Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest – Red October [Part I]

“It means to claim that we are sincere, with our children’s eyes in this unjustifiable world; if someone attacks someone, someone will attack someone.”Youth Manifesto (1)

Forty-one. It was a hot summer. The pacing of the uprisings were making people dizzy, conquering the winter palaces was done with a coup de main as in Sri Lanka, but, “It happens that uprisings are not defeated directly by the state, but rather by the shock of their own victory. When the movement looked at its own victory, it seemed paralyzed.” (2) As stated in the ‘Post Covid Riot Prime Manifesto – Next Level’, “Not ready for civil war, limited locally, idealizing in its rooting of the Commune character, it 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, finds its form.” (3)

Certain circles in France, from which the Tiqquin and Invisible Committee collectives emerged, traveled to various places of militant dissent, studying intensively the experiences of the Italian Autonomia, among others, before publishing their analyses and proposals. Staying for a moment in this last spot, let’s try once again to turn our focus to that class struggle of the 70s in Italy.

Almost all texts by protagonists of the Italian revolt of the 1970s that were published after the failure of ’77 identify the cause of the failure of this attempt in the “militarization of the conflict,” in part meaning the “militarization of the conflict by ‘the movement’ itself,” in part the criticism is directed at the Red Brigades (BR), who, especially with the escalation of the conflict through the kidnapping and execution of Aldo Moro, created a situation that ‘the movement’ could no longer cope with. I think both narratives do not do justice to the historical truth. First of all, it should be mentioned that BR, unlike other armed groups in Western Europe, did put a very real effort to anchor itself in the working class. There were BR units in many strategically important factories, many actions intervened directly in class struggles on the ground, and BR probably had hundreds of militants and thousands of sympathizers in the factories themselves. Regardless of the internal disputes in the BRs over “strategic direction,” the kidnapping of Aldo Moro was correctly determined as an intervention against the “historic compromise” by which the Italian Communist Party (CP) sought to buy its way into the government as a junior partner of the Christian Democrats. In my opinion, the fundamental militarization of the class struggle was not determined by the interventions of the antagonistic left, nor by some militant adventurism of certain Autonomia groups. Certainly, demonstrations were and are not suitable places for armed confrontations with the security forces, also because the organized forces always represented a minority of the demonstrators, BUT the armed actions on the demos and during the riots were primarily attempts to counter the armed attacks of the cops. In principle, one can speak of the fact that a fundamental situation was created, in which one shoots back.

But all the positions mentioned leave out, above all, a significant historical experience, the numerous massacres against the Italian working class in the struggles of the past decade of the 60s, which had created the subjective need not to be slaughtered again without resistance. Either way, in the end all these assessments are on the level of tactical balancing. At its core, however, the ’77 revolt in Italy was an isolated revolt that, while it could connect to broader sections of the working class, was trapped in its nation-state nature. Its defeat was therefore historically inevitable. And it could not be averted even on the terrain of the nation-state, as evidenced by the NATO planning and maneuvering that later became public. So we can speak of an incomplete investigation by the Italian and French comrades, because the horizon of the investigation was the revolt and not the revolution. But this is what it is all about, to intervene now at the height of the times… To refocus our gaze on here and now.

Forty-two. The uprisings have arrived. Now it’s about more. About everything. The various publications by security forces on the “dangers to the existing order” caused by the social distortions here in FRG support this, as does the energy price cap in France, whose elites are still in a state of post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by the eruptive ghosts of the gilets jaunes that materialized out of the void of social fog. In one of the richest countries in the world, there is talk of setting up “warming shelters” for people who can no longer afford to heat their homes in the coming winter. The state, which pretended to be omnipotent in the pandemic state of emergency, has become a helpless rogue overnight, which has to obey the laws of the market, the unfettered play of derivatives, and not the other way around. (4) With the reality of the state’s helplessness, the nimbus created by the historic victory of 1989 is shattering. One only has to have the courage to take a closer look. And with the state’ option the part of the left that has imposed itself to take over this state, in whatever form, also breaks. The hostile takeover is the investment in a dead colossus.

The West and especially the FRG are buying up energy sources worldwide like desperate drunks, South Africa e.g. can’t even keep up with its transport capacities, so much coal is in demand, in the first half of 2022 exports to the FRG were increased eightfold. And while irrelevant debates about a three-month long prolongation of the last 3 nuclear power plants in this country are ongoing, the very ‘green climate crisis governance’ threatens to become a marginal note of history at the moment when it seemed to be determined as the future of the Empire in the Endgame. There are currently only three historical alternatives. A speedy “truce” of the West with Russia, in order to save the inevitable “ecological reconstruction of capitalism”. An expansion of the present conflicts, the real “turn of the times”, the entry into a (at least a latent=) permanent state of war (involving China and important regional powers like India and Pakistan) or a broad revolutionary uprising.

Forty-three. Revolution. A terminology that historically has been so often misused and ridiculed that any decent person first turns away in scruple, disgust and contempt. In the totality of the markets, the first task must be to reappropriate this term. To open up the historical horizon again. To get rid once and for all of the false apparent allies. Not to allow those intolerable milieus to spread again, each of which serves only to control a truth, as the Invisible Committee wrote. (5) Not to indulge in the pose of the eternal rebel, not to serve false nihilism, but to embrace conscious nihilism. “Fear is the default state in the developed world. Fear caused by the alienated and atomized configured world. There is, besides the cybernetic, no web of relations more compatible with this condition.” (6) To make oneself honest, to cultivate and find friendships, to organize, to take advantage of the pre-revolutionary situation.

Forty-four. In the current situation, the negation of war is the tendency towards civil war. There is no militarism in this, but the love for life. The deep knowledge that our window of opportunity is limited. That our adversary knows this as well, who represents the irrational world, an irrational world that disguises its pathological irrationality, its emotional numbness as science and inevitability. A world that is a single deception, a matrix of simulations designed to rob us of our footing, to make us stagger. The Ministry of Truth has long been established, all media editorial offices are located on the 31st floor. We have been living in a dystopia for a long time; the grand masterpiece of power has been to persuade people that this is not the case. All the uprisings that are currently racing around the globe have long known about all these empty promises, the bank robbers have always known about the hidden sympathy of the oppressed, now people are gathering in front of the police stations where they are being held and demanding their release. “We are all together, we have no fear anymore,” they shout in Iran and not only there, while hugging and comforting each other in the tear gas, storming and burning down police stations. All power is finite. And at its peak in its most fragile state of aggregation. And that is precisely where we are. Just a moment ago they were able to lock away two-thirds of the world’s population overnight; now the colossus is reeling. This is the most important revolutionary act at the moment, to bring this message to the world. This inevitably leads to protests becoming riots, riots becoming revolts, revolts becoming insurrections, and insurrections becoming revolutions. When hope returns. Revolutions do not result from despair, uprisings often result from despair, revolutions result from confidence.

Forty-five. Being smart. Staying smart. There is no lack of courage, no lack of determination; if you have a look around the world, if you listen to the various stories of the uprisings, you will find more than enough courage and determination in them. We still make too many mistakes. Still. Thinking the revolution always means thinking the counterrevolution. Our adversary has his computers running 24/7, his technological, political, economic, sociological, criminological,… staffs and commissions are meeting and meeting. Calculates chances and probabilities, prepared for every scenario, famine, blackout, nuclear risk. But we are unpredictable. Life, humans are not an algorithm, never will be. If it should ever happen, it will no longer be life, only a biological variant of a computational model of an AI. But we will not let it come to that. We will continue to learn from each other, we will analyze every defeat, we are more than our intellect, we have our intuitions and our hearts, we are superior to every shitty machine. We are just standing in our own way sometimes.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”Sun Tzu

to be continued…  

Notes

[1] Youth Manifesto Published in France in June 2022 (https://tousdehors.net/Avoir-vingt-ans-en-2022). English translation on Enough 14 (https://enoughisenough14.org/2022/07/05/youth-manifesto-france-2022/)

[2] Sandesh Prasad: Sri Lanka – Looking Back at an Insurgency. In French on Tous Dehors (https://tousdehors.net/Retour-sur-un-ete-d-insurrection-au-Sri-Lanka) , German on Sunzi Bingfa https://sunzibingfa.noblogs.org/post/2022/09/19/sri-lanka-rueckblick-auf-einen-aufstand/#more-2525

[3] Doc McCoy: Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest – Next Level. Post Covid Prime Riot Manifest – Next Level Part I  (21-25) can be found here. Post Covid Prime Riot Manifest – Next Level Part II  (26-30) can be found here. Post Covid Prime Riot Manifest – Next Level Part III  (31-35) can be found here. Next Level Part IV (36-40) can be found here.

[4] There is practically no materialist analysis at the height of the times in the German-speaking world, but one of the very few remaining revolutionary Marxists, Achim Szepanski, has recently published “Energy Prices and Speculation”. https://non.copyriot.com/energiepreise-und-spekulation/

[5] Unfortunately the old website with the texts of the Invisible Committee and Tiqqun in different languages is no longer available, but the “Coming Isurrection” can still be found here https://enoughisenough14.org/2017/05/09/the-coming-insurrection/#more-17945

[6] See “From the smashed windows theory to a conscious nihilism” by “Les Camarades Imaginaires” , either mirrored linksunten post https://linksunten.indymedia.org/node/70629/index.html or as pdf file here http://lesci.blogsport.eu/files/2012/11/b_nihil.pdf

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