Although not written by 56a Infoshop, this text has some interesting things to say about the question of legitimacy, militancy and social centres
All and Nothing: for radical suicide!
Towards some Notes and Confusion on
'You Can't Rent Your Way Out Of A Social Relationship: A Critique of Rented
Social Centres'
...and to continue the dialogue...
by TEXT NOTHING
I'm A Sucker for Good Seduction, However...
I would love to feel that, ultimately, the authors of the text 'You
Can't Rent Your Way Out Of A Social Relationship: A Critique of Rented Social
Centres' are spot on in their questioning of, for want of a better
description, this 'movements' use of what they call 'legal infrastructures'
but I can't. I can't even though I want to because I'm sympathetic to their
desires for a politics based on wildness, anger and love and also because
I want a more radical theory and practice to blossom and for society to change
as a result. I can't even though my solidarity is always extended to those
who attempt dialogue from within social movements instead of just letting
the movement move wherever it wants, usually all over the place. I can't because
despite the obvious thought and feeling that runs through the text, it begins
to circle in on itself and the arguments end up as either free standing generalisations
or worse as contradictions that degenerate into petty sneering. What follows
then is a reply to some of the points raised in the text. 'Some' because it
would be a lengthy and boring process to nit-pick everything...'the history
of revolt is one that occurs largely outside the workplace'..huh? Anyway...
If it's gonna be a case of all or nothing, I'm strictly in the 'or' department.
This is because I don't believe there is a correct way that radical critique
and activity must be done. In fact, I'm happy that this is also one of my
few political beliefs.
Despite how seductive a radical text can be, I remain suspicious of those
who write from the cult of the extreme, as if the more florid the words, the
more radical the ideas must be. In this particular instance, the analysis
presented suffers from such a tendency where in the heat of their argument,
the words become forced or self-consciously radical-sounding, and the text
drifts into the realm of dead words and empty phrases. Whatever good points
have been thrown up, this sudden lead balloon descending reveals the reverse
of what is intended - the poetry of living, of social struggle, of love and
rage and of rightiousness is sapped of energy by mere political langauge.
This poetry is always an adversary to politics.
"Politics is the technique by which society is managed. As a technique
of management, it is everywhere, colonising all time and space. It is both
the result of and the perpetuation of the human's separation from the world.
It is both the result of and perpetuation of fragmented experience. It is
an abstraction but it has a real effect on the world. The political frame
of mind is political precisely because it never leaves the confines of politics.
Everything else becomes secondary. Drives are put at the service of politics,
instead of strategy being put at the service of drives. People are valued
as political beings, dispossessed of their individuality and their real experience..."
Nick Brandt, from within 'Re-fuse', 1978
"Poetry about causes is like birds 'about' fried chicken"
Jack Collom, from 'A Few Crumbs from the Houston Street Median Stripe Naturewalk'
1998
A Life Sentence / A Dead Sentence:
"Groups or networks cannot really describe themselves as confrontational
and anti-capitalist when they submit themselves unnecessarily to legal infrastructure....Here
in Britain, our experience is that there are an increasing number of people
taking the easy route, trying to maintain one foot in the system (reaping
the benefits of personal security, status, financial reward) whilst posing
as radicals plotting it's destruction."
If you've been involved in social struggle for a number of years, you start
to get a feel of those who are 'innit for life' (as the punks round here like
to say) and those who aren't. In my experience, those who are lifers are usually
not the ones who can conceptualise radicality as something that can be 'sold
out'. Nor can a person's radical index be based on a number of hours a day
spent being 'radical'. Radicals just are, young or old, experienced or not.
Isn't it true that the most heart-warming anarchists you'll meet are rarely
'anarchists'? The anarchist propaganda sticker that asks 'Think you're a bit
of an anarchist?' has got it arse-backwards. Outside of the radical 'political'
scene with its Panopticon of rules and scrutiny, some of the world famous
ordinary people are more radical than most self-confessed activists 'on the
inside' (to use a highly appropriate and well-known phrase). However, day
to day, hour by hour, radicals (in and out) submit to the brutal banalities
of daily life as we know it in this system and, because we can't escape a
certain 'social relationship' , to hundreds of 'legal infrastructures' both
simple and complex. Squatting in England is (in the main) a nice and friendly
legal game of possession featuring our beloved 'Section Six' and their beloved
'Possession Order'. Advisory Service for Squatters in London has been running
out of a rented office space for donkey's years. Should they be criticised
for not squatting?
Unless you always cycle in the wrong direction against the flow of traffic,
unless you never leave the country because you refuse a Passport, unless you
demand that your food from the supermarket is dirty and out-of-date, unless,
unless, unless...against our will, we can't escape these legal requirements
of us and others as they appear in the everyday, normal-seeming, social relationship.
It isn't clear what (or more likely who) the authors mean when they talk of
people keeping one foot in the system. There is no outside of that system.
In the rush for radical purity, they end up contradicting themselves. On the
one hand they quote a critical voice of 'counter institutions' that defines
such projects as 'nothing more than alternative ways of surviving within the
present society'. On the other hand they praise an Argentinian women they
met who quit her well-paid job and house to work in a 'grassroots community
health initiative in a poor barrio in Buenos Aires'. Yes, that's inspiring
but which is it to be?
So, it scares me when radicals talk proscriptively about taking easy routes,
personal security, status and financial reward. We don't live our individual
and collective lives in simple black and white. As we all know, it's a total
bust just surviving this world. We get tired out from working. We burn out.
We go mad. We can't take it anymore. Ten years ago it used to be that everyone
knew someone who had flipped out. These days its seems more than likely that
you'll be the one losing it at some point. The loneliest time in the world
can be had in the midst of a solid crew of activist friends! Maybe what the
authors mean is that some people talk the talk and don't walk the walk. Having
a reasonable income, somewhere nice to live, maybe this, maybe that, is only
a 'sell-out' when push comes to shove and those people are nowhere to be seen.
When it all kicks off, does your Collected Dickens stay on your shelf or add
height to the barricades? A favourite experience of mine is bumping into a
former anarchist squatter-type turned family man and newly-created University
lecturer masked up, infectiously buzzing and ready to get into it on the 1994
Criminal Justice Bill riot. A sell-out? Let the posers pose.
"We wonder if the rented social centre offers a perfect displacement
activity for those who are essentially part of the system but wish to appear
to be involved in radical politics".
The authors put forward the notion that it's possible as 'radicals' to be
outside the social relationship they have already said is impossible to escape
the contradictions of. This is the classic 'radical' as outsider, as other.
But it's so self-conscious a social role as to be useless. We are all capable
of radical acts within this relationship. We might make food and share it,
make actions together, talk to each other and blow our minds all within this
relationship. The self-confused radical is just another part of the system
even more so if they see themselves, moment by moment, 24-7, as so 'for real'.
"Once in this "role', play no longer has any meaning. Everything
becomes "serious", so illusury, it enters the domain of the spectacular
and becomes a commodity. Joy becomes "mask". The individual becomes
anonymous, lives out their role, no longer able to distinguish between appearance
and reality...In order to break out of the magic circle of the theatricals
of commodities we must refuse all roles, including that of "professional"
revolutionary".
Alfredo Bonanno, from 'Armed Joy', 1977
However, we survive this world as best we can and our fight can never be determined
by our ideals over and above our daily safety and well being. That we endure
this sick system (with or without happy drugs) is nothing short of miraculous.
So we fight back and we run away. We don't stay in the line of fire just to
be defiant. I'd rather not sign on but then I'd rather not starve.
If what they mean is that (primarily) middle-class types have an adventure
in radical politics then give it up, that surely cannot be a suprise anymore?
That more proletarian types quit being activists but stay radical is no surprise
because the issue of their survival keeps their critique finely honed.
'Legal - Illegal - Scheissegal!'
('Legal - Illegal - Shit Legal' from Berlin squatters festival 'Tu
Wat' 1981)
"If you are doing something the state doesn't want you to do, if you
are challenging the way things are, then you will be repressed. Renting a
social centre is, in our opinion, an admission of failure and cannot promote
anything other than the idea that the anti-capitalist movement has been absorbed
into the system. It demonstrates a lack of commitment to realising the ideas
that you expound, and by calling such a space 'radical' is to rewrite the
dictionary...In our opinion, an anti-capitalist social centre, paying rent
to a landlord, paying rates and bills, obeying licensing laws, legal structures,
and insurance, cannot in essence be in any way in conflict with the capitalist
system. It is not direct action and it is not confrontational. At its heart
is defeat, sometimes called realism...Although squatting is not illegal in
Britain, much of what goes on in a squat is illegal - providing food, beer,
and entertainment for people without license. By squatting we introduce ourselves
to the new social relationships that develop when we take what we want from
the state and property-owning class rather than asking and paying for it -
and to the very idea that is is possible for us to exist outside those parameters...Opening
up a squatted social centre is fundamentally more liberating than setting
up a legal structure, a bureaucracy...there is often an atmosphere of anything
can happen. In some sense this is the very essence of wildness, of revolt,
and therefore in direct opposition to domesticity and obedience...Entering
a centre that follows rules, pays its rates and licences, and has financial
and cultural ownership of the space is radical suicide".
"state-approved social centres", "have further marginalised
the squatters movement"
I can't say that I'm personally thrilled by the idea of anti-G8 protests or
the Dissent! rented social centres but I can't categorically say that something
radical or worthwhile will not come out of them. I dont think the anyone would
class these centres as 'direct action' but there must be an increased possibility
of affinity or direct actions happening as a result of social interactions.
Any of the famous counter-summit meetings of the last few years had a legal
relationship to the State (permission to march, legal zones, sleeping places
etc.) but it didn't stop individuals and groups taking direct action from
within these structures. How do people get radicalised anyway? Is it just
by magic or do they go through a radicalising thought or activity process?
Usually it's by chatting with other 'radicals', reading radical material or
attending sites of social struggle and seeing what is possible. Squat parties
or cafes, demos, pickets, occupations and riots, discussion groups, film nights,
historical walks, picnics, free skools, queer cabarets, 3-sided football matches,
nefarious nightime activities all take place in a human social time and space.
The possibility for individual and collective learning and changing is always
present regardless of any legal restraints (be they cops on the attack or
paying the rent at the endof the month). The confrontation the authors desire
takes place in the social realm (our realm?) and not in the legal one (their
realm?). If we forget that, then we are more caught up in the system's world
than most ordinary people in the day-to-day. Hence, what's the big deal about
focusing on the illegal. Food and beer (presumably bought somewhere) and entertainment
all served up in a squat. So what? It's people that bring or create a radical
ambience and motley mayhem. The best of times with genuine togetherness and
solidarity, those crazy ideas put into practice afterwards, have so very often
been had in a local fully-licensed pub. Plus the opposite can also be true
of squatting scenes - more rules than ever or people acting up because 'it's
no rules, man. This is a squat yeah? It's anarchy, innit?' as they proceed
to shit in the corner, fight the people doing a bar or smash the bogs up.
Or it's five quid on the door for a squatted party! Yeah, I have had some
amazing times in squatted spaces but I've also been physically attacked, ripped
off or sometimes felt horribly lonely and out of place amongst so many 'radicals'.
Despite the pressures brought upon us by a media-driven frenzy for individualism
and a vicious surveillance culture that breeds a hateful self-repression,
the social sphere is not yet defeated or illegal. I suppose that trite slogan
'you can't kill the spirit' sums this up. Imprisoned, beaten up by fascists,
driven half-mad by the daily mindfuck or let down by posers, there remains
something inside us that wills us to keep trying and keeps us cheering or
crying in solidarity with those similarly struggling across the world. Are
those feelings are any less genuine in those who run rent-paying or bought
social centres (London's L.A.R.C or 56a Infoshop? Bristol's Kebele? etc).
It's insulting to insinuate that these places are 'state-approved' as if any
State would approve of the spirit and solidarity that keeps these places going.
Do these spaces really marginalise the squatters movement or work alongside
them, aiding and abetting them?
I'm not down on what the authors say and what they collectively seek. I'm
in total solidarity with that very human project. To have glimpsed that deep
and connected sense of freedom and togetherness that can spring out of certain
events and situations that we might have experienced as politicos is what
keeps most of us going. It's in taking those risks that we begin to know what
is possible, what is inside all of our heads.
On the question of legitimacy, running a rented space has to be a kind of
game, crossing both funny peculiar with funny ha-ha. If the rules and regs
are too strict, then yeah! what's the point? If how the place runs can't be
fudged or smeared along the lines of 'What Goes On' and 'What Really
Goes On' then there's not much fun in that. It could be viewed from within
as a kind of adventurous piss-take. Let's not kid ourselves, at some point
we all play the legitimacy or co-operation game but it's played as a kind
of social engineering, a mask of our intentions because always standing up
to be counted isn't going to be the best bet for radical longevity. We fire
the Parthian shot, attacking by feigning retreat. Nodding whilst shaking your
head is an art form to be learned and practiced to the fullest.
Strategically, a rented social centre may make good sense (alongside other
types of resistance) if it can also operate as a front. Community struggles
from Chile to Ireland have made use of such an operation because there was
no choice if people wanted to meet and resist. Right now, the rented social
centre, blurred bureaucratically, could function in such a way, in the midst
of social affinity, towards, but one step removed from affinity group activity.
Thinking that time itself will fuck up games of resistance is a nonsense.
Time is mysterious. There are enough people and hence enough time to do accounts
or meet bureaucrats now and again. In the same way that there are enough people
to write leaflets or destroy offices of bastards. Cakes will be made for cafes
because some people want to make cakes rather than nightcrawl. If it's not
like this then not only does the scene lack vital subtlety but it's not much
of a movement either.
Only The Dead Have Seen The End of War:
"It is not what you say...it is what you do, that matters. Revolt is
about bringing the war home in a society where it is often too easily hidden
beneath the veneer of isolation and alienation, where we are told (and believe)
the war is somewhere else, where we continue to labour under the illusion
that we are privilged and where in fact some of us do actually have a 'nice
life', where abundant opportunities arise for recuperation and the insidious
selling out of idealism. To bring the war home is to make war on this society,
on the way we live our lives, on the power structures that exist both outside
ourselves and within".
Saying can be the same as doing. What we say to each other (and why we say
it) is probably half the battle. It is hard to say what we really feel and
mean when our thought processes and bodily experiences are colonised by the
second nature feel of the social relationship of capital. It is often hard
to know why we do certain things or why we feel certain things. It is also
very easy to get caught up in scenes and have to blot out things in our heads
that don't seem to fit in with the prevailing ideas. Either that or we blurt
out the wrong thing and we are never forgiven. No one is a perfectly formed
radical with all the right ideas. We are all learning on our own and from
others. There has to be space for people to be confused and imperfect because
if we expect perfection we are imposing a work ethic on our our friends and
comrades. If you're not confused, you're probably wrong.
My suspicion is that the authors want us to say less and do more (even though
they have taken the time to do a leaflet saying what they think about rented
social centres). I want people to do more as well but only if it is beautiful
freeing, wild-appreciating and joyously sensual. In fact I don't even care
what it is if it manages to encompass all those things. If it's falling in
love whilst talking about Vandana Shiva (or Die Hard 2) in rented social centre,
then great. If it's putting on a show in a pub to raise money for prisoners
that's equally great. If it's burning down a dole office, then that's still
just as equally great, especially if it's my one. And definitely more squatting
and more resistance to eviction.
Thus in the realm of doing something, when politicos talk about fighting a
war. I get nervous. I know it's just a fanciful radical sounding metaphor,
much loved by Insurrectionalist Anarchists and others, but I still feel afraid.
This is because very few of us know how to fight a real war and the State
has had centuries of practice of both psychological warfare and the physical
bullet in the head. I know the authors don't mean that we construct an actual
army but the notion 'war' seems the least social of types of resistance. What
do they mean here in their most rhetorical, most black and white paragraph?
What do they think and feel are ways to fight back or practice radical acts
based on their criticism? Nothing is really said of that. How do you fight
a war on our mixed-up social relations? On our role-playing or on our power
games? Through a dogma of illegality, conflict, confrontation? Through radical-ism?
Despite whatever underground activity has proceeded it, ultimately, it's in
the messily coloured social realm that the real movement against the State
happens.
"Conflict as the moment of identity, as 'the' moment of constitution,
of politics, of class constitution...this for me is a forced understanding.
Amongst other things, this conception still attributes great value to visibility.
The 'other' in order to be such, must be visible, manifest, and the more clamorous
the conflict, the greater the identity it confers...This is the back door
through which the traditional logic of politics is returned to play. I prefer
the image of beams eaten from within by termites. I prefer a non-visible,
non-spectacular path, the idea of silent growth of a body that is foreign
to the sort of visibility that leaves you hostage to the universe of mediation".
Serge Bologna, quoted in 'Future Past', 2002
The 'fight a war' part of their text really seems like a sermon from the Cult
of the Extreme. It sounds radical but it's empty. What is the war we should
fight? I can only imagine that it involves something that looks and sounds
militant (like how pictures of riots and masked-up people obssess the movement
as if these acts are the pinnacle of any social struggle and not just the
most violent and spectacular ones). This fetish for militancy disregards the
boring and time-consuming work that radicals put in on the ground. If folks
hadn't spent years setting up local groups and leafleting streets and everyone
had just paid the Poll Tax, the famous Poll Tax riot woundn't have meant a
thing. Luckily there was lots of chatting and lots of rioting all over the
country.
"What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy...thus,
those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army without battle...when ten to
the enemy's one, surrround him...if weaker numerically, be capable of withdrawing
and if in all respects unequal, be capable of eluding him, for a small force
is but booty for one more powerful if it fights recklessly. I say: Know the
enemy and know yourself...you will never be defeated...if ignorant both of
your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle".
Sun Tzu, from 'Offensive Strategy' in 'The Art of War'
"Strategy is the employment of the battle to gain the end of the War;
it must therefore give an aim to the whole military action, which must be
in accordance with the object of the War; in other words, Strategy forms the
plan of the war; and to this end it links together the series of acts which
are to lead to the final decision, that is to say, it makes the plans for
the separate campaigns and regulates the combats to be fought in each".
Carl von Clausewitz, from 'Strategy' in 'On War', 1832
Heavy or spectacular acts are often in no way strategic and seeing as virtually
no-one in the anarchist or anti-capitalist movement takes strategy or planning
seriously such 'war' will be short lived by the soldiers (like most wars!).
Apart from some Reclaim The Streets actions and wonderful elements in UK Earth
First!, only Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) has any sense of long term
planning and any decent sense of security. There is a lot to be learned from
the animal liberation movement in the UK. A big influence on SHAC was Sun
Tzu's 'The Art of War'. In 'Arkangel' Issue 26. they highlighted 'points we
feel most applicable to todays struggle to achieve animal liberation' including
'practicing one of the main principles laid out in Sun Tzu's The Art of War
of knowing your enemy'. But who anymore in the anarchist scenes is publically
publishing useful and practical research on State infrastructure like the
kind of radical stuff appearing in 1980's Black Flag or Hooligan Press in
the 1980's? Stuff that would be genuinely useful in formulating a strategy
of fighting back especially for those more likely to be termites than warriors.
In the realm of strategy, a few spies in the enemy camp is a bloody good thing.
They know who we are. Not only are they photographing you at demos and meetings,
without a doubt, informers and spies attend and are part of the anarchist
and anti-capitalist scenes. They take it far more seriously than we do. With
this in mind, it seems more important that no-one (as yet) takes repression
that seriously either. In fact, some radicals rather saviour a little bit
of repression from our cute liberal democracy as if it legitimises their own
sense of militancy. Sad but true. Personally, despite what I do, I'm scared
of the future and what could happen to me, to us. When the gloves come off,
when the mask of the liberal democracy slips right off (as the movements has
watched and written about for years), it will be nasty and vicious, divisive
and deadly.
Just in passing, historically, attempts at social war put into practice by
small groups of militants have not resulted in increasing the momentum of
revolutionary social praxis. One of the first actions of the 1970's Weather
Underground attempting to 'bring the war home to the United States' was to
blow themselves up! In Italy during the radical upheavals of the late 1970's,
the political strategy of 'The Theory of the Offensive'was a fucking disaster
for the social movements resulting in hundreds of activists rounded up, arrested
and imprisoned.
Everything You Wanted To Know About Squatting But Hoped Wasn't True:
"In Berlin and Hamburg, during the occupation movement of the early eighties,
the number of illegal squats was gradually reduced until they nearly vanished.
At the same time, the most radical struggles also diminshed".
This is far too a reductionist view of the squatting history of Germany. The
energy of the squatting movement rose and fell at similar times in line with
a general political climate. During 1981, both cities had a highpoint of large
illegal squats. By 1984, due to changes in local government policy and repression
(600 houses raids in Berlin from 1981-1984 and 1000 squatters facing criminal
charges by 1985!), the scene had diminished. Later in 1984, the squatting
scene rejuvenated itself just as Haig came to town leading to large riots,
to be repeated in 1986 when Reagen flew into town. The emptying out of the
squat scene in Berlin and beyond didn't lead to a lack of tumult. Radical
riotous activity happened around nuclear power and an IMF visit in 1988, the
main ruckus coming from the Autonomen scenes or in the beautifully-worded
media sensation, the 'chaoten'.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the rapid gentrification of central
East Berlin was actually helped along by squatters evicted from parts of West
Berlin that had been previously gentrified. In Amsterdam, the most self-proclaimed
'radical' die-hard squatters of the mid-80's were the self-titled Invstigation
Group who demanded that squats stay illegal. They began physical assaults
and take-overs of squat bars as well as publishing "Pearls Before Swine:
Decline and Betrayal Inside the activist movement in Holland. A report from
the political wing of the squatting movement" (1988) featuring a list
of 'sell-outs' and cover picturing a masked man executing a line of kneeling
squatter 'traitors' along the banks of a typical Dutch polder. The label 'radical'
or 'squatter' (like 'punk' or 'anarchist' or 'anti-capitalist' or whatever),
in no way guarantees radical ideas or activities.
They can endure our insults but not our laughter:
"Did I fail to understand the Palestinian Revolution? Yes, completely.
I think I realised that when Leila advised me to go to the West Bank. I refused,
because the occupied territories were only a play acted out second by second
by the occupied and occupier. The reality lay in involvement, fertile in love
and hate; in people's daily lives; in silence, like translucency, punctuated
by words and phrases".
Jean Genet in 'Prisoner of Love', 1986
"Revolution is essentially a game - as much as the society it pre-figures
- and one plays it for the pleasures involved...If the revolutionary movement
succeeds, then it will permeate society as a game that everyone can play...Life
and revolution will be invented together or not all..."
Nick Brandt, from within 'Re-fuse', 1978
That revolution, or more likely revolutionary activity, can be theorised and
practiced as a game (and not as political work) might be a shock to some militants.
Simply, the role of play (as one revolutionary strategy?) embodies an insurrectionary
presence in contrast to the role playing or numbers game of politics or activism.
The only rules are potluck and mutation, the game being played as the 'free
action of individuals' for the 'joy of co-operation' to use a bit
of Malatesta.
Play is here and it is now, subversive in joyful, wise and confrontational
essence. Wild, irrational and often meaningless (in a freeing-up way), what
could be more potent than an army of fools? That play is often enacted as
a vast shared secret between its players seems more like a successful model
for revolutionary organising than other more traditional forms we know and
don't love. This game is then the opposite of the mediated and self-conscious
political movement, that is created in opposition, but defined by, the system
is opposes (like Black Metal needs Christianity). Even my folks know that
politics is the shittiest game on Earth.
If this seems like middle-class shit to you, by play I mean activity that
stems from the imagination or more specifically, from what can be imagined
and carried through. "Theft, feigned ignorance (all the better to
dissemble our intentions), shirking or careless labour, foot-dragging and
the go-slow, zero work...secret trade and production for sale (for barter
- even better for free), squatting, defaulting on all payments for anything,
evasion of taxes, destruction of official records, sabotage and arson, assassination,
impromptu riot (for the hell of it) and the detournement of State sponsored
celebration into moments of joyous destruction' ('Without A Trace',
in 'Do Or Die' #10, 2003), is a good and playful list. A further useful list
this time of traits probably necessary for playing hard could be 'Intensity
and spontaneity of feelings and passions. Skepticism about your own knowledge.
Lack of concern for praise or blame. Freedom from guilt. Refusal to conform
to the expectations of others. Humility. Creativity of thinking. Lack of arrogance,
meanness or resentment. Self(less)-confidence. Disdain for traditions and
institutions. Fierce loyalty to the truth of experience and of things themseleves'.
(Distilled from 'Inner Chapters', Chaung Tzu)
Undertaking such praxis, there is then a chance to create now any possibility.
A time and space to liberate thought and feeling from duties and convention.
A timelessness for a shedding of identity and role. It is not a play for power,
nor is it a playtime (a separation from work time). It is a constant but ineffable
insurrection in all its contradictions. A long-lasting laugh at power. It
is always a refusal of work. Always for acts of sabotage, mental and physical.
An anti-economy because it is always a theft in operation as it unencloses
an enclosed mind. It steals through the borders of what is expected of us.
It's collectively created choas, when the rules demand order. Whether playing
with each other or playing with fire, we run the risk of enjoying the game
of revolution. Like a kind of June 18th over a Mayday 2000. Like a war game
gone beautifully wrong.
Rapina Tore and Paglio Ccio
October 2004
Further Reading:
Contained within the 10th and final issue of 'Do Or Die: Voices from the
Ecological resistance' (Brighton 2003) are the following pertinent and
interesting articles:
· 'Social Dis-centres' and 'Stable Bases', both articles
being a better argued critique and defence of social centres than either 'You
Can't Rent You Way Out Of...' or 'All And Nothing: For Radical Suicide!'.
· 'SHAC Attack: Targeting Companies Animal Rights Style', a
look at how SHAC plans and institutes its sustained attack on Huntingdon Life
Sciences and supporting companies
· 'Without A Trace', a nicely written piece highlighting the
radical nature and practice of anonymous and joyous non-spectacular, ahistorical
insurrection.
· 'Insurrectionary Anarchy!', an intelligent and persuasive
overview of this anarchist sub-species.
MAILING ADDRESS ONLY:
BOX NOTHING
c/o 56a Infoshop
56 Crampton Street
London SE17 3AE