excerpts from:

THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE     (by Hakim Bey)


        "... this time, however, I come as the victorious Dionysus,
         who will turn the world into a holiday...
         Not that I have much time..."

               -Nietzsche (from his last "insane" letter to Cosima Wagner)

PIRATE UTOPIAS

THE SEA ROVERS AND CORSAIRES of the the 18th century created an "information
network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim
business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the
net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and
provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and neccessities. Some of those
islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living
consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a
short but merry life.

Some years ago I looked through a lot of secondary material on piracy hoping
to find a study of these enclaves - but it appeared as if no historian has
yet found them worthy of analysis. (William Burroughs has mentioned the
subject, as did the late British anarchist Larry Law - but no systematic
research has been carried out.) I retreated to primary sources and
constructed my own theory, some aspects of which will be discussed in this
essay. I called the settlements "Pirate Utopias."

Recently Bruce Sterling, one of the leading exponents of Cyberpunk science
fiction, published a near-future romance based on the assumption that the
decay of political systems will lead to a decentralized proliferation of
experiments in living: giant worker-owned corporations, independent enclaves
devoted to "data piracy," Green-Social-Democrat enclaves, Zerowork enclaves,
anarchist liberated zones, etc. The information economy which supports this
diversity is called the Net; the enclaves (and the book's title) are 'Islands
in the Net'.

The medieval Assassins founded a "State" which consisted of a network of
remote mountain valleys and castles, separated by thousands of miles,
strategically invulnerable to invasion, connected by the information flow of
secret agents, at war with all governments, and devoted only to knowledge.
Modern technology, culminating in the spy satellite, makes this kind of
/autonomy/ a romantic dream. No more pirate islands! In the future the same
technology - freed from all political control - could make possible an entire
world of /autonomous zones/. But for now the concept remains precisely
science fiction - pure speculation.

Are we who live in the present doomed never to experience autonomy, never to
stand for one moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom? Are we reduced
either to nostalgia for the past or nostalgia for the future? Must we wait
until the entire world is freed of political control before even one of us
can claim to know freedom? Logic and emotion unite to condemn such a
supposition. Reason demands that one cannot struggle for what one does not
know; and the heart revolts at a universe so cruel as to visit such
injustices on /our/ generation alone of humankind.

To say that "I will not be free til all humans (or all sentient creatures)
are free" is simply to cave in to a kind of nirvana-stupor, to abdicate our
humanity, to define ourselves as losers.

I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands
in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free
enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research
and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY
AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force
for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than
an /essay/ ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the
occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct a
political dogma. In fact I have deliberately refrained from defining the TAZ
- I circle around the subject, firing off exploratory beams. In the end, the
TAZ is almost self-explanatory. If the phrase became current it would be
understood without difficulty ... understood in action.



MUSIC AS ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLE

MEANWHILE, HOWEVER, WE TURN to the history of classical anarchism in the
light of the TAZ concept.

Before the "closure of the map," a good deal of anti-authoritarian energy
went into "escapist" communes such as Modern Times, the various
Phalansteries, and so on. Interestingly, some of them were not intended to
last "forever," but only as long as the project proved fulfilling. By
Socialist/Utopian standards these experiments were "failures," and therefore
we know little about them.

When escape beyond the frontier proved impossible, the era of revolutionary
urban Communes began in Europe. The Communes of Paris, Lyons and Marseilles
did not survive long enough to take on any characteristics of permanence, and
one wonders if they were meant to. From our point of view the chief matter of
fascination is the /spirit/ of the Communes. During and after these years
anarchists took up the practice of revolutionary nomadism, drifting from
uprising to uprising, looking to keep alive in themselves the intensity of
spirit they experienced i the moment of insurrection. In fact, certain
anarchists of the Stirnerite.Nietzschean strain came to look on this activity
as an end in itself, a way of /always occupying an autonomous zone/, the
interzone which opens up in the midst or wake of war and revolution (cf.
Pynchon's "zone" in _Gravity's Rainbow_). They declared that if any socialist
revolution /succeeded/, they'd be the first to turn against it. Short of
universal anarchy they had no intention of ever stopping. In Russia in 1917
they greeted the free Soviets with joy: /this/ was their goal. But as soon as
the Bolsheviks betrayed the Revolution, the individualist anarchists were the
first to go back on the warpath. After Kronstadt, of course, /all/ anarchists
condemned the "Soviet Union" (a contradiction in terms) and moved on in
search of new insurrections.

Makhno's Ukraine and anarchist Spain were meant to have /duration/, and
despite the exigencies of continual war both succeeded to a certain extent:
not that they lasted a "long time," but they were successfully organized and
could have persisted if not for outside aggression. Therefore, from among the
experiments of the inter-War period I'll concentrate instead on the madcap
Republic of Fiume, which is much less well known, and was /not/ meant to
endure.

Gabrielle D.Annunzio, Decadent poet, artist, musician, asthete, womanizer,
pioneer daredevil aeronauticist, black magician, genius and cad, emerged from
World War I as a hero with a small army at his beck and command: the
"Arduti." At a loss for adventure, he decided to capture the city of Fiume
from Yugoslavia and /give/ it to Italy. After a necromantic ceremony with his
mistress in a cemetary in Venice he set out to conquer Fiume, and succeded
without any trouble to speak of. But Italy turned down his generous offer;
the Prime Minister called him a fool.

In a huff, D'Annunzio decided to declare independence and see how long he
could get away with it. He and one of his anarchist friends wrote the
Constitution, which declared /music to be the central principle of State/.
The Navy (made up of deserters and Milanese anarchist maritime unionists)
named themselves the /Uscochi/, after the long-vanished pirates who once
lived on local offshore islands and preyed on Venetian and Ottoman shipping.
The modern Uscochi succeeded in some wild coups: several rich Italian
merchant vessels suddenly gave the Republic a future: money in the coffers!
Artists, bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D'Annunzio corresponded with
Malatesta), fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies
(the uniform was black with pirate skull-&-crossbones -- later stolen by the
SS), and crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists
and Vedantists) began to show up at Fiume in droves. The party never stopped.
Every morning D'Annunzio read poetry and manifestos from his balcony; every
evening a concert, then fireworks. This made up the entire activity of the
government. Eighteen months later, when the wine and money had run out and
the Italian fleet /finally/ showed up and lobbed a few shells at the
Municipal Palace, no one had the energy to resist.

D'Annunzio, like many Italian anarchists, later veered toward fascism -- in
fact, Mussolini (the ex-Syndicalist) himself seduced the poet along that
route. By the time D'Annunzio realized his error it was too late: he was too
old and sick. But Il Duce had him killed anyway -- pushed off a balcony --
and turned him into a "martyr". As for Fiume, though it lacked the
/seriousness/ of the free Ukraine or Barcelona, it can probably teach us more
about certain aspects of our quest. It was in some ways the last of the
pirate utopias (or the only modern example) -- in other ways, perhaps, it was
very nearly the first modern TAZ.

...