Twenty-one: The Imaginary Party must come out of the shadows and become real. Without this, it will not work. To the time factor, which we have already addressed in PCRPM 1, the extinction of the world as we know it by the barbarism that calls itself civilization, now comes the intensification of the inner-imperialist war, which for the time being materializes in the limited confrontation in Ukraine, but within it carries the tendency and possibility of expansion and generalization. In the totality of war, many of our weapons from the uprisings of the last 15 years will become blunt, and since the left has historically failed and is in the process of dissolution (by becoming part of power or societally meaningless sectarianism), there exists no real force which is capable of constituting counter-power in this historical intensification beyond symbolism (sabotage, desertion, humanitarian aid, helpless, appealing [mass] demos). Given that the inner-imperialist war, beyond all the associated atrocities, changes the conditions of class struggle significantly to our disadvantage in a very concrete way and covers the horizon of insurrection, we must now enter a new era, regardless of knowing where this jump will lead to. Into the abyss or into the ability to act at the level of the concrete historical situation.
“The most intense struggles of our time find themselves reaching a precipice, and then turning back. To go further would mean leaping into the unknown. No one wants to be the first to jump and see whether they discover new land, or simply freefall. We do not yet know how a situation will finally be created that makes all turning back impossible, and in which the conditions themselves cry out: ‘hic Rhodus, hic salta‘!”
Theses on the Sudan Commune [Ill Will]
Twenty-two: “For the European bourgeoisie, on the other hand, the way forward is that of the historical formation of every state: Along with money, the sword is needed. In this sense, the revival of the project of “European defense” by our masters, and in the meantime that of nuclear power in its new ideological garb of the green economy, is important in two respects: for the energy supply of European capitalism and for arms build-up.” [War to the War of the Bosses, Il Rovescio]
Many people were surprised and irritated by the rapid and, above all, united reaction of Western imperialism to Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. The conditions of this immediate reaction were the strategic importance of Ukraine in the extended center of Europe [unlike Chechnya or Kazakhstan, where the Russian-led military alliance CSTO intervened after protests against rising energy prices turned into widespread riots and then into an uprising within days, and the regime, after the defection of first police and military units, could only be saved by this intervention [1] and the power of opportunity. In other words, just as the Corona pandemic was an accidental treasure for the Empire to realize the historically necessary step into the permanent state of emergency (the “green governance” against the background of the climate and utilization crisis) and at the same time in a war maneuver under real conditions to simulate the internment and disciplining of a large part of the world’s population like to implement and evaluate it. The invasion by Russia creates the conditions which Western European imperialism in particular needs in order not only to be able to keep up economically in the triangle of competition between the USA, Russia and China, but also to be able to assert itself in the long term as an independent power center in terms of power and geopolitics beyond the nuclear armament of the UK and France. For this, the arms build-up of the FRG is an indispensable strategic resource, which was then also implemented by Scholz almost like a coup d’état with the 100 billion economic stimulus program for the German armed forces (without consultation of the governing coalition parties, the tendency to govern by decree, de facto or de jure, was successfully implanted in the measures policy of the last 2 years), “fatefully” under standing ovation of german parliament, while only a few hundred meters away more than 100,000 people demonstrated “for peace”, but not in fundamental opposition to this (war) policy.
Twenty-three: Everything is in flux; this also applies to fundamental strategic forecasts and realities. The opportunities that arise from this must be recognized and used. While it seemed two years long that Chinese state capitalism would establish itself as a leading player in global competition in the wake of the Corona pandemic and the almost universally chosen state measures policy, this all collapsed within a few weeks with the desperate attempt to maintain the Zero Covid strategy at all costs. Against the change of course by prominent government advisors, the party leadership continues to focus on total containment, sealing off entire cities with millions of people, including the economically indispensable Shanghai with its 25 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area. While most people are subject to a total curfew, the access gates to apartment blocks are welded shut, the workforces of strategic companies are incarcerated at their workplaces, economic output plunges by more than 3 percent within four weeks. Mass suicides, desperate people in search of food as the state food supply is inadequate, hundreds of thousands interned in quarantine camps were setup in no time, meanwhile revolts against the lockdown measures and economic misery are reported every day from other areas. Imperialism is a paper tiger. Chinese imperialism is a paper tiger, too, and may be facing its most comprehensive delegitimization since 1989. (2)
Twenty-four: “For something to come, something must go; the first form of the new hope is fear, the first manifestation of the new is horror” (Heiner Müller). Language, heart, syntax, conditioning, collective subconscious, neurosis, compulsion, rule. Any effort to appropriate an insurrectionary perspective cannot bypass the reprogrammings of the last two years. In this sense, freedom means decoding. As soon as there is talk of necessary sacrifices, restrictions and limitations for the sake of the common good and in the name of solidarity, it is an act of war to maintain the dominant, moribund order. “The social issue, which sounds so positive to our ears because it has been loaded with so many good intentions over the last two centuries by so many reformers and revolutionaries who have foolishly jumped on it, is a maneuver. It serves to cover up the compulsory acquisition of people from their world and to allow the rape of their enrollment in the places they are familiar with. It aims to produce aliens that can be relocated at will, whose land can be ravaged and whose living spaces can be poisoned. And you can produce them in factories. So disrooted, so isolated, so weakened, they resist less being treated as indiscriminate matter with no characteristics or determinations of their own, as a kind of plasticine for government engineering.”[3]
So it cannot be about less than to fight for our own subjectivity again, in order to build up an antagonistic front in the current historical culmination, which takes place in the Bermuda Triangle between corona-pandemic-measures, climate catastrophe and (inner)imperialist war. Translated, this means fighting for every meter of conceptuality, also and especially against the false joy from the left, which in the last decades have systematically, under various pretexts and excuses, pursued the self disarming of the revolutionary forces. We are facing the ruins of our history and in this scenery leftist court jesters perform their dusty classics day after day. Either we will become WE or we will fail. In beauty, full of devotion and love, with anger and hunger in the belly, but failing.
Twenty-five: We are living on the eve of the revolution. We just don’t know when it will come and whether it will be victorious. But all the necessities and signs are pushing in the direction of a generalized revolt. This is also the exegesis of the transcripts of the revolts of recent years, which have often transformed from diffuse protests to generalized uprisings within a few days and weeks, and have found their real limit not in the brutality of the counterrevolution but in the failure to establish countervailing power. Not ripe for civil war, localized, idealizing in their adherence to the Commune spirit, they failed to make the necessary jump into the new quality of class struggle. But even if this jump will succeed in the future, that is, if we experience the pre-revolutionary quality in real terms, with all our senses, we are faced with the dilemma of how this new quality expresses itself, how it finds its form. Historically, there is little to fall back on, realities have changed so radically. All the more urgent is the need for exchange, for discourse between the insurgents; the new International will have to reinvent itself in a form that will have little to do with what we know or think we understand.
Above all, it means to spread confidence; the contemporary agenda of counterinsurgency strategists is called impotence and hopelessness. So let’s talk about the maturity of the times. [4] Even in our darkest nights.
…to be continued
Notes
[1] The Kazakh Insurrection’ https://illwill.com/print/the-kazakh-insurrection
[2] When communists crushed the international workers’ movement. The workers’ struggle at Tiananmen Square was the transition from one world into the next. https://lausan.hk/2021/communists-crushed-international-workers-movement/#easy-footnote-bottom-4-14506
[3] Manifeste conspirationniste https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/manifeste-conspirationniste-anonyme/9782021495669
[4] What is that moment? (Quel est cet instant?) by Ghassan Salhab https://lundi.am/quel-est-cet-instant
translated by Riot Turtle