Subversive bookfair in Brussels

Something weird happened. Only a few years ago discussions about a possible subversion of this society were always followed by this one remark. As if it was necessary to first agree about this premise, to avoid getting stuck in inevitable cynicism. “But we are never going to see it happen ourselves” or “If it will ever happen”. This “never” or “one day”, two sides of the same illusion, kept the anti-authoritarian movement on life support. They prevented us from putting certain issues on the table. They drew invisible boundaries around our activities. And maybe rightly so. Maybe we couldn’t do more than keeping certain ideas and practices alive in the shadows of the society, in the margin of the political protest movements. Maybe the (repressive and ideological) reaction on the struggles of the ’70s and ’80s has left us dumfounded for the past two decades. The society of the ’90s and ’00s left little space to breath. However, something has changed. Despite my young age, the thought persists that the “social situation” isn’t the same anymore. That also an “anarchist perspective” cannot be the same anymore and that there are already different experiments exploring some new possibilities. I write “despite”, but maybe it is rather because of my young age that I want to see change. In twenty years it will turn out that the world is still turning and the same authoritarian mechanisms of exploitation and oppression are doing their work with some minor adjustments and some patching. But then let it be because our enthusiasm didn’t make it against the conservative society. And don’t let it be because we were silent when we should have spoken, because we whispered when we should have screamed. Don’t let it be because we were empty handed, like a beggar by the side of the road hoping for a crumb of protest while Progress passed by. While we could have picked up a stick and at least for a moment interrupted this macabre circus.

To put our anger on paper and our desires in words, we often turn to writings that date from long before our own births. These anarchist pamphlets from ages ago are sometimes blamed for being outdated. But exactly that is their strength. Instead of being the application of a sterile pattern, a reproduction to demonstrate their own truth, they are placed on the cutting edge between total critique and being present and aware of the specific circumstances. Nonetheless we have to be able to understand the contemporary specific circumstances. In the social situation we witness today after the neoliberal ideological attack on the welfare state in the ’90s, when they started with the actual demolition of social democracy using the economical crisis as blackmail (perversely enough triggered by the neoliberal ideology). Education, health care, culture, public transport, city planning, all have to show rather than their electoral profit, their economical profit. On all terrains there have to be cut-backs, only the structures of repression are saved (although also prisons and the security sector are partly privatized). While the European masters Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron come to tell us that the multicultural society has failed. In short, no more soft integration, social reforms and subsidies, the distribution of power between the leaders of social movements and communities. The social peace will be more and more forced upon us with physical force while more people are falling overboard. Facing the certainty that poverty is on the rise or is consolidating (no perspective on upward social mobility), where certain groups of people don’t seem to be welcome in this society.  When only (decently) paid work gives access to social integration, the prison becomes a place where many will certainly pass several times in their lives; the street conflicts between law enforcement and youth have become continual.

The insurrections in North Africa and their revolutionary undercurrent find also resonance on the other side of the Mediterranean. The echoes found in the majority of the media coverage are as more often, probably the least interesting. The occupations of the squares in Spain (and other countries) and the calls for “real democracy” seem often to be nothing more than acts of despair from lefty voters who remain confused since the social-democratic parties themselves have buried the project for a social democracy. However, it remains something to sympathize with when people take the time and space to put, maybe not everything but, a lot into question. Nonetheless it is naive to stop there: pacifism and consensus in the general assembly have already has already taken up too much time and space.

There are even people who dare to say that the insurrections in the Arab world were pacifist and were organised through the internet. The Western media had for obvious reasons  a lot of interest in the Tahrir square, but something tells me that it was mainly the cities and villages where all the official institutions of power (party headquarters, government buildings, police stations) were attacked and burned that forced the regimes on their knees. And as far as those who tried to follow Twitter during the insurrection in Egypt, must have been as bored as following the endless news headlines on Al-Jazeera (who was mainly reporting from Tahrir square).

Beyond the limits of the ongoing disorder, there are some encouraging variables. Such as the great silence from Greek State during December 2008, the French banlieues in 2005 and other social conflicts against the State. And there the possibilities of recuperation are seriously limited. Furthermore democracy itself shows an unwillingness to come up with answers besides fierce repression. Even faced with the “Indignant” good citizens, the baton ruled. Probably the State has chosen now a scenario where it encourages the war of all against all (or community against community). A tendency that is already present and on other continents in full development. In such a game the State grounds its own legitimacy in the role of referee (and not necessarily a neutral one).

Let me put it clearly that I’m not searching for the formula that is applicable to the social context and inevitably leads to the solutions for all problems. Neither that the specific context is the same everywhere. With some amusement but also with a dose of outrage, we have seen that the illusion of the historic determinism still continues to live. And that their prophetic words still captivate a lot of people. There are those who have predicted insurrections or civil war while pointing out that it was already happening. There are those who cannot stop speaking about the multitude or direct democracy and both existing in the future. Capitalism would have been so favourable for  us to create the base for her own negation. We would only have to brush her off through a kind of construction of self-awareness, basically a political project. I understand that all kinds of Marxists (post-, neo-, fans of the young Marx, or the Marx of the discourse about the Paris Commune …) were confused after it came out that their revolutionary subjects transformed into the target groups of clientelism and social-democratic reforms. Some maybe changed ideologies out of more pragmatic reasons (repressive pressure, the carrot of the academic career, the empty member lists …). Either way, a part of them threw dialectics overboard. They embrace now immanency. The same philosophical trick with which also Christianity tried to renew itself. Once it was clear for everyone that there was no God above us that can punish and reward us, and that living without a God is possible, they told us that God is everywhere (however mainly in the ‘good’ things) and that we don’t have to consider God as an almighty figure (although they told us so for centuries). And so is Communism no longer the result of a violent, political occurrence; the Revolution. But is it already present and we only have to bring it to its full consciousness. Like this also the most interesting part of dialectics disappears, namely the rupture. That moment where it becomes clear who is part of the revolutionary force and who shows an interest the preservation of this society. In the Marxist version, it is not possible at all to talk about a choice but only about economic interests (otherwise the revolutionary subject and the inevitability become irrelevant). Without the rupture on content, the multitude as well as the civil war cannot guarantee that they are not just a continuation of the capitalist project, that they are not just new appearances of authoritarian mechanisms. We have to be able to acknowledge that since the birth of capitalism and of the State, both are rather successful in suffocating resistance by reinventing themselves. Through recuperation and repression (and if necessary by sacrificing a part) they were able to adjust and keep alive. And it is because they are not a parasitic creature, but proliferate into all social relations, that they were successful. That is why the (individual) revolt is so important together with the critique of all authority and the will to engage in different social relations. During as many moments as possible we have to affirm this rupture to prevent that we as individuals and in our struggles are dragged into authoritarian machinations.

Democracy is no longer an insurmountable horizon, it is no longer obvious. The social peace becomes more and more an imposed peace through the blackmail of work (and the access to money to survive and to “live”/consume) and through repression. It no longer suffices to want to strike cracks in the wall of social peace. I think the stakes are higher today. The social peace already shows a lot of cracks and holes. An anger and dissatisfaction wanders around. And the religious and nationalist preachers are ready to recruit. We have to be ready to show that solidarity, self-organization and direct action can reinforce us. That those are living ideas that can give us strength against the emptiness of capitalist existence. We have to be able to link groups that are socially or geographically separated. We have to develop a creativity of acts to attack the authority in all its forms and especially to take the conflicts from their traditional territories and render them a bigger dimension. Today we can say “We want revolution” because it is not an empty word, but a word that we give every day more meaning.