Since I recognised myself an anarchist, I have always been an “idealist” or for taking it to the Messianic, a “believer” of The Idea. I was fascinated (and continue to be fascinated) by all the stories and experiences that Anarchism has brought, fought for and defended in the name of a conviction that a more dignified Humanity is possible. I always liked texts with a speech that appealed to “preach the spark of consciousness that transforms the instinct of mutual help into the architecture of a society without masters, where bread and freedom are universal and inalienable rights” or where they spoke of the “end of the exploitation of Man over Man” and the “emancipation of the people by their own people”. I believe that, from this interpretation, my logical development was that ego and personalism cannot take place in a universal project.
Perhaps that is why I was so misunderstanding about seeing certain dynamics within the libertarian movement. I’m not talking about real political differences, which are necessary. I speak of eternal beefs, ego wars, adjustments of accounts disguised as principles, social capital accumulated by pointing out the rest and personal conflicts artificially elevated to a political question. I have always seen anarchist struggle as incompatible with the ego. Not because we have no pride, wounds or desire for recognition. We have them. All. But a militant ethics should serve just to put that in place. If we say fight for something that surpasses us, the collective project cannot be hijacked by anyone’s narcissism.
Not for nothing I have chosen this title: “Os cães ladram e a caravana passa” (I understand that in the Spanish State it is used). The expression comes from an old Arabic saying: “The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on”. That is, there are provocations and non-constructive criticisms that cannot prevent progress. There will always be noise. There will always be those who criticise, intoxicate or need any other people’s projects to fail to confirm their own superiority or maintain their comfort. You have to listen to the criticism when they are right and take on mistakes when they are ours, but we cannot turn every noise into a fear that will paralyse us.
Rafael Viana da Silva points out in his text Anarquismo contra o Anarquismo – Menos complacência, mais autocrítica [lit. Anarchism against or Anarchism – Less complacency, more self-criticism] a widespread confusion in the libertarian movement that has done us much harm: taking anarchist freedom as “doing whatever he wants” and individual autonomy as ethical relativism. A freedom without collective responsibility does not produce libertarian militancy: it produces whim, informality, personalism, and a bourgeois caricature of the anarchist as someone incapable of upholding agreements. Anarchist ethics is not demonstrated in everyday coherence but in fulfilling what one assumes, not disappearing when it comes to sustaining a task, not turning every criticism into a personal attack, not using the assembly as the ego scenario, not confusing charisma with legitimacy.
And here appears one of our great problems within the movement—the lack of self-criticism (of course with its due exceptions) and the reproduction of a self-consumption movement. We are the first to detect and point out conflicts of others, but we have a hard time looking at our own. We know how to make devastating statements against other organisations, but many times we do not know how to say “here we fail, here we were unjust, here we act out of pride, here we confuse a personal wound with a political position.”
A libertarian (and also revolutionary) movement without self-criticism rots from within. It can have impeccable discourse and a combative and appealing aesthetic, but if it is not able to review its practices, recognise mistakes and transform its dynamics, it ends up doing more branding than politics.
We have also confused too many times horizontality with a lack of responsibility. As if organising, evaluating, asking for explanations, fulfilling tasks or sustaining agreements were authoritarian practices. They are not! Why would it be authoritarian for an organisation to remind you of what you collectively agreed to? Collective responsibility is not a blind punishment or obedience. It is understanding that the common exists only if someone sustains it. That an assembly does nothing for itself. That an organisation has no arms or heads separated from its militants. That each person is responsible for their own organisation and for fighting for things they disagree with. If no one assumes his share, The Idea becomes a liturgy: many words, little strength. It makes me think if the criticism that is most made within anarchism, is that theory there is much, but little practice, maybe our problem is not so much a problem of excess theory but of internal and external malpractice…
On the other hand, in certain spaces a culture of fear of being wrong, fear of speaking, fear of not using the perfect word has been created, fear that a disagreement will be read as violence, fear that a clumsiness will become public condemnation. And when a political culture produces more fear than courage, more calculus than honesty and more complacency than critical, we have a problem where the centre is in a punitivism disguised as radicalism. And beware, I’m not saying this to deny the actual damage. There are aggressions, abuses, violence and miserable behaviours within our spaces and against which we have to act relentlessly. There are serious things that require protection, limits and consequences, but it is one thing to face the damage and another to reproduce, in small, the prison and punitivist logic that we say to combat: good and bad, saints and monsters, expulsion as the only answer, reputation as a court, rumour as proof and lynching as pedagogy.
In the text How We Handle Harm of the Punch Up Collective, a small anarchist collective from Ottawa, Ontario, focused on building resilient radical movements, insist on something fundamental: not every conflict is abuse, not all disagreement is violence and not all discomfort is harm. If everything is named equally, we stop understanding what happens. And if we don’t understand what’s going on, we can’t intervene well. If assuming a mistake means automatic social death, no one will truly take responsibility. People will learn to hide, justify themselves, lie, or perform regret. A serious militant culture has to make responsibility possible without turning it into a punitive spectacle.
It must also be said that many problems between organisations are not political, even if they are presented as politicians. They’re personal. Poorly managed wounds, affective breaks, envy, competences by symbolic capital, old snouts, informal leaderships, insecurities, resentments. Then all that dresses up, ethics, strategy and principles, but the poor reality is that it’s an ego problem. And let it be clear: mixing the personal and the political like that is a mistake. Of course, the personal has political dimensions but it is another thing to turn my personal discomforts into a universal political criterion and condition the rhythm of my organisation to move to the rhythm of my wounds.
And I also want to make it clear: using bourgeois or liberal institutions to resolve conflicts between comrades should make us reflect on the state of our movement. Not because it is necessary to demand heroics from anyone, or to start from moralistic positions in serious situations. If our only response to each conflict is to delegate it to the state, its courts or its police, something is failing in our collective capacity to build a revolutionary alternative.
From my perspective, politics should be seen as a field of dispute and we have to be prepared for any dispute, receive, give, fall and stand up with our heads raised. We have ethical codes, but the others do not and we can not forget that, so we must be intelligent, humble and coherent but you also have to be daring, disruptive and know how to hit hard at the time of the dispute. Bakunin said, “Destructive passion is also a creative passion.” It is about understanding that every revolutionary construction demands to break with the old forms that bind us like ego-trips, personal beefs, fear, complacency, the ghetto and the inertias that reproduce the same thing we say we fight. Because if the libertarian movement continues to be caught up in self-destructive and sectarian dynamics, we will not only not leave the ghetto as we will continue to drag anarchism towards marginality. And then we are surprised and upset that from the outside they call us children, useful or utopian idiots. But what do we expect, if we spend more energy on internal shit than on thinking about how and that we can contribute to those we say defend and fight for?
Enough of pretending purity and we will build a militant ethics capable of assuming error without sinking into it. Know how to apologise when it touches. Know how to recognise reason when someone else has it. Knowing how to face consequences. Knowing how to look at a conflict without turning it into a show. Knowing how to speak clearly without destroying. Know how to criticise without humiliating. Know how to take care of without covering up. Know how to fight without losing your soul.
In the face of rumour, clarity.
In front of the beef, politics.
In front of the ego-trip, collective projects.
In the face of fear, responsibility.
In the face of punitivism, reparation and limits.
Faced with complacency, criticism and self-criticism.
The anarchism that interests me is a demanding practice of freedom, responsibility and organization and not a philosophy with moral superiority enclosed in its ghetto without transformative capacity. Because in the end the problem is that we want to destroy the state, capital and all forms of domination but we are not even able to destroy our miserable dynamics.
A movement that does not know how to look in the mirror is doomed to defeat. And I’m tired of holding defeats decorated with good slogans. I want an anarchist practice that is on the front line of social struggles and that dares to grow, to correct itself, to ask for account, to assume mistakes but also rebellious, bold and without ever losing the tenderness of the soul before the harshness of the world.
Don Diego de la Vega, Liza militant.
Translated by Organise.
Originally posted in Spanish here: regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/06/14/os-caes-ladram-e-a-caravana-passa/
References
- Ad Nauseam: Apuntes contra el gueto político. Reedición del Manifiesto Ad Nauseam. 2026.
- Rafael Viana da Silva: Anarquismo contra o Anarquismo: Menos complacência, mais autocrítica
- Punch Up * Kick Down Distro: How We Handle Harm
- Dicionário da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa: «Os cães ladram e a caravana passa»
- Mikhail Bakunin: The Reaction in Germany
