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 These anarchist pamphlets from ages ago are sometimes blamed for being outdated.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.

Having a fast look at the era of the first International and the revolutionary brotherhoods which in those days were able to stimulate and stir up a permanent insurrectional tension across the borders, tells us a lot about the paradoxal situation we are now living in. Never before have there been so many means of transport, travel and communication, never before were the curcumstances in different countries so much alike and yet it seems as if we, anarchists and revolutionaries, have never been so much attached to the stately borders. Paradoxaly it seems as if the globalisation of the domination goes together with the de-internationalisation of its declared enemies.

It´s not that all left-overs of the old internationalist tale have been swept away, but let´s be frank: it´s a dim situation. We don´t really get any further than solidary pats on the back and in the best case some sharing of experiences and projectualities. Simply having a look at the shameful lack of perspectives around the insurrections across the meditarenean (or, as you wish, around the revolt of december 2008 in Greece) is sufficient to become aware of this.

As the domination has transformed communication into a ware, into a numbning and alienating instrument, it has equally eroded the dream of the revolutionary internationalism. Today it seems as if the only internalitionalism present in anarchist circles is to be found on the worldwide web distributing passivity, by means of her endless stream of information which is un-understandable (because it´s been detached from its context and from all life), untouchable (because it´s meant to be simply consumed from the screen) and evaporating (because it drowns in the middle of a true databombarding). As well as deeply altering our whole concept of time and space. What was still news today, has already been forgotten tomorrow. And the faster the over there can reach over here through the information chanels, the lesser the over here seems able to dialogue with the over there. It goes beyond doubt that a renewed internationalist perspective is as well in an urgent need of developing a new way of experiencing and conceiving time and space. If not it is doomed only to flourish in the time and space frame of the domination. We could even make a parallel with the old International: in those days the nation-states were fully growing and the creation of an international space was at itself already a rupture with domination.

In which ways can internationalism, international revolutionary solidarity, become again a force which leaves behind its current technological and activist mutilation? We should confront this question again, unless one believes that the universal entrenchement of domination, requires a local microcosmic rooting of its opponents.

Not so long ago there were anarchists who attempted a new sort of International, a project which clearly crashed in a premature way. We think that the re-evaluation of internationalism doesn´t start by means of some sort of formal organisation (even if it declares itself informal), but through the conscious multiplication of opportunities, in discussion as well as struggle. Not only do we all know how important and stimulating the exchange of struggle experiences can be. If it is true that the social instability will contunue to increase during the coming times, and if it is true that the period of 30 years of peace on the european continent is coming at its end, it goes beyond doubt that the development of hypotheses has become of a current interest again. When reading those texts circulating inside of the antiauthoritarian brotherhoods during the times of the International, you could almost speak of an obsession for hypotheses, a permanent sensing (on theoretical as well as on practical terms) of the social horizon for opportunities to light the fuse and prepare the insurrection. Today, it is not only their revolutionary eagerness, neither their untamable enthusiasm which speaks to us, but also their courage to be wrong, to loose, to suffer a defeat (or rather, a series of defeats). When today one is not willing to bang ones head against the wall (which is a constant possible consequence of bringing the utopian desires inside the eye of the storm), can better occupy themselves with the pure comtemplation of the events. Because the complexity of the coming conflicts; the tension as it was described by some, between social war and civil war; the loss of language to express ideas and dreams; the profound and undeniable mutilation of individuals are no longer plain predictions, they have become facts. It´s up to us to find the courage to dream, to dare living the tension by trying to bring them to life, by elaborating them in revolutionary and insurrectional hypotheses; whether they sprung out of a situation which is ready to explode, or from a specific struggle which has lead towards the outcome of attack, or from a courageous attempt to insurge against the parade of slaughter and civil war,…

An example might clarify these words. The insurrections at the other side of the Meditarrenean have temporarily forced open the gates of Europe. Tens of thousands of people illegaly crossed the borders and many of them still with the sweet taste of revolt in their mouths. Regarding this completely new and unpredictable situation, it is not enough to take out our trusty recipes about struggles against closed centres, against borders. Armed with our experiences of struggle, we might have been able to really and concretely think about an hypothesis which could have, through those tens of thousands of people, actually brought the insurrection on the european continent. This counts as well for the period of insurrections in Tunesia, Egypt,…: which initiatives could we have taken to light the torch of the insurrection over here, or how, more modestly, could we have defended and supported the revolts over there? Why did we, aside from the symbolical, did not actually and definitively occupy the ambassieds of those countries and chased away the ambassadors which, especially in the case of Lybia, were actively recruting mercenaries to slaughter the insurgents in their own backyard? I suppose this immediately clarifies the need for an internationalist approach of possible hypotheses. Let´s take a different approach. How many times, during specific struggles, did we not bump into moments in which we were simply in lack of a sufficient amount of comrades (quantatively as well as qualitatively) to try out what seemed possible? We shouldn´t fool ourselves, during numerous insurrections in Europe, it was never only comrades living there who engaged! How many times could the tightening grasp of repression during a specific struggle (intesifed surveillance on the engaged comrades, pressure, limitation of freedom of movement and wasting time in dealing with the watchdogs of the state)  have been solliced by the arrival and temporary stay of a few other comrades? I believe we should face these questions without aprioris and fear, and look for possible roads. We can imagine experimenting with international forms of coordination without grasping back to formal declarations, official congresses or, which is in some way the reverse of the medal, total secret conspiracy which only feeds the ghosts of the international of the examining inquisitors. Maybe we could, for example through a regular bulletin of correspondance, consider the development of a temporality and space of our own which is no longer dependant on the information channels which have the stinking smell of the power sticking on them.

Undoubtably much more is to be said about this issue. I am aware that this text is only throwing some rocks in still water, but here’s the hope that they can contribute to a discussion which dares opening up some possibilities.

A traveller

It hasn’t only been social pacification that has kept our revolutionary imagination in a strait-jacket for years and years. It hasn’t only been the world of power and money that has suffocated our wildest and irreducible dreams and exchanged them for merchandise for our immediate consume. It hasn’t only been the theatre of democratic opinions has stunted the growth proliferations of our ideas. It has also not been the reactionary shifts everywhere around us that have muzzled our mouths and made us swallow our deepest words, thoughts and desires.

It has as well been the dogmas from our own movement which have kept our hands bound together for years, have gagged us, have been a millstone around our neck. For too long have we believed that “propaganda” equalled evil because we didn’t want to appear like Stalin or Hitler. Far too long have we believed that we shouldn’t spread around our ideas, simply out of fear of appearing as missionaries. Exactly because of this there has been a lot of water poured into the anti-authoritarian wine, not to offend anyone. For a long time, too long, have we blindfolded ourselves and believed that our ideas are not accessible, not understandable for “the masses”. We have long forgotten that our path of liberation sprung out of our individual desire towards freedom and experimentation, and that the confrontation with the anti-authoritarian ideas gave us a solid push forward. Locked up in our ghettos, inhaling its air dense with the thought that we were infinitely and completely different than all of the others. Therefore it is not surprising  that the traces of these ghettos can still be found in the young movement that has broken out of it. It is not surprising, but it remains quite a pain in the ass. It prevents our pride to grow and blossom, to stand on antiauthoritarian bases, as anarchists in the open air, in the world. The ghettos have caused us to no longer be able to express what is living inside of us, it has made us regard ourselves as being marginal outsiders. Inside of the ghettos, it was forbidden to think, because thinking equalled being intellectuals. It was forbidden to write because writing was supposed to be uniquely reserved for university students. And through this road we perfected the practice of using different words depending on the person in front of us, or the direction the wind was blowing, always being carried by the wind.

For all of us who at night indulged in fantasies about revolution, it was hard to keep this dream alive. The world around us kept on marching the totalitarian road. Comrades have told us to bury our youthful dreams, because anyway it was pointless. To desire a revolution, was said to equal awaiting the final act. We could also not speak  about a desire for revolution because this was supposed to equal talking about fairy tales to people, it equalled selling strong-worded bags of air. Some comrades decided they didn’t want to wait any longer but forgot that this didn’t need to imply putting our revolutionary dream in the closet. Acting in the here and now is sometimes limited to  seizing the day, period. Carpe diem doesn’t need to imply that there is no future. Moreover, the conquering of the here and now is the only road that can lead us towards a free future. And this is what we are fighting for.

And so it came that some issues were walled up in our heads. So we started to believe that we couldn’t make propositions towards the others, those not belonging to our club. Simply because we didn’t want to be politicians, authoritarians. We knew that self-organisation was entwined within our hearts, but didn’t want to enrich others with our experiences, prudish as we were. So we forgot that maybe there were others who could enrich us. We built cement blocks around our feet out of fear to be something that we didn’t want to be (and anyway are not).

Dogma after dogma, another one was added to the list: it was told that we shouldn’t get overexcited when hearing the news about revolts, we should all keep in mind and sometimes even say out loud that those were not anarchist revolts. We are not fond of the masses, in struggle we don’t wait around until the day we are supposedly enough, we prefer individually shared roads than collective anonymity, the development of liberating ideas over an expanding vagueness which is the ideal soil for new leaders, but… A large group of human beings is not necessarily a mass, it is also a group of individuals. It doesn’t make any sense to negatively qualify a revolt because it concerns a large group of people. Measuring its actors time after time by use of the anarchist criteria transforms anarchism into a whining and paralysing opinion, kills the livelihood of the struggle inside of her.

Last but not least, solidarity was stamped with the label of activism, instead of making an attempt to give it a revolutionary content.

…the wind of insurrection helps us to break free…

The current events have stirred up something deep inside of us. Inside of many of us this old dream has been tickled again: this dream of fighting for freedom. Half naked, but all of us baggage of experiences, we try to think about insurrection, and revolution. Quite few are those saying that the uprising stirred up in the North of Africa and in the Middle East is none of our concern. Why would we concern ourselves with what’s happening in continents that we are not living in? First of all let’s state clearly that we are not just talking about events, but about popular uprisings, about people that organize themselves, that aim against the power, against the oppression they have been living for years. If we as anarchists cannot recognize ourselves in this act, we can better ask ourselves where our lust for struggle is, dried up by lack of desire. Secondly we are internationalists, so we should eradicate the borders that the ever growing nationalism has cut deeply into our heads. Furthermore these uprisings have a certain magical character for us as well, here and now. These uprisings have stirred up the thought of insurrection. These brave people at the other side of the Mediterranean and elsewhere have helped us to break down the walls of our horizon, and this counts for many others as well. In the city we are living in, the word revolution has found a previously unknown echo. In the end there is no one who can deny that the situation over there is firmly connected to the situation over here. Not only are the politicians and capitalists the leaders everywhere, our situation is connected to the situation there no matter from which place in the world. The uprisings in  Northern Africa have for example breached for a moment the gates of Fortress Europe. The fall of Ben Ali and Moubarak, the armed threat to Qadhafi’s power, translates itself also in the disappearance of the authority which aided Europe to guard its heavenly gates, even temporarily. Lampedusa fills up, Berlusconi hands out temporary visas, France stops trains at the border, in Paris there are Tunisians occupying buildings, Belgium asks for an intensification of the border control, and so on. The situation in the countries we are living is changing de facto by the uprisings.

At the same time, there is something brewing on the continent of Europe. Protests against austerity measures and  the final dismantling of the welfare state as we know it. From Portugal through to Spain, to France, England, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Greece. Everywhere in Europe there are many who see the dreams in which they were made to believe (working hard, consuming, retirement and a lifetime of savings, for a well deserved resting time) vanish into thin air. We could read the signs of a disaster, and get stuck on the thought that this historical moment will end up fuelling the hate for the foreigners, present everywhere. Pogroms, massive deportations, and who knows what more. But there is as well a chance that the recent events can stir up something different, something different than protectionism and racism. Might there be a chance that these heated and potentially explosive situations start cross-breeding with each other?

Another doom scenario is one already brewing for years: the construction of new prisons and deportation camps everywhere, the erection of cameras, the expansion of the control and the repressive apparatus, the penetration of technologies of control in the entirety of “social life”. An answer given by the states towards insurrection is of course: repression. But the moment of an uprising opens up many possibilities, the many escaped prisoners during the last months can testify to this. It becomes quite easy to dismantle the repressive infrastructures of the enemy during an uprising. They are experimenting with measures to keep the metropolis under their control, but what if their network of cameras doesn’t function anymore? There are no metropoles in which the cops are loved, there are no metropoles you can say are fully under control of the state.

… and to give back the content to our practices…

There used to be times in which certain words and practices could not be separated from their revolutionary content. It seemed so easy to talk about the world with the help of anarchist ideas.

There used to be times when the antiauthoritarian ideas and practices aimed at the realization of our ideas were fully alive.

Today people might consider solidarity with revolts and imprisoned comrades as activism, while solidarity is an essential part of every insurrection and revolution, and so it is as well for every revolutionary project. When the insurgents in one city come on the streets out of solidarity with another city, we shouldn’t put this too much into question. It is a necessary part of the revolutionary practice.

Nevertheless, today we get often stranded in endless and muddy descriptions of all of the ugliness that can be found in this world. For example we rightfully interact after a murder by the cops, but often don’t get any further than expressing that we are against prison, against cops and the state. We don’t share the basis of our will: to act with other people, our desire for a world without authority. In the city we are living in there is for example almost nobody to be found who loves the cops, nor prison. Continuing to repeat that we are against prison will not help us to go much further in this case. We’ve got more to say, much more.

Besides, the fact is that today a big part of the faces of the state’s enemies have become recognizable for many, with whom we can talk about many other issues. About issues stimulating the subversion of the society.

… in a struggle armed with a revolutionary perspective…

What do we need for an insurrection or revolution? What do we need to appropriate, and which appropriation can we stimulate? How can we fuel the revolutionary imagination? How can we make the antiauthoritarian ideas and practices imaginable and alive? How can we take care that we start off from a strong base, a base of quality, rather than quantity. How can we stir up the existing conflictuality and mix in our ideas? How can we stimulate self organization on the basis of affinity and therefore fuel solidarity? How can we leave the borders behind  and become internationalists? What about our knowledge of the lands we live in? Can we experiment with other ways of struggling other than a specific struggle? How can the specific struggle cross-breed with the ongoing conflicts that develop outside of that specific place? Can we stimulate and push forward those moments in which the lines become clear, the lines between those who fight in defence of authority and those who struggle against it?

A project with a revolutionary perspective does not aim at victories, but it is a permanent event. By far this does not mean acting without thinking. The thoughts about where, when and how cannot and should not be thrown aside in the corner of “pure theory”.

The concrete realization of a struggle with this perspective differs from context to context. The conscious use of methods depends on the choice of comrades, as well as on the context in which they act. Many of us have reclaimed many means; it is up to us to think in which way we want to use them.

We have already been noticing that the world revolution is expressed by many different mouths, and the content of their revolutions scares us often away (we are already fed up by the indignatos and their unstoppable capacity to recuperate). When we are talking about revolution, we cannot detach this from the ideas that inspire it. Revolution without content is a dangerous shell, but this doesn’t imply that we should be prevented from facing the present challenges. Those challenges, they are there. They are popping up as flowers right in front of our eyes. We will not pour water into our wine, but understanding that the situation is neither black nor white (there are just a few anarchists, but there are many people who desire freedom and who are fed up with this disastrous existence) enables us to try, to discover. We inevitably have something to offer. Years of experiences of struggle (be it in the squatting movements or in specific struggles for example against detention camps), of experiments with means, of always looking for new possibilities, angles of approach, of the development of affinities and ideas,… This is not intended to applaud ourselves, but to put into question how it can be possible that at each time people on the street ask us this eternal question “What can we do?”, we are there blinking out in not knowing what to answer. We, obsessed by the question of what we can do, are not able to take this one seriously…

From out of the deepest desire, a world of freedom

From discontent….

In some places the illusion of social peace, reigning in Europe since several decades, has fallen into pieces, while in other places she only now starts showing cracks. For years revolutionaries and anti-authoritarians have gotten used regarding their struggles as valid attempts to break open the tomb of pacification, or to deepen the tensions heating up here and there. But the ongoing changes seem to open up larger possibilities. While some revolts (not to deny the more circumscribed but equally important conflicts and diffuse revolts) such as in November 2005 (France) or December 2008 (Greece) scare the shadows away as torches of a new anger, the insurrections at the other side of the Mediterranean open up challenges that have been put inside the closet for a long time: the question of insurrection, the question of revolutionary perspectives, by which we mean, the question of a large and profound subversion of the social relationships. During a heated social situation the challenge is most certainly not only to “pour out some more oil on the fire”, but rather knowing how to contribute to making the fire rage towards the direction of freedom.

Regarding these changing social situations, which also put us in front of new obstacles, we consider it important to break open our heads once again, to abandon the models and think about our possibilities for encouragement and contribution to the unleashing of the social storm. The lack of revolutionary perspectives, on a small as well as on a big scale, is risking to push us very fast on a side track where only paralysis is awaiting us.

… towards an opportunity

We think there is a need for practical experiences as well as time and space for the development of revolutionary perspectives. Although situations differ from one to another, it seems to us that the basis from which anarchists and anti-authoritarians from all around depart is more than solid enough to enable a discussion and explore a few directions. For this reason we want this international anarchist bookfair to be one of the hopefully many occasions to go into themes that are not only close to our hearts, but have been put aside for too long. We think putting ourselves again fully on the terrain of the revolutionary hypotheses can make us overcome the relative emptiness of the dead-end and annoying repetition of the activist/militant schemes, of a growing incapacity to put fire to the fuse in social situations which seem more and more unstable, of an ideologizing of certain methods and approaches. … By means of this bookfair we want to create space for discussions and informal encounters between anarchists and anti-authoritarians that try overcoming this emptiness in their practice and ideas, in their activities and struggles.

… and an invitation across the borders

As this short sketch hopefully makes clear, the aim of this meeting is internationalist; because a mutual enrichment across the borders can always be worth it, but especially because the question of revolutionary perspectives is irrevocably leading us towards an overcoming of the local particularities. We’d like to get as much out of this encounter as possible and think written contributions can add to this. Therefore we warmly want to invite all comrades to write contributions to the discussion on beforehand. These contributions will be translated and spread in the coming months before the bookfair.