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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.

The old work ethic has disappeared along with the massive obsolete structures of capital which required a permanent army of producers, yet work still has far more implications than mere survival. Millions of people still compete for the privilege of turning up day after day, year after year, to surrender body and soul in exchange for a wage. The alternative: to encounter one’s real desires and create the means required to realise them, could present some surprises and lead to undreamed choices. A job, boring or arduous as it might be, is the easy way out. It gives structure to our day and puts order in our expectations, giving us just enough in our pockets to acquire instant sublimation and quell any sudden surge of hatred towards what is stealing our time and our lives.

Prison has come out of the shadows into the limelight, as not a day passes without some allusion to ‘solving the problem’ of the State’s overflowing dungeons. Advances in surveillance technology are offering alternative models of isolation and control that could see a large number of the latters’ potentially explosive inmates defused and—opportunely tagged or microchipped—sent back to the urban ghettos of capital from whence they came. The main obstacle, bolstered by some retrograde attempts to gain votes through a sworn intractability concerning the ‘enemy within’, is power’s need for mass consensus from those it had led to believe that the State’s protection racket and promise of long custodial sentences were the ultimate social guarantee. The dilemma has given space to a whole range of social cops in an ongoing battle that the sycophantic media have not missed the opportunity to illuminate. The occult world of prison never fails to provide good headlines for those in search of a frisson, ‘enlightened discussion’ or fodder for animated pub talk (the latter often concluding with a call for the reinstatement of the death penalty).

This paper was born from the need to accompany the review “Anarchismo” with an agile publication capable of developing ‘circumscribed and condensed’ analyses. Political and social analyses, leaflets, communiques and documents of the anarchist movement as well as of other groups and organisations, as well as many short and very short articles concerning attacks on the structures of power, news items testifying forms of spontaneous rebellion, that are manifesting themselves with different modalities and often turn out to be quite extraneous to the specific ambit of the anarchist or antagonist movement.
Starting from a series of analyses — concerning among other things, the modifications in the productive structures, the perfectioning of information technology, transformations in the world of work and school, the progressive cultural emptying — a perspective of struggle is outlined: not only the attack on the ‘great temples of death’, on the ‘visible complexes that attract everybody’s attention’ but also and principally small and often simple objectives, peripheral structures spread over the whole territory that are beginning to take on increasing importance for capital: factories, commercial structures, seats of power, but also electricity pylons, communications cables, everything that combines in the development of capital and the continuation of exploitation. These analyses and proposals precede the publication of ‘ProvocAzione’ in part, but in this paper they are gone into further and turn out to be still, valid at the present time.

The rationalisation of exploitation at global level and the illumination among all those with a glimmer of dignity and passion that reformism is not the way to fight it, is leading to explosions of rebellion in many parts of the world. Anarchists are close to these moments, at least in spirit, but do we have anything to give this reality beyond causing immediate damage or attacking police lines? Must we continue to leave everything to chance, believing that organisational clarity will spring forth out of the blue? If we do, the great potential for new qualitative relations risks becoming reabsorbed into extremely pragmatic and convincing reformist programmes which apparently appear from nowhere. Some are not sleeping. The organisers of tomorrow’s misery lie constantly in wait for such opportunities to ride the tiger in order to harness and redomesticate it, possibly under slogans of freedom and self-management.

The following piece of work, on the anti-nuclear movement in the US and Europe, although written in 1979, is still a valid contribution to this search for clarity as a basis for struggle. Since the time it was written the anti-nuclear/peace movement has grown and multiplied mainly due to the mining of Europe with nuclear missiles. This growth has been of massive quantity, but the logic and quality remain the same as when the following was written.

From the first ‘enclosures’ of great masses of people into circumscribed spaces to the most advanced factories today, capitalism has tried to cut out portions of space to dedicate them to one specific use: the production of surplus value. Now, with the advent of the recent post-industrial development and advances in the technological process, the management of this space has changed profoundly. It has passed from partial management to a total one. In this capital has had the support of power and the State. We think that it is important to reflect on the conditions of the relationship that exists today between social space and capital.

To launch a struggle against a precise aspect of power that is oppressing us, against a repressive structure under construction like the maxi-prison, is to pose the question of destruction. Because that’s the only way to put a final end to the structure in question. To believe that an enormous project such as the maxi-prison can be prevented by the gentle voice of petitions and legalist opposition is not only to deceive oneself but also everyone else, all the oppressed and excluded. No, such a struggle must pose the question of insurrection: stopping the progression of power by force and self-organisation. But how pose this question? With the aid of attempts if not similar, at least moved by a similar will in the past, comrade Alfredo M. Bonanno will throw some light on this crucial question.

The horrors of fascism were not the first of their kind, nor were they the last. Nor were they the worst, no matter what anyone says. These horrors were no worse than “normal” massacres due to wars, famines, etc. For the proletarians, it was a more systematic version of the terrors experienced in 1832, 1848, 1871, 1919 .... However, fascism occupies a special place in the spectacle of horrors.

Anarchists are not slaves to number but continue to act against power even when the class clash is at a low level in the mass. Anarchist action should not therefore aim at organising and defending the whole of the class of the exploited in one vast organisation to see the struggle from beginning to end, but should identify single aspects of the struggle and carry them through to their conclusion of attack.