Our next title for Anarchist Summer Reading Program is To Our Friends, by our French comrades of the Invisible Committee.
"To those for whom the end of a civilization is not the end of the world;
To those who see insurrection first of all as a breach in the organized reign of stupidity, lies, and confusion;
To those who discern, behind the thick fog of “crisis,” a theater of operations, maneuvers, strategems—and hence the possibility of a counterattack;
To those who strike blows;
To those watching for the right moment;
To those looking for accomplices;
To those who are deserting;
To those who keep going;
To those getting organized;
To those wanting to build a revolutionary force, revolutionary because it’s sensitive;
This modest contribution to an understanding of our time."
comité invisible
The hypocrisy of empire is especially grotesque today, revealed in the sharp contrast between its iconography of freedom and its breathtakingly stupid and terrifying choice to expand the federal gulag system while our infrastructure crumbles and our social supports are removed.
It's so tempting to fall into demoralization, hopelessness, and blame. Our collective grief and fear are real, and they have an important place in our consciousness. Emotions are there to do a job, and we are healthier when we let them do that job. In fact, the better we get at feeling them, the faster they can do that.
One thing they aren't there to do is get us stuck. We cannot afford to become frozen or isolated or bitter. I'm thinking of the American revolutionaries who faced a similar overwhelm, captured in the powerful image of a serpent, severed in pieces, with the words "Unite, or Die." Each piece, independent, was powerless. United, it was a formidable creature. We face that same challenge today.
The wisdom in To Our Friends offers a powerful lens for this self-reflection, asking us to look inward, to question "the toeholds which the enemy may have within us that determine the non-accidental, repeated character of our failures." It identifies the inherited baggage of leftism that keeps us fractured—the very dynamics that sever our serpent into helpless pieces:
- The empty moral superiority that alienates potential allies.
- The rigid dogmatism that sorts the world into friends and enemies based on ideological purity rather than shared struggle.
- The presumption to dictate the "right" way to live, which breeds resentment and pushes people away.
- The rivalry with the mainstream left, which keeps us tethered to the very ground we seek to leave behind.
These habits, the text suggests, form a "screen between thinking and the heart." They prevent us from seeing each other clearly and from building the trust necessary to act as one. They are the enemy within, the insidious force that ensures we will die separately rather than unite and live.
This is not a call to abandon our principles, but to abandon the toxic patterns that prevent them from taking root in the world. It is a call to see the best in one another, to seek understanding even in disagreement, and to build working relationships founded on shared purpose, not perfect ideological alignment.
This is hard inner labor that defines how we meet this moment. Can we cultivate an inner strength that allows for generosity? Will we find the courage to be vulnerable with one another, and to build bridges of trust across the chasms of old divides?
True independence is not found in the false comfort of separation, but in the profound, resilient power of our interdependence and solidarity.
Let unite, so that we may truly live.
