A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #46 - Don't give up on complexity and the sense of impotence Alessandro Granata Seixas (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Dear comrades, ---- We know well that the weariness you speak of is not 
an individual weakness. It is not laziness, it is not disinterest, it is 
not escape. It is the real burden of a very difficult historical moment. 
It is the fatigue of those who look at the world without illusions and 
see wars, ecological devastation, precariousness, social isolation, 
repression, schools bent to the interests of the market, unions often 
reduced to managing the existing situation, institutional left-wing 
groups incapable of imagining a real break, fragmented movements, small, 
weakened revolutionary organizations, sometimes closed in on defending 
their own survival.

This weariness must be taken seriously. It would be offensive to respond 
with facile optimism, with motivational phrases, with the rhetoric of 
"you just have to want it." Reality is complex, violent, and 
multilayered. Contemporary capitalism no longer dominates solely through 
the visible master, the factory, wages, and direct command over work. It 
dominates through finance, debt, data, algorithms, corporatized schools, 
permanent war, the control of bodies, the destruction of territories, 
social solitude, the transformation of every relationship into 
performance and every need into a market.

But precisely because reality is complex, we can't afford to use it as 
an excuse for disengagement. Complexity doesn't absolve. Complexity 
calls us.

Saying that the world is difficult to understand can be an act of 
lucidity. But it can also become an elegant form of surrender. A 
cultured, refined surrender, full of analysis, but still a surrender. 
Power loves this form of paralyzed intelligence. It loves it when we can 
perfectly describe our defeat, but can no longer imagine a step forward. 
It loves it when we transform analysis into discouragement, criticism 
into bitterness, historical memory into nostalgia, activism into testimony.

Capitalism doesn't just win when it exploits, fires, bombs, devastates, 
and represses. It also wins when it convinces us that there is no 
alternative. It wins when it persuades us that we are too few, too 
divided, too old, too tired, too late. It wins when it manages to 
transform our clarity into impotence.

This is why we need to reverse the reasoning. The harshness of this 
phase isn't proof that organizing is futile. It's proof that organizing 
is necessary.

We don't commit ourselves because victory is guaranteed. We commit 
ourselves because surrender guarantees defeat.

Today, many people seem changed. They seem lonelier, more distrustful, 
more individualistic, more closed in their own private pain. But we must 
not make the mistake of turning this observation into a moral judgment. 
People have not become worse by nature. They have been produced within 
more fragmented, more precarious, more competitive social relationships. 
They have grown up in a world that has destroyed or emptied many 
collective spaces: political parties, unions, community centers, social 
spaces, educational communities, neighborhoods, assemblies, and places 
of political formation.

Contemporary capitalism has accomplished one of its most effective 
feats: it has transformed collective problems into individual failures. 
If you're poor, you need to get better education. If you're precariously 
employed, you need to be more flexible. If you're exploited, you need to 
reinvent yourself. If you're tired, you need to work on your resilience. 
If you're alone, you need to improve your personal life. If school is 
crushing you, you need to build skills. If work wears you down, you need 
to adapt.

Thus, people no longer immediately recognize themselves as a class. They 
perceive themselves as isolated individuals grappling with personal 
problems. But this doesn't mean the class has disappeared. It means it 
has been dispersed, fragmented, rendered opaque to itself.

Here lies one of the fundamental tasks of the anarchist and libertarian 
communist organization: to recompose what capital divides .

For this reason, we must be wary of all those definitions of social 
class that, instead of broadening our understanding of exploitation, end 
up erasing the fundamental conflict. Of course, today a narrow and 
purely industrial definition of the proletariat is no longer sufficient. 
The exploited are not just factory workers. They also include precarious 
workers, migrants, students, care workers, technicians, teachers, the 
unemployed, cognitive workers, delivery workers, school staff, the 
inhabitants of devastated territories, those who unknowingly produce 
data, those who are squeezed as consumers, those blackmailed by debt, 
those who suffer from war, racism, patriarchy, and environmental 
devastation.

But broadening the notion of class doesn't mean dissolving it. It 
doesn't mean replacing the exploited with an infinite sum of separate 
categories: vulnerable users, vulnerable citizens, disadvantaged youth, 
energy-poor, conscious consumers, marginalized individuals. When 
language erases the relationship between those who command and those who 
suffer, between those who own and those who work, between those who 
accumulate and those who pay the price, then it becomes functional to 
capitalism. Capital loves to divide us into targets. We must recognize 
ourselves as comrades in exploitation. Capital names categories. We must 
recompose class . Capital fragments pain. We must organize its strength. 
This is why anarchist communism is not a relic. It is not a nostalgia 
for the past. It is not a flag to be kept in a closed room. It is one of 
the few perspectives capable of speaking to the present, if we have the 
courage to bring it to life. Because it holds together what

that others separate: freedom and equality, individual and collectivity, 
autonomy and organization, social conflict and rejection of 
authoritarianism, trade union struggle and revolutionary transformation, 
ecological questions and social questions, internationalism and 
territorial roots.

Anarchist communism says something simple and radical: we don't want to 
replace one ruling class with another. We don't want a state that 
governs in the name of the people. We don't want a party that proclaims 
itself the external conscience of the exploited. We don't want new 
hierarchies disguised as emancipation. We want the exploited to become 
protagonists of their own liberation. We want a society of free and 
equal people, founded on self-management, mutual aid, cooperation, the 
socialization of wealth, and the concrete freedom of each and every person.

But this perspective doesn't exist alone. It's not enough to be right in 
theory. You have to become credible in practice. And this is where your 
weariness, comrades, meets our task.

Building an anarchist organization today means working on multiple 
levels simultaneously.

On a theoretical level , we must update our categories without losing 
the heart of the conflict. We must understand finance, artificial 
intelligence, global war, the climate crisis, the transformation of 
work, corporatized schools, and the crisis of traditional unions. But we 
must do so without losing our bearings: capitalism remains a system 
founded on exploitation, accumulation, hierarchy, domination, and the 
destruction of life.

On the political level , we must move beyond opinion-making and 
testimony. Commenting on the disaster isn't enough. Good analysis isn't 
enough. We need a proposal for action. We need to define objectives, 
campaigns, slogans, and places to establish ourselves. We need to 
understand where we can truly make an impact: in schools, workplaces, 
unions, communities, in anti-war struggles, in the defense of common 
goods, in movements against repression, and in educational and social 
networks.

On the union level , we must reject both concerted bureaucracy and 
impotent maximalism. The union cannot simply be an apparatus that 
authorizes setbacks, nor a group that shouts without building power 
relations. It must return to being a battleground, a school of 
organization, and an instrument of material solidarity. This is why it 
is essential to work within and beyond the unions, build coordination, 
connect workers from different sectors, break competition between 
categories, and heal what the market divides.

On the human level , perhaps the most difficult, we must learn to be 
together again.

This is not a minor detail. Many organizations don't die simply because 
of a lack of political direction. They die from a lack of interpersonal 
skills. From unspoken fatigue. From personalisms. From entrenched 
resentments. From arguments that turn into wounded identities. From 
comrades who feel used, judged, ignored. From young people who join and 
find closed language, incomprehensible rituals, old controversies, and a 
lack of care.

A revolutionary organization cannot be merely a political machine. It 
must also be a habitable human space.

Not in the sentimental or intimate sense of the term. But in the 
profoundly political sense of mutual care. A militant community must be 
able to debate harshly without destroying one another, criticize without 
humiliating, decide without crushing, welcome without watering down, 
educate without indoctrinating, value without creating informal hierarchies.

Human relationships are not an accessory to politics. They are already 
politics . Because a society of free and equal people cannot be built by 
organizations founded on toxic, authoritarian, competitive, and 
resentful relationships. The means must contain at least the seeds of 
the end. If we want a libertarian society, our practices must already 
educate in freedom, responsibility, solidarity, and trust.

This is even more true in our relationships with the younger 
generations. We cannot expect young comrades to join our organizations 
simply by accepting formulas, liturgies, and languages ​​of the past. We 
must offer them not a political church, but a space for growth, action, 
study, responsibility, and experimentation. We must be able to say: you 
don't come here to repeat a doctrine, you come to build a project. Here 
your anger isn't judged, it's directed. Here your anxiety isn't mocked, 
it's understood as a social fact. Here your solitude meets organization. 
Here your desire for freedom finds companions with whom to become a 
collective force.

In this sense, experiences like a libertarian pedagogical collective, an 
inter-union network in schools, a study group, an editorial team, a 
local assembly, an anti-militarist campaign, or a labor dispute can be 
much more than small episodes. They can become laboratories for 
recomposition. They can demonstrate, concretely, that anarchism is not 
chaos, isolation, or aesthetic testimony, but a method of organization, 
educational relationships, social conflict, and the building of bonds.

We don't have to convince the entire world at once. We must start with 
real, credible, generous, and non-sectarian groups.

A well-conducted open meeting is no small thing. A young colleague who 
stays because he feels listened to is no small thing. A worker who 
understands she's not alone is no small thing. A dispute that unites 
teachers, ATA staff, students, and

Families is no small thing. Where a network of work and protection is 
created, we don't feel alone and we defend ourselves from ideological 
and physical attacks. A clear document, capable of speaking beyond our 
own circle, is no small thing. A discussion that, instead of dividing, 
produces common direction is no small thing. A human relationship saved 
by political care is no small thing. These are the building blocks of 
reconstruction. Of course, they aren't enough. But nothing is enough by 
itself. A newspaper isn't enough, a union isn't enough, a collective 
isn't enough, training isn't enough, mutualism isn't enough, the streets 
aren't enough, theory isn't enough. It's the connection that counts. 
It's the ability to hold all these plans together within a strategy. Our 
organization must serve this purpose: not to contemplate its own 
insignificance, but to transform every small strength into leverage. Not 
to preserve identity, but to produce action. Not to survive, but to 
grow. Not to speak only to those who are already convinced, but to reach 
those who feel the discomfort of the present without yet having the 
words to name it.

Those who have become disillusioned are right when they say the 
challenges are enormous. They are right when they see the limitations. 
They are right when they denounce the weakness of our forces. But this 
reasoning must not lead to withdrawal. A more demanding question must 
arise: what do we actually do with the forces we have?

Because every difficult moment presents a choice. We can simply record 
the decline, or we can become the starting point for a new possibility. 
We can waste away in regret, or we can build new tools. We can say that 
people have changed and therefore there's nothing more to be done, or we 
can learn to talk to today's people. We can lament the crisis of 
militancy, or we can make militancy understandable, useful, desirable, 
and human again.

History doesn't reward those who are always right. It rewards, at best, 
those who know how to organize themselves within the contradictions of 
their time.

To you, tired comrade, I wouldn't say: don't be pessimistic. Rather, I 
would say: don't let pessimism become your destiny. Use it as a 
precision instrument, not a chain. Be severe in your analysis, but 
generous in your practice. Don't believe in easy consolations, but don't 
despise small beginnings. Don't ask activism to erase fatigue, but ask 
it to give it meaning.

We need precisely these comrades: not naive, not rhetorical, not blinded 
by enthusiasm. Comrades capable of seeing the darkness, but not of 
inhabiting it like a home. Comrades capable of telling the truth about 
the current situation, but also of taking responsibility for changing it.

We're not at the end of the story. We're in one of its most difficult 
moments.

The world of capital promises only war, solitude, competition, 
ecological catastrophe, technological obedience, widespread 
exploitation, and freedom reduced to consumption. Faced with all this, 
organized, communist, libertarian anarchism, rooted in social struggles, 
remains one of the few perspectives that does not require the exploited 
to surrender to a new master, a new state, a new ruling party, a new 
ruling class.

Anarchism demands something more difficult and more beautiful: becoming 
protagonists.

This is why we cannot give up. If we are few, every comrade counts.
If we are tired, we must share the burden. If we are scattered, we must 
network.
If reality is complex, we must organize ourselves better. If people have 
changed, we must learn new languages ​​without losing our clarity and 
analysis.
If capital fragments, we must recompose. If the world tells us there is 
no future, we must build a future.

Emancipation toward a world of free and equal people is not a 
pre-determined path. It is a difficult journey, full of defeats, 
contradictions, mistakes, and new beginnings. But it is the only path 
worth taking.

Not because we're certain of victory. But because we know for certain 
that surrender would mean leaving the world in the hands of those who 
are destroying it.

So, comrade, let's catch our breath. Let's look around. Let's seek out 
those who still haven't given up. Let's rebuild words, bonds, tools, and 
organization. Let's make our weariness not a sign of the end, but proof 
that we've fought long enough to know how necessary it is to continue.

Let us not cry over our weakness.

Let's organize it.

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