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Putting aside for the time being the problems raised by the popular insurrection in China, limiting ourselves to as objective as possible an analysis of the insurrectional processes in course of development in various countries in Eastern Europe and the borders of the Soviet empire, we must make one further distinction right away.

Kropotkin’s work on the French Revolution is without doubt one of the fundamental interpretations of events that were to transform the destiny of humanity. Its importance lies in two premises: the design of a revolutionary development that is different and more significant than that usually suggested by bourgeois historians, and the individuation of the first symptoms of the current of thought and action which, a century later, was to take the name of anarchism.

Originally published in 1940 in two volumes, this is the (partly eyewitness) account of the Leninist terror inflicted upon Russia. Maximoff, a life-long anarchist, fought in the Russian Revolution, organized with the metal-workers, and was imprisoned by Lenin’s secret police in 1920 when he refused to join the Red Army (he was happy to fight the Whites, but not put down workers' and peasants' uprisings). Exiled, he wrote this incredible volume, in English. Over the course of nearly 400 pages, he recounts not only the Leninist terror and reaction against the popular revolution, but shows how the actions of Stalin followed deliberately in his master, and mentor’s, footsteps.

Basically, if we stop and think for a moment, what is there that we can be certain of? We get up in the morning, have a quick breakfast, rush to school, work, the nearest park to meet some friends, in a word, each towards their own daily business. In the evening we come back and lie between the sheets, nearly always the same as the evening before, where we can feel sure about the various events we have seen pass in front of our eyes during the whole day. As soon as some event takes place, no matter how simple, the coffee we had in the morning in the bar, everything surrounding it becomes confused, tends to suffocate in detail, and disappears in a non-requited desire for precision.

This book is about living in hiding. It pierces the darkness and leaps into the secrecy of the incognito, a parallel dimension in which even what could be said often is not. Out of excess of tact, fear or because one thinks it is not relevant. Or, in certain milieux and in the worst cases, due to mere political tactics. But, even at a glance, the world of clandestine people is not a desert land; on the contrary it is populated by living beings, experiences and ideas that are very close to ours, in both the most miserable and the most fascinating aspects of our lives, close to our most ardent desires and passionate daydreams.

Behind every aspect of anarchist insurrectionalist theory there is a project. I do not mean a lifeless picture complete in every detail, but a sufficiently identifiable project far beyond these pages and the many others that I have written on this tormented subject in my lifetime. Without taking this into account no analytical explanation will do much, it would risk remaining what it is, a set of words claiming to contest reality, an incongruously idealist claim. The fat plants of classical German philosophy have done all possible damage with their enticing stings, I hope that these are now no more than mere decoys.

If we refuse to let our lives be organised by others we must have the capacity to organise ourselves, that is, we must be able to ‘put together the elements necessary to act as a coherent functioning whole’. For anarchists, individuals who ardently desire the elimination of every trace of tyranny and domestication, this has been experimented in a myriad of forms according to prevailing social and economic conditions, and marked by each one’s particular concept of wholeness.

As G8 summits have become annual appointments attended by thousands of demonstrators from all over the world, this article presents a few points of reflection on how the struggle against power can be really effective: do the protests carried out during the big events set by the leaders of the world bring any real attack on power? Do they really express solidarity to the oppressed? Do they really pose any significant obstacle to the destruction of the planet towards which we are all heading?

Once again in history Anarchism is singled out by every reactionary force as its main enemy. World Governments, moving closer together against the common threat of the common people, fear a socialism unfettered by government ties, a class struggle without the limitations imposed by the parliamentary game, a working class without a leadership that aims at imposing authority either by a new dictatorship or by bourgeois parliamentarianism.

Laudelino spent 25 years in prison between October 1980 and August 2004. Of those 25 years, he spent 13 in isolation. He inaugurated the archive for internal prisoners under special observation in the FIES, in 1991.