We republish an excerpt from the CCF’s (Conspiracy of Cells of Fire) book New Urban Guerrilla on the occasion of “World Workers’ Day”, one of the few days when leftists remember to take to the streets, hold their ritual marches and speak their faded slogans. The left has never been able to fully recover from the consequences of the rise of neoliberalism and the fall of the USSR, and it never will as long as it clings to outdated and anachronistic theories and practices that struggle to cope with the rapid developments of the last few decades. The concept of ‘worker’ and ‘class struggle’ that they so glorify no longer have the same clarity and meaning that they had a century ago. The third industrial revolution, the automation it brought about and globalisation have led to the expansion of the tertiary sector at the expense of the primary and secondary sectors. For the average young worker who works in hotels and cafes, the ‘occupation of the means of production’ does not make as much sense as it would to a bachelor worker, especially when the rusty leftist rhetoric has not even managed to prevail against neoliberal standards, the doctrine of ‘there is no alternative’ and the false promises of social advancement and enrichment. The so-called class consciousness is now almost non-existent. We cannot even imagine how much more fossilized the left will look like with the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution, which is already just around the corner, and which will bring even more radical socio-economic transformations, changing and blurring even more the class dynamics and the meaning of ‘worker’.
With all that has been said about the left, it is therefore not surprising either why a ‘movement’ such as that of the a/a space, which tends to become increasingly leftist, is so alienated from population groups it is supposed to support, such as workers and minorities.
Or May Day is not the worker’s right.
May Day is sabotage, memory and consistency in the workers’ hellhole
Action and attack on the mechanisms of oppression
For anarchy and nihilism
– IO EIF
So here it is necessary to talk about society and the individual. We declare ourselves anti-socialists and have referred extensively to our conception of society. However, because we find that confusion remains in many mouths and ears producing distorted ideologies of revolutionary elitism, we for our part persist in striking down this misunderstanding.
First of all, by the term society we do not in any way exclusively define the numerical population of people. We characterize as a whole the majority framework of attitudes, traditions, morals and customs within which the processes of power are accepted. For example, the concepts of property, patriotism, religion, are pervasive social values deeply rooted in <> without the need for law enforcement and state surveillance.
Of course, the majority of society, beyond the common belief shared in the necessity of power, is at the same time divided into classes. Social classes that are not entrenched from one another, as in past centuries when natural exclusion from the upper echelons of power prevailed (pyramidal morphology based on descent and hereditary rights), but constitute categories of people based on their fluid position in production and their economic surface. Today, therefore, people are in constant class mobility due to the structure of the modern system. The participatory form of capitalism and the real or fictitious opportunities for professional development form a fluctuating scale on which petty bourgeoisie can become bosses (self-made professionals and careerists) and bosses can fall into petty bourgeoisie (company bankruptcies, failed investments). Continue reading “‘III) Class war is outdated’ – Conspiracy of Cells of Fire”