Movement against water monopolization. Saturday the 29th, a riotous assault of severalthousand of people took place during the forbidden mobilization against the construction of awater reservoir. Sunday the 30th, a group of people sabotaged a pipe, filmed by cameras. Theorganizers, partisans of an insurrectional eco-populism, had promised as usual a “joyful anddetermined” demonstration, and indeed they kept their promise. The goal was to reach thecrater of the future basin, and indeed it was a successful bet.

A second-hand chief of police tries to congratulate himself, defending the fact that demonstratorswere pushed back, and that the occupation of the site was straight away stopped. But the truth is, the police was pushed back, cordon after cordon. The probability of their incompetence takes awayfrom us the certainty of our own efficiency. But the assault was continuous and there was not ablink of an eye for two hours and a half. This determination was not only intense and continuous [1],but it was shared to a degree that we had rarely seen before. How can we explain that ? There wasa strategical leveling upwards. This is the proof that we can have a high level of strategic thinking.

What kind of speech goes with that kind of event ? Ecologist leaders, trying more or less to fit in, show their support before the demonstration. One of them left the camp with the word « crevure »(scumbag in french) painted on both sides of his car. His more radical colleague explains thatthis is the cost for defending a governmental ecology instead of a more combative ecology. In thelast days, she even spoke of « the water war », and declared Rémi Fraisse (killed in 2014 with agrenade during the protests against the Sivens dam) as its first victim. There is nothing surprisingabout the fact that the Left always defends the revolution when its too late. A Trotskyist leader islargely applauded as he says that we have to ask ourselves about the possibility of violence. The demonstration proved that it’s no longer a question. Afterwards, the french Interior Minister doesn’thesitate to speak about eco-terrorism. « This is a blunder » retorted Melenchon [2]’s spokesman, alsocalling for a republican police force. The Interior Ministry hammers : there will be no ZAD (Zoneto Defend) at Sainte-Soline. But nobody had asked the question. Some days seem to be gifted withspeech, enabling us to ask questions in a clear and loud voice.

Why run through fields, outflank the police, light them up with some fireworks, cross ditches andhedges, collectively pull ourselves, old and young, through it all ?

« It is hostile in the basins ». One thing is the reason invoked, which is at the center and dominates, another is the mechanic of revolt. When the revolt puts a foot on a battlefield, it is already somethingelse that is at stake. We have crossed the lines together, regardless of ban, overcoming fear, incontradiction with our own breath, we have slipped through a net designed to be tightened ; wealighted in the area of the project by knocking down the last barriers, in the devastated area ofa civilized project among millions of others, making two helicopters fly away after having scaredthe police trucks, and then we had to get out, we had to get away with grenade throws, with LBDshots, in the usual scarce air, and we used the same barriers to protect our retreat. Yes, there issomething else at stake. Yet the day looks furiously like a failed act, a symptom of an era : we reached the objective, and theobjective was empty. As if we were more capable of commitment if it’s tending towards its degreezero. All pure activists will be happy about it, as they consider revolt as its own end. The others willchit-chat, pretending that any struggle about an ultra-precise question is an extra step towardsrevolution. But whether they like it or not, thinking politic step-by-step, in other words radicalprogressivism, has never raised any other questions than those which fit into the governmentallogic. With the proliferation of reformist arguments and alibis, the silence of radicals means consent. It feels like revolutionaries themselves, navigating between depression and disorientation, have lostthe plot, have lost desire for revolution, only four years after an insurrectional upsurge, which hadan echo all over the globe. It’s hard to admit. In reality, the revolt knows another kind of step-by-step, it transfigures the ground where it sets foot, and we don’t reach the void when we organizefor the offensive, we simply reach something else than what was announced, planned or verbalizedin advance. So we never participate only in a day of action. Any political participation supposes totake side, to make space for something else to grow. This may seem paradoxical after a day wherewe have done so well, but we must break with the model of the foot soldier as a form of politicalsubjectivity. A model where we could say for example, that the Soulèvements de la terre [3] are thelittle soldiers of the Peasant Confederation [4], or other things like that. Subjectivity is indissociablyalthough distinctly being able to say I and to say We. We are not talking about an individual orgregarious self-opinion, but about the central imperative of never giving up the decision, at anylevel. This means making sure that the meaning of what we are doing is clear. And also formulatingit at all costs, taking the risk of misunderstanding, of conflict, rather than revelling, as everythingencourages us to do, in confusion and/or half-heartedness.

Today, there is no need to oscillate between the « concrete aspect » of compartmentalized fightsand the « abstract » of revolution. It’s not even the moment anymore to satisfy ourselves with talksabout insurrection (everyone knows that it is a possibility of the present, its very relief, and nota distant horizon). Out of fashion, revolution is now totally relevant. It basically points out theinsurrection that we want, that we can wish, against all those that we refuse or that we reject. Everystruggle must choose, at the same time as its own path, the side that makes it possible, the space ofdebate where it can grow and that it aims to reinforce. It is the revolutionary debate, this particularstrategic field that must be strengthened straight away. Aggregating forces is not enough, we haveto bring out a new field of intelligibility, and to assume the rupture with the democratic order. Thefear of cleavage, unlike what is often formulated, reinforces the fascist possibility, giving it all thelatitude to embody the great cleavage. Why start out the underdog ? Why bet on the impossibility, in this era, of aggregating forces in a revolutionary mode, language and perspective ? It’s takingpeople for fools. It’s believing that overly-used speeches are the most desirable. It’s condemningdeserters to not knowing what they join when they desert. It’s encouraging them to withdraw intoethics, on lifestyle, on family unit, on the individual as a center of gravity – depoliticization. Theissue is not the lack of diffuse radicality, but the lack of ideas, of words, of tensions, of obstinacy, of patience, and of « spaces » of organization that take us out of our revolutionary illiteracy – it isindeed a question of relearning what an organization means.

Those who dedicate their lives to political combat cannot abandon themselves to the avant-gardeof the contemporary ideological collapse [5]. Let’s consider just one thing : the obsession with societalissues, in other words, with sectors of production. The movement against water monopolization isa clear example of it. We are fighting against the monopolization of phreatic table by some peasantoligarchy. And what are we opposing to it ? The idea of common good. In other words, we opposeto private monopolization another private one, that has the well-known perversity of being called« public » : the State. The opposition between what is « private » and what belongs to « everyone »has always structured the government of the world, civilization. A good is a property. When onepleads, as it’s fashionable today, for the « commons », with very few exceptions, no one seems tobe too concerned about getting rid of the background that it all implies : the right of ownership. If at the least some make the effort to separate theoretically “common” and “public”, no one triesto find ways to separate them politically. To get the idea of common out of law, we must at leastbegin to opt for destitution and de-socialization of issues that matter. We have to put an end to thetransformation of our questions into sectors of society. This implies to break-up totally with therevolutionary program of the last two centuries : socialism. Society questions are those which atthe same time suppose and provoke the organization into productive sectors. So we should not rushinto talking about the issue of water, but we should first ask ourselves : should there be somethinglike a question about water ? This element, so intimately linked to life, is politically constructed asa pole that imposes survival. The basic communist issue on this, could instead be formulated thisway : what can we do, how can we organize ourselves, not to solve the question of water, but so thatthe question of water is not one.

The imperative of destitution is what makes a new revolutionary subjectivity, a new us, possible. On one hand, we suggest to give up on all objective foundations of politics : class, gender, race,sexuality, but also territory ; on the other hand, we suggest to see in this mourning not an end, nora confinement in desubjectivation, but the beginning of something else. We gamble neither on aUnique Party of revolt, nor on a plural and unified side of Good. It is about thinking and experiencingthe inscription of clear and distinct revolutionary positions in a camp that is unstoppable in itsbecoming but tied to solid criteria : hatred of institutions, war to the government of the world.

publié le 7 novembre 2022