SENZA CENSURA N.22

march 2007

EDITORIAL

We cannot not dedicate the editorial of this number to the events that have monopolized in the last weeks the general attention of the movement. We refer to the arrests happened on 12th February, to the relative heavy criminalizing campaign against many structures and movements (culminated with the arrest of 4 "guilty" persons which had fixed a manifest in solidarity with those arrested), to the climate of terror and social alarm created in sight of the demonstration on 17th February in Vicenza (Italy). And during the great day of mobilisation itself.
But we would want to make it, like usual, exiting from the specific theme (for this we partially send back to some materials contained in the number, comprised our official notice made in the days following to the arrests of February) but trying to follow some traces of a more general political reflection.

A heavy continuity
Since time we repeatedly assist, in more and more obvious shapes, to a progressive narrowing of the spaces of political activity. We denounce it since a long time.
The examples could be many, and we cite only some just because, perhaps, more than others they have provoked recently a debate on a national level: from the arrests of the antifascists on 11th March 2006 in Milan, to the criminalization of slogan and practicals of movement during the demo about Palestine, to the inquiries for association crimes or with the accusation of "subversive purpose" recorded in several Italian cities. To these, naturally, we have to add tens and tens of episodes of "little" repression (more or less heavy) released every time that a political or trade-union initiative is out of the practical or ideological outlines defined by the other part, be they local or national.
In front of these continuous episodes, we record a great difficulty of analysis and action.
We have the impression that often tehy tend to lose of sight the general picture, concentrating most times only on critical judgments of merit or, worse, attempting in debilitating and destructive reflections on abstruse concepts like "opportunity", "violence", "isolation", "adventurism", and so on. The object of the argument, nevertheless, is always the same subject that endures the repression (or its behavior, its analysis, its perspective), and very rarely the political meaning of every repressive attack, which jump is determining, which are the political reasonings that move it.
They arrive to the paradox that, while imperialism has definitively abandoned every "democratic" appearance and makes the war, the violence, the holdup, the exploitation its pillars, we lose time to discuss if it is right or less screaming "10-100-1000 Nassirya", if it is corrected or less taking back with determination spaces and incomes, if it is madness trying to experiment again shapes of revolutionary organization. We think that this carries mainly to two results: on one side they proceed towards a continuous progressive withdrawal, giving for deducted that some things (a lot!) cannot be done again. Certainty, we have to consider that times "are changing", also from the tactical point of view; but this is not enough! Also because, of this step, we will find ourselves soon to have not any political space, definitively crushed between the most subservient adaptation to the choices of government (of any government...) and the material risk to be exhibited torepressive and/or media "storms" of unpredictable heaviness.
In second place this produces division, creating "differences" and differentiations, and contributing to develop the arrogant presumption to know or worst to can establish which is the limit within protecting ourselves and our political path from these repressive attacks. Until we do not beat ourselves the face... The political reflection than we think it has to be done on the last events is instead obligatory to introduce in a more general reflection. We assisted again to a leap of quality in the political repressive technologies of prevention, to a perfect " squad game " in which secret services, magistracy, political forces, mass media, tested a political action of control to 360°. In a blow they were put to the center of the "viewfinder" revolutionary soldiers, structures of movement, experiences of political intervention in the world of the work, union fields, mobilizations of mass. And simultaneously, in a blow, the political situation showed its own homogenous alignment on the strategic classic positions of the imperialist political model of the "struggle to terrorism" : with us, or traitor!
Nevertheless in Vicenza they were many people...

Movement and identity of class
In the last years we assisted to different occasions for the development of strugglesand movements which succeeded in coagulating and materializing themselves around specific contradictions or unitedby the sharing of wide general subjects. From the "no global" movement, culminated with the days of Genoa, to the struggles of the public transit workers, from the no-tav movement to the struggles of Melfi or Scanzano, from the demos against the war and for Palestine until what already since time was forecasted to be another great occasion of mobilization: the struggle against the broadening of the military base of Vicenza. It is obvious to all that from no of these experiences, born on different subjects and in very different contexts, it has succeeded in developing up to now a general movement, like other times in past, able to start an irreversible trial, a leap of quality in the crash and in the critical conscience towards the system, consolidating new shapes of organization of the class.
Rather, around these experiences have coagulated many realities, also very different, that in that special moment have recognized in those key-words and have given, in their sum, visibility and identity, testing also original shapes of coordination and political cooperation. But when these experiences went diminishing, also the rich circuit of political and social aggregates with them developed, returned many times to reorganize itself, to dissolve "itself" in those well-known "one thousand streams" object from years of the toils and of the experiments of those political and military subjects of antagonism...
Maybe because no of these simply important experiences succeeded in consolidating around itself a strong identity of class, traceable like in the past to special quite visible areas of the population or of the productive cycle (workers, students, etc). And maybe it contributed strong, besides the objective conditions of withdrawal of the class, the enormous and continuous work of control and prevention that, both from the political point of view and from that more properly repressive, the state and the main political and union forces invested to divide, to restore every possible consolidation inside of the institutional "compatibility".
No political revolutionary or antagonist subjectivity had or has today the capacity to support this crash: who experienced payed to an expensive price this attempt or was "called back", supplying new managers to the institutional apparatus and new legitimacy spaces to shameful reformist drifts. But if, with many humility, we tried to do a brief budget of this cycle of mobilizations, everything makes us think that so much "brace" conitnues to hatch under the ruins of the brutal restructuring to which we assisted in these years, and this stimulates us to continue the reflection and the work.

The role of reformism
The large demo of 17th february testifies how much is developing really the opposition to the building of the base of Vicenza, but in the situation untill now described we cannot hide that this can have two value, two possible developments: or to be the demonstration that, although all, today it is still possible to do a concrete, material, politic opposition, developing a real autonomy, or to be only the representation of a "simulated" democracy in which, in front of a generalized attack, there is however still space for opposition. This is the strategic role assigned today to reformism: to maintain "under control", linking them to the values of imperialism, the expressions of movement that are born from the development of the real contradictions of our time.
In this context, in scarcity of a general sight, the reformists will experience still to play the role of champions of the weak, of representatives of the people, of margin against unjustice and barbarity. And in fact today, in the mobilizations against the base of Vicenza, they succeed in having a political legitimacy, subjects and political forces impudently accomplices of the imperialist policies of this government and in perfect continuity with the international strategies of the Usa and European imperialism. And their "battle for democracy" goes also and above all across the total sharing and employment of the repressive strategies towards everything what it is moved outside from them or however outside of their control.

Quite dug, old mole!
At this point, let's come back to ourselves. The discussion developed from the collective during the last months wanted to emphasize these two strategic knots, these two "leader-lines" became central for the perspective of our work: to exploit the "tension to autonomy" and to develop the "critic to reformism". We consider these two objectives like the grill of reference which structures and atthe same time identifies our work, both for what pertains the editors' debate (and the development of the individual numbers of S.C.), and for what pertains our political and militant engagement upset to the outside.
Our efforts always were directed to investigate and to exploit those behaviors, those dinamics, those realities that stretch out (and sometimes succeed) to develop autonomous routes,both on the national level and on the international one. These routes, how we saw, reveal themselves often partial, not comprehensive, destined to be reorganized. But "...in the long trial of development of the class'contradictions it is entirely useless or entirely harmful. Above all in the moments of crash with the state, there are leaps from which is not possible to come back completely and that therefore constitute objectively a progress of all the front of class independently from the specific political results reached." [editorial SC n. 19/06]
At the same time we are since always pledged to denounce and contrast every attempt, political or repressive, to close every shape of opposition inside the thresholds of compatibility defined from the system, that "...cancer, that grows from a lot of years, and that propagates, spreads more near ourselves, like a metastasis. A cancer that removes energy to our anger, that limits our perspective and that becomes a tool more and more important and effective in the hands of the enemy." [editorial SC n. 20/06].
Autonomy and reformism are today more and more elements bounded among them from a clear dialectic relation: where it is developed reformism it cannot develop autonomy, where it is developed autonomy the reformism goes in crisis. This is the political key of reading from which we start in order to make effective our work and that we propose to those who want to collaborate with us: we are interested to confront and to cooperate with others finding concrete grounds work or political debate in which the experience, the contributions, the tools of everyone of us are available to work and to consolidate these two objective inside the real paths of the class.