Fire to the cities ! Some thoughts on hostility against the profiteers of oppression
September 2016 - Germany
In our common struggles against power , exploitation and oppression it is always necessary to clearly identify the enemies of our ideas of freedom and self-determination . If our struggles are supposed to be social struggles , we have to analyze their terrain permanently , consequently and with a clear eye and try to understand the social dynamics of our contexts . It is about examining the social framework on lines of conflict and responsibilities to obtain an analysis that makes it possible to put the profiteers of the social situation in the focus of the social struggle . In the context of these endeavors it is required to take distance from the stupid leftist thesis , that there are no responsibilities in these conditions – people make decisions , these decisions lead to a certain type of behavior , and this behavior has direct impact onto the social terrain . The metropolis always has been a place where the lines of social conflict are visible more clearly . That ’ s because in this environment those share a surrounding , who shouldn ’ t ever meet in the ideal of capitalism – the oppressed and exploited on the one hand , and the rich , the privileged , the profiteers of exploitation on the other . Earlier in time the social order has been built upon the strict division of those who possess and those who don ’ t . The cities were the place , where this clear divisions have become weaker as they grew and grew and for that they often were the showplace of eruptions of anger , that this division provokes . On these terms , power always had a great interest to channel and govern life in the city as effectively and as predictable as possible . The recent developments in the metropolises have shown clearly , that power uses the urban environment as fields for experiments of control and management by all available means and that it reacts rapidly and remarkably flexibly on changes in the capitalist machinery . Comrades from Zurich in Switzerland have articulated these tendencies really precisely by publishing the text “ against the city of the rich ” ( also in Avalanche No . 4 ) - “ big business ” doesn ’ t take place in the malls and shops in the inner cities anymore , but the metropolises are sensitive points in the networks of power and production and therefore shall be reserved for those who profit from these conditions . Luxury-buildings , office-complexes , expensive districts for entertainment and consume , along with the permanent extension and improvement of the architecture of social control , repression and pacification are forming our living environment these days . But still , even in this dystopian vision , flaring , angry signs against this hegemony of prosperity are visible at many different places . The concentration of wealth and property and the offensive ostentation of the privileges the winners of this society possess are a constant provocation to those , who are excluded , left behind and discontented in their position . The pacification and social integration through the democratic theater might seem all-embracing and unattackable at times , but the tension and hostility against the authorities and the circumstances it defends are numerous and visible . In this tendency it seems accurate to denounce and expose the profiteers of these developments permanently and consequently to spread hostile positions towards them – in the social conflict around us there are visible , attackable enemies to be pointed out . The improvement of security architecture , that is supposed to protect the wealth , can be sabotaged . The fact that we need money for survival , can be met with both collective and individual acts of expropriation . Vandalism , gatherings of hostility and visible ideas of attack can be effective threat to the removal of the visible contradictions in public space through displacement and valorization . If we understand the global network of exploitation as an organism , the metropolises are central junctions of its neural system which is vulnerable to repeated short circuits and interruptions .
In different contexts it became visible , that comrades are experimenting with different forms of intervention in the urban environment , correlating with each other in words and deeds , exploring the rapidly evolving social space and trying to find ways of intervention and attack .
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