“The coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.”
Lucy Parsons
“We are carrying a new world in our hearts, and this world is growing right now right here”
Durruti
“What the eye sees, the hand holds. The inflammable material of property explodes the flame of revolution”
Stirner
Very often we easily claim to be against capitalism, but we sometimes lack to truly think what capitalism means. Lost in the abstract fight against the insatiable beast, we forget how real it is.
For ages the arrogance of the rich and the people in power to proclaim exclusive domination upon our lives has been increasing. Controlling our time towards labour, they want to appropriate our emotions and social relations. Tiredness is no longer part of us, but the duty of our weekly hours. The same hour count that erases our desire for leisure time with friends and beloved ones. It is this duty that pushes our bodies and with them our first space of enunciation into the capitalist hands of the state and their servants. Connecting our lives into the most intimate weaving with property. Establishing the prison of binarism as an absolute truth and classifying some bodies and behaviors as more valuable than others.
Private property as we know it, the one we know in the capitalist system in which we were born and raised and which is therefore perceived almost as something “natural”, actually dates back a few centuries ago. It is only since the 17th century common ground that property is a fact of nature and an inviolable right of every citizen. Today, private property is considered in all countries a true sacred and natural right, absolute and inalienable, necessary and inviolable, worthy of being protected by the force of ideas and protected by the force of arms. Wealth has become an absolute good, and capitalism the best of all possible worlds.
Property is necessary for the state, for the rich and the powerful, to maintain their hegemony and it is not at all necessary for happiness. What do we gain from having more than others? Why should this make us happy? It is not the possession of something that makes us happy, but the ability to dispose of it. So why can’t we dispose of the things we need together with others, rather than keep it all for ourselves? There is a big difference between being able to use a given good collectively in the same way or in the way that individuals need and owning it only for oneself. Possessions and property give power. Power over when, how and who can access the good. Even the basic goods that are needed to live, such as housing, food, healthcare, mobility, knowledge…are the private property of a few rich people, companies or the state that decide at what price and conditions they can be made available to us. This creates an ongoing extortion, a tight leash around the neck, lengthening and shortening depending on the conceptions of who is holding the leash.
The state and those in power need to defend their hegemony and private property. They need laws, to check that they are obeyed and, consequently, to set up an enforcing and repressive body, represented by police and prisons.
These two institutions, prison and police, are structured and designed to reinforce the social inequality already present in society and to protect hierarchies and power.
It is no coincidence that the groups of offences with the highest number of registered cases are theft, fraud and property damage, which make up 62 % of the total number of criminal records in Germany (source: Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik 2018).
Another step on the ladder of private property is the monopolization of the means of production by those who maintain capital. Today’s system requires furious rhythm production to feed the jaws of capitalism. It does not matter what is produced and at whose expense, the important thing is to produce for those who can consume.
The arms industry is a clear example of exclusive production, which requires huge amounts of resources and moves huge amounts of capital, but who needs it, and who really wants it? We certainly don’t. Weapons that function as a means of globalization, positioning the nation as a unique and absolute form of social consolidation. Creating borders that only when under the power of these weapons and their servants, are made visible to the eyes of those who inhabit them. Finding in war, an imperious resource, to consolidate their centralist systems of power by means of the monopoly of violence.
It is the eternal lie of the ruling class to change the garb of colonial domination. A colonial domination that, with excuses of white supremacy, rapes, enslaves and murders entire populations by positioning any collective sentiment that does not conform to its modern democracy as barbaric and dangerous. All in order to appropriate natural resources and extract them by force for the sake of a few in the global-north. The numbing promise of modern western democracy that becomes a weapon against all liberation movements in the global south.
From colonial domination to the appropriation of our bodies, the most difficult task is to force us not to look at the world through the eyes of those who dominate us. Not to become allies of those who oppress us, and thus oppress those who have been positioned one step below us in the world.
Happiness can exist only with freedom and we can talk about freedom only when everyone is free.
We are sick of supporting debates over poverty, and being told that we should patiently wait until we get the so called benefits of the capitalist system. We are sick of being pawns in their power games, of being exploited and exploiters, more or less directly, of this world abused in every form, of living in the lie of democratic states and capitalism. We want neither to serve nor to be served. We reject all forms of hierarchy and authoritarianism.
We cannot remain still and passive, our ideas must be spread and take shape in practice for a total liberation of our self and of all the subjugated and exploited collectivities. So that power, accompanied by all its components authority, hierarchy, oppression and private property; and in all its forms, such as the state and its institutions, religious hierachies, patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, and speciesism remain only a distant memory.
As an anarchist block, we are the coming together of different life experiences and ideals. It is the love of freedom, and the conviction to fight against capitalism that unites us, and allows us to turn our differences into a joint struggle against oppression. We acknowledge the need for us all to work harder towards the acceptance of such differences. We are not calling you to join us, but sharing an open invitation to build together, to deepen our dialogue, to fight together.
Expropriation, occupation and scamming the state and the bourgeoisie are some examples of direct actions against private property, which we claim and relaunch as an act of liberation from the chains of capitalism, to regain possession of what has been taken away from us.
A re-appropriation that does not want to be an end in itself, it is not enough for us to have for ourselves what we manage to take back, but we want to share it. Lets destroy the system of private property and put solidarity into practice and put resources in common.
We don’t want a piece of the cake we want the whole bakery!
A life without capitalism is possible.
For a collective sabotage!