Mexico: On anti-electoralism and anarchist struggle

from contrainfo, translated by waronsociety:

Don’t vote them in, kick them out!

“As writers of an essay of political philosophy, the Invisible Committee affects a strong contempt for speculation and a marked penchant for practice. And this is good, above all because it allows them to rake in the applause both of the erudite in withdrawal from vitamins and of the activists thirsty for knowledge…. The critique of the existent, taken in its totality, doesn’t interest the Committee. Nonetheless, precisely like the various marxist sects, the I.C. has the lust to impose its vision….”

The Coming Insurrection is in step with the times, perfectly in fashion. It possesses the characteristics most required at the moment, it is flexible and elastic, it adapts itself to all circumstances (in the subversive sphere). It is well presented, has style and ends up being liked by everyone because it gives a bit of reason to all, without disaffecting anyone in the end. From this standpoint, it is a decidedly political book.”

“The Insurrection and Its Double”

The Invisible Committee is like virtue: always in the middle.

Since times past, we anarchists have constituted a force “oppositional” to every project of power and authority; with various means and under different forms in which anarchist thought is manifested, in their turns we have launched campaigns against all kinds of key moments in the struggle against power, seeking to have confluence with emerging social antagonism. International campaigns for the freedom of compañeros in prison, campaigns against some material realizations of power, and campaigns against the elections of candidates, for example.

Many of these campaigns have been more or less accompanied by the practice of directed sabotage as an individual act in order to become collective, but almost always making clear that sabotage, self-organization and direct action are daily practices and not something to take out every now and then, not something defined by the convergences of power. Although others, those that only correspond to the convergences of the moment, have not projected any broad view of struggle.

So the fact is that in the present moment the thoughts of many compañeros are not so different from the compañeros of the past, those who also fought and died for freedom. Although some concepts have deepened in theory as well as in practice, it continues to be made clear that anarchy is a daily tension and not a practice to take out now and again in certain key moments or when the damned conditions are mature.

We as anarchists, enemies of every kind of power, find ourselves coming up against a limitation in the present insurrectional struggle and this limitation is that of attending to the “agenda” of the State; to put it differently, responding to the call of power and playing the game in their electoral circuses.

If permanent conflictuality means every hostility with the existent, every individual and collective action of permanent rupture with power, every daily act of destruction directed against the State, then why wait for their convergences and key political moments–like the elections for example–to act? Why not make the vindication of the true meaning of the word election [decision – TN] a part of the daily struggle? Someone could answer: “We have to take advantage of the moments,” but even in this we see a great limitation in launching anti-electoral campaigns, responding to the call of power and attending its own agenda–i.e. relegating all our creativity and potenciality to these convergences. Especially because these anti-electoral campaigns are not accompanied by a clear perspective and a real proposal of offensive against power–not only in actions but also in words–and so make clear that anarchy is a game of doing politics and not a permanent tension against the existent.

Political convergencism is a practice of the politicians, and anarchy is not political, it is ethical. For example, to measure every action that departs from our person as “political”, aside from separating life into fragments and separating theory and practice, is a reflection of a severe lack of proper perspective of basing our struggle on our own authentic and unique thoughts. Not to mention the marxistoid origin from which political action (and political prisoners) come: mediation, accord, dialogue, representation, etcetera. Things that are very distant from what many anarchist compañeros have put forward, namely, to speak of anarchy beyond any political tint.

For many anarchist compañeros, to base agitation against authority on the “key” moments of the politics of power is a limitation that distances us from our task, especially when this agitation does not contain a clear perspective that flies beyond an anti-electoral discourse.

On this point, here is where we ask ourselves: And then what? Does everything rest on this? What follows? What about our dreams? Do all discourse and all action have to retreat into political realism, into techniques, into strategy? What about spontaneity?

It is precisely because anarchy is a tension that does not see a difference between theory and praxis, and because it is on the contrary in that theory and in that practice that the two complement each other mutually, that anarchic operations are far from being the typical Maoist guerrilla foquismo [the guerrilla warfare theory of Che Guavara and Fidel Castro – TN]. The foquismo that hopes and waits for “political” prisoners in order to project their struggle on the basis of their vindication–and that creates them if they are not there; the foquismo that attends to all kinds of moments of convergence in order to act and that is ignorant of each individual’s need for their freedom; the foquismo that grabs on to everything it sees in order to project itself, without thoroughly questioning this. Permanent conflictuality is precisely what gets us away from falling into the foquismo that waits for every kind of convergencism, but also “causism”, for its ability to act.

This is why we think an anti-electoral convergence contains its own limitations in its “practice and in its call”. Mainly because it does not have a project more or less defined against power and authority, in a convergence there’s a bit of everything, there are armed Marxist-Leninist parties that have united with their opponents for just this moment of power, there are political parties of the left and there is every kind of authoritarian position antagonistic to anarchist thought. A convergence is an imminently political call to do politics; anarchists are alien to every political alliance. But also because to consent to convergencism as a key moment or to “take advantage of it” reduces our hopes and our passions of living anarchically to a mere political ideology, a question of “tactics” and strategies, as if we were machines that acted in a way predetermined by these “mechanisms” of struggle.

This is why we always reject clandestinity and its norms as a method of struggle, because we do not want to attend to certain mechanisms that predetermine our behavior.

We wager that anarchist agitation should be present everywhere, in election times and in non-election times. We also wager that anarchists should be present in every conflict with which we find affinity, even if it starts as an anti-electoral protest, but changes direction. This is because we do not only see some parts of this world of Capital as harmful and as enemies of our freedom, we see the world of Capital in every meaning of the word as harmful to our freedom and to our fellow beings. But to relegate the daily practice of sabotage and a behavior of rupture against the existent to “key” moments marked in the calendar of power would distance us from our motivations which are to live anarchy itself in the here and now, but also from our idea that anarchy is not political or ideological, it is a daily and permanent tension against every kind of Authority.

Before all this we propose relations of affinity, to find ourselves with other equally enraged individuals in the conflict with authority and to create projects. Our point is to put into practice our individual passions without waiting for calls and searching for the field to encounter each other in the social war with the social antagonism that is present every day.

Our call is to extend the anarchic struggle everywhere that stinks of domination and in every moment. Our call is for the spread of the daily and permanent attack, without waiting for moments of convergence or attending to the agenda of power. Our call is to leave behind every slogan and to extend the anti-electoral struggle beyond its own limitations. Our call is to spread the anarchic struggle and hurl ourselves into the battle against power with passion and without any moderation or limit.

In any event, this is only an individual perspective that we are making collective, it is our intervention in the current debates and explanations of idea that are happening in the present moment. We do not seek to impose anything or represent anyone. We are not looking for specialists of the pen or of the action. These are only some ideas loosed into the air by way of contributing to the spreading of the subversive practice in the here and now.

Let every month be black!

Some anarchist compañeras and compañeros of the Mexican region
(Some!…. because we are not the only “anarchists of Mexico”)
April of the very year 2015

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