By doing this , one contributes to bury the proposals of self-organization and of struggle without mediations and to push back into oblivion the perspectives they might open up . They would not be any more valid proposals for today , in the life that we are living here and now , but just good for an ideal world projected in a faraway future . If on the contrary we are considering them as real , coherent and serious proposals – in the sense that they correspond the best to the transformation of the existing social relations and that they prefigure the future to which we aspire – how can their validity be put into question from the moment the wind starts turning ?
Just as the way of struggling , the way of confronting repression is as well individual as collective and certainly not separated from the social context in which the struggle takes places . Locking up relentless opponents , sometimes even for decades , allows the state to punish them and to physically take them away from the fight in the streets , but it is not enough for the state . One of the goals of these exemplary punishments is undoubtedly to function as a threat to all those who would want to continue the fight . The next step is to obtain from the hostages which the state set as an example a declaration of remorse or at least the recognition that they took the wrong way in the struggle . You can see clearly all the benefits the state can generate from the depersonalisation of individuals who are fighting it and from the fact to be able to publicly present the renouncement to their convictions . The renouncement of some people to their aspirations and perspectives – in particular , revolutionary – or to methods which question the establish order , aims and contributes to drawing a final line on their reasons of existence as to make them better disappear , disappear from the memory as well from the present . To bury them as symbols of an obsolete parenthesis which will not come back to haunt the blocked horizon of state and capital .
To refuse this hateful blackmail , the “ offer ” of which means generally less years of prison , is not – as the upholders of the realism of the raison d ’ Etat or the ambitious pseudo-tacticians would like to make us believe – the prerogative of some furious lunatics aspiring to martyrdom . This is also a matter of the necessity of maintaining one ’ s individual integrity against the will of total crushing by a power that requires us to renounce until what we are , and of lucidity about the things at stake in this whole process .
The demands for pardon are not independent of these things at stake . While the state is further harshening its laws – like recently the one on civil security and the penal code –, promotes at the same time lifelong imprisonment and is jailing people even for unpaid fines , while it tries to paralyse by fear any expression of revolt , while its administration , the prison administration included , asks for more submission of a bigger number of people , it is impossible to ignore that the giving of a pardon could only be the exception confirming and strengthening the rule . And this exception would not come for free ; not only the state wants to see more or less explicit guarantees – in particular , a “ normal and integrated life ” –, the pardon is de facto part of a logic of social pacification , of the preservation of the status quo . Presenting the demands for pardon as “ just a means amongst others ” without great consequences is therefore a matter of a big dose of insincerity or of ( voluntary ) blindness concerning the reality of the ongoing social war .
This world is really built on domination and generalised repression . Every day , years and years of prison are handed out for all kinds of offences – in particular those linked to property – and one should pretend as if the struggle against the system or against some of its aspects could escape this , and at any price ? At least this relation to repression reveals the gap existing between the pretensions of scenes who believe they are radical and their way of confronting reality . And if we speak about confronting reality , it for sure means not to accept it . One therefore has to speak out on the roads that are passable and those that aren ’ t , especially because they come at a much higher cost than prison itself . It is therefore indispensable to refine analyses , to share reflections , to imagine practices and autonomous ways capable of giving some answers by continuing the conflict .
Starting from the principle that a raging battle , individually or collectively , in the social field doesn ’ t quit it when the battle is repressed , you could ask yourself how to fight the repressive aspects in and by the struggle itself . If one considers the struggle doesn ’ t necessarily stop once you step inside of prison , the question could be its articulation on the inside and on the outside of the walls . The fact to continue the antagonism despite the blows of power could undoubtedly contribute , today as well as yesterday , to assume the prison consequences of it – often unavoidable , sadly – without a sentiment of renunciation , neither of sacrifice or a separated parenthesis , but rather as one of the episodes of a trajectory of struggle .
The generalised reflux of bounds of solidarity is produced by the current mechanisms of power , and they are at their turn fed by the many capitulations towards power . But to deduct from this cruel observation that the only “ reasonable solution ” would be to accompany this movement of reflux by accepting and reinforcing the fool ’ s game of the state would only dig a bit more the tomb of our acrate ideas and the practices that result from them . The fact that these principles and action methods are ever more in minority ( which still has to be proven ), does this take away their soundness and means that one should renounce to them ? We think on the contrary that more than ever , the question is to contribute , by putting them in practice , to extend and spread them .
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