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I am convinced that a revolutionary challenge to the current social order must necessarily be a challenge to the last ten thousand years of institutional development that have created it. In short, revolutionary critique must aim at civilization itself. But what precisely does this mean?

This pamphlet is an attempt to analyse the various mechanisms whereby modern society manipulates its slaves into accepting their slavery and — at least in the short term — seems to succeed. It does not deal with ‘police’ and ‘jails’ as ordinarily conceived but with those internalised patterns of repression and coercion, and with those intellectual prisons in which the ‘mass individual’ is today entrapped.

A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which for two centuries have tortured sad humanity. This delusion is the love of work, the furious passion for work, pushed even to the exhaustion of the vital force of the individual and his progeny. Instead of opposing this mental aberration, the priests, the economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work. Blind and finite men, they have wished to be wiser than their God; weak and contemptible men, they have presumed to rehabilitate what their God had cursed. I, who do not profess to be a Christian, an economist or a moralist, I appeal from their judgement to that of their God; from the preachings of their religious, economics or free thought ethics, to the frightful consequences of work in capitalist society.

The human’s true weapon is its hand. The human is an animal that nature has selected with a hand whose thumb is opposite the other fingers. An animal that grasps, wants to take, hold, make its own.

Life has deserted the soulless labyrinth of man’s daily doings. So seemingly ecumenical, so apparently volatile, she is not so cheap. Attempts to encounter her by the slaves of democracy remain just that. The apparent choices in the shop windows of capital come down to one: you can inhabit the swamp with the frogs, wallow in the global quagmire of participation and help spread the mud till even your dreams become grey. Or you can go. Take flight with the vagabonds of the spirit, let the glow of freedom ignite your passions, kindle your spirit, illuminate your mind. Throw away all the prostheses and venture into the abyss of a world without limits.

Yet one more episode in the chronicles of repression is now well-known to all: on October 1 [2009] Alfredo Bonanno (from Italy) and Christos Stratigopoulos (from Greece), two anarchists who have already been hit by repression on a number of occasions, were arrested in Greece following a robbery, and imprisoned in the small town of Amfissa. We all agree on much-debated points such as the attack on this system of exploitation that builds jails and represses every form of rebellion, and are for the total destruction of all prisons. We also agree that support and solidarity be given to imprisoned comrades everywhere. We want all our comrades free, along with each and every rebel currently detained in the dungeons of whatever State and, having our own concept of social retribution, are against prison even for our enemies.
Yet one more episode in the chronicles of repression is now well-known to all: on October 1 [2009] Alfredo Bonanno (from Italy) and Christos Stratigopoulos (from Greece), two anarchists who have already been hit by repression on a number of occasions, were arrested in Greece following a robbery, and imprisoned in the small town of Amfissa. We all agree on much-debated points such as the attack on this system of exploitation that builds jails and represses every form of rebellion, and are for the total destruction of all prisons. We also agree that support and solidarity be given to imprisoned comrades everywhere. We want all our comrades free, along with each and every rebel currently detained in the dungeons of whatever State and, having our own concept of social retribution, are against prison even for our enemies.

At a time when the Mediterranean region is involved in political games worse perhaps than ever before it is important to reflect on the social, economic and political conditions that are intermingling and interacting, producing situations of extreme tension but also opening up a vast field of intervention to all revolutionaries.
We consider the form of struggle best suited to the present state of class conflict in practically all situations is the insurrectional one, and this is particularly so in the Mediterranean area. By insurrectional practice we mean the revolutionary activity that intends to take the initiative in the struggle and does not limit itself to waiting or to simple defensive responses to attacks by the structures of power.

In the early hours of 22 May 2009, a bicycle moves through a cold Santiago night. A comrade carries in his rucksack an insurrectional dream. He’s carrying a homemade bomb and his single objective becomes clearer with each pedal: attack the school of the Gendarmeria. Around 1.30 in the morning, he makes his last stop, only one block separates him from completing the action. But in an instant, an unexpected accident sets off the detonation. The Bomb that should have gnashed in the face of the powerful, when activated threw the body of the compañero Mauricio Morales Duarte to the middle of the street. Mauri was, and is, an anarchist comrade. Actually, an anarchist apprentice as he jokingly liked to call himself. We are not looking to glorify or create blind admiration for our friend by means of this text: on the contrary, we are adamant that Mauri does the speaking. His own words will do the describing. Brother Mauri, this is for you...

The somewhat hasty and long overdue compilation of this pamphlet is the consequence of a deadline, a solidarity gig in London to be held on July 5 [2007]. The experience has been intense, one could say a labour of love. Reading and setting out the words of the imprisoned comrades has been a way of knowing them and being fired by their courage and passion for freedom. For a moment the walls within walls, locked doors upon locked doors, endless corridors and claustrophobic cells disappear in an embrace of free spirits. That brings us to the question of solidarity, and this pamphlet should also be seen as a contribution in that direction, in the eternal debate on the practice of solidarity.

Concentration camps for immigrants where torture is the rule, arrests of anarchists all over the country, police raids and the storming of solidarity demonstrations.
While deportation and murder of immigrants have become everyday events, a great number of anarchists are now under investigation following the nth judicial frame-up, and many of them are in jail.
It is the State’s revenge against those who have always struggled against the brutal system of deportation and in solidarity with prisoners and the exploited.
This pamphlet is a contribution to exposing what’s going on in Italy and is in solidarity to all the comrades in jail.