In such conditions, the foremost duty of any conscious subversive is to unpityingly cast out of the minds of people called to action any illusion about terrorism. As I have already said elsewhere, historically, terrorism has never had any revolutionary efficacity, except where every other form of manifestation of subversive activity had been rendered impossible by a complete repression; and therefore where a notable part of the proletarian population had been brought to be silently on the side of the terrorists. But this is no longer, or is not yet, the case of present-day Italy. Furthermore it is fitting to note that the revolutionary efficacity of terrorism has always been very limited, as the entire history of the end of the nineteenth century shows.
The bourgeoisie, which established its domination in France in 1793 by means of terrorism, must however again resort to this weapon, in a defensive strategic context, in the historical period where its power is universally called into question by these same proletarian forces its own development has created. In a parallel manner the secret services of the bourgeois State cover their terrorism by opportunely using the most naive militants of a Leninism completely discomfited by history — a Leninism that also used, between 1918 and 1921, the same terrorist anti-working class method to destroy the Soviets and seize hold of the State and the capitalist economy in Russia.
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When Lenin, in 1921, at the time of the repression of the Kronstadt soviet, pronounced the famous “here or there with a rifle, but not with the workers’ opposition, we have had enough of the workers’ opposition,” he showed himself to be less dishonest than Berlinguer, who says “either with the State or with the RBs,” because Lenin was not afraid to declare that his sole aim was the liquidation of the workers’ opposition. Very well then, starting from this exact moment, he who affirms he is “with the State” knows that he is also with terrorism, and with the most putrid State terrorism ever set up against the proletariat; he knows that he is with those responsible for the deaths at the Piazza Fontana, on the Italicus and at Brescia, and for the assassinations of Pinelli and a hundred others, and let him not come and plague us any more because we have had enough of crocodile tears about the “martyrs of the Via Fani,” of provocations, vile intimidations, assassinations, prison, the shameless hypocrisy about the defence of “democratic institutions,” and all the rest.
And as for us subversives, who are exactly with the workers’ opposition, and not with the State, let us demonstrate this above all and on every occasion, by always unmasking all acts of terrorism by the services of the State, to whom we will gladly leave the monopoly of terror, thereby making shame even more shameful by consigning it to publicity: the publicity it deserves.
When our turn comes, we shall not lack arms, nor valiant fighters: we are not the slaves of the commodity-fetishism of arms, but we shall procure them as soon as it will be necessary, and in the most simple manner of all: by taking them from you, generals, policemen, and bourgeois, because you already have enough of them to suffice all the workers of Italy. “We have no respect; we do not expect any from you. When our turn comes, we will not embellish violence” (Marx).
A thousand Via Fanis and a thousand Piazza Fontanas cannot profit capitalism as much as one sole anti-bourgeois and anti-Stalinist wildcat strike can harm it, or a simple violent and successful sabotage of production. The oppressed consciousness of thousands are awakening and revolting every day against exploitation: and wild-cat workers know perfectly well that social revolution does not make its way by accumulating corpses along its path, which is a prerogative of Stalino-bourgeois counter-revolution, a prerogative that no revolutionary has ever disputed.
And as for those who have joined up with alienated and hierarchical militantism in the period of its bankruptcy, they could only become subversives on the condition that they get out of it, and only if they succeed in negating practically the conditions the spectacle itself has laid down on what is today designated by the vague but precise term “dissidence,” which is by its nature always impotent.
From now on, whosoever in Italy does not use all the intelligence they have at their disposal to rapidly understand the truth which lurks behind each State lie, whosoever does not do this is an ally of the enemies of the proletariat. And whosoever still claims to want to fight alienation in an alienated manner, through militantism and ideology, will quickly perceive that they have renounced all real combat. It will certainly not be militants who will make the social revolution, nor the secret services and Stalinist police who will prevent it!
-On Terrorism and the State by Gianfranco Sanguinetti
