Some notes on
Insurrectionary
Anarchism

Killing King Abacus
1: THE STATE WILL NOT JUST DISAPPEAR; ATTACK

—The State of capital will not “wither away,” as it seems many
anarchists have come to believe—not only entrenched in abstract
positions of “waiting,” but some even openly condemning the acts
of those for whom the creation of the new world depends on the
destruction of the old.

Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice,
accommodation, and compromise. —lt is through acting and
learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to
insurrection, although propaganda has a role in clarifying how to
act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.

—The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure
for evaluating the importance of a generalized revolt is not the
armed clash, but on the contrary the amplitude of the paralysis of
the economy, of normality.

2. SELF-ACTIVITY versus managed revolt: from insurrection
to revolution

—As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference,
no matter what we are doing or what problem we are concerned
with. But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point
of reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be
built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the
liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense.
These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising
of the most exploited and excluded of society and the most
politically sensitized minority opens the way to the possible
involvement of increasingly wider strata of exploited on a flux of
rebellion which could lead to revolution.

—Struggles must be developed, both in the intermediate and long
term. Clear strategies are necessary to allow different methods to be
used in a coordinated and fruitful way.
—Autonomous action: the self-management of struggle means that
those that struggle are autonomous in their decisions and actions;
this is the opposite of an organization of synthesis which always
attempts to take control of struggle. Struggles that are synthesized
within a single controlling organization are easily integrated into
the power structure of present society. Self-organized struggles are
by nature uncontrollable when they are spread across the social
terrain.

3. UNCONTROLLABILITY versus managed revolt: the
spread of attack

—Itis never possible to see the outcome of a specific struggle in
advance. Even a limited struggle can have the most unexpected
consequences. The passage from the various insurrections—limited
and circumscribed—to revolution can never be guaranteed in
advance by any method.

—What the system is afraid of is not these acts of sabotage in
themselves, so much as their spreading socially. Every
proletarianized individual who disposes of even the most modest
means can draw up his or her objectives, alone or along with
others. It is materially impossible for the State and capital to police
the apparatus of control that operates over the whole social
territory. Anyone who really wants to contest the network of
control can make their own theoretical and practical contribution.
‘The appearance of the first broken links coincides with the
spreading of acts of sabotage. The anonymous practice of social
self-liberation could spread to all fields, breaking the codes of
prevention put into place by power.

—Small actions, therefore, easily reproducible, requiring
unsophisticated means that are available to all, are by their very
simplicity and spontaneity uncontrollable. They make a mockery of
even the most advanced technological developments in counter-
insurgency.
4. PERMANENT CONFLICTUALITY versus mediation with
institutional forces

—Conflictuality should be seen as a permanent element in the
struggle against those in power. A struggle which lacks this element
ends up pushing us towards mediating with the institutions, grows
accustomed to the habits of delegating and believing in an illusory
emancipation carried out by parliamentary decree, to the very point
of actively participating in our own exploitation ourselves.

—There might perhaps be individual reasons for doubting the
attempt to reach one’s aims with violent means. But when non-
violence comes to be raised to the level of a non-violable principle,
and where reality is divided into ‘good” and *bad,” then arguments
cease to have value, and everything is seen in terms of submission
and obedience. The officials of the anti-globalization movement, by
distancing themselves and denouncing others have clarified one
point in particular: that they see their principles—to which they feel
duty-bound—as a claim to power over the movement as a whole.

5. ILLEGALITY; insurrection isn’t just robbing banks

—Insurrectionary anarchism isn’t a morality on survival: we all
survive in various ways, often in compromise with capital,
depending on our social position, our talents and tastes. We
certainly aren’t morally against the use of illegal means to free
ourselves from the fetters of wage slavery in order to live and carry
on our projects, yet we also don’t fetishize illegalism or turn it into
some kind of religion with martyrs; it is simply a means, and often
a good one.

6. INFORMAL ORGANIZATION; not professional
revolutionaries or activists, not permanent organizations

From party/union to self-organization:

—Profound differences exist within the revolutionary movement:
the anarchist tendency towards quality of the struggle and its self-
organization and the authoritarian tendency towards quantity and
centralization.

—Organization is for concrete tasks: thus we are against the party,
syndicate and permanent organization, all of which act to
synthesize struggle and become elements of integration for capital
and the state. Their purpose comes to be their own existence, in the
worst case they first build the organization then find or create the
struggle. Our task is to act; organization is a means. Thus we are
against the delegation of action or practice to an organization: we
need generalized action that leads to insurrection, not managed
struggles. Organization should not be for the defense of certain
interests, but of attack on certain interests.

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

‘The anarchist minority and the exploited and excluded:

—We are of the exploited and excluded, and thus our task is to act.
Yet some critique all action that is not part of a large and visible
social movement as “acting in the place of the proletariat.” They
counsel analysis and waiting, instead of acting. Supposedly, we are
not exploited alongside the exploited; our desires, our rage and our
weaknesses are not part of the class struggle. This is nothing but
another ideological separation between the exploited and
subversives.
—The active anarchist minority is not slave to numbers but
continues to act against power even when the class clash is at a low
level within the exploited of society. Anarchist action should not
therefore aim at organizing and defending the whole of the class of
exploited in one vast organization to see the struggle from
beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle
and carry them through to their conclusion of attack. We must also
move away from the stereotypical images of the great mass
struggles, and the concept of the infinite growth of a movement that
is to dominate and control everything.

—The relationship with the multitude of exploited and excluded
cannot be structured as something that must endure the passage of
time, i.e. be based on growth to infinity and resistance against the
attack of the exploiters. It must have a more reduced specific

dimension, one that is decidedly that of attack and not a rearguard
relationshi

—We can start building our struggle in such a way that conditions
of revolt can emerge and latent conflict can develop and be brought
to the fore. In this way a contact is established between the
anarchist minority and the specific situation where the struggle can
be developed.

7. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL: individualism and
communism, a false problem

—We embrace what is best in individualism and what is best in
communism.

—Insurrection begins with the desire of individuals to break out of
constrained and controlled circumstances, the desire to
reappropriate the capacity to create one’s own life as one sees fit.
‘This requires that they overcome the separation between them and
their conditions of existence. Where the few, the privileged, control
the conditions of existence, it is not possible for most individuals to
truly determine their existence on their terms. Individuality can
only flourish where equality of access to the conditions of existence
is the social reality. This equality of access is communism; what
individuals do with that access is up to them and those around
them. Thus there is no equality or identity of individuals implied in
true communism.

What forces us into an identity or an equality of being are the social
roles laid upon s by our present system. There is no contradiction
between individuality and communism.

8. WE ARE THE EXPLOITED, we are the contradiction: this
s no time for waiting

—Certainly, capitalism contains deep contradictions which push it
towards procedures of adjustment and evolution aimed at avoiding
the periodic crises which afflict it; but we cannot cradle ourselves
in waiting for these crises. When they happen they will be
welcomed if they respond to the requirements for accelerating the
elements of the insurrectional process. As the exploited, however,
we are the fundamental contradiction for capitalism. Thus the time
is always ripe for insurrection, just as we can note that humanity
could have ended the existence of the state at any time in its
history. A rupture in the continual reproduction of this system of
exploitation and oppression has always been possible.

Anti-Copyright Network/ Rezprint Autumn 2006 /
325collective.com
Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all social
problems, a commaodity on the capitalist market of ideologies and
opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an end to the
domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism, which
requires analysis and discussion to advance. We don’t look to some
ideal society or offer an image of utopia for public consumption.
Throughout history, most anarchists, except those who believed
that society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state
behind, have been insurrectionary anarchists. Most simply, this
means that the state will not merely wither away, thus anarchists
must attack, for waiting is defeat; what is needed is open mutiny
and the spreading of subversion among the exploited and excluded.
Here we spell out some implications that we and some other
insurrectionary anarchists draw from this general problem: if the
state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its
existence? It is, therefore, primarily a practice, and focuses on the
organization of attack. These notes are in no way a closed or
finished product; we hope they are a part of an ongoing discussion,
and we most certainly welcome responses Much of this comes from
past issues of Insurrection and pamphlets from Elephant Editions
(see the Insurrection Page on our website or write us if interested).

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