A distanza - "Killing King Abacus"

Ma da ogni altro punto di vista che non sia quello del facilitare il controllo poliziesco, la Parigi di Haussmann è una città costruita da un idiota, piena di rumore e violenza, che non significa nulla.
G. Debord



Haussmann non ha inventato la progettazione della città; già i romani e i cinesi antichi pianificavano le città. Quelle moderne vennero progettate e costruite nelle colonie britanniche e francesi prima che in Europa. Washington DC venne progettata e costruita su di un’area vuota decenni prima che Haussmann rimodellasse Parigi. La differenza è che Haussmann costruì la sua nuova capitale sopra la vecchia Parigi, una città preindustriale. La Parigi di Haussmann a proposito dell’architettura confacente al capitalismo e allo stato-nazione rivela più di quanto non faccia L’Enfant’s D.C, perché ci mostra cosa Haussmann scelse di distruggere e cosa scelse di costruire. Nella sua demolizione dei quartieri poveri e dei vecchi vicoli possiamo vedere che cosa egli considerasse una minaccia.

A Parigi i viali stavano già sostituendo le strade strette due decenni prima che Haussmann assumesse il suo incarico, ma su scala assai minore. Durante la rivoluzione del luglio 1830 ai soldati governativi venne giocato un brutto tiro: i larghi cubi di granito usati per pavimentare i nuovi viali furono portati in cima agli ultimi piani delle case e lanciati sulle teste dei soldati. Queste lastre di pietra divennero una risorsa comune come materiali di costruzione delle barricate. Nel 1830 ne vennero erette seimila.

Haussmann assunse l’incarico nel 1853, dopo le insurrezioni del 1830 e del 1848. Nel tentativo di prevenire altre insurrezioni, cercò di eliminare la possibilità di costruire barricate distruggendo le strade strette e sostituendole con larghi viali. Fece costruire grandi strade anche con lo scopo di consentire un più agevole trasporto di truppe «che collegassero il governo con le truppe e le truppe con la periferia» e che permettessero alle truppe di circondare i quartieri nella città. Pavimentandole facilitò il movimento regolato e regolare delle truppe.

La Parigi di Haussmann era dunque qualcosa di più di una semplice città. Era un simbolo; i suoi monumenti e i viali produssero l’immagine della capitale di un potente impero. I nuovi viali agghindati che erano parte di questa immagine fecero lievitare gli affitti proprio come accade coi moderni progetti di «rivitalizzazione urbana». Intanto i quartieri proletari venivano letteralmente devastati per pavimentare i viali. Mentre aumentava la popolazione dei vagabondi e dei senza casa, nasceva in modo massiccio il fenomeno dei “pendolari”, avendo Haussmann cercato di trattenere e sistemare gli emarginati e di incanalare i lavoratori in movimenti lineari — da casa al lavoro, dal lavoro a casa —: un precursore del metro, boulot, dodo (metropolitana, lavoro, dormire). Nel 1864 tenne un discorso in cui esprimeva «la sua avversione per la popolazione urbana sradicata».

Haussmann progettò la costruzione di collegamenti ferroviari tra il centro di Parigi e i suoi sobborghi proprio nel momento in cui le ferrovie europee si stavano espandendo considerevolmente. «Lo spazio è ucciso dalle ferrovie e noi siamo rimasti con il tempo solo» (Heine). Magari lo spazio non è stato del tutto ucciso dalle ferrovie ma i viaggi ad alta velocità hanno reso il tempo del viaggio un fattore più importante rispetto alla distanza e al significato stesso del viaggio. Ciò che Georg Simmel diceva del denaro può essere in un certo senso affermato della città moderna. Entrambi consentono collegamenti tra cose in precedenza distanti ma rendono più difficile da raggiungere ciò che è più vicino. Mentre le distanze venivano conquistate dalle ferrovie, le vicinanze scivolavano ancora più lontano. Ciò stava a significare che nello stesso momento in cui i trasporti e le comunicazioni permettevano di raggiungere posti lontani in un periodo di tempo più breve, i propri vicini diventavano più lontani: l’industrializzazione richiedeva più ore di lavoro e più tempo occorreva per andare e venire dal lavoro, meno ne restava per socializzare.



Centinaia di migliaia di famiglie, che lavoravano nel centro della capitale, dormivano nei sobborghi. Il movimento assomiglia alla marea: al mattino i lavoratori confluiscono dentro Parigi, e di sera la stessa ondata di persone ne scorre fuori. È una immagine melanconica... Vorrei aggiungere... che questa è la prima volta che l’umanità ha assistito a uno spettacolo così deprimente.
A. Gravneau



L’industrializzazione e l’opera dei nuovi urbanisti erano riuscite a separare gli spazi vitali da quelli lavorativi. Una separazione che ha dato inizio a un processo di sempre maggior dipendenza verso articoli di consumo che in precedenza venivano prodotti in casa o di cui i contadini e gli artigiani non avevano mai sentito la mancanza. La creazione delle periferie aumentava la separazione.



Le periferie nord-americane: il sogno lastricato

Prima della seconda guerra mondiale, gli Stati Uniti erano già un paese altamente industrializzato. Quindi, le condizioni sopra descritte erano già instaurate nelle città nord-americane. A partire dagli anni ‘30, la distanza che divideva gli spazi vitali da quelli lavorativi era aumentata esponenzialmente allorquando milioni di persone si trasferirono nelle periferie, vennero costruiti chilometri di autostrade e milioni di americani acquistarono un’automobile nel tentativo di chiudere questa distanza che aumentava.

Negli anni trenta il governo federale impiegò milioni di dollari per costruire un nuovo paesaggio. Dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, il Veteran’s Mortgage Guarantee Program fornì alloggi a basso costo a milioni di persone. Dalla fine degli anni ‘40 fino alla metà degli anni ‘60 vennero costruite 23 milioni di nuove abitazioni. L’industria seguì i nuovi abitanti dei sobborghi per la maggior parte bianchi fuori della città. Negli anni ‘40 e ‘50 il governo investì milioni di dollari nelle infrastrutture periferiche: gas, elettricità, strade, sistemi fognari e autostrade. Vennero costruite migliaia di strade e di autostrade che permettevano un facile movimento fra le periferie e i centri delle città. I quartieri poveri furono incapaci di resistere alla costruzione di questi serpentoni di cemento che dovevano passare al loro interno, mentre i quartieri residenziali spesso riuscivano ad opporsi. Un esempio recente è la costruzione di una autostrada a Los Angeles, nella zona sud-centrale, laddove i ricchi di Beverly Hills sono stati in grado di fermare la costruzione di una autostrada che doveva attraversare il proprio quartiere.

Il dipartimento della difesa spese milioni e milioni di dollari per la costruzione di strade dopo la guerra. Così come i viali di Haussmann erano utili strategicamente per l’esercito, le autostrade potevano potenzialmente venir usate anche come piste di atterraggio per aerei bombardieri. Ancora più significativa era l’alleanza fra le industrie automobilistiche, petrolifere e della gomma che si spartivano i proventi per la costruzione delle autostrade, e lo Stato. Queste industrie usarono la coercizione dell’ambiente costruito per assicurarsi il consumo dei propri prodotti.

L’alienazione è costruita dentro la città e dentro i sobborghi, nel loro cemento e nell’asfalto. Prendiamo l’esempio di Los Angeles, la città costruita per favorire le automobili non certo le passeggiate degli esseri umani. A Los Angeles molte persone non pensano ad altro che a guidare per tre quarti d’ora soltanto per andare al bar. Invece di avere quartieri dove si possa trovare una strada con botteghe e caffè, gli spazi per socializzare sono sparsi fuori della città. Le città nord-americane sono prive di qualsiasi storia pre-capitalista, essendo state progettate e costruite in base ai dettami del capitale, con l’aiuto dei politici. Il risultato: ruggini urbane più adatte a un’automobile che a un essere umano.

L’abitante dei sobborghi ricorre al controllo sulla natura laddove è privo del controllo sulla propria vita. Quindi osserviamo aiuole potate nelle piazze, una nevrosi per falciare prati e file di fiori meticolosamente piantati, i negozi di giardinaggio che proliferano e il cortile suburbano diventato “natura” mercificata.

Il sogno americano è senza vita ed è uniforme e piatto come il prato suburbano. I sobborghi nascondono la mancanza di rapporto con la natura e con gli esseri umani così come nascondono la mancanza di potere esercitato dagli abitanti delle periferie sulle proprie vite.

Mentre la Parigi di Haussmann era servita per creare l’immagine della capitale di un potente impero, i progetti di rivitalizzazione della città creano l’immagine di una nuova città “abbellita” che ci viene venduta sotto forma di orgoglio comunitario. In entrambi questi casi il risultato è stato raggiunto anche attraverso lo spostamento dei poveri. La «comunità» ci viene venduta con celebrazioni in tutta la città, fiere cittadine o celebrazioni ufficiali del Millennio. Lo Stato e i mass media contribuiscono a creare e a perpetuare queste comunità immaginarie, basate su un concetto astratto di identità comune, il cui esempio più ovvio è quello della Nazione.

Haussmann aveva costruito larghe strade per prevenire la costruzione di barricate e distrutto completamente i quartieri per prevenire ciò che non era controllabile. Questi quartieri riapparvero in forma ben differente nelle periferie. I sobborghi nord-americani sono stati costruiti in maniera tale che si possano sviluppare ben pochi rapporti autentici. Per il controllo statale la comunicazione è una minaccia tanto quanto le barricate. Negli Stati Uniti i sobborghi crescono proprio all’ombra del sogno americano.



[Tr. it. su Diavolo in corpo n. 3, novembre 2000]

Against organization

We cannot conceive that anarchists establish points to follow systemically as fixed dogmas. Because, even if a uniformity of views on the general lines of tactics to follow is assumed, these tactics are carried out in a hundred different forms of applications, with a thousand varying particulars.

Therefore, we don’t want tactical programs, and consequently we don’t want organization. Having established the aim, the goal to which we hold, we leave every anarchist free to choose from the means that his sense, his education, his temperament, his fighting spirit suggest to him as best. We don’t form fixed programs and we don’t form small or great parties. But we come together spontaneously, and not with permanent criteria, according to momentary affinities for a specific purpose, and we constantly change these groups as soon as the purpose for which we had associated ceases to be, and other aims and needs arise and develop in us and push us to seek new collaborators, people who think as we do in the specific circumstance.

When any of us no longer preoccupies himself with creating a fictitious movement of individual sympathizers and those weak of conscience, but rather creates an active ferment of ideas that makes one think, like blows from a whip, he often hears his friends respond that for many years they have been accustomed to another method of struggle, or that he is an individualist, or a pure theoretician of anarchism.

It is not true that we are individualists if one tries to define this word in terms of isolating elements, shunning any association within the social community, and supposing that the individual could be sufficient to himself. But ourselves supporting the development of the free initiatives of the individual, where is the anarchist that does not want to be guilty of this kind of individualism? If the anarchist is one who aspires to emancipation from every form of moral and material authority, how could he not agree that the affirmation of one’s individuality, free from all obligations and external authoritarian influence, is utterly benevolent, is the surest indication of anarchist consciousness? Nor are we pure theoreticians because we believe in the efficacy of the idea, more than in that if the individual. How are actions decided, if not through thought? Now, producing and sustaining a movement of ideas is, for us, the most effective means for determining the flow of anarchist actions, both in practical struggle and in the struggle for the realization of the ideal.

We do not oppose the organizers. They will continue, if they like, in their tactic. If, as I think, it will not do any great good, it will not do any great harm either. But it seems to me that they have writhed throwing their cry of alarm and blacklisting us either as savages or as theoretical dreamers.

Giuseppe Ciancabilla.
http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wdv4n3-4.html#org

The Violence of Poverty by Patrizia

Yet another rape. But today violence against a woman is more amusing if it takes place in a group: of at leas 14. This is what happened in a village in Sicily, Militello. A fifteen year old girl was raped by boys between 11 and 18 years old all looking for adventure. An adventure with a girl whose parents had just returned to Sicily after years of emigration.
The newspapers point out one particular: the girl, who became pregnant as a result of the rape, was mentally disturbed. Her womanhood, her freedom of choice, is trampled on before she starts. First by her parents, who almost kept the fact hidden because of their shame, then the whole village, who interpreted the event as a boyish prank to defend the rapist kids, then the judge. The girl is being prevented from having an abortion. The village priest shows off his sullen moralism.
This time they couldn’t even use the alibi of a miniskirt, of the seductive gaze of the continental woman who — they say — attracts men and distracts them from their good feelings of father, husband or brother.
In that environment there is a more subtle violence, a violence that comes from ignorance and fear. The ignorance of the boy rapists who pursue images according to which a woman cannot be considered a human being to be respected and loved.
In the south, as in the north, sex is still something dirty, composed of violence and abuse. In Milan a girl is raped by a male nurse in a hospital bed. In Termini station in Rome eighty people stand by and watch as an attempted rape takes place on a station bench. The rapist was then covered by the crowd and escaped. So, look out. From the tiny Sicilian village to the huge metropolis, rape remains the alternative of idiots, the last beach of interior emargination and the incapacity to communicate one’s rage in any other way.
But in a little village the authority of the priest, the judge, the carabinieri, the public opinion of “respectable” people who don’t want any scandal, bears a fundamental weight on things. In such an environment it is even possible for abortion to be denied to a girl who has been raped.
Violence is practically subscribed to by a power structure which itself exercises a double violence on the population: on the girl who must submit to the decisions made by the family and the rest of the village; and on the boys.
They are all more concerned with obeying laws and morality than about the life of this young woman.
We must begin to shout our rage again, but not by asking for more severe laws or the application of new ones: this only helps the system to castrate any possible search for freedom, our own and that of others, men and women alike.
If we believe that the practice of rape is born from a precise social condition, then we must not humiliate ourselves with demands for laws that only play the game into the hands of those who rape and exploit us daily.
We are not interested in whether those who raped the girl are found guilty or innocent. That would be too easy. We must fight the whole structure that contributes to creating the idea of violence against women and against emarginated people and proletarians in general. And, as usual, the latter, instead of beating up the bosses, are fighting among themselves, numbing their minds with all the shit that power produces. Violence often grows from conditions of poverty and survival that create the need to possess at all costs what one cannot have through practices of freedom, be it sex or any other part of normal activity.
If we want to overcome this profound contradiction between the request to be “regimented” and a search for liberation within human beings, then we must struggle in our own way and with our own instruments against all the relations of dominion that generate violence. Perhaps that day in Militello the boys would have preferred to have beaten up a priest or to have created some perspective for a less rotten life. Today they are locked up in a cell and are asking themselves why. The state will pardon their misdeed, but they will always remain convinced that all that, even their very punishment, was right and fits into the normal way of things.
Footnotes
[1]^ See “Workers' Autonomy” (Bratach Dubh);
[2]^ See Insurrection No. 0
Notes: “The Catastrophe Psychosis” and “The Violence of Poverty” are reprinted from Insurrection, September 1989
Source: Retrieved on May 7, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/ioaa.html

from Insurrection n. 0 (italian magazine)

Against War and Pacifist Bliss (KK Abacus)

The pacifist abhors war and blesses the state. In times of peace, he has been taught — and he has believed — that society is a vast system of communication where all controls itself by means of dialogue, in a nonviolent manner. It follows from this that only one who, living on the periphery of these communicating vessels, mocks the hopeless cornerstone of vain democratic chattering with blows is candidate to suffer brute force.

Though he implicitly recognizes in this way that this society is not only dialogue but also violence, the pacifist citizen is not excessively worried by this: the violence is destined for others, for the new savages who have not yet acquired a proper communicative humanity and who deduce from this that society is much more violent from the sweet force of words that support a round table. The pacifist elevates the nonviolent image to a supreme principle — in which the peaceful course of capitalist affairs reflects itself — which mediated society gives itself.

When a state starts a war, the pacifist citizen orders it, “in the name of the people”, to conform to this idealized representation of daily life. Imbued with that idea of Rights which the state imposes for worship, he refuses to recognize how the state monopoly on violence, that by which countries guarantee the respect manu militari of the law corresponds, with armies in state to state relations; and when two powers collide it is war that has the final word. Thus, as she glances with nonchalance on the police reduction of democratic dialogue in the affairs of internal politics, the pacifist citizen insists upon the exclusive use of words in foreign affairs: upon negotiation. He wants one without the other, as if one could be able to have Rights without violence, the state without war, the principle without the consequences that derive from it. Far from recovering from seeing these murderous consequences and from allowing the principle from which they emanate to be put into doubt, the pacifist invokes the principle of Rights against violence — which is the reverse side of it — and draws from this irrational process the moral superiority which he decorates himself with: “What stupidity, war!”

Thus, questioning his own rulers and accusing them of unawareness and irresponsibility, the pacifist would be candid as advisor to the prince with the purpose of shedding light upon the real interests of the nation. And the less he is listened to, the more satisfied he is to have accomplished the proper duty of the citizen: to tell the government what he thinks of public affairs — and so much the worse for the head of state, if he finds himself condemned by moral conscience. As long as the citizen, addressing herself to government, recognizes the legitimacy of the state, the state is able to act more as it pleases because, unlike the pacifist citizen, it does not deny the possibility of compensating for the gaps in its discourse, when necessary, by putting forth its own potential for destruction, flying squad included.

It is in this way that the pacifist has drawn up a separate peace with capitalist society, in which he denounces the “drivel” without ever putting it forth for discussion. To this secret complicity corresponds a purely symbolic activity. With his feverish activity, lighting candles, signing call after call, petition after petition, taking his own opinions for a walk on the city sidewalk, the pacifist accomplishes absolutely nothing. The pseudo-activity of the pacifist and of the other propagandists of the “right to...” imitates, more or less consciously, advertising techniques: it assumes that the incessant repetitions of symbolic acts and of reduced slogans able to create an opposition to war and to “ mobilize the citizens”. Notoriously, gratuitous morality sells well in times of war.

The pacifist practice is an extension, by other means, of the Live Aid Concert against world hunger. Placed outside of the production centers of capitalist society, opposition sets itself up in the sphere of entertainment, and of “political pastimes”, where the citizen believes in acting as a responsible and autonomous individual, raised from capitalist contrition to earn a living. This kind of opposition is not able to get a grasp on social reality because the encounter unfolds itself in a mediated unreality which pretends to be the only reality: while the pacifists produce the images of opposition to war, the mass media reduces this same war to a technological operation, covered with base sentimentality. There are two interpretations, two images of the clash; war and capitalist society, which in the meantime, are left alone and proceed. The curious ease with which the pacifist is transformed once again the next day into simple labor power that must carry out determined tasks results from these images. Moralizers abstain: there’s work going on here.

Thus, the atomized individual — who doesn't have any occupation of her own except that of staying aware of the balance of their own pecuniary and emotional bookkeeping — wears the mask of the pacifist citizen from time to time. There, on the public square — or rather on the square of publicity — he proclaims his own high morality against the softness of daily life that she continues to reproduce simultaneously in private and at work. The pacifist is a moralizer in the sphere of mediated unreality and acts without any moral considerations when she is in the production centers of a state, whose warlike defects she denies. This double character of the pacifist is called impotence in the best of cases, in the worst, hypocrisy.

Notes: Translated from: Neither their war nor their peace, June 1999.

Source: Retrieved on April 6th, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/pacifistbliss.htm

Más allá de la estructura de síntesis

CONTRA LA ORGANIZACIÓN ANARQUISTA DE SÍNTESIS PROPONEMOS LA ORGANIZACIÓN INFORMAL ANARQUISTA, BASADA EN LA LUCHA Y LOS ANÁLISIS QUE EMERGEN DE ELLA.



Lxs anarquistas de todas las tendencias rechazamos cualquier modelo organizativo jerárquico y autoritario. Rechazamos a los partidos y las estructuras verticales que imponen directorios de antemano de una manera más o menos obvia... Cuando postulamos la Revolución Libertaria como única solución social posible al mundo actual, lxs anarquistas consideramos que los medios usados en causar esta transformación condicionarán los extremos alcanzados. Y esto significa que las organizaciones autoritarias no pueden ser instrumentos que nos conduzcan a la liberación.

LOS PELIGROS DE LA ESTRUCTURA DE SÍNTESIS PARA LA LUCHA ANARQUISTA.

Lo dicho anteriormente no sólo basta con decirlo con palabras, es también necesario ponerlo en la práctica. En nuestra opinión, la articulación mediante una estructura de síntesis presenta no pocos peligros. Cuando este tipo de organización se convierte en una fuerza potente y hegemónica, como fue la CNT en los años 30, comienza a parecerse peligrosamente a un partido político. La síntesis se transforma en control. Aunque esto sucedió durante un periodo demasiado breve y apenas visible, así que este análisis lo dejaremos para que no se nos acuse de blasfemia o demagogia...
La estructura de síntesis se basa en grupos o individuos que están en contacto de forma más o menos constante entre ellxs, y tienen un momento clave en esos contactos durante los denominados CONGRESOS PERIÓDICOS. En estos congresos se discuten los análisis básicos, se elabora un programa y se dividen tareas para cubrir diferentes parámetros de intervención social. Es una organización de síntesis puesto que se instala como punto de referencia capaz de sintetizar las luchas que ocurren dentro del choque entre clases. Los diferentes grupos o individuos intervienen en las luchas, dan su contribución, pero no pierden de vista la orientación teórico-práctica que la organización en su totalidad decidió durante su último congreso.
Sin embargo, en nuestra opinión, una organización estructurada de este modo corre el riesgo de estar detrás en lo que se refiere al nivel eficaz de la lucha, pues su objetivo principal es la de llevar la lucha dentro de su proyecto de síntesis y no empujarla hacia su proyección insurreccional. Uno de sus objetivos principales para su proyecto es la búsqueda en estas luchas de personas o grupos para su crecimiento numérico organizativo. Por lo que tiende a dibujar una estrategia reformista y hasta cierto punto moderada para captar grupos o individualidades, a la par que intenta frenar todo aquello que intente desmarcarse de su proyecto.
Esto no significa que todxs aquellxs que formen parte de una organización de síntesis actúen de esta manera: los miembros son a menudo bastante autónomxs en su elección de ofertas y objetivos más eficaces en una determinada lucha. Es lo intrínseco del mecanismo interno de funcionamiento de la organización de síntesis lo que conduce a tomar decisiones inadecuadas a la situación, ya que al buscar el crecimiento cuantitativo, a veces a cualquier precio y a toda costa, se tiende a tomar una posición poco clara y poco definida en muchos temas, ya que busca, de alguna manera, tomar una posición que satisfazca los gustos de la mayoría y que descontente a poca gente, para de esa forma hacer su mensaje “digerible” para la Sociedad. Labor que, por otro lado, casi nunca suelen lograr y que suele dejar a la mayoría insatisfecha, todo lo contrario que en la teoría se busca...

EL MIEDO A LO DESCONOCIDO ES EL PRINCIPAL FACTOR QUE NOS EMPUJA HACIA EL ESQUEMA ORGANIZACIONAL FORMALISTA (ORG. DE SÍNTESIS)

La reacciones que se vierten al hacer críticas tales como esta son dictadas a menudo por el miedo y determinados prejuicios. El miedo a lo desconocido es el principal factor que nos empuja hacia el esquema organizacional formalista entre compañerxs. Este esquema nos protege de la búsqueda de soluciones en el riesgo de encontrarse en situaciones y experiencias desconocidas. Esto es absolutamente obvio entre diferentes compañerxs que ven la necesidad imperiosa de tener una organización formal que obedezca a requisitos tales como la constancia, la estabilidad y el trabajo programado por adelantado. En realidad estos elementos nos sirven más como una necesidad de la certeza que como una necesidad revolucionaria.
Por el contrario, pensamos que en la organización informal, sin esquemas de síntesis, se pueden establecer los puntos de partida válidos para salir de esta incertidumbre.
La diversidad organizativa informal creemos que es capaz de convertirse –al contrario que las estructuras de síntesis y formales- en verdaderas relaciones concretas y productivas ya que se basan en la afinidad y el conocimiento recíproco. Por otra parte, el momento donde se alcanza el verdadero potencial es cuando se participa en situaciones concretas de lucha, no cuando se elaboran plataformas teóricas o prácticas, estatutos u otras reglas sociales.

LA ORGANIZACIÓN INFORMAL NO SE CONSTRUYE EN BASE A UN PROGRAMA FIJADO EN UN CONGRESO.

La organización informal no se construye en base a un programa fijado en un congreso, el proyecto es observado por lxs compañerxs y por ellxs mismxs en el transcurso de la lucha y durante el desarrollo de la misma. No hay ningún instrumento privilegiado o vanguardista en la elaboración teórico-práctica, ni hay los problemas inherentes a la articulación de síntesis.
El objetivo básico es el de intervenir en la lucha con un objetivo insurreccional y revolucionario.
Sin embargo aún hay grandes limitaciones dentro de la informalidad, pero creemos que es una forma de organizarse aún válida y abierta a exploraciones teórico-prácticas...

Extraído de “Killing King Abacus”, basándonos en el texto del mismo nombre (en inglés

[Killing King Abacus] Más allá de la estructura de síntesis

CONTRA LA ORGANIZACIÓN ANARQUISTA DE SÍNTESIS PROPONEMOS LA ORGANIZACIÓN INFORMAL ANARQUISTA, BASADA EN LA LUCHA Y LOS ANÁLISIS QUE EMERGEN DE ELLA.

Lxs anarquistas de todas las tendencias rechazamos cualquier modelo organizativo jerárquico y autoritario. Rechazamos a los partidos y las estructuras verticales que imponen directorios de antemano de una manera más o menos obvia… Cuando postulamos la Revolución Libertaria como única solución social posible al mundo actual, lxs anarquistas consideramos que los medios usados en causar esta transformación condicionarán los extremos alcanzados. Y esto significa que las organizaciones autoritarias no pueden ser instrumentos que nos conduzcan a la liberación.

LOS PELIGROS DE LA ESTRUCTURA DE SÍNTESIS PARA LA LUCHA ANARQUISTA.

Lo dicho anteriormente no sólo basta con decirlo con palabras, es también necesario ponerlo en la práctica. En nuestra opinión, la articulación mediante una estructura de síntesis presenta no pocos peligros. Cuando este tipo de organización se convierte en una fuerza potente y hegemónica, como fue la CNT en los años 30, comienza a parecerse peligrosamente a un partido político. La síntesis se transforma en control. Aunque esto sucedió durante un periodo demasiado breve y apenas visible, así que este análisis lo dejaremos para que no se nos acuse de blasfemia o demagogia…

La estructura de síntesis se basa en grupos o individuos que están en contacto de forma más o menos constante entre ellxs, y tienen un momento clave en esos contactos durante los denominados CONGRESOS PERIÓDICOS. En estos congresos se discuten los análisis básicos, se elabora un programa y se dividen tareas para cubrir diferentes parámetros de intervención social. Es una organización de síntesis puesto que se instala como punto de referencia capaz de sintetizar las luchas que ocurren dentro del choque entre clases. Los diferentes grupos o individuos intervienen en las luchas, dan su contribución, pero no pierden de vista la orientación teórico-práctica que la organización en su totalidad decidió durante su último congreso.
Sin embargo, en nuestra opinión, una organización estructurada de este modo corre el riesgo de estar detrás en lo que se refiere al nivel eficaz de la lucha, pues su objetivo principal es la de llevar la lucha dentro de su proyecto de síntesis y no empujarla hacia su proyección insurreccional. Uno de sus objetivos principales para su proyecto es la búsqueda en estas luchas de personas o grupos para su crecimiento numérico organizativo. Por lo que tiende a dibujar una estrategia reformista y hasta cierto punto moderada para captar grupos o individualidades, a la par que intenta frenar todo aquello que intente desmarcarse de su proyecto.
Esto no significa que todxs aquellxs que formen parte de una organización de síntesis actúen de esta manera: los miembros son a menudo bastante autónomxs en su elección de ofertas y objetivos más eficaces en una determinada lucha. Es lo intrínseco del mecanismo interno de funcionamiento de la organización de síntesis lo que conduce a tomar decisiones inadecuadas a la situación, ya que al buscar el crecimiento cuantitativo, a veces a cualquier precio y a toda costa, se tiende a tomar una posición poco clara y poco definida en muchos temas, ya que busca, de alguna manera, tomar una posición que satisfazca los gustos de la mayoría y que descontente a poca gente, para de esa forma hacer su mensaje “digerible” para la Sociedad. Labor que, por otro lado, casi nunca suelen lograr y que suele dejar a la mayoría insatisfecha, todo lo contrario que en la teoría se busca…

EL MIEDO A LO DESCONOCIDO ES EL PRINCIPAL FACTOR QUE NOS EMPUJA HACIA EL ESQUEMA ORGANIZACIONAL FORMALISTA (ORG. DE SÍNTESIS)

La reacciones que se vierten al hacer críticas tales como esta son dictadas a menudo por el miedo y determinados prejuicios. El miedo a lo desconocido es el principal factor que nos empuja hacia el esquema organizacional formalista entre compañerxs. Este esquema nos protege de la búsqueda de soluciones en el riesgo de encontrarse en situaciones y experiencias desconocidas. Esto es absolutamente obvio entre diferentes compañerxs que ven la necesidad imperiosa de tener una organización formal que obedezca a requisitos tales como la constancia, la estabilidad y el trabajo programado por adelantado. En realidad estos elementos nos sirven más como una necesidad de la certeza que como una necesidad revolucionaria.
Por el contrario, pensamos que en la organización informal, sin esquemas de síntesis, se pueden establecer los puntos de partida válidos para salir de esta incertidumbre.
La diversidad organizativa informal creemos que es capaz de convertirse –al contrario que las estructuras de síntesis y formales- en verdaderas relaciones concretas y productivas ya que se basan en la afinidad y el conocimiento recíproco. Por otra parte, el momento donde se alcanza el verdadero potencial es cuando se participa en situaciones concretas de lucha, no cuando se elaboran plataformas teóricas o prácticas, estatutos u otras reglas sociales.

LA ORGANIZACIÓN INFORMAL NO SE CONSTRUYE EN BASE A UN PROGRAMA FIJADO EN UN CONGRESO.

La organización informal no se construye en base a un programa fijado en un congreso, el proyecto es observado por lxs compañerxs y por ellxs mismxs en el transcurso de la lucha y durante el desarrollo de la misma. No hay ningún instrumento privilegiado o vanguardista en la elaboración teórico-práctica, ni hay los problemas inherentes a la articulación de síntesis.
El objetivo básico es el de intervenir en la lucha con un objetivo insurreccional y revolucionario.
Sin embargo aún hay grandes limitaciones dentro de la informalidad, pero creemos que es una forma de organizarse aún válida y abierta a exploraciones teórico-prácticas…

Extraído de “Killing King Abacus”, basándonos en el texto del mismo nombre (en inglés)

http://reflexionrevuelta.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/killing-king-abacus-mas-alla-de-la-estructura-de-sintesis/#more-222

My Perspective by Killing King Abacus

Above all, I am an individual who desires to create my life and my relationship to the world and to other people on my own terms. This is why I am an anarchist. Therefore, my anarchist perspective is egoist and I take from all perspectives that I find useful in developing and carrying out my anarchist project.

From individualism, I take the primacy of the freedom of every individual to determine the conditions of her or his existence in free association with others as the central aim of revolutionary struggle and also a recognition of the necessity of individuals to begin to reappropriate life here and now in revolt against this society to the extent to which they are able.

My perspective is insurrectionist in that it recognizes both the necessity of the individual to rise up in open revolt against her or his condition (individual insurrection) and the necessity for a destructive, subversive rupture on the large scale with the current social order—the rising of the multitudes of the exploited and excluded classes against their condition (social insurrection).

Thus, I recognize the necessity of class analysis and an active critique of the economy. I see class struggle as the struggle against proletarianization—i.e., the struggle against our dispossession of the capacity to determine the conditions of our existence in terms of our real desires and aspirations. It manifests on the individual level in the daily acts of sabotage, theft, subversion and revolt that the exploited carry out to take back a bit of their life and dignity. The recognition of one’s own struggle in the struggles of others is what begins to build the solidarity capable of transforming these individual acts into “the collective struggle for individual realization”, which I see as the real class struggle.

Since this aim of freeing every individual to be able to create her or his life as s/he sees fit requires that everyone have equal access to all that is necessary for this project of self-realization, it is necessary to destroy the institutions that prevent this free access. Thus, the destruction of the institutions of property and of commodity exchange, and consequently of work—that separation of the activity through which one gets the necessities of existence from life itself—is a necessary aim of revolutionary struggle. Only in this way can new social relations based on free association without hierarchy or privilege come to exist. This is communism as I understand it.

I recognize that the institutions of domination and exploitation are what constitute civilization, and, thus, recognize my struggle as one against civilization. Technological systems—and particularly industrialism—developed as means of controlling people, and therefore, the struggle against control is the struggle against such systems. So my perspective incorporates luddism and, in the broad sense, could be called a green anarchist perspective, though I have no use for any anti-human rhetoric, and desire to prevent environmental destruction because a devastated world impoverishes my existence and the existence of all human beings.

Thus, I see the dichotomies made between individualism and communism, individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against human exploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those who accept them are impoverishing their own critique and struggle.
from - http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/vb/wd12persp.html

Anonymous Against War and Pacifist Bliss

The pacifist abhors war and blesses the state. In times of peace, he has been taught — and he has believed — that society is a vast system of communication where all controls itself by means of dialogue, in a nonviolent manner. It follows from this that only one who, living on the periphery of these communicating vessels, mocks the hopeless cornerstone of vain democratic chattering with blows is candidate to suffer brute force.

Though he implicitly recognizes in this way that this society is not only dialogue but also violence, the pacifist citizen is not excessively worried by this: the violence is destined for others, for the new savages who have not yet acquired a proper communicative humanity and who deduce from this that society is much more violent from the sweet force of words that support a round table. The pacifist elevates the nonviolent image to a supreme principle — in which the peaceful course of capitalist affairs reflects itself — which mediated society gives itself.

When a state starts a war, the pacifist citizen orders it, “in the name of the people”, to conform to this idealized representation of daily life. Imbued with that idea of Rights which the state imposes for worship, he refuses to recognize how the state monopoly on violence, that by which countries guarantee the respect manu militari of the law corresponds, with armies in state to state relations; and when two powers collide it is war that has the final word. Thus, as she glances with nonchalance on the police reduction of democratic dialogue in the affairs of internal politics, the pacifist citizen insists upon the exclusive use of words in foreign affairs: upon negotiation. He wants one without the other, as if one could be able to have Rights without violence, the state without war, the principle without the consequences that derive from it. Far from recovering from seeing these murderous consequences and from allowing the principle from which they emanate to be put into doubt, the pacifist invokes the principle of Rights against violence — which is the reverse side of it — and draws from this irrational process the moral superiority which he decorates himself with: “What stupidity, war!”

Thus, questioning his own rulers and accusing them of unawareness and irresponsibility, the pacifist would be candid as advisor to the prince with the purpose of shedding light upon the real interests of the nation. And the less he is listened to, the more satisfied he is to have accomplished the proper duty of the citizen: to tell the government what he thinks of public affairs — and so much the worse for the head of state, if he finds himself condemned by moral conscience. As long as the citizen, addressing herself to government, recognizes the legitimacy of the state, the state is able to act more as it pleases because, unlike the pacifist citizen, it does not deny the possibility of compensating for the gaps in its discourse, when necessary, by putting forth its own potential for destruction, flying squad included.

It is in this way that the pacifist has drawn up a separate peace with capitalist society, in which he denounces the “drivel” without ever putting it forth for discussion. To this secret complicity corresponds a purely symbolic activity. With his feverish activity, lighting candles, signing call after call, petition after petition, taking his own opinions for a walk on the city sidewalk, the pacifist accomplishes absolutely nothing. The pseudo-activity of the pacifist and of the other propagandists of the “right to...” imitates, more or less consciously, advertising techniques: it assumes that the incessant repetitions of symbolic acts and of reduced slogans able to create an opposition to war and to “ mobilize the citizens”. Notoriously, gratuitous morality sells well in times of war.

The pacifist practice is an extension, by other means, of the Live Aid Concert against world hunger. Placed outside of the production centers of capitalist society, opposition sets itself up in the sphere of entertainment, and of “political pastimes”, where the citizen believes in acting as a responsible and autonomous individual, raised from capitalist contrition to earn a living. This kind of opposition is not able to get a grasp on social reality because the encounter unfolds itself in a mediated unreality which pretends to be the only reality: while the pacifists produce the images of opposition to war, the mass media reduces this same war to a technological operation, covered with base sentimentality. There are two interpretations, two images of the clash; war and capitalist society, which in the meantime, are left alone and proceed. The curious ease with which the pacifist is transformed once again the next day into simple labor power that must carry out determined tasks results from these images. Moralizers abstain: there’s work going on here.

Thus, the atomized individual — who doesn't have any occupation of her own except that of staying aware of the balance of their own pecuniary and emotional bookkeeping — wears the mask of the pacifist citizen from time to time. There, on the public square — or rather on the square of publicity — he proclaims his own high morality against the softness of daily life that she continues to reproduce simultaneously in private and at work. The pacifist is a moralizer in the sphere of mediated unreality and acts without any moral considerations when she is in the production centers of a state, whose warlike defects she denies. This double character of the pacifist is called impotence in the best of cases, in the worst, hypocrisy.

--Notes: Translated from: Neither their war nor their peace, June 1999.

Source: Retrieved on April 6th, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/pacifistbliss.htm