Dearest Wolfi and Anarchy magazine,
This response to your review of our book, Days of War, Nights of Love [in Anarchy #52], may be reaching you some months after you published it- you know how these things go, though: no one else in our collective tried their hand at it, since I'm the one who keeps in touch with you anyway, and I've spent the past five and a half months traversing the nether regions of Europe and thus hadn't even seen the review until I stumbled across it on the fucking internet. Anyway, being anarchists, we believe in "diversity of tactics," which involves, among other things, explaining your tactics when it's not clear to your comrades what you are trying to do- so that's what I'll try to do here.
Before we get started, I want to say that I agree with all of your essential points in the review- the history sections in the book are often wildly (and as I'll explain, deliberately) inaccurate, the class war approach of much traditional anarchism is notably absent, and the texts ring with a little too much certitude. Why publish a book filled with bad history, class unconsciousness, and strident self-importance?
To begin with, it's crucial to understand that when we make "anarchist propaganda," our chief concern is not whether what we say is "true" in some "objective" sense, but rather with what the effects of saying it are. This is partly due to our lack of faith in Truth as an ideal (or a possibility), but chiefly stems from our desire to make things happen: to quote the old asshole, "philosophers have only interpreted the world- the point is to change it." Believing that "actions speak louder than words," we compose our words as actions, not descriptions. If, for example, we think we can help those alienated by other anarchist material to discover ways it is relevant to their lives by publishing a broadside entitled "Anarchism is Boring," we don't waste time debating whether or not anarchism actually is boring. So when you take us to task for not sticking to the facts enough, you're judging us by a standard we have temporarily thrown out in order to achieve another purpose.
Not that we think everyone should throw it out, or that we intend to spend much time doing without it! Those who think that, by trying one approach, we are legislating against all other approaches, are still working on the "scarcity system" of radicalism that would have us all struggling against each other for righteousness. But we are not working in a void, not trying to represent all anarchists on our own- the material we produce is intended to work in tandem with the other, different material others make. Our approach, and any approach, for that matter, can only be effective in the context of the whole of all anarchist efforts. OK, so let's look at what we tried to contribute to that whole with this book.
This wasn't a book for the Wolfi Landstreichers of our community. When we make a book for you, Wolfi, you'll know it- as you imagined, it will be a collection of stories from the real lives of people like you and I who are struggling to make world revolution and live to the fullest in the process. As such, it might not make much sense to those who don't have the context in their own lives to relate. There will be time for that book in a few years, if we're still alive and out of prison- first, we felt it a higher priority to make a book for the ones who wouldn't relate to that unwritten book, so we won't have to do without them in this struggle. Such a book is sure to alienate and displease many a Wolfi; but given our purpose, and constructive criticism aside, how our comrades respond to this project is not nearly as important as how others respond.
And so when, for example, we speak against the bourgeoisie as a culture rather than a class, it is not because we have forgotten that they are a class of people who do in fact oppress the rest of us, but because the book is intended for readers who still are tempted, perhaps despite themselves, by the mirage of "success" capitalist culture offers to keep us fighting amongst ourselves instead of contesting their power. For this specific purpose, it is much more important to show that acquiring wealth and power at others' expense is ultimately unrewarding than it is to simply state, as everyone else in our community already has and is, that the ones who do so are out enemies- especially since the average woman on the street quite possibly considers it more likely that she will advance in social and financial standing than that the abolition of classes will take place in her lifetime. Accuse her of being responsible for the oppression of others should she "win" the rat race, and she may understandably counter that if it were not her, it would be someone else; take away her faith in the very worth of the prizes offered by capitalism, however, and revolution manifests itself as the only solution to her problems- whether or not we spell that out in the pages of this particular book.
We don't talk much in the book about revolution in the strict sense- you know, the total overthrow of power- and power relations- because we didn't want to trigger any automatic responses in people who, without due consideration, had already rejected such a thing as impossible or undesirable. This does not mean that we consider the little revolts such as shoplifting, passionate love, and adultery that we celebrate as "sufficiently revolutionary," let alone that we are trying to prescribe them for anyone who "wants to be revolutionary"- to the contrary! We write of the radical tendencies expressed by these half-revolts in order to suggest to those already engaged in them, but lacking a larger analysis, that-first-their little revolts may stem from deeper, if unarticulated, desires for greater social change, and second- such revolts are not enough to gratify those desires.
You accuse us of encouraging people to channel their revolt into the creation of subcultural identities. But throughout the book we urge against the consolation of half-measures such as subculture and the consumption of "radical" products and ideologies, and at the same time champion all the longings which capitalist/hierarchical society cannot satisfy. Our intention by doing so was to help create a revolutionary class of people whose demands are neither met my the status quo or its loyal opposition, people who, if they are to remain true to themselves, must make revolution. If we are successful in this project, it is not necessary for us to advocate that revolution specifically: other books can handle that.
Now let's turn to the most controversial matter, our approach to history and our emphasis in these pages on the value of myth. You argue that "the problem with history as we encounter it is precisely that it is taught to us in a mythological form, emphasizing selective aspects that uphold the current culture and its values"; we argue that all representations of history emphasize selective aspects (how could they not, faced with the vastness of the world behind us in time?), according to who is doing the representing.
You insist on a "demystification" of history, in which presumably the "real" history (I assume by this you mean the version that you prefer) of the human race will be revealed- we insist that such a thing is impossible, and therefore that the value of history is to be gauged by what positive things it can offer us in the present, not- again- by whether it is objectively "True" or not.
This matter is complicated by the little history sections which, inspired at the time by the humorous megalomania of the Dadaists, we threw into the book for entertainment. These sections are so blatantly inaccurate that we thought it would be apparent to all that they were included to play a role somewhere between comic relief and playful bedtime story. Our reasoning was thus: anyone who knows anything about history will recognize the absurdity of our summaries and enjoy them on that account (for heaven's sake, we even stated that Jews were denied entrance to the New York Stock Exchange as a consequence of Abbie Hoffman's famous prank there!), anyone who doesn't know anything about the events we refer to will hopefully be inspired to read up on them and learn more (and discover how loose our interpretations are when they do), and- as strict history is not our forte- it was better that we emphasize our shortcomings than conceal them. A more generous reading of the book than yours would recognize in these sections a goodnatured satire of our own arguments regarding history and myth; it takes a real besserwisser, as they say here in Sweden, to take advantage of this obvious opportunity to accuse us of inaccurate reporting. Just so you know, I've read the same biographies of D' Annunzio you probably have, and seen the photos of him at Il Duce's side- we plagiarized Hakim Bey's paragraph about him because it is an unparallelable example of ridiculous subjective interpretation, not because it was the best history of Fiume we could find in the libraries we've spent a fair portion of the last few years living in.
Finally, regarding the overweening self-importance of much of the writing- as I've articulated already, we don't try to "speak the Truth," nor do we profess to write texts that perfectly capture our own subjective perspectives. We make material to challenge the assumptions of those whose acceptance of capitalist/hierarchical values hasn't been successfully challenged by other anarchists' approaches, and to provide tools for other anarchists to apply in their own provocations. The texts speak for themselves, not for us, and they are sure of themselves so they can do this without getting tangled up in disclaimers and apologies. We, on the other hand, cannot be summarized in any language or number of words, and are no more sure of these ideas than we are of any others; but we know this does not absolve us of the responsibility to act, and so with the experiment of this book, we hazarded a little contribution to the whole of the anarchist project. I think it has helped motivate some who never would have been interested in reading a magazine like Anarchy before; and if it is not enough by itself (what could be?) for those who have taken it as their introduction to anti-authoritarian resistance and autonomous activity, I hope others, like you, will figure out how to provide the missing pieces.
Yours for all-out war and love,
An anonymous CrimethInc. ex-worker
2695 Rangewood Drive
Atlanta, GA 30345