timecomesheretowither - In the becoming-real of the Imaginary Party, we...

29th March 2010

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In the becoming-real of the Imaginary Party, we will no doubt cross path with those ghastly parasites, the professional revolutionaries. Even though the only beautiful moments of the last century were disparagingly called “civil wars,” they will no doubt still denounce in us the “conspiracy of the ruling class to break down the revolution by a civil war” (Marx, The Civil War in France). We do not believe in the revolution, have already lost faith in “molecular revolutions,” but wholeheartedly believe in the differentiated ways of taking up civil war. The professional revolutionaries—whose repeated disasters have hardly slowed them down—will first of all smear us as dilettantes and as traitors to the Cause. They want us to think Empire is the enemy. We answer THEIR stupidity by pointing out that Empire is not the enemy, it is the hostis. It is not a matter of defeating Empire, it has to be annihilated; and if need be we can do without their Party, following the advice of Clausewitz on the subject of popular war: “A general uprising, as we see it, should be nebulous and elusive; its resistance should never materialize as a concrete body, otherwise the enemy can direct sufficient force as its core, crush it, and take many prisoners. When that happens, the people will lose heart and, believing that the issue has been decided and further efforts would be useless, drop their weapons. On the other hand, there must be some concentration at certain points: the fog must thicken and form a dark and menacing cloud out of which a bolt of lightning may strike at any time. These points for concentration will, as we have said, lie mainly on the flanks of the enemy’s theater of operations. […] They are not supposed to pulverize the core but to nibble at the shell and around the edges” (On War).