Random notes on «Call»

My first impression after reading Call
was that it really did not say anything to
me. Since the beginning of their booklet
the authors use quite an abstract
language, which is perhaps intended to
go beyond the banal words that are
employed in every day conversations and
by the media, but which fails to achieve
its purpose. So they talk about ‘evident’
and ‘worlds’ but me, quite a humble
reader, do not catch what they mean nor
do they further explain these exotic
concepts.

Their Proposition I states: « Faced with the
evidence of catastrophe there are those
who get indignant and those who take note,
those who denounce and those who get
organised. We are among those who get
organised Â».

They do not mention another category:
those who struggle and attack by deeds and
by words. They do not mention hundreds
of comrades all over the world who attack
and sometimes are imprisoned but still
continue to attack. They do mention the
Black Panthers, the German Autonomen,
the Italian Autonomists, the British neoluddites,
radical feminists, the 2nd June
movement but they seem not to be aware
of recent facts, from the struggle against
the immigration detention centres and the
world that produces them to the solidarity
that expresses itself by all possible ways
every time repression hits hard.

It has to be seen, then, what kind of organisation
the authors of this booklet are
into. They declare that « to get organised
means: to start from the situation and not
to dismiss it. The name we give to the
situation that we are in is world civil war Â».

First of all I wonder why they say world
civil war instead of calling it social war,
then I still don’t understand what they
mean for starting from the situation and
not dismissing it.

The answer is maybe what they later call
‘secession’, secession from the capitalist
valorisations and secession from the left
identified with Tute Bianche, Attac, social
forums and other species of activists.

I wonder once again why they talk about
« secession Â» and not about « refuse Â». Refusing
the capitalist valorisations and the
world of the leftist activists (which is a
product of the latter) means to act according
to a revolutionary project. « Secession Â»
implies the negation of any revolutionary
break. The authors simply constitute
themselves as an « autonomous material
force within the world civil war Â» and as
such they « set out the conditions Â» of their
call. What is this autonomous material
force intended to do? And does not this
‘setting out the conditions’ sound
vanguardist? It does, in my opinion, and I
found other statements in Call that seems
to be imposed from above.

If on the one hand their analysis of the
present catastrophe and of the way various
species of leftists try to cope with it is
good, on the other hand the authors of
Call do not propose anything concrete.

On the contrary they launch their « call Â»
(from above of course): « This is a call. That
is to say it aims at those who can hear it.
The question is not to demonstrate, to
argue, to convince. We will go straight to
the evident Â». Here are some people who
propose themselves as those who know the
truth (what they call « the evident Â») and
make a « call Â» at those who can hear it.

Furthermore throughout the booklet great
emphasis is made on « community Â», « sect Â»
and « collective experience Â». No mention
is ever made of individual action. In fact
the authors of Call say clearly that they
prefer « collectivity Â» to the individual. In
their Call the individual disappears under
the predominance of the « material
collective force Â». The individual is only
mentioned in a derogatory way, as the
« liberal individual Â», the pacifist, the
advocate of human rights. The existence
of individuals animated by rebellious
thoughts who act according to a
revolutionary project either on their own
or along with other individuals animated
by the same rebellious thoughts is not at
all contemplated. On the contrary the
authors are convinced that « the end of
capitalism Â» will come after a link is
established between what one lives and
what one thinks, and that this link is not
an individual issue but it depends on « the
construction of shared worlds Â». I find it
hard to follow this reasoning as I think the
desire to put an end to « the catastrophe Â» is
entirely an individual issue. It starts from
individual inner rage and its ability to find
accomplices along the way. I don’t think
that the starting point is organisation and
« shared worlds Â»: this only leads to the
production of abstract words, which can
be seductive and glamorous but which will
never end up in any really revolutionary
transformation.

Finally, what on earth does it means: « On
the one hand, we want to live communism;
on the other, to spread anarchy Â»? The
authors of Call suggest that communism
is not a political or economic system, has
no need of Marx and has never had
anything to do with the USSR. They say
that communism means to elaborate one’s
relationship to the world, to the beings, to
oneself, and that it starts from « the
experience of sharing Â».

They go on: « The practise of communism,
as we live it, we call the Party. When we
overcome an obstacle together or when we
reach a higher level of sharing, we say that
we are building the Party Â». If this kind of
communism needs the building of a party
(exactly as Marxist communism) it cannot
be associated with « spreading anarchy Â».

The authors of Call are very careful in
depicting their « Party Â» as a captivating
« formation of a sensibility as a force Â», in
which everything is shared on equalitarian
basis and in which formalisation is
minimal. They almost succeed in
presenting « the Party Â» as the only effective
instrument of struggle against the system,
as the most wonderful achievement of any
antagonist movement, but still their association
between « anarchy Â» and « communism Â»
and its « Party Â» is unconceivable.

As far as I know anarchy does not need
any Party. And if it can express itself also
through collective activity (between two
or more people) it cannot be disconnected
from the individual. It is the individual
desire for freedom, the individual disgust
towards exploitation.

I wish the authors of Call all the best.
May their call reach those who « are building
the Party elsewhere Â», but certainly it
will never reach my ears.

From 325 N°7.