minion and its reproduction , the structures that find themselves behind the rows of cops and façades of banks . Emphasis on the unpredictability of insurrection does not mean to say that it fell from the skies . It is fair to say that there may be tensions pointing to increasing opportunities for revolt , but there is no certainty that these will become reality . Conversely , there could be situations or conflicts that give no glimpse of the next outbreak of rebellion at all , yet blow the lid off things . However , the unpredictability of insurrection should not be a serious problem for anarchists who are continuously clashing with authority , it is a serious problem for the State . If we look at the massive investments in control and law enforcement that are being made internationally , it does not appear that the State is completely unaware of this weak point .
Insurrection is a game of unprecedented connections and unanticipated acts . It is not mathematics where numbers provide the final solution . It is not a matter of “ external solidarity ” applauding the revolt of others . Each context and each moment offers different possibilities and opportunities . Anarchists must give themselves analysis , knowledge and means to go on the offensive and attack .
One should also seek to learn insurrectional experiences , in one ’ s analyses as well as in one ’ s practices . Dominion ’ s time is moving faster and faster , blurring the memory of revolts . Insurrections are not the social revolution and should not be seen as steps in a linear development towards social revolution . Rather they are transient moments of rupture during which time and space escape the grip of power . Given the intensification of repression – the fact that authority is always ready to drown the uprising of the oppressed in blood – and the apparent confusion of the motivations of the many people in contemporary times of rebellion , some shrink from the insurrectionary perspective . And yet . It is precisely insurrection that is breaking the grip of control and repression in a world where mass extermination and organized killing are now the daily routine of State and Capital . It is precisely insurrection that is capable of creating the space for translating rejection and revolt into clearer and more assertive ideas . Fear of the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of insurrection is not only found on the side of order , but also among the revolutionaries who seek salvation in the repetition of old political recipes : instead of attacking everywhere and all the time , the building of a unified revolutionary movement ; instead of insurrection , the gradual development of a “ counter-power ”; instead of the necessary destruction , the illusion of a progressive change of attitudes . We then see the anarchists taking the role of the moribund left or former insurgents in search of certainties ranting on the “ proletariat as historical subject ” or starting to read Lenin to find recipes for a “ victorious revolution ”. Yet recent insurrectional experiences all point to the need to find other roads , roads that separate themselves radically and permanently from any “ political ” vision of social war .
The classical revolutionary perspective of self management is dead . It is time to finally take notice and put an end to attempts to revive it in other words and in other forms . No structure of capital or the State can be taken to be used in an emancipatory way ; no social category is in essence a carrier of a project of social transformation ; no defensive battle will transform itself into a revolutionary offensive . The contemporary paradox lies in the fact that on the one hand , insurrection needs a dream of freedom to give it oxygen to persevere and on the other , its work must necessarily be totally destructive to have any hope of going beyond extinction and crystallization . Insurrection is necessary to open the path to individual and social liberation ; and it is the vitamins of utopia that force undreamed of horizons in order to escape from the social prison . It is from the confluence of insurrectionary practice and ideas of freedom that a contemporary revolutionary perspective could arise .
The destructive nature of insurrection leads to the destruction of the edifice of the social prison we all live in . It is necessary to study and analyze where its walls , guards , watchtowers are today if we intend to strike them . Modern domination has disseminated structures that enable the reproduction of the social prison everywhere . Think of the ubiquitous technological infrastructures that attach each and every one of us to the role of prisoner without having visible chains as such . Or how capitalist accumulation is basically moving towards circulation . In Europe at least , exploitation is no longer concentrated in huge bastions as before , but has spread and decentralized , encompassing every aspect of life . The connections between these aspects are guaranteed by paths , cables , pipelines , railways , underground pipes that represent the veins of dominion . We will certainly not be the last to howl with joy if insurgents set fire to the parliament anywhere in the world , but the anarchists ’ contribution to the social war without doubt also consist of pointing to and attacking how and where authority feeds and reproduces itself more specifically .
But destruction is not enough . Deed and thought must go hand in hand . We cannot hope to pull down the walls of the social prison if we are not already trying to look beyond the walls towards unknown horizons , no matter how difficult . You can ’ t think freely in the shadow a church . That ’ s true . But the church is not just a building , it is the realization of social relations and dominant ideologies . It is in desiring what these relations and ideologies don ’ t offer , what they erase from the imagination , whose very possibility to be thought is suppressed , that we will find ourselves at daggers drawn with the existent . We have no need for yet another programme to planify the transformation of the world , nor
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