Anyone who decides to organise my life for me can never be my comrade. - Alfredo M. Bonanno

The reduction of class war to a mere military confrontation carries within it the logical conclusion that, if we undergo a military defeat on this terrain, the class war ceases to exist as such. From this we come to the not just theoretical but practical absurdity that in Italy today, after the defeat of the combatant organizations, there is no longer an actual class war.

If I don’t feel like carrying on, given that no one can be forced to continue if they don’t feel like it, I say, ‘My friends, a man is made of flesh and blood, he can’t go on to infinity. So, if I don’t feel I can make it, what must I do? Sign a piece of paper? I don’t carry out impure actions, I don’t get comrades arrested, I’m simply making a declaration of my own desistence.’ I have always considered this to be a legitimate position, because nobody can be obliged to carry on if they don’t feel up to it. But desistence is no longer legitimate if, in order to justify it, I come out with the statement, ‘I can’t carry on because the war is over’. No, I no longer agree, because where does that lead us? To all the others both inside and outside prison for whom it isn’t true that the war is over, or for whom this concept is dubious, but end up believing it because everybody is saying so. And, desisting or not desisting, they end up reaching the same conclusion. It would be quite indecorous for me to push others to desist in order for me to justify my own personal decision to give up the struggle.

In order to break out of the magic circle of the theatricals of commodities we must refuse all roles, including that of the ‘professional’ revolutionary.