Some Notes on

Insurrectionary
Anarchism
Sasha K.
I
nsurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all
social problems, a commodity on the capitalist market of ideolo-
gies and opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an
end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capital-
ism, which requires analysis and discussion to advance. We dont
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
straight from past issues of Insurrection and pamphlets from El-
ephant Editions.
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 con-
demning 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.
It is through acting and learning to act, not propa-
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ganda, 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 in-
surrection 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 deci-
sions 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
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present society. Self-organized struggles are by nature uncon-
trollable when they are spread across the social terrain.
3. Uncontrollability versus managed revolt: the
spread of attack
It is 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 in-
surrections 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 sabo-
tage in themselves, so much as their spreading socially. Every
proletarianized individual who disposes of even the most mod-
est means can draw up his or her objectives, alone or along
with others. It is materially impossible for the State and capi-
tal 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 prac-
tical contribution. The appearance of the first broken links
coincides with the spreading of acts of sabotage. The anony-
mous 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 develop-
ments in counter-insurgency.
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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 parlia-
mentary decree, to the very point of actively participating in
our own exploitation ourselves.
There might perhaps be individual reasons for doubt-
ing the attempt to reach ones 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 isnt just robbing
banks
Insurrectionary anarchism isnt a morality on survival:
we all survive in various ways, often in compromise with capi-
tal, depending on our social position, our talents and tastes.
We certainly arent 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 dont fetishize illegalism
or turn it into some kind of religion with martyrs; it is simply a
means, and often a good one.
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6. Informal Organization; not professional revo-
lutionaries or activists, not permanent organiza-
tions
From party/union to self-organization:
Profound differences exist within the revolution-
ary movement: the anarchist tendency towards quality of the
struggle and its self-organization and the authoritarian ten-
dency 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 delega-
tion of action or practice to an organization: we need general-
ized action that leads to insurrection, not managed struggles.
Organization should not be for the defense of certain inter-
ests, but of attack on certain interests.
Informal organization is based on a number of com-
rades linked by a common affinity; its propulsive element is al-
ways 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 par-
ties. The informal anarchist organization is therefore a specific
organization which gathers around a common affinity.
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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 ex-
ploited; 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 ste-
reotypical 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 relationship.
We can start building our struggle in such a way that
conditions of revolt can emerge and latent conflict can de-
velop 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.
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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 ones own life
as one sees fit. This requires that they overcome the separa-
tion 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 individu-
als 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 equal-
ity of being are the social roles laid upon us by our present
system. There is no contradiction between individuality and
communism.
8. We are the exploited, we are the contradiction:
this is 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 require-
ments for accelerating the elements of the insurrectional
process. As the exploited, however, we are the fundamental
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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 exploi-
tation and oppression has always been possible.
U NT OR E L L I