Diary of an Escape

by Antonio Negri

  Folio 66

  This week I’m living my days between Milan, Venice and Rome. I am enjoying the ‘Negri case’ – I try to act it out. It brings to mind a story my grandmother used to tell me, about a man building a haystack. A peasant had correctly constructed a haystack, building from the bottom up, but then he overloaded it with hay, so that it ended up a bit of a mess, and the hay in the bottom part began to rot. So what does the silly peasant do? He starts digging out the rotten hay underneath, and the whole stack tips over on top of him. That’s how I see the magistrate in the 7 April case. He built the 7 April case from the bottom upwards, in other words from the need to put an end to local disorders. But then he overloaded it, and the whole thing became top-heavy and tipped over on his head. The same is as true for the magistrate as it was for the silly peasant. At this point, enter the corporations – the magistracy and the politicians – who cannot permit the stupidity of the peasant to be seen, because it would reflect badly on the whole corporation. So what happens then? Grandma said that, in order to prevent further problems of rot and infection, you have to burn the haystack. And that is exactly the impression I have. This is what is happening. They are preparing the fuses. What is emerging victorious is the old peasant agrarian ideology of the corporation. They want to burn everything – and make sure the fire falls onto us. The ‘Negri case’ is the symbol of the perversion of Italian peasantry, that is for sure, and also of its ferocious fables – but above all of this magistracy, of this disproportionately large power of regulation in a state deregulated, in a state which is gothic. To defend their prestige they are ready to do absolutely anything. It would be so simple, so clean-cut, just to wipe the slate and forget it, but this is not possible – it would only be possible for people who are not Levantine in character and dirty in their complexions. I feel downright racist in their regard. But when all is said and done the fault is also mine, for the way in which I have behaved. I resist, I hold my ground, I produce a dissociation which is a definition of identity and not a pentimento, I get myself elected as a member of Parliament, and in the trial I react by claiming my existence – but, Toni, don’t you realize that this insane priesthood which is the Italian magistracy – an uninterrupted continuity of monarchy, fascism and capitalism – cannot be granted dignity and honour? Only submission: I kiss the toe of your slipper, o Grand Vizier, and I crave pardon. That’s how it’s done. Italy, Italy, shame upon you! Only a Grosz could do justice to the faces I see around me – or a Buñuel, in the cinema. The ‘Negri case’ is an arrogant obstinacy, the caricatural continuity of the rule of bureaucracy – this is why there is nothing to be done other than to resist. Oppose it with another rationality, another way of life. It would be so easy for them to say: ‘The pentiti? They are a bunch of rogues, and we’ve made them confess what we wanted them to confess, so now let them keep quiet with their lies, and not project their massive slanders … And the emergency laws? These were simply a necessary means that we had to use for a while, but now it’s over, finished … let’s get back to legality …’ But instead … Maybe if we had a monarch, whose virtue was honour and to whom obedience was due on the charismatic basis of a truth that is seen as absolute – ah, if only I had a monarch and the arbitrariness of his judgement to judge me! The bureaucrat can’t do this – his so-called virtue is coherence. But it’s not even that! Here in Italy, in the crisis, the bureaucracy’s loyalty to itself is no more than a political defence of its own separateness, of an independence which does not participate in the dialectic of society and of the state but simply pursues a line of self-reproduction. The magistrates of the Nazi regime, in the horror of their function, respected a sworn value: obedience to the law, in the Obrigkeitsstaat. They were dogs, but they were obedient. Here they are no less dogs just because they have not yet decided to build Gulags and concentration camps (remember that they have constructed the special prisons, and Article 90, and Voghera, and death cells – and they have no values, and are crazy with power. This perversion has to be fought and destroyed. I don’t know how I shall come through this ‘Negri case’. Apart from anything else, the whole thing is so absurd – my image is so distant, in this horizon dominated by the media. No matter how things turn out, they will operate on a distant horizon and I shall only be able to live them as science fiction. But what is certain is that, whatever happens, I shall continue to struggle against the possibility of further ‘Negri cases’ – in other words against this irrational and cruel figure of the magistracy and of repression. I don’t want to do it as an avenger or as an executioner – no, that really is not my mission – only political struggle can change this world of ours – but at the same time I cannot remain silent about my disgust with these animals – they are repellent, clandestine, and infected, both for society and for civilization as a whole. (Milan – 26 July)

  Folio 67

  More perversion – that of the political class. Here in Rome I have no way of avoiding contact with them. People tend to see me as a cynic – but here I find myself being a moralist. Even cynicism has its limits; and in Sade, at this limit, you read the highest of poetry. But not with these people! Here poetry really does not exist any longer, not even as a resolution of their evil. The perversion of the system is simply vulgar. Why continue talking of crisis and objectivate a reality which in fact is subjectively unrecoverable? A perversion that is functional. I continue with a crazy rhythm of interviews – I feel that we are at the outer limits of imbroglio and defamation. This is a rule from which journalists – a breed of person even more despicable than that of magistrates and politicians of the big parties, if such a thing is possible – cannot deviate. Malignity. On the other hand, today I received an article by Karl Heinz Roth. Worse than Calogero! – what’s got into him? Today I have no wish to get angry – it is just amusing to see how a German autonomist can be so wrongheaded! But this does mean that I’m on my own. The game of politics – in the perversion that is its nature – does not accept strong impulses towards breakthroughs. Not from the Right, for reasons that are obvious; not from the Left, for less obvious and sometimes banal motives – resentment, envy and the like (it would be instructive to write a little handbook of the vulgar passions of the Left). I’m on my own. Bitterly I have to admit it. I have to hurry. Sometimes I’m so tired that I could almost wish that they would speed up the business of my re-arrest – I am alone, and they are making me more and more alone. At this point I’m expecting even my closest friends to start distancing themselves. I have to fight a lone battle, between myself and people who shower me with opinions. From the Right, they tell me that I am morally responsible for Italy’s terrorism, hence I should go back to prison. From the Left, they tell me that, because I have dissociated myself from terrorism, I am a traitor deserving to be killed. And from the centre I have to deal with people who want to use me politically. I cannot fight this battle on so many fronts on my own. So what then? Let us hope that it comes soon, this battle on my own personal terrain, where I can demonstrate powerfully that I am outside of that generalized perversion – alone, yes, but still alive. All the time I argue with myself about the political and cultural value of escape – conceived of as sabotage, as an act of absenteeism. Today this is the only communist possibility of bearing theoretical witness. Why didn’t you do it immediately, Toni? Because the perversion of the enemy has to be revealed right down to its bare essentials. The only key which can permit us to pass through the perversion of the political and judicial system and system of the media is, therefore, that of a passion-driven alterity, of a confidence in ourselves which is founded on justice, which is continuous and always on the alert. Each of them has to hate me not only because their bosses have told them to, but also because they feel my contempt. That contempt is my denunciation of their perversion – it is honour against vulgarity, it is collective love against their individual concern for their jobs. I am certain that they are winning – I have no illusion about that. But I am serene in my lucidity and contempt for the
m. I say no to the game of politics, that is, to the game of constructing vulgar homologies and common interests, a general will and a common interest – a game whose law is to draw you into their camp. No, really, I do not go along with this perversion. I try it sometimes, but I simply cannot do it. I am Spinozan by nature, and I think that God is on earth and that our life is constitutive of ever-increasing humanity. And them? No. Ultimi barbarorum. (Rome – 28 July)

  Folio 68

  The escort is beginning to drive me crazy – I have told them clearly that I can’t stand it any longer, and that I don’t feel myself to be under threat from anybody. But they still carry on. Paola often goes berserk with them. We are followed, monitored, blocked – with an attitude half of control and half of complicity. I’ve had enough of it. However, the whole thing can be amusing sometimes, even comical. Like tonight …

  Today I was in Naples for a series of TV interviews. There were no trains, because the lines had been blocked by a protest of the unemployed, so we had to hire a car. In the evening, returning from Naples, we stopped in at Formia to say hello to a group of comrades. Really nice. Agostino took us all for a meal up in the mountains, behind Formia. Wild, fearsome places. Counting the escort we had four or five cars, because they had two following us. At a certain point we got lost up in the mountains, down tiny roads that would have been inaccessible to anyone but lunatics like ourselves. We started the most incredible manoeuvres with our cars, and got ourselves thoroughly lost down the little lanes. When we finally got to meet up at the restaurant, our guards were looking so scared and despondent that we almost took a notion to buy them dinner! Anyway, back to reality … A day like today brings me back to the pleasures of life and struggle. On the one hand the crisis and the perversion of the system, and on the other this enormous wealth of proletarian society – in Naples I meet many comrades who are still managing to remain active, like living fishes in this swamp of misery, corruption and criminality; and they are managing to keep hope alive. Always an inch, just an inch, above the level of desperation which this damned power has distributed – they are drugged on hope. And in Formia I find a group of comrades in whom the tendencies of the old marginalized proletariat and those of the new, educated and abstract proletariat have constructed a new universe of revolutionary values. The material, irreversible fact – the solid knot – of these behaviours has always fascinated me – and here you feel it as a solid force. And here, yes, through these given behaviours, you can read again, outside of any sectarian and small-group fantasies, a memory of class struggle which cannot be erased.

  This seems to me like a small experience of recomposition along historical axes (in the revival of all the stories of struggle and revolution that have been lived), and along social axes at the same time (in the recompacting of different sensibilities and different sectors of the proletariat). A small and symbolic experience. Taking a stand against the obscenity of this system and the perversion of power. There are many of these groups of comrades, and, as such, they need to be discovered and put back into contact with each other. They remind me of the best moments in the building of the autonomy movement in the north during the 1970s – and then my thoughts run to all the experiences of the autonomy movement, strong and diffuse, which, albeit solely at the social level, have consolidated themselves in all the countries of developed capitalism. I never forget this strong social dualism – but when, in the night, in the long discussions which precede this dawn that begins to show itself before me, I find myself looking at it, in the interpretation the proletarian protagonist makes of it, then once again I begin to think that it will be possible to make the transition from the social to the political and to dream of this radical political change in the class consciousness of the people. What is a class? Certainly not the aggregate of typical proletarians that Engels describes, beloved of so many fusty nostalgic comrades. No, I prefer the slogan of Flora Tristan: ‘constituting the working class’. And then, why forget our good old teacher Marx, where he said that the working class is revolutionary, otherwise it is nothing. Here, once again, on these mountains, I too feel myself high on hope.

  PS Today, before leaving for Naples, I held a press conference where I presented the proposal for a bill on the reduction of preventive detention, as prepared by the comrades. (Naples/Formia – 29 July)

  Folio 69

  Today is my fiftieth birthday. A turning point? A trifle. These days I am living life with a great desperation – this life which could be so rich and fine. Ten years ago, 1 August 1973, was the starting point of this whole story of the autonomia movement – a big supper, with a hundred comrades present. I look at my life now, the life of a shipwrecked sailor washed up on an island, released from the waves and the perversity of the trial, but at the same time I see my space getting smaller and life becoming impoverished in the most extreme tension. I have decided that I shall make my escape, and shall get out and retain my freedom – but I am preparing nothing to that end. I feel that to set about preparing things would weaken the strength of my struggles in the here and now. And yet, in this very difficult situation, I am living – and I cannot avoid recognizing it – a kind of suicide. Unconsciously, long, drawn-out. With words I have the same poverty as I have in the face of the object to be described – a certain repugnancy to say them. I have to live this life even on the edge of death, and I must not admit that death is near. But why is it that destiny invites me to choose between life and death? Sometimes I think of having a sickness, a terminal illness, as a moment of rest, as a melody which resolves for you the drama of thought, and then everything finishes gently. Life and its desperation would have just one final spasm, as everything came to an end. But, when all is said and done, this just represents a new desire for suicide. Sometimes, when we’re arguing and shouting, Paola tells me: ‘When you were in prison, and when it seemed there was absolutely nothing that could be done, your mother used to tell me “Cheer up, Paola, at least he hasn’t committed suicide!”’ That was the great fear of my mother, and the great tension in me during these fifty years of mine. Paola reproaches me for accepting this state of affairs, for not preparing my escape. It is true – in some ways this living of mine, now, seems like a strange mixture of struggle and testimony and rupture, and at the same time of unwillingness to act and acceptance of fate. But it’s not really like that. I try to explain to Paola that this rhythm of life, this way of its proceeding – in which even desperation and heroism sometimes turn out to be empty masks – can be broken. The linear logic of life and its nullifying rhythm reach a threshold where even destiny imposes on you an alternative. This is how my fifty years of life have been – always right to the limit, to understand, to struggle, to organize moments of love. And now I am faced with the invasive presence of death and power. Struggling to the utmost limit. And then, at that limit, a jolt of hope and a re-beginning. Paola reacts by telling me that I’m crazy and that this is completely irrational. Irrational, I answer – and what is rationality, except that tragic and horrible figure which is seeking my death? That figure which calls itself law, or that nebulous machine which usurps the name of the will of the people? No, I shall not prepare my escape – I want to live it right to the limit, without ambiguity, this situation of struggle on the edge of a possible death. I shall escape – believe me, Paola – and it will be on that margin, after having savoured to the limit their perversion, and after having enjoyed their death-bearing machinations. It will happen, this escape of mine, like an act of hope, like a moment of destiny. You have to construct inside yourself an impulse of struggle and of knowledge that thrusts you to live in a way that is irresistible. So don’t get scared, my dear Paola, if death is our companion, if suicide coexists alongside the desire to live. It is we who have to decide between life and death – it is life that decides, the decision is made by its immediate truth. If that’s not the way it is, then there is no value in either living or dying. (Milan – 1 August)

  Folio 70

  Now we’re
coming to the heart of the debate about the authorization to proceed and my eventual re-imprisonment. A big battle. Everyone realizes that the problem is not only about me; it is also the problem of giving a strong sign, an indication, for finding ways to break out of the Years of Lead. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that it is precisely because this sign does not want to be given, precisely for this reason, that they will decide to put me back into prison. A moment of great nervousness. I continue with developing contacts and relationships, and also with the slow work in Parliament, to block possible prejudicial decisions. Infinite problems. Growing tiredness. Rossana is back from her holiday, which was very short. I am very fond of her. I really would like to manage to stay out of prison and to work on the things she is suggesting to me – an inquiry into class recomposition in the north, and the restructuring of industry and the explosion of this huge and innovative tertiary sector. An apology for Rossana. Her optimism is boundless, and sometimes it even rubs off onto me. She loves me like you’d love a kid. I go to Rebibbia and manage a brief meeting with the comrades. The first problem is that of the conference on alternative forms to imprisonment, planned for September.