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 arenâ€™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.