(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie - Conversation with Eduardo Colombo: "When the project does not exist, the act of revolt becomes repetitive", Saint-Imier, August 2012 (fr)

Here is the transcription and translation of an interview with Eduardo Colombo during the 
International Anarchist meetings that took place in Saint-Imier (Switzerland) in August 
2012. ---- The issues discussed revolve around the specific anarchist organization, 
so-called spontaneous movements born in recent years and what they mean. They also address 
the issues of "alternative" concrete within the existing system called wanting to subvert 
the importance of collective rebellion to the shock of the established order in terms of 
its imaginary significations and therefore training revolutionary subjects, and finally an 
overview of current thinking on the relations individual / company that moves and 
reformulates the problematization of the subject and subjectivity in relation to their 
emancipation.

This interview was conducted by a comrade Libertario Grupo Acci?n Directa, Madrid.

On the organization and especifismo platformism

Gladys P. : What is your perception of especifismo as a form of organization that seems to 
be booming at the moment and which runs a major debate in the international anarchism.

E. Colombo : I think there is a particular historical situation, which is that anarchism 
is not working now implementing it originally had when the militant proletariat is 
integrated in the struggles social. The proletariat went by diluting in Western countries, 
and gained an integration method that I called in an article written there about forty 
years, "Imaginary integration of the proletariat" [1] in the sense that it was made ?? 
possible by the adequacy of its action at law, by some participation in consumer and 
political elections, all of which have the conditions of a situation of confrontation type 
classes revolutionaries were diluted. And the problem of especifismo focuses on this, 
since there is not a definite, clear social basis on which anarchism today. Anarchists in 
the position to recognize them, ie to form an ideological group that necessarily leads to 
the formation of federations defined as specific anarchist, a structure - the critical 
point of view of a position non-sp?cifiste - a little the structure of political parties.
To me, it seems to me that expresses this conflict especifismo / anti-especifismo , 
fundamentally in the history of the movement in Latin America has a clear meaning is that 
- and this is a somewhat personal impression - there is an amalgam, a synergy between two 
different concepts and that people use them as if they were the same thing, namely that 
since the especifismo rooted and appears to be the only way to organize the positions 
platformists behind begin to integrate or amalgamate with especifismo so that defending 
it, we defend the same time positions platformists .
Both ideological positions that are not clear to most people, produce a change from the 
point of view of other anarchist positions, which I consider more open, is not favorable 
because they close a little discussion. It is important to recall the Latin American 
origin of the discussion on especifismo , because I also think that the current problem 
that gives a place platformism comes from Latin America, because of guerrilla actions, or 
type "Guevara."

At the beginning of the labor movement in Argentina, the anarchists had a dominant 
position, and that from the 1880s. It was a time when there was a great debate on the 
labor organization. Both the Socialists and anarchists were part of what was then the 
working population of South America, especially in the Rio de la Plata, Buenos Aires, 
Montevideo. Most important in Buenos Aires because of the size of the city, but the 
internationalist movement probably began in Montevideo with the actions of the exiles of 
the Commune of Paris. Then Bakuninists groups are formed in Buenos Aires, and the 
fundamental debate revolved around what was called the anarcho-communism .

The idea was that of anarcho-communism, anti-organizational (anti-organizer), who opposed 
the permanent organization because the companions said that when the anarchists organized, 
they created all power structures internal party, and they criticized many Malatesta for 
his organizational position, in the newspapers of Argentina they called the 
"organomaniaque" . All this anti-organizational trend, which was not individualistic - it 
is important to remember because then many historians have called individualistic through 
ignorance or for other reasons - has lost ground as the Anarchism is integrated in the 
labor movement that was created with the Socialists, the first workers' Federation, which 
was the FOA in Argentina in 1901, and in 1903 changed its name to FORA, after adding to 
Organization Workers designation Regional , which shows the anarchist influence that led 
to the declaration of the Fifth Congress (1905) which states that the purpose of the 
organization is working to fight for anarchist communism. This so-called declaration 
finalist of the FORA V Congress.



That is to say that from that moment, the teleology opposed to especifismo because the 
runner idea was that workers were organized as workers, depending on their position class, 
and that the organization was to bring understanding of their operating conditions and 
acquire a vision of the future and the social change that was expressed by the highest 
expression of human emancipation that was the anarchism. Then the anarchist statement 
saying the organized workers should spread awareness among their brethren the 
anarcho-communist ideas are those that will lead to the final release, but without 
requiring the worker who held a membership anarchism. This is what we called teleology .

Gladys P. : What coincide, in broad strokes, with anarcho-syndicalism ...

E. Colombo : Sure. What happens is that it is yet another historical problems. At that 
time, the word anarcho-syndicalism does not exist. Anarcho-syndicalism began to be used 
between the two wars and spread after the second. In fact, the term anarcho-syndicalist 
CNT appears with the Spanish after the Congress Theatre Comedy [Madrid, 1919] which is the 
"finalist" statement as would the foristes , namely the declaration of anarchist 
communism. And then, little by little, was called anarcho-syndicalist everything a 
revolutionary workers' organization.
But it also hides an important distinction in the history of ideas, the conflict became 
clear Congress to Amsterdam [1907] between the support organization in the labor movement 
and the revolutionary syndicalist anarchists. Because syndicalism is not synonymous with 
anarcho-syndicalism.
Syndicalism is represented by the Charter of Amiens [adopted in 1906] and expresses the 
position of the working conditions in France at the beginning of last century, which is 
Based on the discussion in Amsterdam between Malatesta and Monatte.
All that to say that in Argentina, for example, the position sp?cifiste failed to produce 
a truly anarchist organization. There was one meeting in the 1920s that gave nothing, and 
after the suppression of 1930, when the labor movement was totally weakened with the death 
penalty, punishment for unlawful association, etc.., The first born real specific 
organization, which was the FACA (Anarcho-Communist Federation Argentina), created in the 
Villa Devoto prison during the most intense time of military repression.



I left Argentina in 1970. Until then, my membership to anarchism was centered on the FORA 
and La Protesta , the anarchist newspaper that has existed as long as Argentina. At the 
time I left, the current sp?cifiste was a minority. The large current is related to the 
labor organization. Something that has now changed. I returned to Argentina for the first 
time 18 years after my departure, and then other times, and now everyone except the small 
groups that maintain or are developing, such as FORA, which begins again publish his diary 
Organizaci?n Obrera , the vast majority of young people I know do not identify with 
anything other than the especifismo , without necessarily having a definition platformist .
I insist on defining platformist because it created, in my opinion in any case, a major 
division in the anarchist movement. Because through the platform appear organizational 
forms leading to a democratic centralism.

Still speaking
of the organization

Gladys P. : I asked you the question of especifismo because it seems to me that this is a 
debate that has arisen in anarchism internationally. Companions platformists who identify 
as sp?cifistes and as anarcho-communists are very active in their proposed organizational 
form, and it seems to me that, somehow, they pose a debate that, as far as 'I was told, is 
always the same: anti-organizational tendency and another ultra-organization within 
anarchism. It seems to me that in the midst of that, between these two poles, opens a 
theoretical and practical space ...

E. Colombo : Sorry to interrupt you, but it is important to see the finalists trends I 
mentioned a moment ago, do not define anti-organizational forms are forms for the 
organization, but an organization focus on the actual activities of life itself. In other 
words, the idea of an anti-especifismo finalist is that anarchists are organized according 
to the task they have in production. If this is the labor movement, they are organized in 
the labor movement, organized under assembl?aire form in unions or companies resistance, 
whatever, in the same way that anarchists are organizing to publish, to publish , get in 
touch with others, organize themselves to communities, communities neighborhoods ... But 
the organization has a social function which is given by the social function itself, not 
by the fact they are anarchists, ie the anarchists organized anarchy in the tasks that 
society allows them requires them or offers them. This is not an anti-organizational 
position, the organization is focused on the task and not determined by ideology.

Gladys P. : The impression I have, for what I know of the anarchist movement in Latin 
America is that often there is a convergence around positions may insurrectionist 
anti-organizational one hand, and to some extent, as a reaction to this, at positions 
Platformists ...

E. Colombo : Yes, because the current situation is very fluid, very changeable. [...] 
There are two types of insurrectionism : insurrectionist a position related to the 
development of the social movement, ie the insurgency, and that is my position, is a 
necessity on the road to revolution . And another position, that of revolution immediatist 
, which is no future , that has no future, that says what to do is the military action, 
the hold-up, individual expropriation ... This is not the same form of insurrectionism . 
Both forms coexist in some social time and distance themselves in others, the same word 
but unifies social reality differs.

Movements
spontaneous

Gladys P. : Our perception, mine personally, and I think shared by other companions of 
our affinity group, that is, between the two positions opens a theoretical and practical 
space very important would be the most likely to anarchism in search of a social impact, 
but lacks a little joint in the direction to provide more explicit theoretical and also 
practical content. Do you also that there is such a space to fill?

E. Colombo : Certainly, because, in addition, this is what comes to mind when discussing 
any militant movements on, let's call the spontaneous mass movements , namely the fact 
that people are rebelling and seek to organize through movements in public places, in the 
occupation of particular areas (it's not the same thing to occupy a place as plants), is 
seen as a movement of such spontaneous and it would explain why they are considered as 
spontaneous as they are not specifically. Something historical experience breeds in them. 
And that something is the basic position of the anti-authoritarian revolutionary movement 
is building a plebeian political space : ordinary people decide together, in primary 
assemblies , on the primary assemblies settled forms of controlled delegation and on it 
develops a kind of expression of policy that denies leaders who opposed the emergence of 
forms of permanent delegation rebuild political power . This is the basis of what has been 
the anti-authoritarian revolutionary movement.



This happens in a way that says spontaneous because the people who set in motion do not 
know where it comes from, but the spontaneity , as has always been the case, expresses 
nothing other than trends that are rooted and do not recognize their own sources.
This is what makes ordinary people July 18, 1936, which rise and flow into the fight and 
spontaneously begin to communities. They do it spontaneously, but why? Because there were 
previously three years of insurgency and 20 years of anarchist propaganda. And that is the 
way for spontaneity can express. It happens the same with the current movements, the fact 
that the anti-authoritarian structure assemblies occurs spontaneously is the result of a 
tradition, a history that has this type of problem in the foreground.
What we spoke yesterday, the problems that arise, such as the difficulty of maintaining a 
assembl?aire activity with a degree of permanence and the fact that it requires 
participation, which takes time, and the decision to get involved in the subject, while it 
creates new problems. New problems that are fundamental to us and we are interested in 
because they bring us face the difficulty to solve in practice. For example, it was said 
yesterday at a meeting of the Indignados : you arrive with an anarchist program and they 
will tell you: "No, no, if you anarchists, you make a program, then you're like 
politicians ... "There is the problem. How does one put forward ideas that are 
fundamentally liberating and necessary, because without an understanding of what you want 
to do, the action exhausts itself , without ideas, without the project, the movement can 
not advance, and therefore, how to articulate the project and action?
How can you do understand that there is a purpose that goes beyond the immediate 
situation, which purpose is the revolutionary transformation of society, and how this 
transformation requires forms of activity that extend beyond the spontaneous movement that 
runs itself? This problem does not fit all, one piece. It can not be because I think that 
what is in the pipeline at the moment, as we have seen in Spain, but also in the United 
States, also in Israel, in different places, it is the emergence of a new revolutionary 
subject , that is to say a collective subject .
's revolutionary subject is not historically determined with a prior or what would be the 
point of view of Marxist origin that the proletariat must complete historic mission to 
transform society then this revolutionary topic does not exist and never has existed in 
the past, it is a figment of the imagination. But what is certain is that in any 
revolution, the process leading to the revolution is the gestation of a new revolutionary 
subject that is expressed in the act, in the insurrectionary moment.



To give an example of what I mean. The French Revolution, which is the model say ... He 
said that it was a bourgeois revolution, which is absolutely false. The bourgeoisie is the 
class that has remained with the product of the revolutionary process, which expropriated 
the revolution to its advantage. The revolutionary process begins with peasant uprisings. 
All the castles of France are burned during the preceding two years on July 14. On July 
14, enlightened bourgeoisie - which sees things most clearly - is present, but at the same 
time engages the process "sectionary" with the movement sans-culotte , which will serve as 
seed to another revolution in within the revolution. Then, when the bourgeoisie takes the 
dominant position, the revolution ceases to exist. All this to say that this is not a 
bourgeois revolution, but it is a process that has generated a revolutionary subject , 
compound and complex, which includes classes and fragments of the dominated classes and it 
was he who led revolution rather than the fraction of the bourgeoisie which is appropriate 
political power.

Of course, what is possibly happening right now - maybe this is just our desire - and that 
is not directly visible, because every historical situation is still opaque in the eyes of 
those who live , this construction is a process that leads to a profound transformation of 
society and that it will happen in a libertarian sense that if we are able to influence 
change with our actions at every moment of this.
These are the ground changes that give the impression that the movements appear suddenly 
and the people who live: even activists who are preparing and fighting are surprised when 
it happens. I think this is what is happening now, our task is that of always, maintain 
and deepen a policy type, if you can call it that, dissemination of ideas, dissemination 
of organizational forms practices.
For me, it is very important, we talked about yesterday, when Bakunin said that in the 
revolutionary process "action is directed by the masses, nothing more. But individuals 
play a fundamental role in the construction of ideas and organizational forms that express 
or can express what the people want in this insurrection. " [2] Bakunin wanted to avoid 
the appearance of leaders who control or have claim to provide guidance in the process.

Breaking
imagination established

Gladys P. : With this, we have entered fully into the other major theme of anarchism 
internationally at this time, and of course also at the local level, which is precisely 
the involvement of anarchists and ways of participation open with the spontaneous 
emergence of these movements, relatively spontaneous because they come from a previous work.
A point that we mentioned yesterday, it is that such movements do not occur either in a 
political vacuum. The fact that people do not develop active and radical political 
participation does not mean they do not have the political imagination. What they have is 
the political imagination of the system, which often gave the impression that, although 
spontaneous forms of organization are anti-hierarchical, horizontal, etc.., That it leads 
to reincorporate quickly back into the normal political operation when the conditions of 
normality reappear, as happened in Argentina with corralito in 2001.

E. Colombo : One thing to see very clearly: we are all socialized into a type of society. 
We live in a society that is called democracy, which is basically an oligarchy, with an 
elite type that control the political process. And people are trained to see the world 
through these hierarchical forms, all anarchists too. We acquired another vision, protest, 
we oppose the system, we fight but basically occur when deep emotional situations in 
different aspects, these forms of hierarchical relationships, which are at the origin of 
the socialization of child 'in the family, etc.. reappear . Bakunin said that in a dark 
corner of the brain most active, the most ardent son of the people, a sleeping policeman. 
In other words, we also have to fight against some of today's society that is internalized 
in ourselves. If there is an anti-authoritarian future society, men are able to live in 
this model of society will at the same time create. Men today are not able to live in a 
free society. There must be a very profound transformation of society.



What happens in this situation, I think, is that one of the central elements of the 
political situation, is what we might call the political apathy of the majority. Why? This 
is not because the common people do not see the need to change society, but because they 
do not see the opportunity to do so. Everyone has the feeling that he has taught the 
system, it can do nothing individually and collectively forms of organization to go 
further do not exist. Then there as an obstacle to political action, created by the 
disenchantment has produced in the last century, probably through the suffering and defeat.

The revolutionary process has been very active in the first half of the twentieth century, 
culminating with the Spanish revolution, but all the revolts were drowned in blood. We 
also had the experience of totalitarianism. Part of socialist emancipation process was 
blocked, locked and stifled by Bolshevism. All this happened, especially in the last 
quarter of the past century, from the 1960s, when began the general disillusionment, loss 
of revolutionary aspirations, despite some bursts as in 1968.

Gladys P. : As you said, that may arise a spontaneous movement, people need to be 
equipped with a different collective imagination, a different than the system established 
by the of process revolutionary collective imagination endo-culturing

E. Colombo : Sure, and it's a slow process of formation of the revolutionary subject.

Gladys P. : The problem is the relationship that this revolutionary new collective 
imagination may seek to create with a cons-culture, because actually this imagination will 
lead to a cons-culture and how it runs the risk becoming a ghetto and stay in a place 
where it can no longer stand and make a breakthrough.

E. Colombo : Personally, I'm reluctant to so-called movement against-cultural. I think 
that if the development of an alternative culture seems fundamental to me, this 
against-culture must be linked to social and political action, that is to say that it is 
the struggle in public spaces or factories, workplaces, occupations, etc.., which creates 
the social movement and the revolutionary dynamic. It is not staying in purely cultural 
processes, as shown in a somewhat mystical anarchism, or dandy . The underlying idea is 
that, to me essential that the revolution, if one day we can do something that has a 
revolutionary significance, will be the work of ordinary people, ordinary people, not 
revolutionary . Revolutionaries do not make the revolution , the question of "active 
minorities" is essential, but it is not different or marginal, but the common people 
involved, who go to work every day, which can produce a revolution.

Gladys P. : To explore facet your psychologist, to what extent can generate a 
revolutionary collective imagination without giving rise to an against-culture.

E. Colombo : It's hard to say. From the psychological point of view, what is interesting 
is that the ideas do not work in a vacuum, in limbo, but they are related to human 
activity, and human passions. The ideas are active, perennials, when united with the 
desires and emotions of men and women who live and can gain a collective force.
ideas of emancipation, freedom, equality, are still present they exist intellectually, but 
in the days monotonous, they are disconnected from reality, they are as utopian ideas, 
that is to say, if anyone asks, everyone knows but are not involved in community life.
How does it fit with the daily reality? I think it is through the social processes in 
which we feel involved. Why I insist on the fact that the revolt or collective 
insurrections are necessary moment in the revolutionary process. It is the collective 
uprising that breaks the leaden weight of the imaginary established. This is the time to 
set this imaginary divide that people get involved, do live and own the liberating ideas .



What I mean by that is that we do not feel alone, neither we nor anyone. It is a mistake 
to believe that one thinks one. We think with the world, we think with others, we think 
with what is and what can be with what is and what might be, the reality in which we think 
and that in which the other say they are, and that structure thinking, it creates the 
collective imagination, and at the same time, individual imaginary revolve in various 
wrestling moves that make people aware of their situation. We see it every time there is a 
major social processes such as major strikes, it is in the action that people are 
politicized. After some leave and others stay.

Gladys P . : This is the part of the analysis we did Indignados movement in Spain. The 
important thing is not so much the movement itself, but what will remain of this movement 
in two, three or five years, in the sense, say, to generalize the revolutionary 
imagination, generalize these options.

Develop
ideas

Gladys P. : Returning to the theme of social movements. As you said, it is natural that 
cracks the lead yoke of institutional imagination in which we are all socialized, we are 
all endo-cultures. Much depends on the same position of the system, ie to the extent that 
this system is able to maintain and bring some stability to his speech, which in the case 
of contemporary capitalism is a discourse of opulence ...

E. Colombo : Yes, but it is here where I think the collective movements act as 
instruments made ??out of imagination. The system has learned - say in the historical 
process of the system proponents have learned - to use repressive means smarter and more 
subtle way. For example, when I went into the movement, anarchism was totally persecuted. 
Be anarchist meant going to jail. It disappeared gradually. Because today, it is not ideas 
as such that concerns political power, they let you speak, as long as your words are 
trapped, isolated, in this kind of ghetto that the State has established to monitor 
dissent. For example, if you want to make pornography, you do it in the appropriate place 
and nobody will tell you anything, but if you do not do it in the right place, you will 
have a problem. If you write in the World libertarian or anarchist newspaper X, 
confidential, with reduced diffusion, for example if you write: "We must use violence, 
dropping bombs, destroying society", nobody will take care of you, but if you manage to 
publish it in a mass-media, you should be held accountable.
This means that the system has learned to deal with such things. For this, the ideas, the 
important point is their reworking in action, not to change what everyone thinks, but to 
elaborate on the actual situation, now, for they are in the flesh and in the mind of the 
oppressed.

Gladys P. : Do you think now occurring contributions to fill this space? In addition, as 
we mentioned yesterday, these spontaneous movements, not only open a scope for our ideas, 
but they also require us to reformulate. We see that there are things that work for a 
group of 20 people who do not work for 3000, so we have to rethink.

E. Colombo : There is one aspect that is important to take into account is what Foucault 
called the episteme , which is the structure of a knowledge base specific to a time at 
which we believe that no be an unconscious knowledge is not critical and thus remains 
latent in the collective mentality. We take many things for granted and we think from them.



I, who am very critical of theories of power Foucault, I think the debate has recently 
been launched by the so-called post-anarchism is an important discussion because it forces 
anarchism to review current ideas in a number of areas intellectuals who are not directly 
anarchists, but are influenced by anarchist or libertarian ideas. The post-anarchism built 
a bridge with neoliberalism reviving involuntarily epistemological field built on the old 
archetype of submission, where the subject is a matter submitted by the networks that 
weave the practices and discourses that condition, say to be short, a matter determined by 
the structure of the system.

Gladys P. : So it would mostly change what is supposed to be common sense, which is 
considered normal. So how do we, anarchists, we can influence in this process, because 
obviously our practice of disclosure, our propaganda the last 30-40 years has failed, 
failed to break the imagination and introduce a new .

E. Colombo : Because a collective imagination, a world of representations and beliefs, 
can not walk alone: ??on the one hand, there is development work across the ideological 
debate that plays at this level, and even time this work must be linked to social 
processes, we were talking about before, because these two processes are not strangers to 
one another.
There is an element in sociology has always been a source of heated debate: how ideas pass 
into the social reality? I think that the passage is in the double movement of critical 
elaboration of ideas and social movements disobedience, protest, uprising. This is where 
is this combination, although this combination is not obvious to those who live it.

Gladys P. : One of my teachers said that the main task for the philosophy of modern 
thought was to elucidate the convergence between the individual and society, the 
individual can think, one can think of society, but it is much more difficult to think of 
the process that links the two.

E. Colombo .: The problem is interesting is what I'm working at the moment the idea that 
there is an individual and that there is a society is already an idea of the system 
because the "individualism" is the basis of liberal thought. According to this ideology, 
the individual is free and comprehensive in the state of nature and gives a part of his 
freedom to enter society. As if freedom could exist for a single individual, isolated, 
before meeting others. This is an atomic position, liberal. In fact, the "individual" is 
made ??by the social environment . Behind the image of the individual profile on the 
agent's actions , which is constructed as such in the series of social interactions that 
mobilize from the cradle to the grave. My identity is an identity that I built mine by 
metabolizing or the influence of others, all others, because it depends on the language 
group, family, local group, etc.., But I'm the one who 'assume and integrity.
From a social point of view, it is the subject's autonomy and not independence of the 
individual, we must defend. Independent individual is an individual who supports all 
dominations. The autonomous subject is the project to build socially, and this is always a 
subject-agent, author, an active subject, I am an individual, but I'm a collective 
individual, I built a subject or self-built in relationship with others.

Gladys P. : As Bakunin said, a society of free men can build free men, free people. Like 
you said, even if we try to free ourselves from these heteronomous determinations we adopt 
the system through the endo-culturing process, the system is another entity, it does not 
exist as abstract metaphysics are always others who build. So what is involved, this is 
what has been asked by the movements of transformation and especially anarchism, how is 
the passage, how people who are not able to be free because they have not grow up in a 
free society, can they build a free society?

E. Colombo : That's what we said earlier. For me, this process takes place in the social 
struggle, which is why I enjoy basically the insurrectionary times, because these are 
times when the eruption occurs the different, the excluded, which widens the horizon of 
the possible, and where ideas heterogeneous system become visible and audible to the 
people who live in the time of revolution .

Gladys P. : Before closing, one of the things that seem important to us in our group is 
that people are aware, when we speak of capitalist crisis, debt crisis, the economy is not 
a slender aspect of society that exists independently in metaphysical limbo and that would 
be imposed on society. That is to say, we continually reproduce it, we reproduce the 
capitalist system is that we reproduce the daily crisis is that we also have the ability 
to change it in the same way that we can change any aspect of society if we decide to do so.

E. Colombo : Basically because the social work process as a whole. That is to say that 
the financial crisis may be, but the financial crisis is linked to nation-states. The 
elites who control the nation-states are articulated directly with international traffic 
police of the capital. We can not forget, as anarchists, one of the fundamental elements 
of our position, the abolition of private property . Today, people talk as if private 
property should not be affected, nor discussed, as if she was there as a natural fact. No, 
private property, the idea is that an individual owner or a group or class has the 
ownership of the means of production or land, is one of the central elements of the system 
that was somewhat forgotten fight because we consider attacking the right to property is a 
utopia.



Gladys P. : That's why I think anarchism, in the case of this crisis, occupies a key 
position or is placed in the part of the political discourse that is unavoidable. Because 
through the future of the left, Marxist, social democratic and others, we see that they 
have come to be as a theoretical dependence vis-?-vis the system. After the fall of the 
Soviet bloc, after the abandonment of models of political parties and authoritarian model, 
on an epistemological level they have almost no speech. The only language they can deliver 
is "manage capitalism in a different way" and "instead of applying social cuts, we 
implement policies to stimulate employment," but they can not exceed the discourse of the 
capitalist system.
According to me, the anarchists are the ones who, at this moment, can make something, 
after a preliminary course further development, continuing to maintain a fully 
revolutionary discourse and we are only able to provide elements to build this new 
collective imagination.

E. Colombo : I think the correctness of our basic position allows us to move forward in 
the development of ideas, but we lack a working economic and social level. How, for 
example, capitalism in the intersection of State and international finance? We prepare, in 
the team of the French magazine Refractions a number of state and the current changes in 
the national and international [3] And there is a difficult aspect of interest scale: how 
loss sovereignty of nation-states is related to the movement of capital, and how to 
recompose the political and financial elites who benefit from the situation? But most 
economists do not have a mind that allows them to leave the economic system to see outside.

Gladys P. : Another aspect that we find very interesting in these spontaneous movements 
is that they are engaged in a less dramatic way more down-to-earth, is that they are 
engaged in the construction concrete alternatives. It does not necessarily represent the 
processes occurring jointly but are convergent process. For example in the case of Spain, 
they decided to build networks of agro-ecological cooperatives, production and 
consumption, which are now intertwined with popular assemblies, with the self-care 
initiatives ...
This seems very interesting because, as a friend said, it is necessary to provide 
alternatives to people not only in ideological terms about what we are going to build as 
imaginary, but also in practice, which acts by saying: that we will work like that. In 
addition, such initiatives allow us to get our hands dirty with the self. In this sense, 
it might echo have a discussion I had the other day about 
r?volution-douce/r?volution-dure. This means that the construction of such structures can 
never replace a proper revolution, an armed insurrection which is obviously necessary last 
resort. Do you think the construction of this type of initiative can be a valuable 
contribution?

E. Colombo : I think all these initiatives are essential if they consider themselves as 
forms of struggle for a new society, and not as a form of internal fitness for the society 
in which we live. This is very important. Throughout my life, I saw what happened with the 
communities, for example, if a community is closed on the inner life, it necessarily 
fails, the global society the phagocyte. If this community, like telling the Comunidad del 
Sur (Montevideo), is conceived as a community fighting for a new future, it has a positive 
value, even if it succumbs to face repressive power.

Gladys P. : In this regard, we would, anarchists, who could give them this purpose and 
this purpose again finalist.

E. Colombo : I think yes, it is one of the central elements. If we abandon the utopian 
dimension of change, we will continue to repeat uncritically all perversions of the 
system. When the project does not exist, the act of revolt becomes repetitive . You rebel 
because it hurts, because you bear it more, but tomorrow you'll again you rebel, and once 
completed, you'll have to redo another again. You will have the fate of Sisyphus.

Gladys P. : In this sense, it is also what has frustrated the spontaneous movement in 
Argentina in 2001, not having a vision processing system.

E. Colombo : The "What vayan todos" was an expression of desire, but what next? Who let 
us instead to fill the void? He had put someone on the throne because they had not thought 
about anything else. Then they gave all those who had been.



Gladys P. : Finally, and above all thank you for the interview and have spent a long time 
of your time ...

E. Colombo : Nothing, it's always interesting to talk to, it forces you to think again 
about certain subjects.

Gladys P. : In fact, it seems to me that we are at a critical point of anarchism is yet 
another final time we face and we have to produce something, something that should get an 
effect, and we end up with a little while to develop, as is called a journal published by 
the companions, we "just do it" . [4] Did you also feel that if we miss this opportunity, 
let us confront capitalism may be different, but able to reconstruct his speech for 
another 30 or 40 years?

E. Colombo : I prefer not to answer for a simple reason: I do not want to be optimistic, 
nor let optimism for better times, as they say. For me, it is a sentence Landauer has 
always had a personal value: "Men believe that one day they will be free and equal when 
they have destroyed the barriers that prevent them to be, without realizing that they are 
just as they struggle to get it " . [5]

Gladys P. : Thank you, Eduardo.

___

Interview conducted and published by the GLAD (Libertario Grupo Acci?n Directa), based in 
Madrid.http://estudioslibertarios.wordpress.com/

[Translation: JF]

___

Notes:
[1] "The imaginary integration of the proletariat," The Black Lantern # 2, Paris, December 
1974-January 1975. Available here:http://www.la-presse-anarchiste.net/spip.php?article222
[2] See M. Bakunin Preamble Knouto-Germanic Empire, Works Compl. , Vol. 8,. pp. 296-297
[3] This number came from. Refractions No. 30, of the state.http://refractions.plusloin.org/
[4] Todo por hacer (Madrid).http://www.todoporhacer. org /
[5] See Gustav Landauer, Revolution . Editions Champ Libre, Paris, 1974, p. 140


EDUARDO COLOMBO

Born in Argentina in 1929 he campaigned to FORA and editor of the newspaper La Protesta . 
The Federaci?n Obrera Regional argentina develops a unique position in the international 
anarchist movement of not separating the "political" (communist anarchist purpose) of the 
"union" protest. It is thus opposed to revolutionary syndicalism who wants to be the spine 
of the future society.

"The FORA sees in unionism nothing other than what it can be: a means, because it is in 
the hands of the poor, is positioned against the current system of iniquity, but a means 
which, in the last review is somehow a child of the same plan. Created in the womb of 
bourgeois society into authoritarianism of the surrounding world, unionism is a weapon, 
and precisely because it is a weapon, it can serve as the cause of good than evil (and we 
are warned that weapons lend themselves more easily to evil than good!) ".

In 1970 Eduardo, Heloisa his wife and their two children went into exile in Paris. We are 
68 and after they join the working group Information Correspondence ICO. At the 
dissolution of the magazine, he participated in the creation of the magazine The Black 
Lantern (1974-1978) with anarchists from the "March 22 Movement" and the magazine Black 
and Red who, too, joined ICO after 68. In the 80s, it fits into the magazine published in 
Italy, Volont? (1982-1996) and currently still Refractions (review of research and 
anarchists expressions). Member of the CNT for a few years, he is also responsible for a 
while Editions CNT-RP before move away.

Eduardo Colombo is also a doctor (in Argentina) and psychoanalyst (job he has held since 
his arrival in France) orientation resolutely opposed to Lacan and Freud. This is also the 
link that operates between psychoanalysis, anarchism and revolution that takes to a 
specific "post-" visions opposition (modern anarchists ... structuralists) who postulate 
an inevitable subjugation of the subject and therefore the ... abandonment of any 
revolutionary project. He opposes their vision of freedom where human seizes the 
opportunity to change the world.

He is the author of The Will of the People - Democracy and anarchy , Paris, Editions 
Libertarians, 2007 The political space of anarchy, Sketch for a political philosophy of 
anarchism as well as numerous articles on the power imagination, the state, revolution, 
sexuality ...

___

Books published

The will of the people, democracy and anarchy , Libertarians Editions / Editions CNT, 2007.



The political space of anarchy, Sketch for a political philosophy of anarchism editions 
ACL 2008.



Other texts Eduardo Colombo, more recent, are available on the website of the journal 
Refractions ,http://refractions.plusloin.org/

Or HERE

By way of comment

Some of us know Eduardo Colombo for a long time, since the days when he worked for the 
anarchist magazine The Black Lantern in the 1970s. More recently, in countless book fairs 
and other anarchist meetings which he has long been a visitor and a very loyal player.

It is one of the founders (in 1997) and a pillar of the journal Refractions , trying to 
renew or keep alive the theoretical approaches and reflections on contemporary or 
anarchisms. It is historically linked to the "anarcho-communist" current - as in OCL - 
that is to say, the trend places anarchist ideals and interventions in the context of 
class struggle from the perspective of a revolutionary transformation of society towards 
communism in freedom. Favorable to the organization of activists but leaves open, and if 
possible always critical current definition methods of organization and action, the place 
and function of these modes of combination, the relationship to knowledge, the "ideas" and 
"conscience" as the fruit of social-historical process.

A range of policy design process as a whole forging, underpinned by a fairly clear vision 
of its great options while knowing unfinished and permanent construction. An approach that 
bases its interventions on the construction of facilities for the comings and goings 
between "theory" and "practice," which favors anything that promotes the autonomy and 
self-organization in the struggle, full participation in social movements, as it considers 
that it is here, in these times essential for crystallization and the collective 
expression of rebellion and revolutionary and emancipatory aspirations that are the real 
schools of self-emancipation. A perspective that involves the study of concrete 
situations, the fight against the dogmas of any kind (especially when they come from our 
camp ...), critical thinking modes of domination, including those that breed in the 
revolutionary movement itself, the weaker, neutralize or are drifting towards new forms of 
political rule, that is to say to new deadlocks and new defeats.

Eduardo Colombo began many years while working a rigorous theoretical review about what 
could quickly call an anarchist politics or anarchism reflecting critically on and 
politics (and political philosophy) to provide a drawing a renewed configuration "policy 
space of anarchy" . This work led him to lead a reflective journey in which he explored 
the issues directly related to this topic, and there are many: the forms of domination and 
how to establish the mechanical command / obedience and hierarchy that follows, the 
formation of the state, what law, rule, how political power is tied to social obligation, 
the concept of "power" and its multiple meanings, that of authority, autonomy, democracy, 
modes of social belonging and meaning derived therefrom, the establishment and training of 
utopia in the project of emancipation. More recently, he has been involved in the dispute 
over relativism, post-anarchism, [1] and some purely immanentist and vitalistic 
conceptions of anarchy and addresses at the moment the discussion on false evidence and 
aporias or impasses dichotomies individual / society, the issue of subjectivity, the 
subject (Cartesian, Kantian ...), its structuralist and disappearance of its resurgence as 
a subject-subject (Foucault) or, as an alternative argument, the subject-actor of social 
change, the construction of subject-independent, social, relational against the abstract 
and liberal individual and, one might say, the discovery of attendance, training and 
cross-membership of the subject in the world and the world in the subject ...

In this conversation with Eduardo Colombo, several topics are discussed: the question of 
anarchist organization or methods of organization of anarchists in the social reality, and 
how these are ways to organize stakeholder social processes. If the need to organize is 
shared by many anarchists, let alone if they are at the same time communist , contours, 
rationale, definitions and methods of action are debated.
Discussion on this item refers to the relationship between the "revolutionary 
consciousness" (the specific organization) and "social experiment" of the fight (the 
protagonists fighting, resistance, rebellion) in a betting perspective on self-empowerment 
on a revolution led by ordinary people and not by a vanguard, which experience or 
consciousness is the cause of the other? Or, how is it conceivable to build both? If 
anarchists, revolutionaries have "consciousness" (ideas) and are organized separately by 
the latter, how can they at the same time not be a vanguard, or "outside" ideological , 
giving lessons, and there reproducing the asymmetrical relations of master and pupil, the 
power of scholars and competent, relied all hierarchical social and political organization.

How revolutionary can they avoid making this a separate purpose separate organization with 
its own logic, shop, chapel, reproducing the function of political parties who put their 
reason for being in their own development, their own future, their quest for power and 
influence, that is to say in a more autor?f?rencialit??
's thesis finalist evoked Eduardo is not it more consistent from this point of view: the 
revolutionary purpose, provided that it exists, it materializes, may be the product of 
social experience and not a piece of the sky fell to earth ideas. The role of 
self-proclaimed revolutionaries not he is then - with those who are not - through 
struggles, collective resistance against injustice, active mobilization, and within these 
thanks to proposals and initiatives of its own (direct action, disobedience, solidarity 
based, but also critical expressions, moments of political debates on strategies and 
outlook of struggle, direct meetings ...), through "insurrectionary moments" of breaking 
construction autod?terminations autonomy and collective, to promote pregnancy in social, 
political, subjective a revolution conceived as a deep transformation involving the 
largest number, a social-historical creation, and not to pretend the lead on behalf of the 
people and the proletariat, or the channel and frame within specified devices?

Eduardo Colombo that does not neglect the production of ideas and "propaganda", insists 
that the formation of revolutionary subjects is not given by a telos , the implementation 
of a plan of human history recorded in a sociological objectivity (a historical necessity) 
but it is from the collective struggle, especially when they acquire a magnitude and 
intensity as the immediate horizon appears to be widening, as new thinkable and possible 
are day because these insurrections then become "instruments made ??out of imagination. "

The current period is discussed, especially with the emergence of so-called spontaneous 
movements such as "Indignados" in Spain or "Occupy" in the United States, less to analyze 
themselves, but rather to see what they are the symptom, as they reflect social 
transformation processes at work in underground and invisible part, new issues these 
movements pose to us, anti-authoritarian revolution without revolutionaries. But also to 
discuss the open spaces they re-elaboration of valid ideas, modes of action and adequate 
concrete proposals, albeit circumstantial and for certain situations but may reintroduce 
the conflict in the whole issues, "build a plebeian political space" antagonistic to 
interrupt the continuity and time frames established by the company's capital and from 
there make a new collective imagination managing to reverse the balance of power across 
the entire society, dominant position on the defensive, to break the feelings of 
helplessness and leaden social meanings imposed.

May 2013
JF

___

[1] On this subject, see also: A critique of post-anarchism

On some of the internal contradictions in the current "anarchism", both as a political 
power but more as a cultural movement / ideology, one can refer to the report of the 
International Meeting Anarchist St. Imier, in August 2012 the comrades of the OCL present 
on site were: Issues that raise questions ... not really surprise