„Sisyphus, the powerless and rebellious proletarian of the gods, knows the full extent of his unfortunate situation: he thinks about it during his descent. The knowledge that was to bring about his actual agony simultaneously completes his victory. There is no fate that cannot be overcome by contempt… The struggle against the summit can fill a human heart. We must imagine Sisyphus as a happy man.“
Albert Camus
In December 2022, we spoke out publicly for the first time with Communiqué Number Zero. Now we are addressing you again, after further meetings and discussions. Times have not gotten any easier in recent months, the capitalist metastases continue to spread and the rate of capital’s pranks is intensifying. Looking for ways in this country to find and organize antagonistically in relation to a seemingly overpowering opponent is not getting any easier. The various offshoots of the historically failed left are only able to organize defeats that are then reinterpreted as victories afterwards, such as the mobilization after Lützerath or recently on May Day. Everything is still lacking. Solid analyses, practical organiImperial reorganizationzing, the ability to even think about strategic interventions. Identity politics, rigid language politics, vegetating in self-referential bubbles stifle all attempts at self-critical stocktaking. The insincerity of questioning one’s own support for the repressive coronavirus state of emergency is the final nail in the coffin of this historical impasse.
„In both 1914 and 2020, the left betrayed the situation and swore allegiance to power. From their point of view, the world can be reduced to the two axioms of rulers and ruled. Today, we still find this old chestnut – the system-critical radicals at the forefront – defending power by praising lockdown and vaccination, a subtle sign of their loyalty to power under the pretext of defending the poor, whom they despise and infantilize. The more the social world implodes, the more the left implores in its heart: „We must defend society“. In short: defend the lie, defend power, ensure that nothing happens through various moralistic and guilt-ridden rituals. This is how the Party of Reason operates, hoping to educate us.“
Ezra Riquelme – Defeating the Left
Beyond the winter palaces and the great strike
[Discussed and written before the riots following the police shooting death of 17-year-old Nahel and the subsequent unrest. Whereby recent events confirm the following lines once again in retrospect]
There is no doubt that things have happened in France in recent months that require our full attention. But perhaps the biggest problem is that there is a lack of suitable tools to get an idea of what is actually happening. Let’s forget all the boring trade union processions, the imagination of the workers‘ united front in the form of the intersyndicale, all the talk of the general strike.
Let us not forget that the mobilization against Macron’s „pension reform“ was just about to implode without leaving deep social scars when the republican emperor decided that it was possible to rule without clothes and autocratically wanted to impose his bill by decree. The subsequent explosion on the streets may remind us once again that social developments do not primarily take a linear and predictable course within objective power relations, but that the really important social eruptions are fed by anger, weariness, hatred, the feeling of not being able to breathe, by a firework display of affects. That weak point of all cybernetic mechanisms of power control as well as all political approaches of all self-appointed leaders, who are always immediately ready to inherit the revolt and channel the rage and transform it into a modernized power project, beyond all comprehensibility, those places of revolt arise which carry within them the capacity for fundamental upheaval.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to outline a few fundamental problems of the revolt in France, because many fundamental strategic limitations can be found in them. Firstly, it was a „defensive struggle“ of the „old working class“ organized in the traditional way. Really relevant work stoppages only took place in the „public“ sector, where there is still a significant degree of trade union organization (refuse collection, electricity and energy suppliers, teachers, railroads, local transport in Paris, ports, etc.). Even if, in essence, with the failure of all attempts at integration by way of the decree (which also rendered all relevant trade union/government talks obsolete), the movement diffused into a ’non-movement‘, whose only horizon was „The people want the fall of the regime“ and „revolution“ as „slogans“, not as „demands“, it lacked the more subversive brilliance of „storming heaven“ that characterized the movement of the „barbarians of the gilets jaunes“.
In addition, the (almost) exclusive ability to mobilize within the „old working class“ (which is joined by „political activists [of all colours, from Trotskyists to ‚autonomists‘] at the demos, nightly manifs sauvage, blockades and sometimes also at the picket lines) prevented a solidarity with the migrant surplus proletariat, which has a long history of struggle (especially in the banlieues). Only a few segments of the racially marginalized „black France“ took part in the struggles, while during the football World Cup, for example, there were various spontaneous riots of „black France“ and regular ambushes and attacks on the repressive apparatus in the suburbs, which currently seems to be the only guarantor of the Macron regime’s continuing existence.
Shouldn’t it have been possible to create permanent places for discourse and organization? A few occupation attempts were very quickly ended by the cops or met with little response. The question of the necessary representation also remained completely unresolved. As the old trade union hierarchy lost more and more influence in the course of the movement, perhaps council structures (in whatever form) would have offered a possible perspective? But perhaps these are still old fantasies of an old left. Be that as it may, since their possible composition remained as unclear as their emergence, but the conflict did not bring about such an escalation that, in whatever form, territories (places that are not defined purely spatially) could no longer be (completely) controlled by the enemy (which in turn could perhaps have found their place in the failed occupations), it remained with regionally limited structures of exchange and organization, mostly reduced to the immediate future. It is also striking that the number and quality of analytical contributions on the strategic orientation of the movement against Macron’s ‚pension reform‘ remained manageable if one compares the publications made with the range and radicalism of the movement.
The situation is practically crying out for a qualitative leap, but the movement is not aware enough of itself to dare and organize the escalation.
Imperial reorganization
This world is currently being reorganized in the face of disorder from above and below. The current hot and cold wars are symptoms of a crisis that is eroding the basis of the long peace (the Pax Americana). This reorganization of the balance of power, as manifested in the war in Ukraine, is not about attacking and defending liberal values. It is the struggle between rival rulers and economic blocs that find themselves in the crisis of neoliberal capitalism with its falling profit rates, financial bubbles and dead ends of exploitation. When attempts are made in this country to open up new markets with a green accumulation regime (such as the production of hydrogen in Ukraine and elsewhere) and to underpin this process with massive moral pressure, it is not surprising that it is precisely this green logic that encourages war and its liberal human rights protection rhetoric of a „feminist“ foreign policy. Authoritarianism and a totalizing morality go hand in hand here, which was and is already a recipe for success for liberal rule in the climate and corona crises. In this respect, arms deliveries and the protection of LGBTQI rights obviously go hand in hand. Anti-miltarism can then only be empathy-less cynicism.
It is not surprising that the global South is reacting very differently to the war in Ukraine and is not joining the liberal outrage in large parts: It is obvious who will lose out again anyway in this confrontation between the imperial powers of Russia, China, the EU, the USA, India, etc.
If the left in this country joins the deadly logic of the peace of victory over Russia, they make themselves a party to the war. Suddenly the left is ready to defend the fatherland and its values. Such a left has reached the lowest point of abomination. It is the same abomination it indulged in in 1914 and 1999. The only perspective that remains is that of desertion from the imperial armies, from the logic of war, which is not ours.
Perspective Non
Since the pathetic radical left has increasingly disavowed itself in its liberalism through climate appeal politics, the approval of authoritarian corona measures and the establishment of the same „from below“, a non-positioning or support for green arms supply policies, we can no longer develop a revolutionary desire together with them. This is not the only reason why an orientation towards global uprisings, which are not generated by the traditional left or its parties and trade unions, but often first have to assert themselves against them, is the only possible perspective for antagonistic politics in the metropolises.
„It is still too early to predict the consequences of the pandemic, but there is no doubt that the era of protests that began with the economic crash of 2008 is not over.“
Endnotes – Forward barbarians
We are convinced that the increase in revolts worldwide and thus also in the number of fighters who, through their experiences in these places, have not only understood the necessity of revolt and perhaps even of revolution, but have almost physically internalized it, generate the basis for a necessary existential discussion about overcoming the conditions. Of course, ‚making revolution‘ cannot be learned and we cannot trust collective memory more than we can trust our individual, over-formed memories. Nevertheless, the accumulation of dissent and antagonistic positioning seems to continue to take hold in many places around the world. All of this prepares the terrain on which future struggles will be fought, diverse identities will become confused and a universalism that goes beyond the ruins of the labor movement will become visible. Even if there is a lack of coherence in the ’non-movements‘, their confusion often seems to be based on a betrayal of what we think we are, they enable the revolt against a state of general isolation and loneliness (which has been further exacerbated by digitality and social distancing): ‚Non-movements‘ are the crucible in which transformations in the reproduction of daily existence and thus of human life become visible, which have made possible the explosions on the streets that we have seen globally in the last decade. It is these changes that make the emergence of new subjectivities, of a less panicked or domesticated type of human being, possible. For it is precisely because the ’non-movements‘ represent the crisis of this stagnant capitalism and their effect is to make this stagnation ungovernable that they can open the rift through which something new can break into history. But we also know about the integrative power of capitalism, which sometimes incorporates the most beautiful gestures, demands and ways of life with subversion, sometimes with open violence. In this respect, the worldwide revolts can become revolutions, but they can also become part of the general chaos from which capitalism will reconfigure itself.
The great palaver
„The joy of conspiracy is the joy of meeting, of discovering brothers and sisters, even where one would least expect it.“
Konspirationist manifesto
We think it is overdue to take the next step. In view of the real superiority of our opponent in this country, in view of the deep reluctance to continue wasting our time on the next campaign, the next event, the next pointless flash in the pan, in view of the need to define ourselves by breaking with the statist left of the last few years of the state of emergency, we see no other way than to first and foremost create a place for real people. We are aware of the numerous pitfalls, we expect our (left-wing) opponents to be bottomless. We almost expect the usual defamations and rebukes.
But we also say that, globally speaking, we are not living in times of revolution, but nevertheless in revolutionary times. The internal imperialist wars and conflicts (Ukraine, Taiwan, Africa,…) as well as the revolts that have spread around the globe in recent years are evidence of this.
There is little sign of these uprisings here in Germany, but there are still revolts and positions that have encouraged us and continue to do so. From the revolt in Stuttgart city center in the summer of 2020 to the New Year’s Eve riots a few months ago in Berlin, where a few hundred young people demonstrated one of the best equipped and trained police forces in Western Europe. We know that there have not been many who have clearly and publicly opposed the agreement of the left and the state in the pandemic state of emergency, but we have listened intently to each of these voices in our enforced isolation and these voices have warmed our hearts. We are at a point where there is nothing left to lose. Everyone in any sort of sanity knows about this historic point we find ourselves at. We hear from all corners about people who are searching, who want something different, something new. We hope to reach you all with these lines.
We invite you all to the first NON-CONGRESS in Berlin in early 2024!
We will be making our voice heard in further communiqués and providing you with more details about the congress.
People and connections from Wuppertal, Münster, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Offenburg.