DECOMPOSITION for insurrection without vanguards Contents Going in Circles: A Critique of “The Coming Insurrection” A Corps Perdu #3, international anarchist review, 2010 Blangui or the Statist Insurrection Finimondo, 2011 Blanqui in Venaus Finimondo, 2014 ‘The Death of Rémi and Confrontations: ‘The Radical Recuperators Come Out of the Woodhwork Anonymous Decisions, Compositions, Negotiations Hourriya #6, 2021 Here Lies a Corpse Avis de Tempétes (Storm Warnings) #3, 2018 A Composition Julien Coupat, Adrian Wohllcben, Hugh Farrell, and sther Imaginary Friends Ungrateful Hyenas Editions ungratefulbyenas.noblogs.org THE WRITINGS OF TIQQUN and the Invisible Committee have given risc to the emergence of an authoritarian insurrcctionalist tendency that has been recruiting and building its ranks for about the past decade and a half. Although one of the trademarks of tigqunism is its approach to “invisibility”, or not being legible as a distinct tendency, after so many years and some significant betrayals, tiqqunists have thoroughly revealed who they are and what they want, which is at dircet odds with any struggle against authority. ‘While tigqunism has crossed the pond from France and taken oot across turtle island to some extent, the anarchist critique of tigqunism has not. This reflects a gencral commitment to tolerance in the anarchist space, an unfortunate reaction against the ideological dogmatism that silos people in insular and stale subeultural enclosures, Thinking through the lens of this false dilemma comes at the expense of uncompromising clarity around how we relate to power, eformism, sepresentation, and the mechanisms of politics. In shor, this tolerance, even when motivated by a desire for openness and connection, blurs the lines which lic at the very foundation of autonomy and self- organization. Tiqqunism pretends to offer an escape from idcological camps, transcending the confines of identities that no longer serve us and inviting us to be partisans in their insurrectionary composition. Not only is this an cmpty promisc, as the subcultural niche they have formed is highly exclusive, insular, oppressive, and frankly unpleasant, itis also a way of manipulating readers into uncritically adopting, or at least tolerating, their proposals. This collection aims to shed light on the authoritarian ambitions woven throughout tiqqunist ideas in order to encourage 5 anarchists to abandon tolerance and move towards principled and necessary conflct. Ideas are not neutral,they are not incidental acsthetic preferences or personality quirks, they form the basis of who we are, how we move through the world, and how we struggle. As the authors of Blangui or the Statist Insurrection remind us,the ideas we fecl close to arc “nat irrelevant, and constitute choosing an unmistakable side.” Going In Circlesis still relevant over a decade later, s it shows how the practices of tiqqunists are entirely predictable from their magnum opus, “The Coming Insurrection.” Blangui or the Statist Insurrection traces authoritarian insurectionalism to its source. Blanqui in Vinaus gives a brief note on the proposals for recuperation within “To Our Friends.” The Death of Rémi and Confrontations fusthers the theme of recuperation, commenting on the tiqqunist mobilization of the State murdering a demonstrator in order to dialogue with it. Decisions, Compositions, Negotiations hones in on their logic of “composition” in the context of land defense struggles, and Zere Lics a Corpe speaks o their use of composition to pacify the ZAD. We close with our own “composition,”intended to lay bare the essence of the tiqqunist project in the very words of those not-so-invisible men who love to put their names on things. ‘While tigqunism inevitably plays out differently across contexts, we value the insights and experiences of comrades from other territorics in recognizing and attacking authority in all its guises. 111 Will Editions recently published a text championing “composition” as the strategy that sccured “victory”at the ZAD in Notre-Dame-des-Landes and proposes the same strategy be used in the No Cop City struggle. In bringing these texts together, we hope to spread hostility to this vision of victory and to tiqqunist involvement in the No Cop City struggle, or anywhere clsc they rear their managerial heads. For insurrcction without vanguards, Ungrateful Hyenas Going in Circles: A Critique of “The Coming Insurrection” Translated excerp from A Corps Perdu #3, international anarchist review, 2010 Common-laces “This book is composed of seven circles, four chapters and a preface. In the first part, the Invisible Committce takes us through the hell of present-day society in Dantesque fashion. In the second part, we arc finally introduced to the paradisc of insurrection, which we could reach by way of the proliferation of communes. f the first part casly wins the reader's approval through its description of a world strewn with permanent disasters, the second is much emptier. Both, however, sharc a common theme: a certain vagueness, well concealed by a dry and authoritative style. Perhaps this is not cven a flaw, but rather a basic ingredient in the appeal of this little book. To make its point, the Committce does not nced analyses. It prefers statements. Enough of these critiques and heady debates, make way for the obvious and concrete objectivity that is immediately self-evident! With contrived humility, the authors even specify from the start that they aim only to “introduce a litle order into the common-places of our time, callecting some of the murmurings around barroom tables and behind closed bedroom doors", that is to say that they are satisfied to “lay down a fixw necessary traths” (p. 12). Besides, they are not the authors of this book, but “made themselves scribes of th situation,” because “i’s the privileged feature of radical circumstances that a rigorous application of logic leads o recalution.” It was necessary to think it throughs the common-places are the necessary truths that must be transcribed in order to awaken the sense of rigor, which will logically lead to revolution! Obvious, isn't it? You willfind very few ideas upon which to reflect in the seven circles that make up the contemporary social hell, and many states of mind in which to partake. The authors avoid basing their discourse on any explicit theory at all costs. To avoid running the risk of being outdated or questioned, they prefer to record the very banality of life, where everything is transformed into something familiar - as an array of ‘common-places' where the imaginary figure of “the Frenchman” surfaces at every turn, They might as well pepper in any platitude whatsoever while they're at it, cven to the point of portraying realiy as the exclusive product of totalitarian domination, rather than the fruit of a dialectic at the heart of the social war. It is true that this would require them to o a bit further than just generalized feclings. The propaganda of power is treated as a significant and, above all, credible source: to describe their imaginary world without classes or individuals: common knowledge (pg. 19), the HR manager of Daimler-Benz (pg. 47), an Israeli officer (pg. 58), jokes among executives (pg. 64) or the first opinion poll that comes along (pg. 65) do the trick. In The Coming Insurrection, everything is leveled, crushed by control and repression. Itis not the world that is described, but the desert that power dreams of, how it represents itself. This near absence of dialectic between the dominant and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited, is no accident: the reader should find themselves in this vision of the totalitarian nightmare, they should be frightened by it. It is not a matter of convincing them, nor of pointing out the mechanisms of adherence or voluntary participation in our own servitude. The reader must share in this pseudo-universal hell in order to then be saved in one foul swoop, if they only join the big We and its subjective intensities. By taking note of the imminent end of the world in an apocalyptic tone, and going over the various social spheres being consumed by the flames, the Invisible Committee dwells on the most immediately perccivable effects of the disaster, while keeping silent about its possible causes. They inform us, for 3 example, that “total misery becomes intolerable the moment i is showwn for what it is: without cause or reason’” (pg. 65). Without cause o reason? These are not the sharpest analyses of the existent, neither those of a more communist varicty against capitalism nor those of a more anarchist varicty against the State, that would not be vague enough, and there are other texts for that, like those reserved for a small milieu (the two issues of the magazine Tiggun, disbanded in 2001, o The Call,a 2003 book, an excerpt of which forms the 4 edition cover of The Coming Insurrection). In this book, political powerlessness or cconomic bankruptey never lead to the development of a radical eriticism of politics or needs, because these themes are only pretext to a nauseating description meant to valorize what follows. The Coming Insurreetion, born as a commodity, was simply designed and written to reach the “general public.” As this “general public” is composed of spectators eager for emotions to consume in the moment, as they are resistant to any idea that could give meaning to their entire existence, let’s give them casy images to latch onto that worit be too tiring. In order to more effectively hold the reader’s hand, the authors must include them in the construction of a great collective “We," which is justified in contrast to the vile individual “I". The individual, which everyone knows only exists as a Recbok motto (“ am what I am"),is quickly disposed of as a synonym for “identity’ (p. 14) or “straitjackef’ (p. 90). Itis in fact, the famous gangs that are supposed to embody “all possible joy” (p. 23). Gangs are no longer the complex product of resourcefulness and incarceration, of mutual aid (which is different from solidarity) in survival and competition, but rather the form of self-organization par excellence that must be emulated. In another book, this sentiment is pronounced even more explicitly: “We are not afraid of forming gangs; and can only laugh at those who will decry us as 2 mafia.” (The Call, Proposition V). As others have noted, the authors of The Coming Insurrection “..sec the decomposition of all social forms as an ‘pportunity” just like Lenin, for whom the foctory tesined the army of proletarians, for these strategists who are betting on the reconstitution of unconditional solidarity of the dlan wariety, the modern “imperial” chaos is training the gangs, fundamental cell o their imaginary party that will combine into “ommunes” in order to join the insurrection.™ Aspiring shepherds savor only the smell of the flock, “the gathering of many groups, committees and gangs” (p. 107), verything with a suffciently herd-like mentality in order to exercise control. Uniqueness must be rejected, it interferes with the formation of a sufficient mass workforce. ‘The book also repeats over and over again that this socicty has become unlivable, but mainly because it has not kept its promises. And if it had? If “zhe peaple”had not been pushed out of “their fields," “their streets,“their neighborhoods,”“the hallways of their buildings (p. 97), if we had not been robbed of “our own language by education,” of “our songs by reality TV contests,” of “our city by the police” (p. 20)... perhaps we could still live happily in curworld? As if it had previously been ours, this world, and these neighborhoods or these cities were not precisely an example of our dispossession, something to destroy. As if the poor reappropriating the carceral architecture of these neighborhoods were not preciscly one of the ultimate signs of alienation. No one can “eny these neighborboods” (p. 20), and certainly not because they have an “informal cconomy.” We gladly leave the hypocritical distinctions between the mafia and the state to the Committee, o those made between the different expressions of market domination, that s to say, the litele game of tactical preferences between the different faces of the master. We prefer to fight against authority and the economy, as such. As they proceed to deny the existence of a multifaceted social war thatis not the exclusive domain of one subject (the rcbellious youth of the banlieuc), one sometimes wonders whether the scribes of the little green book might be coming from a place of ignorance. Perhaps they simply reflect the readers who are being addressed, those who look at lie in the projects and only sce policemen and young rioters, those who settle the score with their families by maintaining ties to subsidize social subversion (p- 26), those who can “circulate freely from one end of the continent o the other, and even across the world without too much trouble” (p. 99), or even participate in the electoral spectacle as if they were performing some subversive gesture (“We're beginning o suspect that i’ only against voting itself that peaple continue to vote," p. 7). Insurrection as a Proliferation of Communes Where are we meant to arrive after having this modern hell recounted to us? What dawn might we be led to by the end of this civilization in decline that has nothing more to offer us? Acivilization that, no less, alleged to produce, like a well-oiled machine, “he means o s gwn destruction” (this is not a reference to the ongoing nuclear catastrophe, but to... “The proliferation of mobile phones and Internet access points™) (p. 46))? Upon close inspection, the insurrection secms to come in this book with no aim other than hastening the great collapse, without moving beyond it to orient, for cxample, towards anarchy (or communism, for others). It i its own goal, and would be sufficient in and of itslf. The tiqqunists already noted, though not without ridicule: “We are working to build up such a collective force, that a statement like “Death to Bloom!” or “Down with the Young-Girll”is enough to cause days and days of rioting” More than nihilism—beyond this world there is nothing but this world, without future or possibility—it is a revisited millenarianism where the apocalypic future is already hidden in the present, making it scem totally detached from our present and deliberate (or unintentional) actions. We should simply be capable of embracing this agony in order to make it 2 moment of liberation and purification, to take pat in the great destructive insurrection by establishing oursclves as a force. Not only does the realist catastrophism of such position scem doubtfil, but in the event of such situation, it also scems like this insurrection would only bring about a restructuring of power, and not necessarily a real transformation of the world, undermining all domination. The “communes” never appear to be conceptualized as bases for experimentation, as a tension. ‘They are already here: “Every wildcat strike is a commune; every building occupied collectively and on a clear basis is a commune.” (pg-102) Morcover, this question is so blurred for the Committce that they admit: “We can no longer even sce how an insurrection might begin.” (pg. 95) By riots, one would be tempted to answer. Or by a revolt which, although initially of a minority, generalizes socially. But no, that's already too committed for them. Itis better to leave the question unresolved, to appeal to as many curious people as possible, better to avoid subjects on which there are heated divisions. Better to continue to simplify the reality of antagonism by presenting an Everything that can only be attacked from a hypothetical elsewhere, by “secession,” by “surreptitiously overtakfing]" (pg. 109) or by constituting “a serics of centersof desertion” (The Call, Proposition V). By failing to see insurrection as 2 particular process informed by everything that precedes it, they avoid any reflection on how to fight for the destruction of this system, within and from this system, while also already carrying the projectuality of another world with us in the way we fight. That would require starting from the opposite hypothesis to that of the authors. A revolutionary hypothesis that is neither alternativist (we can build niches within the existent, and already “a neww idea of communism is to be elaborated” in capitalism’) nor messianic (the inevitability of the collapse of civilization for which we must prepare). In rcality, there is no outside that could escape the social relations of domination and thus constitute the basis for building a force towards insurrection. Itis only in moments of rupture that these social relations can be subverted. As an old text alzeady said: “No role, no matter how much it puts one at risk in terms of the law, can take the place of the real changing of relations. There is no short-cut, no immediate leap into the elsewhere. The revolution is not a war.™ Another question that usually arises with insurrection is that of relationships and affimity (the sharing of general perspectives and ideas), which is not the same as affectivity (a momentary sharing of particular situations and feelings, such as rage). Again, don't worry about getting an answer, because the Committee gets away with an acrobatic leap: “All affinity is affinity wirhin a common truth.” (pg. 98) The trick is simple. Rather than starting from individual desires, desires that are inherently varied and divergent, it is enough to start from social situations which can be casily perceived as common and named “truths.” Because the Committee is not interested in the ideas we possess, it prefers the truths that possess us. “A truth isn't a view on the world but what binds us to it in an irreducible way. A truth isn't something. we hold but something that carries us.” (pg. 97) The truth is messianic, external and objective, unequivocal, beyond discussion. Itis enough to share the feeling of this truth to find oursclves agrecing on banalitics such as “we have to get organized.”To avoid breaking the spell, we must swallow the truth that the dead end of the current social order is transformed into a highway towards insurrection, and the possibility that, for example, this agony could be prolonged is impossible. And since all this is inescapable, everyone can pleasantly avoid asking questions like “organize how,”“to do what,”“with whom,” “why”? And so disappears the old debate as well - between concciving of the destruction of the old world as an inevitable prerequisite to any authentic social transformation, or belicving that the emergence of new forms of lfe will succeed in doing away with the old authoritarian modcls by themsclves, making any generalized dircct confrontation with power superfluous. The Invisible Committee is in fact able to reconcile these tensions which have always stood in opposition to one another without any problem. On the one hand, they hope for “a multiplicity of communes that will displace the institutions of socicty: family, school, union, sports club, ete.” (pg. 102) And on the other hand, they advocate: “Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the anonymity to which we've been relegated to our advantage, and through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an invulnerable position of attack.” (pg. 113) Here again, there is something for everyone - for the back-to-the-landers who try out the experience of settling quietly in the countryside (for n whom the Commune is the oasis of happiness in the desert of capitalism) and for the enemies of this world (for whom the Communc is synonymous with the insurgent Paris of 1871). Like today’s advocates of the “non-state public sphere” (from the most boisterous anarchist militants to the slickest “disobedient” Negrist),the Invisible Committee argues that “local self- organization superimposes its own geography over the state cartogeaphy, scrambling and blurring it: it produces its own secession.” (pg. 108) But while the Negrists understand the progeessive spread of experiences of self-organization as an alternative to the insurrectionary hypothesis, the Committee proposes a strategic integration of paths until then considered incompatible. It is no longer sabotage or the small business, but sabotage and the small business. Planting potatoes by day and knocking down pylons by night. Daytime activity s justified by the need for independence from services cursently provided by the market or the state and to guarantee oneself a certain material autonomy (“Howw will we feed ourseloes once everything is paralyzed? Looting stores, asin Argentina, has ts lmits” pg. 125). Nocturnal activity is posited as a requirement for interrupting the flows of power (“In order for something to rise up in the midst of the metropalis and apen up ather possiilities, the first act must be fointerrupt is perpetuum mobile” pg. 61). The scribes then ask themselves, *IWhy shouldn’ communes proliferate everywhere? In cxery factory, every street, ecery village, every schaol. At long last, the reign o the base committees!” (pg. 101). Why, indeed, should it not be possible to achieve the old 1970s illusion of “armed communes”, that not only defend their own liberated space but also go on to attack the spaces that remain in the clutches of power? “The answer lies in the contradiction that the authors claim to overcome: outside of an insurrectionary context, a commune exists only in the cracks left empty by power. Its survival remains linked to its innocuousness. As long as it is a question of growing carrots in organic gardens with no gods o masters , of offering cheap (or frec) meals in popular cantecns, of treating the sick in sclf-managed clnics, it all gocs well. Basically having someone il in the gaps of social services can be useful, and it provides a convenient place to park the marginalized, fa from the windows of the metropolis. But as soon as one gocs out in scarch of the nemy, things start to go awry. At some point the police come knocking, and the commune is finished, or at lcast resized. The sccond reason why any attempt to generalize “armed communes” outside of an insurgency is ftle is duc to the material difficulics in which such experiments founder, with a myriad of problems accompanied by chronic lack of resources. Since only a privileged few are able to resolve any difficulty as fast as they can write a check, participants of the commune are almost always forced to dedicate all their time and cnergy to its internal “functioning.” In short, sticking with the metaphor, on the one hand, the needs of the daytime activity tend to absorb all strength at the expense of the nighttime activity; on the other hand, the consequences of the nighttime activity tend to endanger the daytime activity Sooner o later this tension explodes. This docs not mean that we should deny the importance and the value of such experiences, but it docs mean that we cannot overburden them with a content and scope that they cannot have: that of alrcady being the moment of ruptur itself, which, if it cxpanded, would form the insurrection. As Nella Giacomelli already noted in 1907 after the experience of Aiglemont: A colony founded by the men of today and obliged to exist in the margins of the current society so as to draw in its resources i fatally destined to remain nothing else than a grotesque imitation of bourgeos socicty. It cannot give us the formula of tomorrow, because it itself reflects too much of the old formula of the present, which unconsciously permeates us all to the point of disfigurement.™ Extending the concept of “commune” to all manifestations of rebellion or revolt and equating the sum of these moments with Insurrection is another of the Committee’s instrumental gimmicks, which goes in circles without resolving the question. If the totality of subversive practices is the insurrection, then 5 itis not coming: it is alrcady here. Haven't you realized? This tendency towards confision allows them to pander to both those who aim to satisfy their daily needs as well as those who aim to realize their utopian desires, to entertain both those who dedicate themselves to “understanding plankton biology’ (pg. 107) and those who ask themsclves questions such as “Jow can a TGV line or an clectrical netcaortebe rendered usless?” (pg. 112). While The Committee can establish in the absolute a kind of self-interested complementarity between all the practices, they do not advance one inch on what these forms develop, on the question of why which is the only thing that really gives them meaning, positing that a collection of against is suffcient. Perhaps one of the aims of this argument for forms of hostility without speaking to their substance resides in the Committec's explicit desire to draw lines “of battle on a global scale” (pg. 99). That s to say, not to deepen the passion for an existence free of any form of domination, but to realize all kinds of alliances that only this absence of a shared positive substance would make possible. Finally,one last point piqued our curiosity: if this book does not define a why of the insurrection, could it at least face the question of the Aow? Here again, avoidance is dressed up in style: “As for deciding on actions, the principle could be as follows: each person should do their own reconnaissance, the information would then be put together, and the decision will occur to us rather than being made by us.” (pg. 124) It useless, therefore, to waste time in tedious debates on what method to adopt and which goals to pursue, the disagreements these debates provoke are too inconvenient. Let’ go fishing for information, and the decision will come by itself, beautiful, brilliant and valid for all Do you need some more details? Take a look at the historical references of The Call and The Coming Insurrection, and use your imagination. I “the firs of November 2005 offer a model” (pg. 113), it is in words only, for the action that the scribes have in mind better resemble a Black Panther Party led by Blanqui (i.e., perhaps the construction of the “party of insurrection” or of “permancnt callctive organization™). This authoritarian mishmash of concepts, supplemented by such elusive notions as relational “density” or communitarian “spiric” (pg. 102), rounds out the confusing quality of the book, which, a already noted, is not its flaw but its major attraction. The Coming Insurrection i in step with the times, perfectly fashionable. It possesses the qualities of the moment, a flesibilty and clasticity that can adapt to all circumstances in a rebellious environment. It is well presented, has style, and ends up being liked by everyone because it makes everyone right without rocking the boat. Let us return now to the starting point of this review, and take this book whose authors decided to put out through a Ieftist commercial publisher and to distribute in the temples of consumption at face value for once. If it is clear that “the task of cultural circlesis 1o spot nascent intensities and to explain asuay the sense of whatever it is you're doing” (pg. 100), let's Ieave the hypocrisy of passing off simple collaborationism as a. daring incursion into enemy territory, as sound tactics, to the opportunists. What a strange idea it i to sccede or become autonomous from institutions which they advise to participate in without hesitation! A revolutionary movement driven by the desire to reach a rupture with the existent does not need the validation of the social order that it criticizes. The Coming Insurrection in all the bookshop windows is nothing but a caricature and commodification of an insurrection that might shatter ther all Insurgents without blindfolds 1. Exclusive interview with Julien Coupat in Le Mande, May 25, 2009 2. Agamben, Badiou, Bensaid, Ranciére, Nancy and other true democrats: “No to the new order”, Le Mond:, November 28, 2008 3. Translator’s Note: The Frontist Party also known as the Common Front or Social Front, was a political party in France founded in 1936 15 by Gaston Bergery and Georges Izard. It was a founding member of the Popular Front. 4. Comité Invisible, 4 point of clarifcation,January 22,2009, p. 4 5. René Riesel and Jaime Semprun, Catastrophism, disaster management and sustainable submision, Encyclopédie des nuisances, June 2008, p. ar-a2 6. Tiqqun, afterword of March 2004 to the ltalian edition of Bloors Theary, Bollati Boringhieri, November 2004, p. 136, One may also note the little game of correspondences between the twins of Tiggu, The Calland The Coming Insurrection:in this afterword, Tigqun recommends to the “ltalian public”seads The Call, while The Insurrection has made it onto its back cover. Finally,the second text of the Comité Tnvisible, A point of clarification, discreetly included at the bottom of its third page a website that brings together these different writings, and others to which they are relaed (such as those of the Commiltee of the Sorbonne in exil). 7. Comité nvisible, 4 point of clarification, January 22,2009, p. 3 8. At Daggers Drawn with the Existent its Defenders and its Fale Critics 9.Treos, Una colonia comunista, Biblioteca de la Protesta Umana (Milan), 1907 10. Proposition 14 of the Occupation Committe of the Sorbonne in eile, June 2006 & proposition of Jardin sembrase, Les mawcoements sont faits pour monrir, Tabin Party (Lyon), August 2007, p. 114 Blanqui or the Statist Insurrection Translated from Finimonds, 2011 At best, Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) leaves us with a slogan and a book. The slogan is No Gods, No Masters, which was the title of the newspaper he founded in November 1880,a few months before his death. The book is the fascinating Erernity by the Stars, meditation on the existence of parallel worlds and eternal return. A battle cry and a philosophical work of astronomy: that is all that’s worth retaining from Blanqui. The rest, we gladly leave to the dustbin of history, whether it be his other newspapers (such as La patric en danger) or his vanguardist and authoritarian politics. However, not everyone shares this view, to the point that some have cven been trying to vencrate this name that scemed given up for lost. This rediscovery has been driven by the most energetic and least rigid authoritarian subversives, killed in the art of sniffing out the mood of the moment. In light of the ever more imminent disintegration of this socicty,of the constantly spreading flames of the riots, they realized that a coming insurecction, hidden just around the corner, was more likely (and also more desirable) than an electoral victory of the extreme left (which would be made responsible for managing a situation from which no outcome would be painless). Otherwise, they would have risked leaving the terrain open o those anarchist loudmouths, the only ones who had never abandoned insurrectionary perspectives, even during the graycst years of social pacification. These authoritarians also realized that the sinister ancestors of social criticism, their so-called “classics”,could be of no help to them, secing as they had lost their luster long ago. After having erected alars to them for more than a century, after having made their thoughts luminous beacons in the midst of a revolutionary squall that ended in . the most shameful of shipwrecks, their names no longer offer any guarantee. On the contrary, they provoke genuine allergic rejections. On the other hand, Blanqui, the forgotten one, this great representative of authoritarian insurrectionalism, presents all the characteristics needed to serve as an alternative historical reference: original, charismatic, up to the challenge of the coming Let’s be honest, Mars, who warmed the armehairs of the British Museum by teaching surplus value or the subsumption of capital, and Lenin, working in a central committee to preparc the triumph of the party burcaucracy, are no longer very cnticing. But Blanqui, my God, what a man! First of all there is his life— responsible for numerous insurrectionary attempts, nicknamed “Enferme”for having spent 33 years behind the walls of the French imperial prisons—which arouses an unconditional respect capable of silencing, or at least cushioning, any possible criticism. And then there’s also his explosive militant action, his incessant agitation, his ardent activism, combined with a simple and immediate language which expresses commaunist thought while resisting the cold Marxist cconomic tonc. This is where his current force of attraction lics. With an absence of hindsight in an era where everyone had to stay alert, if only to find alliances, Blanqui can be appreciated by cveryone: by anti-authoritarians who are thirsty for action, as well as by authoritarians in necd of discipline. 1fin his time he was somewhat snubbed by the scholars of scientific socialism (who recognized his good intentions but basically reproached him for having the same defects as Bakunin), and firmly opposed by the enemics of all authority, then today—as all good sensc s eclipsed—he has all he needs to take revenge. Blanqui was not only a persistent and fiery agitator (the anarchists faint with emotion), he was also a persistent and calculating leader (the orphans of state communism erupt in applause). He joined the courage of the barricades and fell to the martyrdom of imprisonment, his cyc lost while scanning the firmament. He did not formulate great theorctical plans, sophisticated claborations, unpalatable for today's narrow tastes. He also gave his instructions for taking up arms. Blanqui did not elaborate decp reflections, because reflexes prepared in advance were enough for him. He is the perfect revolutionary icon for today’s market, now that no one wants to debate complex systems anymore. Today, we want intense emotions to consume. ‘And Blangu doesnt bore us with abstract speeches; he's 1 practical guy. Dircct. Someone to listen to, from whorm we all have to learn, and whom we can therefore trust. That's why he was exhumed. That's why, among the many incamations of the revolutionary dictatorship, he is the only one who can pass for a fascinating adventurer rather than immediately revealing himself as a petty man of power. A century and a half late, Blanqui captures them all. If he had a Facebook account, he would be drowning in “likes.” His revaluation is made even more appealing by his choice of tactics. Recently, has the working class been terrorizing the bourgeoisic, or has a smile rather blossomed on Marchionne’s face [CEO of Fiat since 2004]7 Has the proletariat been fighting for its cmancipation, or snitching on the wildest demonstrators? Have you been hearing the streets rumble with masses of insurgents heading for the presidential palace or rather masses of fans going to the stadium? Have you noticed how the cxploited are more passionate about radical social criticism than the latcst seality show? In his memoirs, Bartolomeo Vanzetti remembers his nightly hours spent poring over books, detcrminedly snatched from the restorative slecp of work fatigue. He was a worker, but he spent his free time studying: to understand, to know, to refuse to remain raw material trapped by the gears of capital (or by the dialectic of some intellectual). Today, the shadows under the eyes of workers have other causes. Those who want to participate in the ongoing social war must thercfore take into account this obvious fact: the masses don't care about revolution. Butit’s not a problem anymore, really and you know why? Because Blanqui didntcarc about the masses. He didt need them. A lucid, capable, bold elie, ready to unleash a well- 1 calibrated blow at the opportune moment was enough for him. ‘The masses, as usual, would have adapted to the fait accompli.In short, even in the midst of the current capitalist alicnation, some people give us hope. The Leninists arc outdated, not realizing that building a great party capable of guiding the exploited is 0 longer uscful. The anarchists are also outdated, too stupid to sealize that there is no longer enough consciousness to awaken the exploited and keep them from ending up in the hands of the partics. What we need is a handful of subversive conspirators capable of claborating and applying the correct stratcgy. Then, in one stroke, the social question is solved! We must admit it - Blanqui i the right man, rediscovered at the right time by people who can only be right. So right, in fact, that they arc carcful not to take Blanqui’s essential ideas, detestable in many aspets,into consideration. And they know it. His imaginary friends are so aware of it that they limit themselves to praising its power, its style, its fecling, its determination (all admirable qualities, no doubr, but they do not tell us much about the person who possesses them; Napolcon, Mussolini or bin Laden could also have boasted those same traits). As for his real friends, such as the communard Casimir Bouis, incidentally also his publisher,they had no doubts about the reason for Blanqui's prestige: “He is the most accomplished man of State that the revolution possesscs.” Yes, Blanquist power, Blanquist style, Blanguist fecling, Blanguist determination—all putin the service of a very specific political project: the conquest of power. Even his surprising treatisc on astronomy, even his most accurate slogan, will never succeed in making us forget it Who knows why, among all the good people who want to praise a conspirator of the past, a barricader, a persceuted person influential in the movement, no one thinks of Bakunin? Because if one remembers Bakunin as a demon of revolt, synonymous with absolute freedom, then Blanqui would be rather synonymous with dictatorship. Bakunin wished for “anarchy,” Blanqui proclaimed “regular anarchy’ Gsnit that adjective adorable?). Bakunin invoked the “unleashing of bad 2 passions,” Blanqui prescribed that “no military movement should take place except by order of the commander-in-chicf, barricades should be erected only on the sites designated by him” (the sclf- appointed commander,if goes without saying, was him). Bakunin was looking for somcone among the conspirators who was ully comvinced that the advent of freedom is incompatible with the existence of states. He must want for the destruction of all States at the same time as that of all the religious, political and socal institutions, which includes: the offcial Churches, the permanent armies, the ministries, the unicersities, the banls, the aristocratic and baurgeois ‘monapolis. This s so that on their ruins a free socicty may finally emerge, no longer organized as it i today from the top dosun and from the center to the periphery through unity and forced consolidation, but rather starting from the free indicidual, free asseciation and the autonomous commine, from the bottom up and from the periphery to the center, through free federation.” Blangui was looking for someone whose answer the question “just after the revolution, willthe people be able to govern themselves?” would be: “the social state being gangrenous, heroic remedics are necessary to pass to a healthy state. For some time, the people will need a revolutionary power.” This power would put immediate provisions into action like the “substitution of a [State] monopoly in the place of any expelled boss... Transfer to the State domain of all the movable and immovable goods of the churches, communitics and congregations of both sexes, as wel as their nominces... Reorganization of the personnel of the burcaucracy... Replacement of all dircct or indircct contributions by a direet, progressive tax on inheritance and on income.. government: Parisian dictatorship.” If during the 19¢h century, Bakunin and Blanqui were not just two revolutionarics among many others, if their names acquired such a reputation, it is because they were the incarnation of two different and opposed ideas, because they represented the two possible faces of the insurrection for the whole world: the anarchist one against the State, and the authoritarian one in favor of a new State (frst republican, then socialist, and finally 2 commaunist). To feel close to one or the other in itself, it/ unmistakably constitutes choosing a side. For Blanqui, the State was the driving force of social transformation, since “the people can only emerge from serfdom with the impetus of the great society of the State, and it takes great courage to defend the contrary. Indeed, the State has no other legitimate mission.” Criticizing Proudhonian ideas, he argued that any theory that chimed to emancipate the proletariat without relying on the authority of the State scemed to him a chimera; worse, it was “perhaps”a betrayal. He was not so ingenuous as to make false impressions. He simply argued that “although all power is by nature oppressive, to try to do without it or to opposc it would be like “convincing the prolctarians that it would be casy to walk with hand and foot bound.” Those who try to claim their attempts to revalorize “Enferme are based only in their interest in the practice of insurrection, only a technical necessity that transcends any shared perspective, arc deliberately Iying (with the exception, of course, of any action fetishizing anarchists, who are barely even worth mentioning). f Blanqui was indecd looking for agreement “on the question of capital, Imean the practical means which, in the end, are the whole revolution,” he did not hide the link that unites action with thought: “The practical means are deduced from the principles and also depend on the evaluation of men and things.” One of his best-known texts, Tnstructions for Taking Up Arms, which continued to fascinate the many young intellectuals who were aspiring generals of a new Red Army after the Situationists, is not just a manual for insurgents. The journal Critigue sociale had already published it in 1931 for a reason - not for its *strictly military and anachronistic side,” but to emphasize “the value of this important contribution to the eritique of anarchic uprisings.” Indecd, these Instructions continually justify the need for an authority capable of putting an end to frecdom that is considered counterproductive. It s the disgusted cry of a man of order at the sight of so much disorder: “small groups are disarming the corps de garde or scizing gunpowder and weapons from the armorics. Al this is done without coordination or dircction, at the mercy of individual imagination.” This text is an indictment against “the shortcomings of the people’s tactics ~ the undoubted cause of our disasters. There was neither leadership nor any form of general command; there was not cven unity amongst the combatants... the soldiers only do as they please.” In short,if the insurrection is defeated despite the courage and enthusiasm of those who take part in it it is because “organization is missing. Without organization, there is no possibility of success.” This scems obvious, but how does one obtain this organization, this coordination, this agrecment between the insurgents? Through the horizontal, pre-emptive and widespread diffusion of an awareness, of understanding, of an intelligence of the necessitics of the moment (anarchist hypothesis), or through the vertical establishment of a single command that demands the obedience of all, who arc kept in ignorance until the necessary moment (authoritarian hypothesis?). OF course, Blanqui has his practical instructions to give in this matter: “A military organization, especially when it must be improvised on the battlefild, i no small matter for our pasty. It presupposes a command-in-chief and, to a certain extent, the usual series of officers of all ranks.” In order to put an end to “these tumultuous uprisings, with ten thousand isolated individuals, acting randomly,in disorder, without any overall thought, cach onc in his comer and according o his fancy,” Blanqui does not cease to provide his recipe: “Again, it must be repeated: organization, unity,order and discipline are the sine gua non conditions of victory, Troops are unlikely o resist an insurrection that is organized and acting by means of the whole apparatus characteristic of the government's own forces for long.” This is the Blanquist practice of insurrection: an organization without pity for the cncmy, but which knows how to impose internal order and discipline, on the model of the apparatus of a government force. 2 For us, this stench of the barracks provokes only horror and disgust. Even if a red or red and black flag were to fly over it it would still be a place of repression and stupefaction. An insurrection that, instead of developing in frecdom at fll throttle stands at attention before an authority, would be lost in advance. It would become the mere vestibule of a coup diétat. Against this gloomy possibiliy, one can fortunately always trust the intoxicating pleasure of revolt which, once it explodes, is able to send all the caleulations of these strategists into disarray. Maurice Dommanget, who dedicated a lfetime of devotion to Blanqui, recounts the atmosphere in Paris during the attempted insurrcction of May 12,1839: “Blanqui was trying to give orders, o prevent the desertions that were beginning, to “want to organize the crowd,”a difficult task, given that almost no one knew him. All shouted. All wanted to command. And nobody obeyed. It was then that a rather lively and symptomatic argument oceurred between Barbés and Blanqui, which no one has reported until now. Barbés accused Blanqui of having let them all down, Blanqui accused Barbés of having discouraged everyone with his slowness, and provoked the departure of the faint-hearted and the traitors.” When insurrection breaks out, when normality unexpectedly ceases to restrain human ‘possibilitics, when all want to command because none want to obey anymare, the so-called leaders lose all authority, rush usclessly fo give orders, and fall to arguing among themsclves. The disorder of passions has been and will always be the best and most cffective antidote to political order. Perhaps the best way to understand the abyss that separates the authoritarian conception of insurrectionary action from the anti-authoritarian one is to put them face to face in the same period, within the same historical context. Nothing is more instructive in this regard than a comparison between Blanqui and Joseph Déjacque, the French anarchist banished after having participated in the days of 1848. What is Blanqui’s famous organizational model? A pyramidal structure, rigidly 2% hierarchical, like his Society of Seasons which preceded the insurrectionary attempt of May 1839: its base component was the weck (composed of six members and subject to a Sunday); four weeks formed a month (at the orders of a July); three months formed a season (directed by a spring); four scasons formed a year (commanded by a revolutionary agent). And these revolutionary agents together constituted a secret exccutive committee, unknown to the other affiliates, whose general could only be Blanqui. At the crucial moment, when the insurrection was finally decreed, the committee of the Sacicty of the Seasons broadcast a call to the people, in which it communicated that “the provisional government has chosen military leaders to lead the struggle: these leaders come from your ranks; follow them, they willlead you to victory. They are named: Auguste Blanqui, commander in chief...” The experiences that followed did not make him change his mind, as demonstrated by the publication of the Instructions for Tuking Up Arms in 1868, the Central Republican Socicty of 1848 or the Phalange and its clandestine groups of struggle in 1870. All his life, Blanqui never stopped plotting against the government in power, but always in a militaristic, hierarchical and centralizing way, always with the aim of establishing a public safety committee at the head of the State. In contrast, Défacque evoked in his notes to the Revolutionary Question (1854) the possibiity and the urgency of going on the attack with secret societics,inciting the creation of small autonomous groups: “that cvery revolutionary choose, among those whom he belicves he can best count on, one or two other proletarians like himself. And that all of them—in groups of three or four, not linked to cach other and operating in isolation, s0 that the discovery of onc of the groups does not lead to the arrest of the others—act with the shared goal of destroying the old socicty”. In the same way,in the pages of his newspaper Le Libertaire (1858), he recalled how, thanks to the meeting between the subversives and the dangerous classes, “the social war takes on daily and universal proportions... We, the plebeians of the 2 workshops, complete oursclves with a new clement, the plebeians of the prisons...Each onc of us will be able to continue to make rebellion according to his aptitudes.” Where Blanqui “invited” the people to remain a mass to mancuver, manage, discipline and keep obedicnt to the orders of its self-proclaimed leaders, Déjacque addressed himself to cach proletarian to push them to liberating action, on the basis of their own capacities and aptitudes and with their closest accomplices the same Déjacque underscored Blanquis dictatorial aspirations: “Governmental authority, the Itis therefore not surprising tha dictatorship, whether itis called empire or republic, throne or armchai, savior of order or committee of public safety; whether it cxists today under the name of Bonaparte or tomorrow under the name of Blanqui; whether it comes out of Ham or Belle- e whether it has in it insignia an eagle or a stuffed lion... the dictatorship is nothing but the rape of liberty by corrupted syphiliic virility. Here again, to fecl close to one or the other s ot irrelevant, and constitutes choosing an unmistakable side. Finally,there is one last aspeet of Blanqui that,to the keen eye, may have sccmed worth dusting off - his opportunism. Displaying a certain disinterest in theoretical questions and a strong attachment to the exclusively material problems of insurrection, Blanqui pioncered a trend that is now rather fashionable in subversive circles: tacticalism (the unscrupulous use of mancuvers or expedients to obtain from others what one desires) in the name of tactics (the technique of using and maneuvering military means). Blanqui admirers generally use the term ecleticiom to describe his skillul and self-intercsted changes of position. His conception of insurrcction as the result of a strategic movement and not as a social cvent led him to conelude that the end justified any means. For him, it was not the method that counted, but the resul,that i, the effective conquest of politial power. That is why, despite his taste for conspiracies, in 1848 he tried to lead a democratic movement to participate % in clections. As his comrade Edouard Vaillant, his spokesman at the congress of the First International in London in September 1871, recalled: “The work of the revolution was the destruction of the obstacles that obstructed the way: its first duty was t the bourgeoisic, to arm the prolctariat,” to arm the proletariat ‘disarm with all the forces of the political power conquered, taken from the enemy: In order to achieve this goal, the revolutionarics had to attack the power, to march against it on all the paths: agitation, action, parliament, etc. They did not lock themselves in the “model prison” of any dogmatism. They have no prejudices.” “This absence of “prejudices’—which at the time, beyond any ethical coherence, were at last intuitions guided by a minimum of intelligence—led Blanqui to sometimes embarrassing results. In 1879, few years after having thundered that “the disastrous influence of the deliberating assemblies must end,” he tried, without succeeding, to be elected deputy of Lyon. To realize this laudable insurrcctionary project, he asked for help from his friend Georges Clémenceau, then a radical deputy, to whom he wrote: “Become in the House the man of the future, the leader of the revolution. It has not been able to find one since 1830. Fortune gives it one, do not take it away.” As everyone knows Clémenceau did indeed go on to have a great carcer, becoming first asenator, then Minister of the Interior, and twice President of the Council. He camed the nickname of “France’s top cop” through bloody repression of strikes and revolts that culminated in several massacres of proletarians, through merciless hunting of subversives of all stripes, not to mention his interventionism during the First World War, One cannot say that Blanqui was very clear-sighted when he asked the future leader of the reaction to become the leader of the revolution! But ultimatcly, it isn't so strange. He had seen in Clémenceau the makings of a political Leader, of a condotticre. He could not understand that power is the tomb of the revolution. “That s why we have no reason to pay homage to the corpse of this aspiring dictator. Beyond perhaps a slogan and a book, his memory continues to reck. Stinking like his general staff, his military style, his barrack spirit (“his friends were convinced that the dominant personality in him was that of a general,” wrote the good Dommanget). Let his admirers, old or new leaders of the party of Statist insurrection, go and dig in his grave, emotionally breathe the stench. With the recent earthquakes, who knows, maybe they will end up buried by their Master’s side—an eternity in the mud. 2 Blanqui in Venaus Translated from Finimonds, 2014 “Politics i the art of recuperation. The most cffective way o discourage all rebellion, all desire for real change, is to present a man or woman of state as subversive, or—better yet—to transform a subversive into a man or woman of state. Not all people of statc are paid by the government. There are functionaries who are not found in parliament or cven in the neighboring rooms. Rather, they frequent the social centers and sufficiently know the principle revolutionary theorics ‘They debate over the liberatory potential of technology; they theorize about non-state public spheres and the surpassing of the subject. Reality—they know it well—is always morc complex than any action.” - Ten Blows Against Politics, 1996 For some time, a rumor has been circulating among some anachists in Europe about the latest publication of the Invisible Committee, the authors of the 2007 international bestseller The Coming Insurrection. It is rumored that the Committec’s members shared the draft of the text with their political friends around the world, to gauge their reactions and to solicit useful feedback. The first draft contained a harsh attack on anarchists, guilty of not properly prostrating themsclves before them (and of having scoffed at the farce of Tarnac, where, when the police came knocking, the alleged authors of the book rushed into the protective arms of the lcft they had been at war with the day carlier). But some of their friendly correspondents—from our beautiful country, it is said—suggested that they cut the overly vehement parts, soften the tone, because ultimately, with some reflection, there are still many services that these anarchist idiots can render. This rumor originated with a mischievous anarchist who apparently may have read the original draft of the text as 2 well as the correspondence about it. These are the risks of the Commune and sharing tools: you never know who might peck at a computer left on and unattended! Whether this rumor is truc or not, a few days ago we were given the gift of the Invisible Committee’s new book, fresh off the press, published in France at the end of last month. Its called 75 Our Friends (political ones, it goes without saying) and its imminent and simultancous publication in seven other languages is in the works to promote its diffusion on the four continents. Italy will be one of the lucky countries, so we might as well wait to read the full translation. But then, you may ask, why arc we talking about it here and now? Because thanks to the lessons of the Invisible Committee, we finally understand that advertising is not only the soul of business, but also the soul of subversion (well, the busincss of subversion). Morcover, we would risk being mistaken for state burcaucrats if we didut hurry up and share at least a few excerpts from this new masterpicce with our readers. Anyway, here’s 1 preview, a scoop of sorts Choosing which part to share i asy, too casy even. These geandchildren of Blangui devote some thoughts to ltaly, more preciscly to the struggle against the TAV in the Susa Valley and its miraculous effects. Here is what they write: “Among the miracles of the Susa Valley struggle, one has to include the way it succeeded in tearing a good number of radicals away from their painfully constructed identity: It brought them back. down to carth. In contact again with a real situation, they were able to shed most of their idcological spacesuit—not without incurring the inexhaustible resentment of those still confined in their interstellar radicality where breathing is such a problem. [...]. Alternating family-style demonstrations with attacks on the TAV construction site, esorting to sabotage at one moment and partnership with the valley’s mayors the next, associating anarchists and Catholic grandmas, this struggle is revolutionary 3 at least insofar as it has been able to deactivate the infernal coupling of pacifism and radicalism.” Absolutely! As nice political animals, Blanqui's grandchildren think that the most natural and spontancous environment to live in s the zoo. Those who do not enter the zoo or stay far away condemn themselves to isolation, that s, to breathing the stale air of a spacesuit, demonstrating an untiring resentment against those who casily breathe the same air as mayors and parliamentarians (and perhaps even as snitches and various dissociati). The Invisible Committec's admiration of their Italian anachist apprentices is almost touching, these Victor Serge’s of ours who have finally understood the strategic usefulness of an alternating current of conflictuality, dear to authoritarians since time immemorial. What a pity that “a fraction of the anarchists who declare themseles “nibilists™ and that in reality “are only powwerless”also pollutes this coveted air. Anarchists who identify the enemy, give themselves means and attack... brrr what 2 horror, they arc nothing but powerless, obviously. On the other hand, those who get involved with mayors, priests and stalinists, those who get elected to the city council like Tarnac superfans of the Invisible Committee, of course, those people have.... Those people have what? They have understood how things work! “There is no Esperanto of revalt. I’ mot up to the rebels to learn to speak anarchist; if's up to the anarchists o become polyglot.” Esperanto is a foolish utopia, this new language which contains elements of all languages, encompassing them without preference and putting them in communication while respecting their diversity. The most practical, immediate, strategic way to commaunicate is to speak the language of others. English especially, in business. Authoritarian only, in politics. Anarchists, be polyglot! Stop meowing al alone in a ghost town, bark and growlin the company of dogs and pigs! On Monday speak humanitarian, on Tuesday democratic, on Wednesday journalist,on Thursday syndicalist, on Friday legalist,on Saturday 5 communist, on Sunday—amen—liturgical. And occasionally, speak rebel if you want. As for the anarchist language, i s better to forget it entirely. Inany case, let’s be honest, what use i it to you? The Death of Rémi and Confrontations: The Radical Recuperators Come Out of the Woodwork Translated from the Internct, 2014 “Our strength won't come from our naming of the enemy, but from the cffort made to enter one another’s geography.” - T Our Friends, Invisible Committee Mathieu Burnel, co-defendant in the Tarnac affa, was in good company on October 31 on the set of “Ce sofr ou jamais"a program broadeast by one of the official spokespersons for state terrorism, the France 2 channel. At a time when clashes had been taking place daily in several cities for nearly a week following the gle against the Sivens representative of thorities was finally police killing of a demonstrator in the strug dam, the beginning of a dialogue between the radicals” and representatives of the possible. Blessed, then, arc all those citizens who continuc to conscientiously pay their dues so that the public service channcl can accomplish its sacred duty of maintaining order (of which dialogue between the dominated and the dominant is an integral part) when the situation s at its most dire. Because without representatives, there are no more represented, and without the represented, there is anarchy! In order to stock the shelves of the great supermarket of televiscd opinions, Mathicu Burnel used his best tricks to compete with Julictte Meadel, national sceretary of the Socialist Party for industrial policy, Corinne Lepage, European deputy of the Democrat Movement party, and Pascal Bruckner, a reactionary philosopher. 5 On the theme of “Ecalagy, the new battlefeld?” he once again demonstrated the practical consequences of the words “fo make cur power grow” o “not to designate the enemy but to compose with him.” Faced with potentially uncontrollable situations, power regularly needs interlocutors, even aggressive ones, as we are reminded by Danicl Cohn-Bendit’s appearance on the ORTF on May 16,1968, after the beginning of the general strike. And if, as an old bearded man dear to the authoritarians remarked, history often repeats tsclf in the form of farce, it is because power only gets the buffoons it deserves. October 2014 is obviously not May 1968 (*Fuck May 68, Fight now!” said a tag on the walls of Athens in 2009), but not everyone has the lucidity to wait for an uprising before rushing onto TV to try to take the lead. Unless the insurrection has already come, of course! Speaking for cach and every one of us - for “aur generation,”for Reimi Frassc (who would have been part of ‘o peaple who i1y o take seriously at least the question o ther existenc”) and fox ung pesple oday” - the recuperator on duty claims to embody this rage of a thousand faces. After radio and TV appearances with his colleagues Benjamin Rosoux (the city councilor of Tarnac since March 2014) or Julien Coupat (who invited nine journalists to interview him over the course of four hours in November 2012), this time he was not there to defend himself against the accusations of the police, but o sell his party of the “insurrection that has come”! “The idea of using the media niches that power concedes to revolutionaries to our advantage is not only illusory: It is frankly dangerous. Their mere presence on the stage is not enough to break the straitjacket of ideology in the heads of the audience. Unless one confuses the power of expression with the power of transformation, and believes that the ‘meaning of what onc expresscs, with the word, with the pen, with the image, ctc.,is given a priori, without having to worry about knowing who has the power to do it. There would be content which could exist there in diverse forms without 3 being affected by it. This is the old illusion of the rcified world in which activitics appear as things in themselves detached from society. But just like other forms of expression, the subversive form that language takes is the guarantee of the incorruptibility of its meaning. It is not immune to the dangers of communication, Using subversive language on the terrain of domination i sufficient to undermine, or cven reverse, the meaning of it.” - “The mirror of illusions, notes of discussions from the side of La Bonne Descente” (Paris), 1996 Intervening in the media with the old Leninist argument (sbout Parliament) of using it as a platform not only reinforces the legitimacy of these tools of domination, but also endorses the democratic game that cstablishes a basis of dialogue rather than confrontation. “You don't argue with the cnemy, you fight himis an adage from the revolutionary cxpericnce, but it only applics to those who really intend to abolish all authority. For the others - starting with the politicians of the “movement” - it is certain that sooner or later one must show tact, know how to compromise in improbable “aliances” is,” which s to say, o adapt to the cxistent rather than to subvert it. Accepting the rules of the game rather than messing up the game itself. This dynamic, which we have scen in recent years in Val Susa, Valognes and Notre-Dame-des-Landes, for example, after the confrontations that pushed the cops back,is not new. ‘We have known for a long time that not all politicians sit in Parliament but also emerge from struggles, and that the conquest of power (or of hegemony) sometimes takes side roads. “to compose with what exists where one Refusing the mechanisms of politics—of which recuperation and representation arc an integral part—is not a matter of principle, but one of the conditions for truly experiencing autonomy and sclf-organization. Only the dialogue of those in revolt will be able to overcome the organized confusion, among themsclves in a space of anti-authoritarian struggle where words and their meaning are not mutilated by the needs of control and the 35 consensus of power. It is there, far from any representation, that ideas with ncither masters nor owners, ideas that animate us, can at last belong to anyone who recognizes themselves in them. The enemies of order 1. An illastration of this logic can be found in *E¢ maintenant quisn faie? (Indy Nantes, October 28), where anarchism and pacifism are 0 longer ideas with practical extensions, a elationship to the world, but stupid divisions to be overcome in order to “énsw how (o create a force” and “moce towwards vitarie.” For ous lttle post-Blanquist generals, in fact, why bother with ideas nd coherence (between means and ends, for example),since everything i reduced to tactical *situations” that simply need to fitinto their miserable litle calculations: “Sunday night,we heard that Rémi