Editor's Note: This entry is one Worker's reaction to our interview from the Ukraine crisis, which you can read on our blog here.
It seems to us that there is a transitional phase (interval) from "situation" to "event" under insurrectional circumstances.
Despite the far-right or fascist involvement, an anarchic situation has been created. Any organization, ultra-left or far-right, loses its influence or vanguardesque stability in the transition from situation to event. This does not mean that an event cannot regress, but we find it trivial to postulate the type of insurrectional process that can consume the event--at that point we will have won...
The anarchic atmosphere of the situation is elucidated into an insurrectionary process--a becoming-insurrectional.This paradigmatic shift shakes the ground world-wide. The bodies--faceless, organless, dividuals-- of the disciplined society break into an ensemble of singularities (the multitude) with the aptitude to grab abstract desires and notions and forge them as concrete. The impossible becomes possible; the invisible visible; the the disappeared or unappeared, appears; the divided united--yet, united in their freedom.
The maelstrom of insurrection will whip through the Ukraine manifesting liberated zones. What will happen in these liberated zones will be determined by whether or not they fall into the archaic dualities of right versus left. Nuancing these zones will be delineated by the interlocutors of the zones: either as a locus of creativity and desire, or as States, thus speaking the language of our modern era, and resuscitating the same problematics caught in the web of modernist duality.
We hope the Ukrainians can show us the way in their insurrectional-becoming. As was written in the streets of Paris in '68: "barricades block the streets, but show the way."
Liberated territories have to be postulated as terra incognitas, not to necessarily "begin anew," but to formulate an area for our creative impetus.
"The burning barricades are visited by people who have come to let out anger and resentment that have accumulated over the years – for the excesses of cops; for the corruption; for the 'golden toilet'; for the stupidity of the sell-out officials. An elderly man, 80 years of age, walks up to young guys in masks and asks them for a bottle of flaming liquid. They ask him:'- Grandad, you wont be able to throw it far enough!- Just give me one, I want to show these beasts that they cannot treat me like this'"The youth might question the elderlies ability to throw a molotov the correct distance to smash against the police phalanx, but as the old man insinuates: with anger comes a logic of insurrection. Consequently, with this logic comes a realization of the total lack of boundaries. The trajectory of the molotov is not nearly as important as the indignant act. This anger screams: "I am willing to create! I recognize my will to power!"
Although Empire loses it's topographical boundaries, simultaneously manifesting new ones, the becoming-insurrectional loses its topological boundaries, simultaneously creating new ones.
Every time we unveil a bridge connecting pseudo-islands (these pseudo-contingent burst of crises) with capital, we must reconcile the seemingly unfathomable truth that today we deal with a crepuscular capitalism. The capitalism of today is a stage of capital's development that operates in constant crisis, in twilight. What isn't hallowed ground?
In a society that is in ruin, destruction becomes creation--desire becomes creation.
The Ukrainian situation has illustrated for us the archaic makeup of contemporary leftism. They joyfully march through the quagmires of the 20th century. Since no Lenin or no Durruti has risen from the ashes of Kyiv, those on the left disregard anything creative or new in Ukraine, calumniously condemning their insurrection to the helms of fascism. What boring pessimism!
Although we admit, in the preliminary stages of insurrection, with all its ambiguities and ambivalence, fascism is possible—primarily because anything is possible within insurrection. Nevertheless, within this gamble we can intensify this game, change the rules, or fold. Our role, along with the Ukrainians, is to push the struggle to the point of no return. This irrevocability of insurrection refuses to reciprocate banal versions of the 20th century—any pirouette into fascism. This is an apogee where fascism becomes unfathomable—and along with it, any forms of leftism. The leftist of today acknowledge that to destroy fascism they in turn must destroy themselves, and any remnants of a micro-fascism left from the 20th century. Ostensibly, this is what they fear the most.
“[W]hat fascism set in motion yesterday continues to proliferate in other forms, within the complex of contemporary social space. A whole totalitarian chemistry manipulates the structures of the state, political and union structures, institutional and family structures, and even individual structures, inasmuch as one can speak of a sort of fascism of the superego in situations of guilt and neurosis.” — Felix Guarttari
Empire has expanded the threshold well beyond our old forms, or our decrepit “chemistry,” of political discourse. Leftism is trailing behind. This is why leftism of today is but a sepulcher.