a particularly acute area of social conflict and works in a perspective of insurrection.

The debate is open on this point. Criticisms that insurrection is not a valid proposal today sometimes confuse insurrection with. the old "propaganda by the deed". On the contrary we think that the insurrectional project gives itself the aim of attacking power in each one of its manifestations by the stimulation of the anarchist informal organization, but always with mass participation, showing in deed the possibility and validity of such attacks.

In that way it is possible to be present in the class struggle and heighten the level of it.

We see the informal organization therefore as a number of comrades linked by a common affinity. The wider the range of problems face as a whole, the greater their affinity will be. It follows that real organization, the effective capacity to act together, i.e. knowing where to find each other, the study and analysis of problems together, and the passing to action, all take place in relation to the affinity reached and has nothing to do with programs, platforms, flags or more or less camouflaged parties. The informal anarchist organization is therefore a specific organization that gathers around a common affinity.

Undoubtedly it will tend towards a growth in numbers, but this is not the main aim of activity. As the organism born in this way develops it will give itself common means of intervention. First of all, an instrument for debate necessary for analytical examination, such as a paper or a review, capable of supplying indications on a wide range of problems and of becoming a point of reference for continually verifying affinity or divergence of opinion between groups and individual comrades.

Secondly, these specific groups can also form base structures involving the exploited in specific areas of struggle, not as an element of growth in the specific movement. In this view, it becomes dispersive to give life to a permanent structure to confront specific problems. The base structures have a single objective. When this objective has been reached or the attempt fails, the structure either widens into a situation of generalized insurrection, or dismantles as the case may be.

It should be stressed here that although the element holding the informal organization together is undoubtedly affinity, its propulsive element is always action. If it limits itself to the first alone, all relations will become arid in the byzantine perfectionism of whoever has nothing better to do than to try to hide one's will to do nothing.

The problems that have been touched on here deserve more going into and we invite all comrades to take part in the discussion of them.

BEYOND RESISTANCE

While resistance to repression and the advance of capital is, indeed, necessary, it is not a sufficient response to the present situation. Resistance is merely an attempt to be friction in the path of the present order to impede its progress. As such, it is essentially a defensive stance, an attempt to merely hold one's ground. It ends focusing so completely on what one is resisting that one forgets the reason for one's struggle. From a position of relative material weakness-as against the powers that be that are well armed and well positioned-resistance by itself is inherently a losing battle. Focusing on the worst aspects of capital and the state, we simply find ourselves perpetually up against an enemy who keeps shoving us back. Were we in a position where mere resistance could actually stop the progress of the present order, wouldn't it make more sense to use that strength to tear the system down?