WORLD WORLDWIDE GREECE News Journal Update - (en) Greece, Interview of the Anarchist Initiative of Saints Anargyro - Kamaterou in "Ediciones Pensamiento y Batalla" (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

Following a proposal from the publishing scheme from Chile "Ediciones
Pensamiento y Batalla" (Thought and Battle Editions) we granted an
interview answering 8 questions posed by the comrades, with the aim of
including them in a book to be published regarding anarchism in GREECE.
The interview was conducted in English and will be translated into
Spanish for publication by Ediciones Pensamiento y Batalla. ---- Here is
the Greek translation ---- 1) Could you briefly describe what the
neighborhoods in western Athens are like where you intervene politically?

The western suburbs of Athens are our main field of activity, but
without limiting us in our action at a central level. The western
suburbs are predominantly working-class neighborhoods, the poorest
suburb of the capital, where mostly working-class people live. In
various municipalities there are several "blocks" of workers' apartment
buildings and there are also various marginalized groups of the
population, such as immigrants who experience brutal labor exploitation
and Roma communities, where the majority of them live in squalid
conditions and in camps.

2) Are you part of an Anarchist Federation? Do you coordinate specific
actions and mobilizations with other groups, organizations or
collectives of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement?

No, our political core is not a member of any Anarchist Federation.
Nevertheless, we are advocates of the necessity of the organization of
anarchists, which goes beyond the level of the "affinity group" and
crystallizes into a federally organized political body. The issue of the
anarchist organization has concerned us since the beginning of the
establishment of our political nucleus and within the next period we
intend to publicly state our positions on it, ending up in our proposal.
Our plan has a dual character. At an initial level, we look forward to
the formation of an anarchist organization of the western suburbs,
which, as stated in our constitution, is a strategic goal and the goal
of organizational evolution of our core. But already now, we are
fighting for the necessity of general anarchist organization to gain ground.

At this point we should point out that, unfortunately, in the anarchist
space in Greece, organizational fragmentation dominates in small
affinity groups, which are basically not governed by the relevance of
political positions and goals. Mainly, they act detached or cooperate
opportunistically on specific topics or under the weight of
extraordinary circumstances. We should also say that some years ago,
there was an attempt, on the initiative of some anarchist collectives,
to form an Anarchist Federation. Within the pre-conference dialogue, a
split occurred and two federations were formed, of which today one is
inactive and the other consists of a few collectives.

Our political core, despite criticizing the existing model of the
formation of the anarchist space in Greece, is trapped within it, just
as all the anarchist forces either agree or disagree with it. So we
also, mainly, collaborate on some struggle disputes with some anarchist
collectives or comrades/equals, which we consider to be points of
political and value convergence and have been politically fermented over
the years in the struggle. We recognize, of course, that this kind of
occasional partnership cannot replace the stable and organizationally,
politically and ideologically coherent political body that we are
fighting to create. What we at least try to ensure now, is respect and
camaraderie with those we work with, away from various problematic
logics that exist within our political space, whether they concern the
exploitation of individuals for the implementation of a political agenda
by collectives, or the instrumental treatment of other collectives.

3) Realizing that you are in favor of the theory of organizational
dualism, under what principles is it built? How do you make your
decisions? What historical accounts of revolutionary anarchism are adopted?

Organizational dualism is a concept that in the Greek anarchist movement
does not have much appeal and is largely unknown. The majority of
comrades/equals do not understand the difference between joining an
anarchist group, a neighborhood assembly, an occupied park or a student
body. For us, indeed, organizational dualism is a key feature of our
political and organizational view of revolutionary movement development.

Very briefly, organizational dualism means distinguishing levels of
organization.

Politically, we support the existence and action of a special anarchist
organization, i.e. a political organization of anarchists with a clear
identity and elaborated tactical and strategic plan of action, accepted
by all its members on the basis of voluntary cooperation and ideological
and programmatic unity. On a class-social level, we support the
participation of anarchists in the labor-union movement, regional
popular assemblies and other forms that originate from below, without
requiring the maximum ideological and political agreement, for
participation in them.

The task of anarchists is not to guide social-class movements "from
above." The role of anarchists within movements is to exert influence
without aiming for a political hegemony like the communist parties and
their arbitrary "fronts", who just want to fit the movements into their
party plans. Our own role in the direction of the formation of what
could be defined as a "revolutionary vanguard" concerns the contribution
to the autonomous development of the movements and the interconnection
of the individual claims they put forward, with the aim of their
integration and the transition from the protest to the revolutionary
perspective .

For us, the revolutionary movement is essentially a joint articulation
of these two levels of organization. Historically, we trace
organizational dualism from the beginnings of anarchism, in the theory
and action of Bakunin and the Workers' Union called the First
International. The first anarchist organization in history is the
"Alliance" founded by Bakunin, which was governed by a clear
revolutionary program and constitution and operated alongside the
Workers' Union (the class-social level). On the one hand, the Alliance
had "tight" positions, and on the other, the Union aimed to rally all
the workers without looking to their guidance from above or setting
strict ideological prerequisites. At least that was the line of the
anarchists within the International and it was fully competitive with
the Marxist wing. A form of organizational dualism, albeit
controversial, can also be seen in Spain in 1936 with the parallel
action of the CNT-FAI, while this concept is central, especially in the
platformist current and subsequently in the current of specifism.

4) What does your "Anthology of Texts" bulletin consist of? What kind of
texts does it include? How do you distribute it?

The anthologies of the initiative's texts, which are published every 4
months, are publications that include all the actions and texts we
publish, as well as photos, within this time period, as well as a
preface analyzing the current juncture in which they are published. So
far we're up to our 11th anthology issue and we're in the middle of our
12th. Anthologies are distributed either hand to hand, or in political
spaces sent across the territory, by free contribution.

5) In your self-presentation you clearly and forcefully defend a class
anarchism. Why this emphasis? Have individualist, nihilist or
postmodernist currents gained any weight today in the Greek region?

Anarchism is a child of socialist thought and the labor movement of the
19th century . It does not exist as a movement outside of its class and
socialist base. Therefore we do not perceive the existence of any
non-class anarchism or any liberal anarchism which has as its center the
individual and not the society, the working class and the oppressed
popular strata. As we say in our constitution, anarchism is the
revolutionary worldview of the working class, its libertarian
culmination. And as our classics would say, be it Bakunin or Kropotkin,
the free individual or the free man cannot exist outside of a free society.

Regarding the second part of the question it is very difficult to answer
in just a few lines. Indeed in the previous decade there was a
flourishing of the nihilism and anarcho-individualist current in Greece,
clustered around the "New Anarchy" current, the "new urban guerrilla"
and the FAI-IRF (Informal Anarchist Federation - International
Revolutionary Front). Although this tendency was temporary, it tried to
develop an autonomy and a distinction from anarchism and the anarchist
space in Greece by exercising harsh criticisms, both ideological towards
anarchism and towards the movement.

Despite the existence of structural differences and the existence of
competing and even hostile viewpoints, we perceive this current as the
result of the disillusionment of large sections of comrades and comrades
with society, even with the errors of the anarchist space at that time.
It was the time shortly before the assumption of political power by
SYRIZA that many anarchists were demobilizing and turning into
supporters of the left-wing government and the struggles as a whole were
in a retreat phase, after the great aggravation they experienced in the
two years 2010-12, marked by massive and dynamic mobilizations against
the anti-social memorial measures, in which the forces of anarchism had
a significant presence. If we look at history, the current of
anarcho-individualism has always gained ground in periods of retreat of
struggles and in periods of kinetic disappointments.

However, this current has weakened over the years and today it almost
does not exist. Most were decommissioned and others completely
overhauled. Now, in relation to the influence of postmodernism, this has
been gaining ground in recent years and is a complex phenomenon that has
not been analyzed much. In Greece there is not exactly a self-conscious
"post-modern anarchism" or "meta-anarchism" but a general influence of
post-modernism on a large part of anarchists of all tendencies, who may
not even know the main representatives of this current or the general
principles of. Rather, the adoption of elements from postmodernism is
done uncritically and unconsciously because in Greece there is no
developed anarchist revolutionary consciousness in the majority of
anarchists and therefore our ideological formation is fluid, fluid and
tolerant of admixtures from the entire spectrum of bourgeois and Marxist
thought. We could really give a multi-page interview about all this and
fully develop our criticism at another time, because in this interview
it is impossible.

  6) We learned that at least one member of your organization was
accused of beating a former Syriza finance minister (current MeRA25
"leader"). Could you tell us about this case? As anarchists, what do you
think of the Syriza state administration a few years ago?

Indeed, last May one of our comrades was arrested for participating in
the beating of Varoufakis. In fact, he was personally targeted for this
attack by the former minister, who pointed to him as the main
perpetrator. It is of course difficult to say more about the action, as
it was not an action organized by us, nor in general an organized
action, in which there could be an assumption of political
responsibility or some collective position of those present for what
happened. In reality it was a spontaneous rebuke of the former minister,
from a motley crowd that happened to be there.

Collectively we supported both this spontaneous action and our partner,
with announcements, with solidarity gatherings in the courts and with a
gathering outside the headquarters of MERA25. Unfortunately, most of our
political space disapproved of the action either because of political
sympathy and tolerance towards the criminal former minister, or because
it depoliticized the events. We did our best to support the action but
we could not speak on behalf of the participants.

As for the refusal of many comrades/equals to support the attack on
Varoufakis, it is something that did not surprise us. This brings us to
the second part of your question. The SYRIZA government was a government
that implemented a harsh economic and political agenda and its tenure
was disastrous for the movements. But it was disastrous because, among
other things, the movements were deceived by her, and instead of
fighting her, they waited in vain for her to abolish the memorandums and
follow a pro-worker and pro-people agenda, something she neither desired
nor was possible in the heart of the global crisis which rages even
Greece found itself at the center of it to happen.

Our collective was founded, in a different form than the existing one,
during the period of SYRIZA rule by members of the anarchist movement
who clashed bitterly with those who harbored delusions and acted as
defenders of the government within the movement. The first formation of
our collective in 2016 was precisely the birth of these intra-kinetic
processes and ruptures. They were comrades who organized the first
anarchist anti-state demonstration against SYRIZA in February 2015, who
occupied the Athens law school in the spring of the same year, who
organized pro-abstention rallies in the July 2015 referendum and
participated in the organization of the anarchist bloc in the
demonstration against the passing of the 3rd memorandum as well as the
conflicts that followed.

7) Why is it argued that the current crisis conditions are ideal for the
development of a revolutionary movement?

We believe that the crisis that capitalism is going through worldwide is
a structural crisis and it is an insurmountable crisis. There are no
systemic tools to overcome the crisis, nor is this crisis related to a
temporary recession like the one in 2020 or to the cyclical crises that
capitalism goes through over the decades. Capitalism has completed its
historical cycle and is in a phase of decline, in which there will be
setbacks, there will be bloodshed and wars, and of course there will
also be social uprisings and revolutions. We cannot accurately predict
how long this phase will last, although it will be the norm until the
existing socio-economic system is overcome.

As we have been writing for years, the way out of the crisis is either
generalized imperialist wars and the rapid impoverishment of societies,
which, however, will not solve the inherent problem of capital, or
social revolutions. There is no middle ground. We see the conditions as
ideal for revolutionary movement building with anarchism at the vanguard
of the struggle for overthrow as there is no other political force
capable of fulfilling this mission. Marxism historically went bankrupt
and its implementation in a set of countries failed, while the bourgeois
forces, of all shades, which dominate at the moment, will not remain
forever immune to the people and the working classes. That is why our
basic slogan, which is also the real dilemma of the times, is: anarchism
or barbarism!

8) What do you think are the most urgent tasks that the anarchist
movement must develop today in the Greek region?

If we could answer epigrammatically, then we would say: a) creation of a
pan-Hellenic anarchist political organization with nuclei of action in
every region and every possible corner of the country, b) mass entry
into the labor movement, strengthening of grassroots unions, creation
and formation of new ones, in basis of a strategic plan, a Free Labor
Federation, c) establishment of regional popular assemblies,
socialization committees and mutual aid networks. Very broadly, these
are the three points that we consider to assume the character of
historical political duty for anarchists today. The ultimate goal is the
creation of a libertarian revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism
and the state. Nothing less - nothing more. The anarchist organization
is the one that must open the way, inspire with its action and convince
with its revolutionary program. The labor movement is the one that will
claim, fight and organize the working class, from a dependent class, to
a class for itself and overall it is the social-popular factor that will
implement and make the social change a reality by building, already from
today, the new society inside the shell of the old one. The new society
to rise will need to go through armed struggle with our oppressors, the
bourgeoisie and the state and crush them.

https://anarchism.espivblogs.net/2023/11/03/synenteyxi-tis-protovoylias-anarchikon-agion-anargyron-kamateroy-sto-ediciones-pensamiento-y-batalla/
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