Affinity: Beyond Friendship

Many draw back in front of affinity.

It is in fact
a lot easier and less demanding to sign up

to something, be it an organization, a permanent
assembly or

an environment and to take up and reproduce formal
characteristics,

rather than undertaking a long and never
exhausted research for comrades with whom

to share
ideas, analysis and eventual projects.

Because affinity is exactly this: a reciprocal knowledge

between comrades, shared analysis that lead to perspectives

of action.

Affinity is therefore directed
on one hand towards theoretical

deepening and on the other towards
intervention in social conflictuality.

It aspires to the sharing of ideas and methods,
and it

does not have as a goal an infinite growth.

For some
comrades, one of the main preoccupations,

even though often well hidden, seems to remain

the number.

How many are we?

What should we do to be
more?

From the polarization on such a question and
from the constatation that today we aren’t

many,
given by the fact that many others do not

share our ideas
deriving the

conclusion
that we should, to grow numerically, avoid

putting
too hard of an accent on certain ideas.

Affinity is not the same thing as friendship.

Of
course the two do not exclude each other,

The search for affinity occurs on an interpersonal
level.

It is not a collective event, a group affair,
where

it is always easier to follow than to think
for oneself.

The deepening of affinity is evidently a matter
of

thought and action, but in the end affinity
is not the

strictly about carrying out an action together,
but rather a

starting point from which to then pass to
action.

It is true that the search and the
deepening of affinity require a lot of time

and energy,
and that therefore it is not possible to generalize

it to
all comrades.

The anarchist movement of a country, of
a city or even of a neighbourhood cannot become

one
big affinity group.

It is not about enlarging different
affinity groups with more comrades,

but to make possible the multiplication
of autonomous affinity groups.

The search, the elaboration and the deepening
of affinity leads to small groups of

comrades that know each other,
share analysis and pass together to action.