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We lead a life that is not our own. We did not choose where and when to be born. We did not choose the family that would raise us, and we have generally had very little say even in the matter of our appearance or our education. We are not even free to decide for ourselves about our death as one can see by the punishment that awaits those who practice euthanasia and the reprobation with which suicide is condemned. We are so accustomed to this ongoing, precise, inexorable dispossession of our selves, that we now perceive it as normal, as utterly desirable. If it is toil to live, then it is indeed the state that relieves us of this onerous task. We came into this world only to be put into a cage. But something has happened in the meantime. The story, as it appears, is not truly finished. Those who had declared themselves certain that they could no longer create events capable of changing the course of things have been forced to see their error. Even those who had sworn on the inviolability of the American empire have recognized their delusions. Our days on this earth are not necessarily condemned to a boring serial repetition. Everything is still possible, even seeing the greatest superpower on the planet struck at the base by small people armed with box-cutters. Everything is still possible, even seeing billions of people sink to the lowest degree of servitude. In spite of it all, everything is still possible. Dying, certainly, comfortably seated in the armchair of passivity, dazed by the spectacle of human events of which one can only be an amazed spectator. But also starting to determine one’s own destiny for the first time, to truly choose, to be the creator of one’s own existence. In a word, to live.

— based on an article translated from Hapax

The Rudiments of Terror

The ruling order and its challenger face each other. The former has everything: an organization — the state — economic power, military power, control over the entire nation. The latter has little at its disposal. Only a few people, full of desperation, with a few rudimentary weapons. But these few are inspired by a terrible propulsive force, the ambition for domination, that is great enough to move them to launch their challenge. They know that they are weaker than their adversary, so they must strike and run, strike and run. And when a power — even in embryo — must strike, it knows only one tool: terrorism, the use of intentionally blind and indiscriminate violence. Like that which caused the death of a few thousand people, crushed and burned in the fiery collapse last year on September 11, as hijacked airplanes were crashed in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

Of course, the terrorism of the challenging power is blatant and is immediately denounced as such by the media of its rival. But who will have the boldness to denounce the terrorism of the power in office, the terrorism of the state, particularly the powerful states that maintain the global order? The images of the ruins of the towers and repetition of the death counts have traveled around the globe, rousing the horror of all, perhaps enough to make people forget that for those in power (and for those seeking it) the “common people” have always been thought of as cannon-fodder. Slaughtering them in a hijack attack or on a battlefield doesn’t really make any difference.

These deaths are just like the deaths caused by aerial bombing, like those that occur year-round at workplaces, in barracks, in police stations, in hospitals, in prisons. Like those brought about by the paving over of wild places, by nuclear power plants, by the adulteration of our food, by atmospheric pollution or by the psychosomatic illnesses caused by the way of life that is imposed on us in this world.

So here it is, the violence that strikes everyone in a blind and indiscriminate fashion. Here it is the terrorism of the state.

September 11: What the Masters Want to Teach Us

The attacks of September 11 provided the masters of this world with a splendid opportunity for carrying out their most repressive projects with little dissent. It also provided their propaganda machine with the opportunity of promoting the ideological agenda of those who rule us. Almost from the start, the various “experts” were on hand to analyze, to theorize, to tell us what to think. The propaganda of a united America and of a world divided simply into “good” and “evil”, the “good” again all united in the fight against “evil”. This corny mythological worldview pushed by the politicians and the media though had more to it than a simple promotion of mindless patriotism. The attacks were, in a sense, of epic proportions. It was easy for the authorities to convince us that as individuals we were helpless in the face of something of this sort, that we needed to be protected. And, of course, this protection could only come from the experts in protection — the state.

This is, in fact, the fundamental lesson that those in power have been promoting since the attacks: we are not capable of defending ourselves; the dangers of the world are beyond our control; we need to rely on the authorities, the experts to decide what to do for us.

Last month, another voice joined in this chorus. When the first anthrax-laced letters were discovered, people began to investigate possible natural remedies that they could acquire for themselves without reliance on the medical system — which many in this country cannot afford. Information about methods of strengthening the immune system, herbal antibiotics and similar natural and easily accessible methods of dealing with the potential of anthrax infection was spread through a variety of means that did not require going through an authority. But such self-reliance does not serve the interests of those in power, and so last month a government scientist, Dr. Stephen E. Straus, director of the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, declared that people should not rely on such alternative remedies, but should rather have “an unwavering trust in the currently approved drugs and vaccines”. Straus offers no evidence that the natural methods do not work. He simply describes them as “unproven remedies”. In other words, the experts have not yet tested them in their laboratories on captive animals or on prisoners. In fact, Straus is just another voice — a government voice — telling us to put our faith in the authorities. And when fear gains the upper hand in people’s minds, they are easily swayed by such voices.

But another interesting bit of news came out a few weeks after Straus made his call for people to remain faithful to the experts in medicine. Tests on the anthrax powder that had been found in mail here showed that it was a form of anthrax developed in military laboratories here in the United States. The very authorities in whom we are to place our faith are the real source of that which threatens us. But those with an understanding of US foreign policy, those few who know the history of US involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, were already aware of this. The government that calls us to unite behind it holds at least as much responsibility for these attacks as Al Qaeda. But this too is simply a minor bit of news, a banality about how states function. This entire social order, dominated by capital and the state is a string of disasters, none of which can rightly be called accidents. We live our lives on the edge of catastrophe and turn the other way, hailing those who have placed us there as our protectors, simply because a few stopgap measures have maybe put off a particular catastrophe for a short while or because our masters meet a catastrophe with bellicose rhetoric and calls for the proper apportionment of blame (which never seems to fall on them). In fact, the catastrophe is this social order with its top priorities being profit and social control, with its specialization and division of labor that guarantees that no one fully understands what is going on, with its dependence on authorities and expertize that steals away people’s capacities for self-determination, with its cumbersome technological apparatus which provides the authorities with a tool for controlling people, but which is itself beyond control. It is not by relying on experts that we will put an end to this existence on the edge of disaster, but by taking back our lives and destroying the present social order.

Cybernetic Warfare

The current nature of war as primarily the activity of the great powers policing the lesser states, keeping them in line, makes the conventional methods of warfare useless. Sending out soldiers to do face-to-face battles with those who are often fanatically convinced of the justice of their cause is simply a waste of human resources. So to go along with the (not so) new type of war new types of weapons are necessary. And in Iraq in 1991, Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan now, the US has demonstrated some of these weapons, high-tech killing machines that require few soldiers and often none on the battlefield.

One of the weapons being used in Afghanistan is the Predator drone, a pilotless drone that carries attack weapons along with its surveillance equipment. The drone can be operated by remote control from hundreds of miles away. In Afghanistan, it was used to successfully kill several farmers who were salvaging for scrap from a destroyed and long abandoned Al Qaeda camp.

Then there are the “precision guided” bombs. Their precision was already well known from the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, when one such bomb happened to hit an industrial suburb of Sofia, Bulgaria — 100 miles away from the Yugoslav border. In Afghanistan Around 10–15 percent of the bombs missed their targets, often in urban settings.

While it has apparently not been used yet, the Pentagon has a land mine in its arsenal called the Hornet. This stationary weapon is capable of launching a missile at a moving target that comes within range of its ground sensors — about a 100-yard radius. Of course, it makes no distinctions between targets.

In addition, there are a number of new high-tech weapons in the works. Within the next ten years, the Pentagon wants to have a squadron of a dozen pilotless fighter jets. By 2009, it wants a “hypersonic missile” that can travel 600 nautical miles in 15 minutes. It is calling for technological methods that will allow for surprise “high volume precision strikes” as well as for laser- and microwave-powered weapons.

The aim of these weapons is to enhance the capacities to launch stealthy “preemptive strikes” — in other words to attack those who are deemed as a threat before they have a chance to raise a complaint let alone a defense. Weapons of this sort have nothing to do with conventional warfare. Why would they? Such warfare is now relegated to those backwaters which are not currently of significance to the rulers of this world — places like Rwanda or Somalia where, until a great power intervenes “for humanitarian reasons” if not “to fight terrorism”, there really are certain more or less equal powers in horribly bloody contention.

In a sense these weapons could be seen as global level, very lethal, riot control weapons, not intended for direct conflict over territory, but for the maintenance of social peace. If there is one thing the state understands, it is that social peace can only be maintained through violence and terror. Certainly any reasonable person could see that every one of these new weapons is a machine of inhuman terror. All of them are potentially weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction of human life. But in this case the weapons are in the hands of the cops of the world, keeping the peace for the masters of the world and guaranteeing our continued obedience. And so their use is not called terrorism, but peacekeeping. But if social peace can only be maintained through the use of terror, then clearly it is time we broke the social peace, destroyed this world’s rulers and their guardians and began to create our lives as our own. Both their war and their peace are terror. Let’s refuse both.

Toward the Total Criminalization of Revolt: The USAPATRIOT Act and Its Limits

On October 26, 2001 — just six weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USAPATRIOT) act was signed into law. It should surprise no one that this 342-page legal tome could be brought together so quickly considering that experiments with “anti-terrorist” legislation and police activity have been going on for years on federal, state and local levels in this country. It was only necessary for the US government to bring together their harshest aspects and create a law that essentially criminalizes all resistance in a timely manner that would guarantee its passage.

The act creates the new crime of “domestic terrorism”. This label covers any act that is deemed dangerous to human life, that violates state or federal law and appears to be intended: 1) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; 2) to influence the policy of a government through intimidation or coercion; or 3) to affect the conduct of government through mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping. It further defines terrorism as the use of a “weapon or other dangerous device... to cause substantial damage to property.” The act furthermore allows the secretary of state to designate any domestic or foreign group that has ever engaged in violence as a “terrorist organization”. Throughout the various sections of the act are details that effectively undermine the obligation for federal agents and other cops to show probable cause or to have a search warrant, thus permitting the police and the FBI to conduct secret physical searches and surveillance at will. In addition, it undermines every legal right of any immigrant if there is “reasonable ground to believe” that they were involved in terrorism or activities posing a risk to national security or the safety of the community.

An act of war

While it is certainly worthwhile to research the details of this act, what is truly interesting is its language. While the expansion of what police and federal agents are permitted to do in carrying out their repressive activity are stated with clarity, the descriptions of what constitutes terrorism or aid to terrorism are so ambiguous and broad that they encompass every form of revolt, resistance and even dissent. Wildcat strikes or unpermitted demonstration could be defined as potentially dangerous and illegal acts of coercion and intimidation. The stone or brick one picks off the street up to chuck through a bank window is a “dangerous device”. And all of the confrontations with fascists and white supremacists that certain comrades carry out certainly fit the act’s definition of terrorism. So the purpose of the act is clear. It is not intended to protect the American people from attack, but rather to protect the American state from the potential revolt of its people. Thus the real significance of the “war on terrorism” declared by Bush becomes clear: the peace of the market is social war. The boogeyman of terrorism with a million faces allows the masters and rulers to act without the formality of “rights”. While the American exploited tremble and rage over foreign terrorists, the ruling terrorists in Washington have acted to criminalize all revolt, to make every tool that the exploited have for fighting them illegal. The USAPATRIOT act was an act of social war against the excluded.

War is peace

The White House has declared it. The current war is distinguished from those of the past by the fact that it is unfolding throughout the world (even if the bombs are still mainly falling on Afghanistan and with some military “aid” quietly slipped to the Philippines and with threats toward a few other nations at the moment) and points to all those who attack “the American way of life” as adversaries. This war will have no end and will use every means, including murder, deception and torture. So the state of permanent war has been declared. “Criminal terrorism” furnishes a representation of evil (of the worst kind) sufficiently believable to authorize the weakening of democratic oratorical precautions. They will kill like always; they will lie like always; they will find it more useful than ever before. But — this is what is new — it will all be done in broad daylight.

That a democratic state openly and decidedly resorts to violence (against its own population and no longer just against colonized populations and easily identified “dangerous” classes) for reasons beyond our control, with none of the usual progressives pursuing security daring to oppose it: this is what constitutes a sufficiently new situation that forebodes further consequences. On other hand, if the margin of maneuver for an active social critique is in danger of being restricted considerably in the years to come, nonetheless it could never be reduced to nothing.

Laws do not determine existing social relationships; they only give them expression in legal form. The law is there to insure the reproduction of social relationships and to confirm them, conforming them to relationships of domination that it translates into legal form. The opportunities for any repressive social legislation, the opportunities for its application or suspension, depend on the relationship of current social forces and not on the methods of policing called upon to enforce them.

It has frequently been demonstrated that repressive legislation doesn’t just seek to strike at the social conflict in act, but to anticipate its future, threatening those who might participate in it. But in the presence of strong social tensions, in the presence of an expanding social movement inclined to fight without yielding before the black mail of fear, repressive legislation is suspended in apprehension of further enflaming the minds. The despicable USAPATRIOT act is no exception. It was not passed in order to defend the United States from a real existing revolutionary assault, but to prevent such a thing. In this way it indicates, negatively, the course to follow in order to rid ourselves of it.

— WL and Hapax

The Weakness of Our Rulers

Currently, there can be no doubt that the American state appears to be strong. It feels confident in openly decreeing an endless global war, in proclaiming a “preemptive strike” policy that permits it to attack any nation that it perceives as a threat, in enacting a law that undermines the “rights” it granted us, in criminalizing every form of resistance and revolt — in short, in declaring itself publicly to be master of the world and of our lives. It would be foolish to claim that it is doing this out of a present weakness. No, it is confident precisely because the social struggle here is weak. Few are challenging anything deeply, and so the rulers feel strong. But the strength of the rulers always relies on one thing: our compliance. We are the arms, the legs, the torso of this society; when we refuse to obey and begin to take our lives into our own hands, the plans of the rulers fail.

We will not defeat the current war efforts through moralizing or pacifistic bleating. This current “war on terrorism” is in fact one of the most blatant expressions of that war against the exploited and excluded of this world that is social peace. It is necessary not just to refuse their war, but also their peace.

If our desire is freedom — that is the capacity and will to create our own lives — then our task is clear: to refuse to obey and to rise up and destroy this terroristic, war-mongering society and create the lives and world we desire.

Alternatives or Refusal?

The United States government is now demanding support for a war that it has been carrying out on and off for over a decade. It is making broad claims of the threat presented by a second-rate renegade colony, a former puppet that tried to cut a few strings and was transformed into the devil by the American government’s propaganda machine. This war has nothing to do with terrorism (beyond the everyday terrorism carried on by all states, and particularly the American state). Saddam Hussein has made no threats against the United States. There is no evidence that Iraq has the weapon capabilities Bush and crew claim and according to Unscom (the UN investigation committee) reports a great deal of evidence that it does not. The US government’s claims that such weapons — if they existed — would be offered to terrorists for their use is absolutely baseless. Thus, it is absurd to speak of “more just ways to challenge terrorism” or of “exploring alternatives” with regards to this current attempt by the US to garner international support for a war that is already in act. Instead, what we need to speak about and act upon is an absolute refusal of the American government’s crass exploitation of the events of September 11, 2001 to gain support for its blatant acts of aggression and terror against the people of Iraq, and absolute insubordination to every call for submission to the necessities of war.

We are currently living in an era when, for all practical intents and purposes, there is a single power ruling throughout the world, the power of Capital. The few enclaves that still exist against this power have little chance of survival as long as we, who live in the heart of the beast, continue to be blind to its real nature and believe that it can be reformed, that it can be made “more just” (as if justice were anything more than the edicts of judges who serve those who rule this world.) And the United States is the greatest representative of this power, militarily and economically.

The end of the duality of superpowers at the end of the 1980’s changed the nature of war, at least as carried out by the great powers. (Of course, this change was already in act decades earlier — after all, weren’t the Korean War and the War in Viet Nam “police actions”?) We no longer see the real contention of nations for power, territory and resources. The great powers like the United States and the European Union already have practical control over all of these. Instead the great powers go to war to police recalcitrant subjects. This is why the US is attacking Iraq (and still patrolling Afghanistan and “aiding” the Philippines) and threatening Iran, North Korea, etc. Looked at this way, it also becomes clear that the USAPATRIOT act, the searches at airports and bus stations, the fear-inducing propaganda efforts, the increased security everywhere are acts of war. And not of a “war against terrorism”, which would have had to start with the dismantling of the CIA and a half a century of US foreign policy, but rather against the possibility of revolt by the exploited and excluded people here and world-wide as well as against all who dare to refuse control, who dare to refuse “life” as compliant sheep.

If we talk to the representatives of this war-mongering social order, we are still granting them the final say. Such participation is simply participation in our continued slavery. Instead, those of us exploited, excluded or simply disgusted by this social order need to talk with each other about how we can actively refuse the state’s war, encouraging noncompliance, disobedience and revolt, in short, total insubordination to the efforts of the masters of this world to once more send us out to shed each others blood in their interests. As long as the state exists and Capital rules the world, war will continue killing us. Only insubordination and total revolt can bring this to an end, and open the possibility of a world where no one can order anyone else to go out and kill.

An Easy War

In general, Americans are cowards. This has become quite clear since September 11, 2001. Most people are willing to put up with every humiliation in the name of security at airports, bus stations and other places considered “at risk”. They are ready to jump at every wolf-cry of “terrorism” from Bush’s pack of liars. And they are prepared to prostrate themselves before Big Daddy State so that He will keep them safe. They are also ready to support a war that they know will be easy, a bully’s war for which serves no purpose other than to keep the hysteria of the “war on terrorism” raging.

If this were likely to be another Vietnam War, this cowardice might be worthy. It might cause more people to oppose this war out of sheer chauvinistic fear for “American lives”. After all, we don’t want “our boys” getting killed.

But war has changed. Thanks to the technological developments of the past twenty years, it is becoming easier and easier for the great powers who have access to it to carry out their acts of destruction from a distance, without a care. For the most part, mistakes will only kill foreign civilians, those residing in the territory under attack. American casualties would be few, almost entirely the result of “friendly fire”. So it is easy for Americans to thoughtlessly accept further American aggression against Iraq or anywhere else the government desires it. It requires no courage whatsoever, simply continued submission to the will of our rulers.

Courage now lies precisely in the refusal of this war. But we must be clear about what this war is in order to understand what refusal means. In the same way that the current social order tries to make each new disaster brought on by the economic-technological devastation of the earth appear to be a separate incident easy to repair, the rulers of this world try to make the current American war-cry appear as a distinct event. This is not the case.

War has been the normal state of life throughout most of the world for decades. Not just in places like Rwanda, Palestine, Yugoslavia or Somalia, but in the hearts of American cities as well, where if you are neither black nor poor nor possibly “illegal”, then the police won’t shoot at you. Otherwise, there is no guarantee.

The real war, the one behind all the others that fuels them is the war of the rulers against all those they rule, the war to maintain their power in the face of all actual or potential revolt. Pacifist requests to the rulers to find “peaceful resolutions” to their conflicts can only help to maintain this ongoing war because it is the very function of the state and of all forms of rule. Thus, appealing to “our representatives” (and are we really so willing to give up our own capacity to decide, to allow someone else to “represent “ us?) can at best change one minor scene in the global theater of pain, while leaving the state of universal war intact.

The illusion that capitalism and the democratic state could offer abundance and freedom for all has proven to be the most blatant lie, and unrest is a worldwide reality. But the potential for revolution is perpetually recuperated into ethnic and religious conflicts worldwide and into gang war and racial hatred here. And all of this plays into the hands of those who rule us allowing them to advance their war against us — now through the so-called “war on terrorism” with its new laws and “security” measures — criminalizing more and more expressions of dissent, resistance and revolt.

Thus, real refusal of the current war effort must take the form of insubordination, not of petition. Disobedience on all fronts, the refusal to negotiate in any way with the state, the refusal in the full sense to fight their war. But the refusal of their war must also be the refusal of their peace, because the two are one. Thus, the refusal of their war must also be the active struggle to destroy the state and capital everywhere.

When Peace Is War

We are all aware that the United States is gearing up for an attack on Iraq. The formalities are still being worked out, but at this point, US military action seems almost certain. But this war will not be without resistance. There have already been numerous protests against the war, and the attack on the recruiting station in San Jose certainly seems to be a response to the call for war as well. When the actual fighting begins, more resistance can be expected. But resistance to this war cannot simply rely on methods and concepts from the past. An “anti-war” movement that is not also an attempt to completely overturn the ruling order no longer makes any sense. Therefore it is necessary for anarchists to make a serious analysis of the situation that is arising.

Anarchists have already put out a number of calls for noncompliance and insubordination toward the war effort, and these are certainly worthy endeavors. But to understand what this would mean requires careful examination of the situation. A ‘zine of “proletarian grumbling” out of London called The Whinger points out a few things we should consider in developing our resistance:

Even if there was a general strike in the west it would probably be too late to stop an attack. They no longer need the labor of the bulk of us in the “developed” world directly in their war effort. In the west they no longer need mass conscript armies or mass forced militarization of labor in specific industrial war production to directly sustain the war effort. Most of the weapons are now produced beforehand under capitalist “peace-time” in dispersed commercial arms production which is not labor intensive. Much of the “fighting” by US or british or European forces can be done by privileged protected elite professional technicians and officer-bureaucrats, leaving some shooting and mopping up and patrolling on the ground for regular soldiers. This sort of changes the role of regular soldiers from an attacking and war-fighting role to an occupying and heavy policing role.

There are a number of significant points that can be drawn from these observations. While a number of opponents of the war are seeking to play on the possibility of another Vietnam as a way of inspiring wider opposition, this is, in fact, very unlikely. For all practical intents and purposes, the US has been carrying on a war against Iraq since 1991, with no use of ground troops since the end of Operation Desert Storm and only the occasional bombardment, relying instead on the UN-sanctioned embargo to impoverish and kill Iraqis. Unlike the war in Vietnam, this operation has not had any visible effects on the daily lives of the American populace. The current effort to heat up this war is simply intended to get rid of a former ally who has become a liability to increase US control in the region. On this level, it has far more in common with the “humanitarian bombing” of Yugoslavia than with the Vietnam war. And we can assume that this war will be fought in a similar fashion: intensive aerial bombing with high tech weapons causing a fair amount of “collateral damage” consisting of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded, but few if any American casualties, followed by an occupation by an armed, military “peace-keeping” force. In fact, the Bush administration has been talking of setting up an interim American-run military government ruled by a US military officer, similar to that which was set up in Japan following World War II. The point is that this specific war is likely to be very short. It is the military role of “peace-keeping” that will continue.

In fact this war (like every war) is the product of capital’s peace-time policies on every level. Contrary to Orwell’s thinking, “war is peace” is not a totalitarian “big lie”. It is, in fact, an accurate description of the current functioning of the ruling order, though it may be more precise to say, “Peace is war”. This is what we need to keep in mind as we seek to build resistance to this war. My grumbling proletarian friend goes on to say: “...the slogan ‘sabotage the war economy’ is actually strictly speaking mistaken. The problem is that the majority of us are not directly in a war economy at the moment, most of us are still very much in a ‘peace-time’ economy and that is what we need to sabotage and socially subvert.” For the ruling order, peace-time is simply the time to calmly prepare for the wars to come. With the current military technologies and methods, most of us in the west will rarely experience any significant change in our daily routine due to a war such as the one proposed. We will continue to experience capital’s “peace”, that fine civilized peace that so bores, yet pacifies, us. Therefore, any effective resistance to this war must also be a subversive attack against the peace of the ruling order. So it is not so much in terms of any immediate effect on the current war effort as on the level of the necessity to destroy current social order in order to make wars of this sort impossible that the practice of noncompliance and insubordination becomes significant.

But “peace is war” not only because the ruling class uses peace-time to prepare for future wars, but more significantly because their “peace” is itself carried on as a war. Who are the peacekeepers in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan? They are armed military personnel. And even on the streets of the cities here in the west, peace is maintained by armed people in uniform, often with military training. The police also constitute an arm of the state, and those who live in poor neighborhoods often know what it is like to be occupied and under the threat of death or capture if they make the wrong move. Consider as well the obvious militarization of the police involved in crowd control during demonstrations and protests. Peacekeeping is really nothing other than war-making. Thus, it can be said that the entire world lives in a state of permanent war, the unending violence through which our rulers maintain their power.

And so no call for peace makes sense any more. It would simply be a call to maintain the order that sustains war. There can be no negotiation, no coming to terms with this civilized world. It requires war to suppress the desperation of those it has excluded that is breaking through its doors as everything falls apart. All we can oppose to the bombs over Iraq, if we want our opposition to be more than symbolic, a mere appeasing of our consciences, is class attack. We must liberate the smoldering hatred and hurl it against those who have stolen our lives and the lives of all the exploited of the earth. Identifying the common enemy — the owners, the rulers, the technological and productive network, the totality of a civilization based on domination and exploitation — is the primary form of solidarity toward the bombed and the refugees. Attacking this enemy is the only real tool we have for transforming the wars imposed by the social order — in which we end up killing each other in our real enemy’s interests — into a fight for liberation from exploitation and domination, from every form of rule.

No Time for Begging

For anyone who seriously opposes the war against Iraq, the time for begging is over. The US government has made it clear that it will make the war it has wanted for months. To continue to make “demands” of those in power is now a blatant absurdity, and it is necessary to consider the actions we can take on our own to obstruct the war effort. But in considering such matters it is necessary to have a clearer understanding of the full meaning of this situation.

Many of those that I have seen out on the streets at the anti-war demonstrations have been proclaiming their patriotism alongside their opposition to the war. The time has come to recognize that patriotism, the love of the fatherland, is the ideology by which every war between nations supports itself. Patriotism always only serves the rulers. It is the ideological weapon that they use to divide the exploited people of the world, to convince them to fight each other rather than rising up against their rulers. An opposition to this war that is going to know how and where to aim its actions will need to reject patriotism and the concept of the fatherland completely. As long as these continue to exist, there will be war.

It is also important to realize that as significant a role as oil may play in determining the US insistence on going to war, there are other factors that are equally, or possibly more, important in this decision. At least among radicals, it is generally recognized that a global marketplace has been developing over the past few decades. But it often goes unnoticed that the same processes through which this has come about have provided the state with the means for developing a global network for policing the world. This network consists of international institutions, military forces and alliances, police forces on all levels and the technologies of information, communications and surveillance systems. So the question has arisen: who is to control this system? The US and the UN both agree that the world must be policed and that when petty tyrants disturb the peace of the great tyrants, they must be put in their place. Their disagreement is over how to manage this. The UN desires a broader based multi-lateral management of global policing under the various international institutions such as the UN itself and the World Court. The US wants unilateral management for itself, with other nations and institutions supporting it. In either case, the great powers still make the decisions about existence that we are forced to live through. Global policing, regardless of who manages it, means the intrusion of policing into every aspect of our daily lives. It is the ongoing system of violence through which the rulers of this world impose social peace. If opposition to this war is to be anything more then taking sides about who is to police us, then it must also be opposition to the peace offered by the rulers of this world — in other words, opposition to policing, social control, the state and the entire social order based on domination and exploitation.

Bush, Blair and their pack of warmongers have played heavily on people’s fears to promote their agenda on Iraq. But this is nothing new. “Rule through fear” (which was among the first definitions of terrorism) has always been the basis of the state. Behind every ruling power stand the club and the gun. Even the democratic smile masks the barracks and the prison. For years now the American state has used the threat of crime to expand police powers and spread the tools of surveillance and control across the urban terrains transforming cities into open-air minimum security prisons of preventive detentions, and make us all increasingly suspicious of each other so that the potential of real dialogue is suppressed. Democratic states take a sophisticated approach to “rule through fear”. They focus the fears of their subjects on an “other” — “criminals”, “drug addicts”, “terrorists” — convincing people to view the arms of the state, the police and the military, as their protectors. But an end to war has to be an end to “rule through fear” in all its forms. And that means putting an end to the state.

So resistance to this war must necessarily become practical resistance to the state in its totality. The functioning of the war apparatus requires obedience both by military personnel and by the population as a whole; it requires the flow of various items necessary for the war operation; it requires the smooth functioning of various institutions and apparatuses. A serious response to the war must thus include total insubordination on our part, and the development of methods for supporting individuals in the military who choose, in whatever way, to refuse to obey orders. It must include direct action on all levels against the war machine and the institutions that support it. The targets are everywhere; one needs only a bit of imagination and a few trustworthy accomplices.

Once we recognize that putting an end to war requires putting an end to all the institutions of social control and exploitation, i.e., to the state, the absurdity of demanding peace from these institutions becomes clear. In fact, we have nothing to say to them. Instead we need to talk with each other, creating the space and time for real dialogue, finding those we can act with and taking actions we ourselves decide. As the US government has been pushing its agenda at the top, in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Algeria, and numerous other places, the exploited have been finding ways to act on their own against their oppression, creating assemblies for real discussion among themselves, reappropriating what they need to create their lives and attacking the institutions that dominate them. The time for begging indeed is over. It is time to take back our lives.

Against the war, against the state: total insubordination

Endless War

The war in Iraq is now officially over. Of course, U.S. and allied troops continue to occupy the country and casualties continue, just as in Afghanistan. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have surfaced makes the arrogance and irrationality of the US regime all the more blatant. At the start of the war even some people in the American media felt compelled to write of “Empire” when describing reactions around the world. But without an analysis of the full context of these events, this war remains simple another random atrocity among the rest.

The concept of “Empire” can certainly be a useful tool in analyzing the nature of the world we are facing today. The networks of economic and political power have spread themselves across the globe forming a web of domination and exploitation from which nothing escapes. Even people in the most remote places find themselves being dispossessed of the capacity to create their own lives as the pollutants of industry contaminate the lands from which they have made their lives or capital itself directly intrudes with dams, mines and other environmentally devastating projects. Thus everyone becomes dependent on a social order that is not based on the needs and desires of the individuals who make it up, but on the need of the system to maintain and expand itself at any cost. Certainly the metaphor of Empire seems fitting.

But in using this metaphor, it is essential to clearly analyze the nature of this Empire. Over and over again since the war against Iraq began, I have heard people speak of the American Empire. Certainly, the United States seems to be ascendant in the control of the Empire right now. But this is simply the current situation in the relationships of power in the world, in the competitions and intrigues between the various parts of the ruling class. It is necessary to recognize this, because otherwise we will be easily drawn into false oppositions, becoming pawns of one or another faction of the ruling class or those who want to become so.

The Empire is in fact a global network of domination. This network has not just now come into being. On a technological and institutional level, it has been developing since the end of World War II, when advanced technological development moved largely into the hands of the military, seeking means to advance social control. But it was the swift advances in cybernetic, communications and surveillance technologies beginning in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s that provided an essential material basis for this network. These technologies combine with the international political and economic institutions, military forces and alliances and police forces on all levels to provide the state with the means for policing the world. By the early 1990’s, the infrastructure of this network was in place and one could indeed talk of a global Empire of capital.

But the nature of both the technological and institutional means through which this Empire has developed has significant implications. While it is true that certain factions of the ruling class may be in the ascendant at various times, as the American state is now, the real operation of power in the Empire is in fact decentralized. The networks of information, communications and surveillance are able to spread control precisely by operating as a network, spread thinly across the social terrain. The specialization required both technologically and in the operation of bureaucracies also serves to prevent this Empire from building its Winter Palace. This is why it is a mistake to speak of the American Empire, even though the US is currently the greatest power within the Empire. It is not enough to bring down the current US regime or to weaken its power if we want to bring down the Empire, because its tentacles are everywhere. This is why those like Negri, who see European political unity as a potential opposition to Empire, are fools.

Due to the specialization necessary to the maintenance of the imperial network and the competition that is an inherent aspect of the capitalist ruling class, the power of Empire is not merely decentralized, but also fragmented. Every faction of the ruling class agrees upon the necessity of global social control, on the necessity of policing the world, in order to guarantee their wealth and power. But they cannot agree on how to divide that wealth and power, or even how to manage the process of global policing. Certainly, one of the reasons why the latest war in Iraq developed as it did was a disagreement between different factions of the ruling class over how to manage the policing of the world. The UN in general wanted a multilateral approach involving the relatively equal cooperation of a number of powerful states, whereas the US desired a unilateral approach of alliance under US control. For now, it is having its way. But this conflict between the UN and the US was nothing more than a disagreement over management techniques. The only peace France, Germany, Russia and the UN wish to maintain is the social peace that stems from the fear of the exploited to revolt against their masters, and that provides the rulers with a peaceful sleep. One merely has to look at Chechnya or the Ivory Coast to see this.

The social peace of the Empire is, in fact, endless war. When the rulers of this world say they are making war in order to preserve the peace, they are not necessarily lying. Peace, for them, means precisely the maintenance of their power with as little disturbance from those they rule as possible. Yet the maintenance and expansion of their power can only happen through the dispossession and exploitation of the majority of human beings, so unrest is inevitable. Most of the exploited do not have a clear understanding of the nature of current social relationships and so through campaigns of fear and hate the rulers can redirect their rage into nationalistic, ethnic or religious conflicts. Thus, civil wars rage particularly in poorer and more desperate parts of the globe. In addition, the smooth functioning of capitalism requires that such conflicts be kept at an adequately low level. Thus, the great powers must police the world, and this policing is carried on through their armed forces. A system based on dispossession, exploitation and domination can never do without policing. Institutional violence or the threat thereof is essential to the maintenance of political and economic power. Thus, Empire means endless war. The Pax Romana is maintained with battalions, tanks, guns, tear gas and “smart” bombs. This is one reason why, while still in Afghanistan, killing and enforcing the will of the world’s masters, the US and its allies started a war in Iraq as well. While it may be true that this particular war would not be happening if Bush were not president, we can be certain that there would be others, as indeed there are others even now.

With the initiation of the “war on terrorism”, endless war has, in fact, become the open policy of the world’s rulers. “Terrorism” is a nebulous concept especially as those in power use the term. Their aim, of course, is not to define a precise problem and deal with it, but to create a specter to haunt the dreams of the people they rule. It is a sophisticated form of rule through fear in which the state convinces people to accept more and more generalized repression in their daily lives by presenting the image of a fearful and threatening outsider from which the state will protect them with its military, its police and its technologies of social control spread across the globe and into every sphere of daily life. But to maintain this image, the state must find terrorism everywhere. The nebulous way in which the term is used makes this easy enough. The terrorists, so we are told, are in fact everywhere — hidden in secret cells across the globe. So the policing of the world, particularly the fight against terrorism, is an endless task that justifies every use of force and every sort of repression.

In fact, war is simply one of the ongoing disasters imposed by Empire, because Empire is the global system of Capital/State. Along with war, it also brings ongoing environmental disaster, increasing precariousness on every level, social disintegration, the degradation of language, ...the list of disasters could go on endlessly as the disasters themselves do. The endless flow of disasters is now so evident that those in power can no longer even pretend that there is some business-as-usual that runs smoothly to strive for. Instead they readily admit the disasters, but present them in a piecemeal fashion as separate and unrelated events. They are presented as “natural catastrophes”, “human error” or tragic inevitabilies. And increasingly, they are presented to us in a technical language that reinforces the idea that we must rely on the authorities and their experts who have the real understanding of events. In this way those in power use our fear of the disasters caused by power to reinforce their rule.

The technological and institutional systems through which the Empire operates are far too cumbersome for anyone to truly control. Each specialist, expert or functionary knows only his or her small portion of the operation. The machine itself lumbers on like a juggernaut, outside of anyone’s control. These systems were developed this way in order that the control would exist within the machinery itself. The point was to eliminate to the greatest extent possible the capacity for willful activity on the part of the individual. But this is precisely why the current social reality is one of ongoing disaster. In their lumbering, these juggernauts set off catastrophes that no one can predict, and the real role of experts is to try to limit the consequences of these catastrophes — or increasingly today to simply create explanations that may make them more acceptable to people.

This is the context of the war in Iraq. Those who have opposed this war in favor of “a peaceful solution” to this one problem taken out of context still support the endless war of the Empire. Though this war is officially over, military activity continues in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan, Columbia and the Philippines. The supposedly “peaceful” French government is imposing its “order” on the Ivory Coast through military force. The Israeli military continues to bulldoze Palestinian villages and kill young children along with alleged “militants”. And Russia is enforcing its control in Chechnya. And within cities throughout the world, armed police enforce the order of the rulers on the exploited, harassing and even killing the most dispossessed — the homeless, the undocumented immigrants, refugees of all sorts.

So it is essential that opposition to this war become opposition to the endless procession of wars and catastrophes, opposition to the Empire, in other words, opposition to the state, capital and the totality of the technological and institutional apparatuses through which the ruling class maintains power. Such an opposition does not consist in creating a “Counter-Empire”, a mirror image of that which we oppose, but in destroying the Empire in its totality. Therefore, it will not function as a political opposition, as a force contending for power. Its methods will not be the methods of politicians, contending with each other for mass popular support. It will rather be a revolt of the barbarians.

Unlike the Roman Empire though, the current Empire has no outside. So where do the barbarians come from? In fact, the current Empire is creating its own barbarians in its midst. The process of dispossession through which the masters accumulate their wealth and power, places more and more of the exploited into highly precarious positions. Endless war and catastrophe throws millions onto the road as refugees. More and more find themselves homeless or jobless. The “dreams” of high-level consumption become meaningless to these people. What do they have left to say to the rulers of this world? And besides how does one say it, when one doesn’t speak the language of the state? This civilization offers them nothing.

What distinguishes the revolt of the barbarians from the opposition of alternative politicians, of the parties, unions and organizations that claim to represent the exploited or whatever specific cause, is that the former makes no demands. It is an expression of rage that says all it has to say in the burning of banks and employment offices, the trashing of military recruitment centers, the fragging of officers. Such actions leave no room for negotiation or dialogue with power. If those who carry out such acts are often not too clear about their reasons, one thing is clear: their reasons are not reasons of state.

So an opposition to this war that is not a mere questioning of how the endless war is managed must also be a matter of barbaric revolt. Total insubordination is just the beginning. The attack against the institutions through which this war operates is essential. But I am not speaking here about a military attack. The technological, organizational and structural formations necessary to make the global network of domination possible are also the source of its vulnerability. In order to spread itself across the globe, the Empire has had to decentralize its institutions, structures and technological framework and accept the fragmentation inherent to its functioning. Thus, there is no Winter Palace to attack. Instead the targets are everywhere, and the methods and tools for attacking them are available to everyone. In such a context, the methods for developing, spreading and carrying out the struggles cannot be the same as those used by politicians of whatever kind. To continually march with signs to some symbolic institution of power in order to hear the various alternative politicians sing to the choir implies that we still have something to say to those who rule us. Better to stop listening to speeches and start listening and talking to each other. Better to stop waving signs in front of the institutions of power and to start attacking them. Better to learn to let the mass break up into smaller conscious groups capable of actually bringing a city to a halt and possible inflicting some damage on the institutions of power. The war in Iraq has officially ended. The war against the exploited will not end until the Empire of Capital and the State is razed to the ground.

Against the endless war of Empire, against the state, against the civilization of domination,

the barbaric joy of class war and individual and social insurrection

The War Continues

Despite the proclamations of victory last May, the war in Iraq continues. Not that this is any surprise. After all, the aim of the US government was not simple to move in quickly, destroy an enemy and then leave, but to invade and occupy. It was inevitable that there would be resistance, and this means ongoing warfare, ongoing death and destruction.

By this time, even the Bush administration doesn’t talk of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as a reason for the war. The deception behind those claims has become far too evident, and it is in the best interest of the ruling regime to sweep them under the rug as best it can. The rhetoric that the president has been using recently is much more reminiscent of those 19^th century American politicians who saw in the United States the salvation of the world. The US military is in Iraq “to spread democracy”.

What is interesting about this rhetoric though, for those with any knowledge of history and any capacity to read between the lines is that it does reveal the true aims of the US in Iraq. As should be clear to anyone who has read WD in the past, I have no illusions about democracy. It has never had anything to do with freedom or self-determination; rather it refers to a form of rule. More specifically, in the present era, it refers to that form of rule exercised by the United States government and the governments of the European Union (along with increasing numbers of governments around the world as the hegemony of capital is more thoroughly established worldwide). The ideological essence of democracy lies in the conception of an abstract equivalence of every person. This abstract equivalence is realized by the legal reduction of every one to the lowest common denominator (it is no accident that one of the most common phrases heard in the assertion of rights between individuals in conflict is: “You’re no better than me!”). This is maintained through rights and obligations which the government is to protect and enforce.

This abstract equivalence hides very real differences, particularly differences in wealth and power. The owners of the world are merely citizens like you and I; the rulers are just our representatives. These are the swindles that blind us to the fact that our lives are not our own and never can be in the framework of democracy and the social system it upholds. For even if we were to “self-manage” the current order of things through “direct democracy”, the system itself, with its abstract equivalence and its reified community would continue to define our existence on its terms, in order to guarantee its reproduction.

Although there are democratic regimes all over the world at this point, the United States maintains a hold over the ideology of democracy. This is why, for example, duly elected heads of state in countries whose policies contradict US interests can be referred to as “dictators”, whereas countries with absolute rulers whose policies coincide with US interests can be referred to as “democracies”. Thus, when the Bush administration says that the reason for the invasion and occupation of Iraq is to establish democracy, this is not the lie some would claim. The administration is simply saying that they are in Iraq to establish and enforce US hegemony there.

In fact, US hegemony would most likely be served best by the establishment of a representative system. Iraq is made up of a variety of contending factions — various Shi’ite sects, Kurdish groups, Sunni sects and the secular currents. The establishment of a representative democratic system under US tutelage could provide a structure for these contending groups to carry on their conflicts through political as opposed to military means, providing the social peace necessary for the US to maintain its control in the region with the fewest possible hassles.

So the US claim that it is in Iraq to establish democracy is simply another way of saying that it invaded Iraq to establish and enforce its control in the region. In other words, it is an admission that this military operation is nothing other than an invasion and occupation. This is why there was never any real welcome of the troops by Iraqis (beyond a few events staged for the cameras). One does not welcome invaders, one resists them.

And so the US has wound up in a war that is not likely to end real soon. Destruction, atrocities, injuries and deaths mount on all sides, and the American soldiers in Iraq are not prepared for what they are facing. Due to the quick disintegration of the Iraqi government at the outset of the invasion, no truly organized Iraqi military force currently exists. The resistance in Iraq is, thus, basically a relatively unorganized guerrilla operation (or more likely a number of independent guerrilla operations). Some aspects of it seem to be more formally military, while other aspects are reminiscent of the Intifada in Palestine. American soldiers have never been particularly well-trained for dealing with this sort of resistance.

Taking this into consideration while also looking at the way in which the proclaimed reasons for which this war was begun — to find and destroy the supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and to bring an end to the alleged connections between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda — have proven to be swindles, one is left to wonder what morale could possibly be left among American troops. Certainly, sharing a bit of turkey with the Turkey in the white house isn’t enough to overcome the ongoing reality that these soldiers are facing in Iraq everyday, not just in terms of the dangers they face, but also in terms of the atrocities they are constrained to carry out in the name of those capitalist ideals of humanity and democracy. Certainly, mutiny and desertion seem like the most reasonable response, but in this world reason generally serves power, and the reasons that contradict power are labeled crime or madness.

The people of Iraq and the occupying soldiers consist mostly of individuals who feel powerless in the face of forces far greater than them. Like most of the powerless, the American soldiers generally resign themselves to the circumstances they are in “only following orders”. It is hard to know how much of the Iraqi population is involved in the resistance or to what extent it is controlled by various factions contending for power. So I cannot say if the Iraqis are equally resigned. From here, it seems not.

Ultimately, the war in Iraq is an expression of the war of the rulers against those they rule. This war is always going on as a preemptive attack against potential rebellion. The rulers fight it on many levels. Certainly, convincing poor people and people with few opportunities within this society to join the military in order to “better” themselves is a tactic in this war, as is the rousing of patriotic fervor. What better way to counter a potentially dangerous enemy than to convince them that your interests are their interests? The democratic ideology makes this particularly easy. After all, aren’t we all “equal” before the law? Don’t we all have the same rights, as well as obligations to the “common good”? When the work ethic combines with the democratic myth, even the disparity between a Bill Gates and the homeless panhandler sleeping in some downtown doorway can be justified. After all, we are told, he worked hard for all that wealth. He’s just another citizen like you or I. Any of us could do it too... So the ideological framework of society works to convince the exploited that this world really can function in their favor...

And yet, the war of the rulers against the poor has never stopped taking its toll. As soldiers are sent off to Iraq, here in American cities, the war against the exploited is on the offensive as the criminalization of homelessness advances. In many cities, homeless camps are subject to sweeps, laws are being passed making sleeping in “public” areas such as parks illegal day or night, laws against sitting on sidewalks are being passed. Little by little, every aspect of the existence of the homeless that is not institutionalized is being criminalized, thus forcing homeless people into increasing dependence on institutions. In addition, the authorities promote perspectives that drive a wedge between the homeless and the rest of the exploited. One recent campaign along this line has been the production of cards which list all of the charitable and government bureaucracies that exist to manage the homeless. These cards are available to anyone in quantity. Rather than giving cash or food to panhandlers, one is to give them these cards, thus reinforcing the idea that they must be processed through the proper channels to meet their needs. After all, if they go through the proper channels, in our democratic society, certainly their rights will be upheld.

So indeed, on all fronts, the American ruling class is fighting for democracy, because democracy is perhaps the most effective swindle that any ruling class has ever come up with to keep those they rule in line. Abstract equality, the ideology of rights, the myth of the “common good” and the work ethic all work together to blind the exploited to the real conditions of their existence, to create false hopes for changing those conditions within the context of this society and to allow the masters of this world to present their interests as the interests of all. Our liberation depends on our rejection of the democratic swindle, not in favor of some other form of rule, but as an aspect of the rejection of all rule, of every form of domination and exploitation. If the most reasonable response the American soldiers in Iraq could make to their situation is mutiny and desertion, our most reasonable response here is to move toward insurrection through autonomous direct action and attack against the institutions that dominate our lives. But our reasons are not those of the rulers, and will appear to them as barbarous madness. But for their opinion, why should we give a damn?