The imminent crash is not an apocalypse, but a birth laden with immense possibility

~ Liberto Herrera, A.N.A. ~

The rotten edifice of global capitalism is entering its terminal convulsion. Its foundations, built upon exploitation and ecocide, creak to the point of exhaustion. This is not an accident, but the logical outcome of a system that consumes lives and planets with the same coldness. Faced with this imminent civilisational collapse, the crucial question is not how to save the ruins, but how to ensure that, in the fall, we definitively crush the altar of Capital, the State, and all hierarchy. And the clear and urgent answer is that of anarchist action: that the exploited and oppressed be, without any mediation or pity, the conscious actors in the downfall of this sick world.

The heralds of power, in panic, are already offering their poisoned solutions: more State, more control, more “green capitalism” to manage the scarcity they themselves created. They want to convince us to trust the jailers again, now as supposed firefighters. It is a historical fraud. The State, far from being an antidote, is the armed wing and bureaucratic manager of the catastrophe. Its logic is one of sovereignty over people and territories, of social triage amidst chaos, of the perpetuation of an elite in mental and material bunkers. Trusting it to guide us through the collapse is like handing the flock over to the wolf for protection.

Therefore, the only historical force capable not only of surviving the collapse, but of forging something radically new in its fire, is us: the multitude of the powerless, the precarious, the racialised, those crushed by the machine. We have no interest in preserving this world, for it never belonged to us. Our power lies precisely in what the system denied us: the affective detachment from its moribund institutions and the creative capacity of those who have always had to reinvent life in the cracks. The collapse is not the end of our history; it is the necessary demolition of the stage on which we have always been supporting actors.

The time is not for petitions, nor for waiting for political saviours. It is the time for direct action, horizontal organisation, and aggressive solidarity. Every wildcat strike that paralyses the flows of capital, every occupied social centre that becomes a base of mutual support, every community infrastructure that ignores the State and the market, are laboratories of the future and direct blows to the decaying present. It is in the concrete practice of popular assemblies, self-managed supply networks, and community defence that the consciousness and power we need are forged. This is how a world is dismantled: by creating, here and now, the embryos of what is to come.

We reject with all our might any Faustian pact that offers us crumbs of “stability” in exchange for disarming our rebellion. The authoritarian left, with its nostalgia for strong states and enlightened vanguards, is a dead end. It only reproduces, in new clothing, the same logic of command and obedience that led us to the abyss. Our path is different: not the seizure of power, but its dissolution. Not the management of the crisis, but the creative explosion from its ruins.

Therefore, let fear be fuel, not paralysis. The system feeds on our fear of chaos, selling security in exchange for freedom. But the true chaos is the current order, which destroys ecosystems daily and condemns generations. Our audacity must be proportional to the monstrosity we face. “There is nothing to lose but our own chains.” And there is a world to be won: a world without masters, without borders, without the machine that grinds bodies and dreams; a world where individual freedom is inseparable from the free community, where the need to destroy goes hand in hand with the passion to build.

The imminent collapse is not an apocalypse, it is a birth. Painful, chaotic, but laden with immense possibility. It is up to us, anarchists and rebels of all stripes, to be the midwives of this new era. Not with speeches, but with hands that dismantle the old and erect the new. Not with leaders, but with the collective strength of those who dare to govern themselves. May the collapse of this ailing world be our boldest work, and the impending chaos the blank canvas on which we will finally paint freedom.

Machine translation. Inage: Kate Ter Haar on Flickr CC BY 2.0