A-Infos (en) Brasil, União Popular Anarquista (UNIPA) - Anarchism and Violence: the tasks and limits of "Black Bloc" tactics (pt)

Militants identified as Black Bloc has been the target of persecution. The police, the 
government Cabral and Dilma try to put them in prison as criminals. On the other hand, 
parties like the PT, PSOL and PSTU and union leaders pelegas do the same. Try to make the 
criticism that the Black Bloc "hinder" mass actions. They create a false controversy. ---- 
What is the Black Bloc? What are its limits and what its potential transformer? We must 
first observe the story. The Black Bloc is a form of struggle that emerged in Europe in 
the 1970s and 1980s. This tactic was intended to defend the "occupations" (abandoned 
buildings that workers had turned into community centers). The police used extreme 
violence. So the activists started using bike helmets and shields improvise to try to 
prevent evictions. That is, the Blackhawk Bloc was a medium.

The end was the defense of a social organization against police violence and state. But it 
was in the movements against globalization in the 1990s that the Black Bloc became known 
worldwide. Now, after the crisis of 2008, the Black Bloc tactic has been widespread in 
several countries in Europe's periphery (Greece, Spain, Italy), Africa (Egypt) and in Brazil.

But in reality this is not the first form of self-defense of the workers and oppressed 
peoples. In fact, in Brazil and in the world ever existed various forms and self-defense 
tactics and mass violence. The main forms were the revolutionary syndicalism, who 
considered sabotage, resistance to police and insurrection as the center of his repertory. 
These resisted both in street demonstrations, as with clandestine forms of organization. 
Many carried guerrilla actions and became known as expropriated because expropriavam banks 
to finance the revolutionary struggle.


Photo: Spanish Civil War, 1936.

But these tactics are not exclusive to the popular uprising of June. In many situations, 
peasants and rural workers burn sugarcane farm and headquarters. The workers destroyed the 
housing company as a protest against poor working conditions and destroyed the union 
bureaucracy. Soon, self-defense tactics and mass violence are neither new nor unique to 
the Black Bloc.

So how can we understand the criticism of the Black Bloc? There is a bourgeois criticism. 
Think all this fighting are criminals. But there is also criticism of the opportunist left 
that says the Black Block, by use of violence, the masses away from the fight. His 
argument becomes untrue for two reasons: the emergence of the Black Bloc tactic in Brazil 
follows the mass movement. Massification that bureaucrats and union supporters had never 
achieved.

Why the Left opportunistic attacks the Black Bloc and all forms of mass violence? Because 
she needs to show that respects the limits of the bourgeois order, which will never create 
organizational forms that threaten so real that power. Ie, the opportunist left and the 
rich and powerful fear the people, the people try to take power. This is the root of the 
problem.

In this sense, the Black Bloc tactic is only one in the history of the workers' struggle. 
1: The Black Bloc is a tactic, not this tactic, without incorporating and defend this 
tactic no revolutionary movement. The tactics of the Black Bloc and its defensive and 
offensive dimension should be integrated by a revolutionary strategy. The mass of workers 
are marginalized in teaching and creating conditions for effective social changes in 
Brazil. Without the use of this tactic, mass violence, no revolution and no one can 
proclaim itself revolutionary.

What are the limits of the Black Bloc tactic? Despite the use in countries like Germany, 
USA, Europe, throughout the Anti-globalization Movement, not able to create a movement to 
overthrow capitalism. Only mass violence without an organization and a program is not 
enough. It runs the risk of turning "means in the end." Or, as happened to certain sectors 
of the Black Bloc in the U.S., consider the actions of mass violence as an act, to satisfy 
the desire for individual expression.

But the unions do not pose the problem of mass violence can not be a revolutionary factor 
seriously. Large popular uprisings like Ecuador in 1998, Argentina in 2001, Bolivia in 
2005-2006 do not take this strategy and tactics, were integrated into capitalism and 
failed to perform social changes.

Therefore it is necessary and we must avoid two mistakes: pacifism counterrevolutionary, 
condemning the violence of the masses, and the myth of violence as an end in itself. So 
the task is a mass organization of revolutionary syndicalist type, which educate, 
politicize. At the same time it supports the forms of self-defense and street fighting. 
And who fights against the union bureaucracy and political parties. The Black Bloc tactics 
need to integrate the Strategy Revolutionary Syndicalism. Out of it she tends to isolation 
and weakening. Inside it enhances and leverages the organization classist and combative.
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