Sobre La Revolución
There will not be a revolution coming.
Insurrectionaries, anti-civilization anarchists, post-marxists, and other radicals of the 21st century’s ilk have been stating this, but it seems like nobody has gotten the message. There will not be a worldwide revolt to bring in socialism. There will not be a final victory of the proletariat. The world is different now. We know the consequences of our actions, we know what alienates us and what improves us, or at the very least how to find out. Climate change is our existential threat, we have less than 10 years to reverse our effects on the planet to avoid the final point of no return. At the moment, our current trajectory and momentum will have us barreling past it like a semi truck going 100 mph through a thin fence. The only way to stop it from coming at an accelerant pace is to reverse what human activity has done over the past however many hundreds of years. Solar and wind won’t cut it, as their extractivist nature (both require oil to be constructed as they both use plastic) renders them effetively neutral. There is only one carbon-negative country on the earth, and its the Kingdom of Bhutan. They actively resent and prevent technology and tree-cutting as a result of wanting to preserve their environment. However Bhutan is not a complete example of the answer, as they are also a regime that is hostile to minority ethnic groups and are still a fucking monarchy.
Regardless, the point is that there is often a dogmatic approach to revolution, in many different shades. There are people who think revolution won’t happen in the first world or “imperial core” because the F-15 exists (and was labeled a huge waste of $1.2 trillion) and because the United States has the largest and most advanced military in the world (spread across 170 countries out of 193 recognized by the UN), and has a militarized police force and the NSA’s spying policies. Never mind the fact that members of the military are disappointed and demoralized by no wars to win, only battles to fight and money to make. Increasingly alienated from the purposes they joined, the military merely serves as a way for people to avoid the harsh fate of being a working class citizen in the United States, forfeiting their ability to drown any sorrows they have with anything other than alcohol and cigarettes. But this is not an endorsement of a revolution coming through direct conflict with an organized military. There is no revolution coming.
There are people who think revolution won’t happen because reactionaries exist and people in the West are overwhelmingly right wing. Never mind that proletarian revolt often follows the most reactionary regimes and that civil wars are often wars fought between progressive and reactionary sides that galvanize the masses. However these aren’t always revolutions, and there won’t be one. There are people who think revolution shouldn't happen because it will cause mass deaths and violence, and violence is bad, so we should focus on reforms that help those in the most need right now. What foolish children. Between 54,000-80,000 people dying daily because of capitalism and the state isn’t violence? That’s okay as long as there isn’t guns blazing every day in the streets? There are guns firing regardless, but the revolution you think of is giving each bullet a purpose. Often my criticisms of gun fetishism and gun culture is that Second Amendment supporters focus too much on the rights to have a gun (if you’re white), but never enough on gun safety, gun storage, gun discipline, and cleaning. If you’ve ever seen the anime or read the manga for Bleach, you might know Kaname Tosen. My philosophy towards gun usage and violence parallel with this quote of his: “Those who do not fear the sword they wield, have no right to wield a sword at all.”
The gun is a deadly weapon and it should be treated as one. However much political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, it must still be feared. We seek the elimination of power. However this will not bring revolution. There is no revolution coming.
Those who support revolution are of a similarly misguided ilk. All we need to do is galvanize and awaken the consciousness of the masses. As if it were that simple. What we are experiencing now is an awakening of consciousness but a similar lack of galvanization to do jack fucking shit. There is no revolution coming.
There are also those that think organization will be the answer to causing revolution. We just need another worker’s organization, or to get workers to join the existing ones, they say. If you’re not familiar with my views on organizations: they fucking suck. Labor organizations merely seek to better oneself within the systems they exist. Even the revolutionary ones seek to guide the struggle towards their disconnected idea of revolution. And a new one sees the same problems as every other new organization: the split. Dividing and fragmenting the revolutionaries of the working class by organizing qua organizing. A failed experiment, a failed science. There is no revolution coming.
I am neither a pessimist nor optimist, but I avoid calling myself a realist. I can’t confirm the real or what is real. But revolution is not coming. To say that revolution is coming is to misunderstand completely the point of acknowledging revolution. Revolutions are extant, objective conditions that are outside of our subjective control. Their forms are subjective, but their existence is objective. To sum up: revolution isn’t coming it has always been here. Now some may be confused. Isn’t it supposed to be violent? Isn’t it supposed to be noticeable. These are the same people that say “ooooohhhhh” when you mention the industrial revolution. The violence that is on display is not victorious, and not blatantly organized, which is why people are confused. Some perceive revolutions as the insurrections that succeed, others as the insurrections that succeed and the society that goes past it. However revolution is a revolving, one revolution is one twist of the social axis. Nobody controls the social axis, just when it becomes noticeable and apparent. These are the peaks and valleys of every revolution.
So then what? We don’t control revolution, so do we just work on reforming to make our position better? As anarchists have stated before, the more the state does, the more will have to be done to dismantle it, as the Invisible Committee suggests, we should destitute it. The anarchist line follows the line of Théorie Communiste: the highest organization of worker’s power (or power in support of the workers under capitalism) will become the counterrevolution once the state and capital are defeated. The same goes for every reform that we “win”. “SO WHAT THEN? GET ON WITH IT!” I can already tell some of you are begging for the relief of knowing what strategy I propose. My answer: nothing specifically, nothing in particular.
I’m sure many are fuming and already dismissing the rest of what I have to say. Believe me I have an idea of what we or I could do to end this nightmare world we live in. Ultimately there’s nothing specific. I support insurrection.
Insurrection is an act of resistance. The point is not necessarily to win, but to show the weaknesses of the state and capital. It’s to point out that winning is a possibility. Insurrection can be collective but also individual. Every window smashed, every trashcan burned, every dead police officer is a small insurrection against everything liberals and reactionaries hold dear. However Bonanno understandably had to clarify that a revolution is not merely an accumulation of insurrections (although it could be useful to perceive it as such*), it requires just one insurrection to win. When it comes to insurrections, winning is not directly the point (although that is definitely a welcome side effect). It’s point is expressing resistance and pointing out the fragility of the world. However it is important to remember: fragile does not mean weak. Fragile means easy to break, not easy to beat. Even the broken shards resist resistance. Some won’t but others will.
Every garden planted, intentional community or commune generated, every trans or non-binary person coming out and making themselves known, and every power line cut is also an insurrection. Anything that breaks order is an insurrection. Every breakage is a new bone broken in the skeleton of Empire. But it won't end until one insurrection wins, or until all of them do. In terms of more specifics of practice, I believe that To Our Friends by the Invisible Committee is by far the best example and promotion of 21st century praxis for all anarchists, communists, anti-civilized, insurrectionaries, and radicals. In order to commit to our impure insurrection, we should destitute the world. Leave, and bring forth our positive and constructive insurrections, and our negative and destructive insurrections will have to occur when our insurrections reach the point of being unbearable by the current state of affairs, intolerable, and the highest point of the current revolution.
*Considering the idea of how perceiving revolutions as accumulation of insurrections could be useful is parallel to the idea of mechanical advantage of a pulley system being the number of pulleys in said system. The concept is explained here.
