From the CrimethInc. collective (15/12/2023) …
Argentine Anarchists on the Election of Javier Milei
On December 10, the self-described “anarcho”-capitalist Javier Milei took office as president of Argentina, having campaigned on a promise to eliminate the Central Bank of Argentina and overturn the political establishment. What happens when an “anarcho”-capitalist takes power?
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In the wake of the rejection by Chilean voters of the proposed “right-wing” constitution (17/12/2023) – the country’s second constitutional referendum in just over a year, with the previous referendum (04/09/2022) ending with the rejection of a “left-wing” constitution, thereby preserving the Pinochet constitution of 1980 -, we share an interview with Chilean anarchists conducted by members of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation (12/12/2023) on the eve of the referendum.
In 2019, significant segments of the dominated classes of Chile gave shape to what is now known as the “social explosion”, a popular uprising of national proportions. The social explosion produced a profound political crisis which forced the resignation of then president Sebastián Piñera and initiated a process which sought to overturn and rewrite the country’s dictatorship era constitution.
In this interview with Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation (BRRN), members of the Santiago Anarchist Federation (FAS) offer a number of criticisms and alternative proposals to the constitutional assembly process. Members of the FAS also speak to the role played by both the left and institutional forces, as well as factors that have contributed to the rise of far right and neo-fascist elements in Chilean society.
This interview was conducted and translated by the Black Rose / Rosa Negra – International Relations Committee (IRC).
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To sum up Negri’s exposition of Marx’s line of argument in the Grundrisse: capitalism is a social system with two subjectivities, in which one subject (capital) controls the other subject (working class) through the imposition of work and surplus work. The logic of this control is the dialectic which constrains human development within the limits of capitalist valorization. Therefore, the central struggle of the working class as independent subject is to break capitalist control through the refusal of work. The logic of this refusal is the logic of antagonistic separation and its realization undermines and destroys capital’s dialectic. In the space gained by this destruction the revolutionary class builds its own independent projects – its own self-valorization. Revolution then is the simultaneous overthrow of capital and the constitution of a new society: Communism. The refusal of work becomes the planned abolition of work as the basis of the constitution of a new mode of producing a new multidimensional society.
Harry Cleaver, “Introduction: Part One” to Antonio Negri’s Marx Beyond Marx
Antonio Negri’s written corpus is extensive in time and scope and we cannot do justice to it in any short post, such as this. And whatever differences there are between his thought and our own views, Negri’s intellectual contribution cannot be dismissed.
In this spirit, we share below Harry Cleaver’s written introduction to the English language publication of Antonio Negri’s autonomist classic, Marx Beyond Marx.
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“I am not an anarchist from any standpoint, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in.” The words are Antonio Negri’s, from a 2010 interview (e-flux journal). And yet we learned from him, even in disagreement. And Negri’s work – which we have shared before – will continue to speak to us.
Antonio Negri died this last December 16th.
We share below a lecture that Negri gave at the conference on the Idea of communism in London, March 2009, followed by a short political biography by Michael Hardt and the documentary, Antonio Negri: a revolt that never ends.
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From lundimatin #407, December 11, 2023 …
This text was written by the philosopher Jean Vioulac for a gathering organised by Lundimatin at the Consulate, in Paris, on December 2, 2023. The theme revived the most haunting dichotomy of our contemporary entrance into the fascist winter: “Fascism or Revolution” . The demand for thought posed by the situation presupposes an intervention with concepts. The Revolution is not only an ecopolitical emergency, it is a necessity immanent in the very logic of the reality principle. And this is how “to fuck everything becomes vital”.*
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From lundimatin, #407, December 11, 2023 …
The young Palestinian writer and poet Nour El-Din Haggag has just died on December 5, followed on December 7 by the poet Refaat Alareer, after the bombing of their house in Gaza. One of Nour El-Din’s last writings explained why, at the risk of his life, he refused to leave his land and remained in Gaza.
Good evening, World,
Last night all communications and the internet were cut. What I thought impossible has come to pass. The postman won’t be able to come in all this bombing and destruction, and his newspapers won’t carry except the same news every day: that Gaza is being annihilated. And perhaps news of my death will be in the next edition. The bombing gets stronger and we hold onto our hearts because what we fear is coming closer, we shall die in silence and the world will know nothing of us. We will not be able to scream or to record our last moments, our last words.
I live in a small neighbourhood, Shuja’iyya, on the east side of Gaza City. Every night the explosions don’t stop. They are varied and come from all directions. With every massive sound that shakes our homes and our hearts we hold each other. We know that an explosion will come that we won’t hear, because we will have exploded with it.
And so I write now. Maybe this will be my last message that will wander the free world, and fly with the doves of peace, and tell the world that we love life if we can get it, but that in Gaza all paths are closed, and we are just a post or a tweet away from death.
OK: I am Nour el-Din Adnan Haggag, a Palestinian writer. I am twenty-seven years old and I have many dreams.
I am not a number, and I refuse that news of my death should pass without you saying that I love life, happiness, liberty, children’s laughter, the sea, coffee, writing, Fairouz, and everything that brings joy .. before all this vanishes in one brief moment.
One of my dreams is that my books would travel the world, that my pen would have wings unhindered by unstamped passports and refused visas.
Another dream: that I should have a little family, that I should hug a son – who looks like me – while I tell him a bedtime story.
And my greatest dream remains that peace should fill my country, that children’s laughter should rise before the sun, that we should plant a rose in every spot where a bomb fell, and paint our freedom on every wall that was destroyed, that war should leave us alone; to finally live our lives, once.
Nour el-Din Haggag, Gaza, Palestine
28 November 2023
(Translated from the Arabic by Ahdaf Soueif)
These writer-poets in whom the Palestinian people recognised themselves at the height of their resistance through the poem, are today among the 17,000 victims of the war ordered against the Palestinians.
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Being an anarchist does not mean one has reached a certainty or said once and for all, ‘There, from now on I hold the truth and as such, at least from the point of view of the idea, I am a privileged person’. Anyone who thinks like this is an anarchist in word alone. Instead the anarchist is someone who really puts themselves in doubt as such, as a person, and asks themselves: What is my life according to what I do and in relation to what I think? What connection do I manage to make each day in everything I do, a way of being an anarchist continually and not come to agreements, make little daily compromises, etc? Anarchism is not a concept that can be locked up in a word like a gravestone. It is not a political theory. It is a way of conceiving life, and life, young or old as we may be, whether we are old people or children, is not something final: it is a stake we must play day after day.
Alfredo M. Bonanno, The Anarchist Tension
Alfredo Bonanno’s elaboration and defence of “insurrectionalist anarchism” is undoubtedly his most significant theoretical-practical contribution to anarchism and, not coincidentally, his most contested.
Bonanno endeavoured to trace a path for anarchist politics in the wake of the waning of the working class as an agent of anti-capitalist struggle, born of changing social relations in modern capitalist society. His criticism of the anarchist-syndicalist tradition expresses what he understood as the need for a new orientation for anarchism, an orientation that could be described as an ethics and politics of militant opposition to the reign of capital in all social spheres. This translated into a rejection of formal mass anarchist organisations, as instruments of radical social change, and an ardent championing of “insurrection”: the permanent struggle against capitalist society, with the goal of its destruction, through concrete and situated actions that reflect and engender disruptive moments in the mechanics of capitalist social reproduction.
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“Certainly, a lot of people in Britain, when you say ‘anarchists,’ they just think of riots. And the news will say, ‘Today, twenty anarchists went on a rampage.’ They don’t understand anarchism,” he said. “Politically, I’m a revolutionary. I believe in breaking the whole system down and f*cking starting again. And I can see that that’s not going to happen for a while. And when I say I’m a revolutionary, I’m an anarchist. I think that the political system we have right now lead to corruption at all kinds of levels,” he said.
Benjamin Zephaniah, interview from Psychology Today, 24 July 2018
People can write about anarchist theories as much they like but there are places that live without government and live peacefully and happily. A lack of power means people of course aren’t fighting over it and the main objective of society is to look after each other.
Benjamin Zephaniah, Palatinate, 27 October 2022
In a 2019 post, we shared Benjamin Zephaniah’s testimonial text, Why I am an anarchist. Today we mark his passing, celebrating the poetry and that artistry that he created, lived and shared with so many.
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From lundimatin, #406, December 4, 2023.
KAPT’AL is not a God
It is a principle
It spreads like light or water or wind
And it expands
Imperturbably
***
Ian Alan Paul: Anaesthetic Violence
Ill Will has published the second part of an earlier reflection on the current Israeli violence against Palestinians, by Ian Alan Paul, this time offering an analysis of the politics of death in Palestine. Both essays are excellent and as we earlier shared the first part, we now share the complementary piece.
In his essay “Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Noise,” the artist Yazan Khalili recalls gathering with friends in a city in the West Bank to paint some graffiti mocking the Palestinian Authority’s security collaboration with Israel.1 After police officers from the Palestinian Authority approached and instructed them that it was prohibited to paint there, Khalili found that:
This partitioning of land that also functions as a partitioning of the sensible is taken up by Khalili as a point of departure to examine the colonial policing of who and what can appear and where, of what is heard as speech or disregarded as noise, of what is permitted to make sense or is barred from doing so. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Rancière, Khalili’s essay helps us understand how this sensual policing of places and people organizes life across Palestine, allowing one person to smoothly blend into the scenery of Jerusalem’s old city while another sticks out and is subjected to interrogation and arrest, one group chanting on the streets of Haifa to loudly demonstrate while another is bludgeoned and dispersed, and one driver to freely pass through a checkpoint at the edge of Bethlehem while another is stopped and searched. All of these forms of policing are built upon what Rancière describes as an aesthetics that rests at the foundation of social life, a sensible distribution that establishes and enforces who belongs where and for what purpose.2
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