Salto – subversion & anarchie

Why should we come back to questions about affinity and informal organization? Certainly not because we are lacking attempts to explore and deepen these aspects of anarchism, because yesterday’s discussion, like today’s, have partially been inspired by them, and also not because there is a lack of texts –  true, most of the time in other languages – that approach these questions perhaps in a more dynamic manner. However, without a doubt, certain concepts require a permanent analytical and critical effort, if they don’t want to loose their meaning by being all-too-often used and repeated. Otherwise our ideas risk becoming a common place, some “evidence”, a fertile ground for the idiotic game of identity competition, where critical reflexion becomes impossible. It also happens that the choice of affinity for some becomes quickly dismissed as if it was about a relationship perched on its own ideas, a relationship that would not allow a contact with reality and neither with comrades. While others wave it around like a banner, like some kind of slogan – and like all slogans, usually it is the real meaning, deep and propulsive, to be its first victim.

No human activity is possible without organization, at least if we understand for “organization” the coordination of the mental and physical efforts deemed necessary to achieve a goal. From this definition we can deduct an important aspect, which is often forgotten: organization is functional, it is directed towards the realization of something, towards action in the broadest sense of the word.  Those who today urge everyone to just organize, in the absence of clear goals and while awaiting that from this first moment of organization all the rest would automatically develop, they put on a pedistal the fact of organizing as an end in itself.  In the best of cases, maybe they hope that from this will spring a perspective, a perspective that they are not able to imagine by themselves or can only roughly draw up, but which would become possible and palpable only within some kind of collective and organized environment. Nothing less true. An organization is fruitful when it is nurtured, not from a banal quantitative presence, but from individuals that use it to realize a common goal. Said in other words, it is pointless to believe that, just by organizing ourselves, the questions of how, what, where and why to struggle will be resolved by the magic of the collective. In the best of cases – or the worst, depending on the point of view – perhaps someone could find a bandwagon to jump on, a wagon pulled by someone else, and just get comfortable in the quite unpleasant role of follower. So it is only a matter of time before one would, disgusted and dissatisfied, break with this organization.

Organization is therefore subordinated to what one wants to do. For anarchists, we need to also add the direct ties that need to exist between what one wants to do, the ideal for which one struggles and the way to obtain it.  Despite the present disguising and word games through the marxist meanders, some parties are considered to be an adequate means to fight against political parties. This considers the political establishment of the productive forces put forward still today (in times when the scale of the industrial disaster is under everyone’s eyes) as a road to end with capitalist relationships. Some want to take measures to render superfluous all other measures. Anarchists have nothing to do with this kind of magic tricks, for them the ends and the means need to coincide. Authority cannot be fought with authoritarian forms of organization. Those who pass their time picking apart the fine points of metaphysics, making arguments against the use of violence, an alibi or a capitulation by anarchists, through this demonstrate above all their profound desire for order and harmony. Every human relation is conflictual, which does not mean that it is therefore authoritarian. To talk about such questions in absolute terms is certainly difficult, which doesn’t take away the fact the tension towards coherence is a vital need.

If today we think that affinity and affinity groups are the most adequate form for struggle and anarchist intervention in social conflictuality, it is because such a consideration is intimately tied to how we conceive of this struggle and this intervention. In fact, two roads exist to face the question, roads that are not diametrically opposite, but that also do not totally coincide. On one hand, there is the non-negotiable need of coherency. From there comes the question of the measure certain anarchist organizational forms (taking for example the organizations of synthesis with programs, some declarations of principles and some congresses such as anarchist federations or anarcho-sindacalist structures) answer to our idea of anarchism. On the other, there is the matter of adjustment to such and such organizational structure. This adjustment puts the question more on the grounds of historical conditions, of goals that want to be reached (and therefore to the organizational form that is considered most apt to this), of analysis of the social and economic situation… To the great federations we would have preferred, also in other eras, small groups who move with autonomy and agility, but on the level of adjustment to the situation, with great difficulty one can exclude a priori that in certain conditions, the choice of an anarchist organization of struggle, specific and federated, of a guerrilla constellation…can (or rather, could have) answer to certain needs.

We think that contributing to insurrectional ruptures and developing them is today the most adequate anarchist intervention to fight against domination. For insurrectional ruptures we mean intentional ruptures, even if temporary, in the time and space of domination; therefore a necessarily violent rupture. Even though such ruptures have also a quantitative aspect (as they are social phenomenons that cannot be reduced to a random action of a fistful of revolutionaries), these are directed towards the quality of the confrontation. They take aim against structures and relations of power, they break with their time and space and allow, through the experiences made and the methods used to self-organize and of direct action, to question again and to attack more aspects of dominion. In short, the insurrectional ruptures seem to us necessary on the road towards the revolutionary transformation of the existent.

Out of all this logically derives the question of knowing how anarchists can organize themselves to contribute to such a rupture. Without giving up on the always important  spreading of anarchist ideas, according to us, today, is not about gathering at all costs the most amount of people possible around anarchism. In other words, we don’t think that what is necessary is a strong anarchist organization able to spread and attract the exploited and the excluded, as a quantitative prelude for these organizations that in turn will give (when the time is ripe) the signal of insurrection. Furthermore, we think that it is unthinkable, in our days,  that insurrectional ruptures could start from organizations that defend the interest of a particular social group, starting from, for example, more or less anarcho-syndacalist forms. The integration of such organizations within democratic management, in fact perfectly answers to contemporary capitalist economy; it is this integration that made it impossible to potentially cross from a defensive to an offensive position. In conclusion it seems to us impossible that today a strong “conspiracy” would be able, through different surgical operations, to make domination tremble and to drag the exploited in the insurrectional adventure; beyond the objections that can be made against this way of considering things. In historical contexts where power was very centralized, such as in czarist Russia, one could still somehow imagine the hypothesis of a direct attack against the heart (in this case the assassination of the czar) as a prelude to a generalized revolt. In a context of decentralized power like the one we know, the question can no longer be about striking the heart, hypothesizing a scenario where one, well aimed shot, could make domination shake in its foundations (which obviously doesn’t take anything away from a well aimed shot). Therefore other paths should be explored.

Many draw back in front of affinity. It is in fact a lot easier and less demanding to sign up to something, be it an organization, a permanent assembly or an environment and to take up and reproduce formal characteristics, rather than undertaking a long and never exhausted research for comrades with whom to share ideas, analysis and eventual projects. Because affinity is exactly this: a reciprocal knowledge between comrades, shared analysis that lead to prospectives of action. Affinity is therefore directed on one hand towards theoretical deepening and on the other towards intervention in social conflictuality.

Affinity is radically placed on the quantitative plane. It aspires to the sharing of ideas and methods, and it does not have as a goal an infinite growth. For some comrades, one of the main preoccupations, even though often well hidden, seems to remain the number. How many are we? What should we do to be more? From the polarization on such a question to the argument that, if today we are not many, this is given by the fact that many others do not share our ideas (no, also not unconsciously), deriving the conclusion that we should, to grow numerically, avoid putting too hard of an accent on certain ideas.

These days it is rare to still find those who will try to sell you a  membership card to some revolutionary organization, destined to quantitatively grow and aspiring to represent always more exploited; but it is many who think that the best way to get to know others consists of organizing “consensual” activities such as for example self-organized bars, workshops, concerts, etc. Surely such activities can have their role, but when we face the topic of affinity we are talking about something else. Affinity is not the same thing as friendship. Of course the two do not exclude each other, but it is not because we share certain analysis that we sleep together, and vice versa. In the same way, just because we listen to the same music it doesn’t mean we want to struggle in the same way against domination.

The search for affinity occurs on an interpersonal level. It is not a collective event, a group affair, where it is always easier to follow than to think for oneself. The deepening of affinity is evidently a matter of thought and action, but in the end affinity is not strictly about carrying out an action together, but rather a starting point from which to then pass to action. OK, this is obvious, some might say, but then this would mean that I will not meet many people who could be good comrades, because in some way I would confine myself in affinity. It is true that the search and the deepening of affinity require a lot of time and energy, and that therefore it is not possible to generalize it to all comrades. The anarchist movement of a country, of a city or even of a neighbourhood cannot become one big affinity group. It is not about enlarging different affinity groups with more comrades, but to make possible the multiplication of autonomous affinity groups. The search, the elaboration and the deepening of affinity leads to small groups of comrades that know each other, share analysis and pass together to action.

The word is too loose. The aspect “group” of an affinity group has regularly been criticized, in both wrong and right ways. Often there are comrades who share the notion of affinity, but it becomes a lot more complicated when we start talking about “groups” which on one hand only addresses an inter-individual aspect, while on the other hand seem to stifle the “growth”. The objections most of the time consist in underlining the pernicious mechanisms of the “interior/exterior”, of the “inside/outside” that such affinity groups can generate (such as, for example, the fact of renouncing to one’s own path to follow the one of others, the sclerosis and the mechanisms that can surface such as some forms of competition, hierarchy, feelings of superiority or inferiority, fear…). But these are problems that arise in any kind of organization and are not exclusively tied to affinity. It is about reflecting on how to avoid that the search for affinity brings to a stagnation and to a paralysis rather than to an expansion, a spreading and of a multiplication.

An affinity group is not the same thing as a “cell” of a party or an urban guerrilla formation. Since its search is permanent, affinity evolves in permanence. It can “increase” up until the point that a shared project becomes possible, but on the other hand, it can also “decrease” until making it impossible to do anything together. The archipelago of affinity groups therefore constantly changes. This constant change is often pointed out by its critics: one cannot build anything from this, because it is not stable. We are convinced of the opposite: there is nothing to be built around organizational forms that revolve around themselves, away from the individuals that are part of it. Because sooner or later, at the first blows, excuses and tricks will anyways surface. The only fertile ground on which to build is the reciprocal search for affinity.

Finally, we would like to point out that this way of organization has the further advantage of being particularly resistant to the repressive measures of the state, since it does not have representative bastions, structures or names to defend. Where crystallized formations and big organizations can practically be dismantled in one hit, because of the same fact that they are rather static, affinity groups remain agile and dynamic even when repression hits. Since affinity groups are based on reciprocal knowledge and trust, the risks of infiltration, of manipulation and snitching are much more limited than in huge organizational structures to which people can formally join or in vague surroundings where it is only necessary to reproduce certain behaviour to join the club. Affinity is a quite hard base to corrupt, exactly because it starts from ideas and it also evolves in their function.

We believe that anarchists have the most amount of freedom and autonomy of movement to intervene in social conflictivity if they organize themselves in small groups based on affinity, rather than in huge formations or in quantitative organizational forms. Of course, it is desirable and often necessary that these small groups are able to come to an understanding between each other. And not for the purpose of being transformed into a moloch or a phalanx, but to realize specific and shared aims. These aims therefore determine the intensity of the cooperation, of the organization.  It is not excluded that one group who shares affinity organizes a demonstration, but in many cases a coordination between different groups could be desirable and necessary to realize this specific goal, anchored in time.

Cooperation could be also more intense in the case of a struggle conceived on a medium term, as, for example a specific struggle against a structure of power (the building of a deportation centre, of a prison, of a nuclear base…). In such a case, we could talk about informal organization. Organization, because we are dealing with a coordination of wills, means and capacities between different affinity groups and individuals that share a specific project. Informal because we are not concerned with promoting some name, or quantitatively strengthening an organization, or signing up to a program or a declaration of principles, but of an agile and light coordination to answer the needs of a project of struggle.

In one way, informal organization finds itself also on the ground of affinity, but it goes beyond the inter-individual character. It exists only in the presence of a shared projectuality. An informal organization is therefore directly oriented towards struggle, and cannot exist apart from this. As we previously mentioned, it helps to answer to particular requirement of a project of struggle that cannot be at all, or with great difficulty, sustained by a single affinity group. It can, for example, allow to make available the means that we deem necessary. The informal organization does not therefore have the goal to gather all comrades behind the same flag or to reduce the autonomy of the affinity groups and of individualities, but to allow this autonomy to dialog. This is not a loophole for doing everything together, but it is a tool to materialize the content and the feeling of a common project, through the particular interventions of affinity groups and individualities.

What does it mean to have a project? Anarchists want the destruction of all authority, from this we can deduct that they are on the constant search for ways of doing this. In other words, it is certainly possible to be an anarchist and active in such without a specific project of struggle. In fact this is what happens more often than not. Whether anarchists are following the directive of the organizations they belong to (something that seems belonging more to the past), or whether they are waiting for the arrival of struggles they can participate to, or whether they attempt to include as many anarchist aspects as possible into their daily life: none of these attitudes assumes the presence of a real projectuiality – something that, let’s make it clear, does not make these comrades less anarchists. A project is based on the analysis of the social, political and economic context one finds themselves in, and from which one refines a perspective that allows them to intervene in the short and medium term. A project that therefore holds an analysis, ideas and methods, coordinated to reach a purpose. We can for example publish an anarchist newspaper because we are anarchists and want to spread our ideas. OK, but a more projectual approach would require an analysis of the conditions in which this publication would be suitable to intervene in the conflictuality. We can decide that struggling against deportations, against the deterioration of the conditions of survival, against prison… because all these things are simply incompatible with our ideas; developing a project would necessitate an analysis to understand from where an anarchist intervention would be the most interesting, which methods to use, how to think of giving an impulse or intensification to the conflictual tension in a given period of time. It goes without saying that similar projects are usually the occasion for organizing informally, in a coordination between different groups and anarchist individualities.

Therefore an informal organization cannot be founded, constituted or abolished. It is born in a completely natural way, fulfilling the needs of a project of struggle and disappears when this project is realized or when it is assessed that it is no longer possible or relevant to realize it. It does not coincide with the entirety of the ongoing struggle: the many organizational forms, the different places of encounter, the assemblies etc. produced by a struggle will exist independently from the informal organization, which does not mean that anarchist cannot also be present there.