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Machinery of charity or revolutionary solidarity?

From Act for Freedom Now!

PDF in Spanish

"... establish, outside of all bourgeois politics, the solidarity of revolutionary action ..."

Mutual aid support networks, neighborhood networks, volunteers (or wage earners), food banks, the entire vast apparatus that emerged in a few weeks to contain the disastrous economic and social consequences that the pandemic has caused, have captured the attention of many, be it due to altruism, or due to pure and simple necessity. And it is normal, given that as in any crisis that the capitalist system goes through, the most serious consequences are suffered to a greater extent by those who prior to the crisis were already fucked, that is, the poor, in Madrid or in Sevastopol. Capitalists follow a simple logic: socialize losses, when they exist, and hoard profits, always. It is a logic that goes across a society divided between exploited and exploiters, between governed and governors.

And so we find ourselves in a situation of poverty and helplessness, of pure and simple need to eat, with the social services collapsed, the Church and NGOs, collapsed or, at least, overwhelmed enough to refer "cases" to these networks. Networks made up of a variety of neighborhood associations, neighborhood activists, social workers doing overtime, left-wing political collectives, various individuals, people who want to lend a hand, left-wing militants, the occasional infiltrated fascist, anarchists, libertarians, Christians grassroots, those who passed by, and those who simply wanted a fucking safe-conduct to evade the isolation imposed by force of a fine, a smack and a military boot. Oh, and we can't forget a few aspiring politicians, that they have not hesitated to suck up to the camera when the press appeared, to command and establish themselves as censors and organizers of some of these initiatives, which in some neighborhoods of Madrid, demanded levels of autonomy and pointed out the lack of horizontality and clarity. In the end, little by little, these networks are entering general dynamics of functioning as mere managers of charity, of extra support for social services, of an emergency prop in the face of a welfare state that has been dismantled for a long time and, now, overwhelmed.

Are we still talking about the wet dream of social democracy in the middle of 2020 and in the new post-covid-19 era? It seems so. The welfare state was a pact for social peace signed by the leftist aristocracy with our exploiters, a dream built on the brutal exploitation and plundering of other regions of the planet, the domination and depletion of the earth, the wheel of modern slavery of the production and consumption that we overpaid with the numbness of democratic pacification, where the repressive brutality of the State was justified and protected under selective repression against those adventurers who decided to break the margins of the democratic consensus. The project of this government, which some fash at a bar may brand as "social communist", it is only the usual path of following the path of underpinning a friendly-faced capitalism. And meanwhile, generating more and more excluded, in an acceleration of this process where technique and technological development play and will play an important role. Each time more people are pushed to the margins and becoming a management problem, with the over-flooding jails and the social services doing a balancing act, along with the different subsidies, the ERTE and various cushions of the system. The progressive government is the main prop of the regime, following the historical tradition of the left of numbing and pacifying the rage, with the aim of preserving order and normality, which is the perfect scenario for local and international exploiters.

We think it is important to highlight this, being sure that the queues to collect food in the food banks are here to stay, to highlight the role in reproducing the system that these initiatives can, and perhaps have already played. They are not born from nothing, they are not only a solidarity impulse, they are the materialization of a mentality derived from the welfare state project. Or at least, we believe, it is a determining factor.

When was the stinger removed from the wasp?

Because we do not want to contribute to the spectacularization of poverty as a fact derived from a pandemic, but as a structural consequence of a system that generates poverty and exploitation for the benefit of an elite. Because we know that we will have to tend to our basic needs and those of our friends, family and comrades, but we refuse that the price to be paid is the renunciation of the fight against those responsible for our misery. Because we don't want to conform to a calm and orderly logic that fits perfectly into maintaining the state of things, which speaks the discourse of order, of authority, of social distancing in the queues of supermarkets and food banks, states of exception, of apps that control our movements, of the military and police on every corner, of drones and swarms of surveillance cameras and private security.

Because we want to establish solidarity as a link of union with our equals, anonymous or not, in the fight against those who speculate in the neighborhoods, against property, against the ratholes in which we're holed up, exposed to poisoned air, against controllers, against the political class, against our bosses and employers, against borders, prison walls, fences and barbed wire, against those who seize up and hoard and live in opulence thanks to exploitation. Against the management of the catastrophe of the State and its fucking dystopia called “new normal”.

Nor do we want the capitalists to pay the consequences of the crisis, everything they have they have achieved through the theft and exploitation of ourselves. Globalization has made exploitation a non-homogeneous, but global process, acting in different layers. We want to settle accounts. We want to fight. We want to hear about strikes, looting, squats, riots, attacks and that its engine is solidarity and mutual support.

"The basis of revolutionary solidarity lies in recognizing the rebellion project itself in the struggles and actions of others and, therefore, seeing these others, at least potentially, as accomplices in the struggle."

We are disgusted by the disgusting welfare role that ends up generating institutions outside the institutions where a new vertical division is generated, between the one who gives and the one who receives, generating dependency and becoming a rule, routine and finally "normality" while our exploiters swim in abundance. The “specialists of charity”, speaking in silver, are managers of innocuous and harmless responses to the problems generated system at its root. Whatever it takes to avoid conflict: military and technology, cheap patriotism and an army of social workers, are the axes of the pincers of peace and social control.

We want to establish solidarity with others in the key of struggle, to experience mutual support as an impulse for struggle. Because it is a matter of real need, it always was, it was never an idealistic crusade, revolutionary solidarity is a necessity for those who decide to stand up to this world of misery.

The solidarity that bursts the illusory lines of the borders, which has in its essence the denial of false identities as the nation or the race, connects individuals in the language of the practice of the attack. And it is not enough for us at all to drive the fascists out of our neighborhoods.

Democracy and the welfare state, as a mirage and crystallization of the authority of the powerful over the oppressed, are the real virus. And it is not enough for us at all to drive the fascists out of our neighborhoods.

"And what does it mean to act in solidarity with others in struggle? Above all, it means continuing our own fight against all forms of domination and exploitation wherever we are. The State, Capital and all the institutions through which they exercise their power constitute a totality, and every attack of a part, even the smallest subversion, a minimal expression of a self-organized revolt, is an attack in general. ”