Civil war is the free play between forms-of-life; it is their principle of co-existence.
“War” because in each singular play between forms- of-life, the possibility of a fierce confrontation — the possibility of violence — can never be discounted. “Civil,” because the confrontation between forms-of-life is not a confrontation between States—those coincidences between a population and a territory — but between parties, in the sense this word had before the advent of the modern State. Because we must be precise from now on, let us say that they confront one another as partisan war machines. “Civil war” then, because forms-of-life are indifferent to the separations between men from women, political existence from bare life, civilians from military; because to be neutral is to take sides in the free play of forms-of-life; because this play between forms-of-life has no beginning or end that can be declared, its sole end being the physical end of the world that no one would be able to declare; and above all because I know of no body that is not hopelessly carried off into the excessive, the perilous, course of the world.
Tiqqun, Introduction to the Civil War
On the morning of the 3rd of October, some 50 people occupied an apartment building on Cadete Julio Llompart Street of Madrid – now known as edificio ocupado britanny. The building was appropriated in the context of what has come to be called the Obra Social, a political campaign driven in Madrid by housing assemblies of 15M and nationally by the PAH (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipteca). Elsewhere in the country, 13 buildings have been taken in Cataluña and 1 in Torrevieja. This has been paralleled by the Corralas occupation movement of Andalucia. The PAH alone has been able to house over 700 people.
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The ecstasy of revolution: Gustav Landauer
Only when anarchy becomes, for us, a dark, deep dream, not a vision attainable through concepts, can our ethics and our actions become one.
We want to be everything though: humans, animals, and Gods! We want to be heroes!
In revolution, everything happens incredibly quickly, just like in dreams in which people seem to be freed from gravity.
We are proud and secure enough to demand a new age; an age where people live in a beautiful and joyful world.
Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer, writing as an anarchist, at the end of the 19th century, states that “we have no political beliefs – we have beliefs against politics”. (79)* Anarchism as anti-politics may sound to many, enigmatic. Even if anarchists oppose the authority of the State, do they not do so as part of a political movement? Is not anarchism an anti-State politics? Can one not speak of an anarchist politics? Landauer’s refusal of politics suggests a negative answer to these questions. And more significantly, it points towards a conception of anarchism, or more broadly, of anarchist-socialist revolution, that is in many ways not only distinct from more traditional conceptions of the same, but is also far more profound in its radical implications.
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