International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Alfredo Bonanno is an Italian anarchist whose greatest influence has been within the insurrectionary tradition within anarchism . In numerous self-published pamphlets, including The Anarchist Tension and Armed Joy , he has advocated the spontaneous uprising of the exploited against state capitalist authority. Bonanno argues for the importance of living anarchy, of making ideas, feelings, aesthetics, desires, and actions one in life. In response to democratic criticisms of anarchism, Bonanno responds that anarchism is not a quantification, a success or failure, but an ongoing tension that exists in society as people struggle against being ruled over. Bonanno cautions against anarchists making any idea into a religious concept, something that comforts people in their present misery with promises of delivery and salvation in an indeterminate future. Nice ideas, uncritically held, do not solve problems but mystify and cloud them over. Unlike other revolutionary anarchists, Bonanno does not view the working class as the center of social structure or social analysis. He urges anarchists to think beyond both Marx and anarchosyndicalists since, in his view, the working class has practically disintegrated. At the same time Bonanno relates transformations within the workplace, that is, flexible production, to the socialization of a “new human,” the “flexible person” with modest ... log in or subscribe to read full text