Diary of an Escape

by Antonio Negri

  Folio 46

  Very tired. I take a rest from the trial. I work on drawing up appeals and preparing election materials. The prospect of my freedom is growing. But it is a dry hope. I find that I can’t unify the imaginary, which arises out of the concrete reality of these days, with the great hope I am living. I can’t manage to free myself from the immediacy of the trial and from its squalid, dreary reality. I’m left on my own, a masturbator, in this situation. (Outside there is pandemonium in the organs of the state: a blitz against the Camorra, and the question of Tortora’s imprisonment. The impression is one of uncontrollable madness.) This is not succeeding in its project to become a diary. Too little time, and too much tiredness. I can’t even manage to provide myself with a notebook, a logbook for the journey. And anyway the tension is too high to permit a simple documentation.

  What is to be done? Maybe the only way to save this work is to focus our gaze on what is immediately at hand. People – it is the people who will pull me out of prison – that’s what I am thinking this evening, precisely in the immediacy. So what then? I have to throw my dead body into what remains of this trial. Can’t you hear it, Toni – can’t we all hear it – this powerful signal of hope that is coming from outside? Let us play it. But how? In the only productive way that is open to us, of course – and this is what life has taught me. By building. Building life against death, freedom against repression. There is a moment, and it is this one, in which the entire meaning of existence is put on the line. A very powerful pleasure in revolution – this is the origin of our current woes. And at the same time the sole origin of all our hope. So we work on rebuilding tensions and expectations: of finding some way of surviving between the imbroglio of the trial and the call for freedom that people are putting up. Then let us go down the path of claiming our history. What were we? We were the hope and honour of many generations. We were the totally deployed subjectivity of the revolutionary movement. It is difficult to relive a passion that existed in the past, but which will also come again in the future. I see faces which are pale and tense with fear, in the sweat that comes from fear, awaiting this reappearance. No, our trials are not a sign of defeat. They are powerful symptoms of the future. I get a buzzing in my ears when I think of all this – I am in unison with hundreds of thousands of people. With that ‘second society’ that is so full of desires. The dialectics of this trial disgusts me. My intellectual anti-dialectical passion reacts against it. I believe that, despite everything, I have behaved well. I have not renegued on anybody. I should claim my past more powerfully. This is how I see things today. Push to the limits. Revolution. What is it? It is to be together, it is to build the conditions for freedom. Here there is an enormous programme, which the masses are disposed to put into play as an element in the creation of a new society. Why do I need to repeat its objectives? Every major struggle displays them as elements that are irreversibly present. I have written and talked about this, possibly even to excess, drawing from the movement what the movement itself was producing. Now we can add, in the hope of revolution, a recompense for our sufferings. Enough of these black legal robes, enough of this ill-famed justice. I believe that my judges have understood this too. I am tired. And yet never too tired to carry forward our revolutionary utopia, taking it a step further than what in reality we have been capable of fulfilling. A step forward. Many steps forward. The process of defending myself in the trial has enabled me to place this further step before a huge public opinion. Claiming our history. They are trying us for our hunger for freedom, for our thirst for justice. You, my friend, who are walking along the road, oblivious of us and of everything – prisons and movement – are you with us, friend? Truth and justice are not merely the abstract high-sounding terms that too many people imagine them to be – they are not money, abstract equivalence of ideology. No, they are hope. Not a dried-out hope but a life-filled hope. My bad mood of today is passing. I look forward with enormous hope. But all this will be worth nothing unless we also manage to make our claim – I want to move more determinedly on this terrain. I am proud of the movement, of its reality, of its capacity for imagining. We have to overturn the emptiness of the dual image of the trial and of the parliamentary elections. Hope. An affirmation of all that has happened. The gutter rats of the media and the wolves of the political parties have robbed us of that unique innovative mass experience which was working-class and proletarian autonomy.

  I claim all of this. With serenity, with the humility of someone who knows that this overturning was an established fact in the consciousness of a multitude of comrades. So let us go forward with courage and with occasional small portions of heroism. (G12 Rebibbia – 17/18/19 June)

  Folio 47

  Today the trial blew out. The lawyers are angry. They have gone on strike. The judges, the corporation of arrogance, have been treating them in the same way that they treat us. They’ll be striking for the whole week. Only Tarsitano, the PCI’s man, was not on strike – he was there, like a crocodile, his jaws gaping – the provincial idiot – a toothpick with the function of a pole keeping his jaws eternally open. But he and his party bosses will find their own ways of getting what they want, through those sectors of the judicial corporation with which they are associated. From Perugia, another arrest warrant has been issued for me: they say that, six or seven years ago, I organized a prison escape in Perugia, and that I organized a prison riot to facilitate the escape. They’re claiming that I put a handgun into a football and threw it over the wall. And that I left getaway cars all ready outside. An impressive operation, no doubt about it. If it were true, it might even be amusing. Pity that the person who is claiming all this is one of their murderous pentiti. Is there anything they would not concoct, to avoid life imprisonment? What I find particularly striking – today the judge arrived from Perugia, in a vain attempt to interrogate me – is the fact that they are starting these manoeuvres right before the elections. Against the Socialist Party in Savona, against the Christian democrats in the south, against the Camorra (in other words, against all parties, but in favour of some) in Naples. And then against my comrades and me here in Rome – from Perugia. This is obviously a counterattack. An attempt to overload the situation, to raise the stakes in terms of spectacle. I already had an intimation that the newspapers were preparing some such operation, and a few days ago I had a first hint of new criminal proceedings. Today the warrant sits before me, accompanied by the slimy face of one of their hit-squad judges. He is very angry when I inform him that, in the absence of my lawyer (who is on strike), I am not able to reply to his charges. Maybe he thinks that strikes are still illegal, like in the good old days. I am angry, too, as I look at him, I think – I don’t understand why the fact that he passed the examination to become a magistrate and now earns a fat salary gives him the right to get so personal with me. Then I chuckle to myself – in fact I laugh in his face – as he gets all worked up, and I reflect on the fact that his first name is Wladimir. As in Vladimir Ilych? Was that the intention of his father – who, for sure, must have been some old communist? The ironies of fate. Instead of growing up to become a guardian of freedom and communism, he is possessed by his function. A baleful situation. I look at him with a certain sympathy now. I wonder, are we in a phase of a new offensive now, one supported by the PCI central office, to uphold the fabrications of the 7 April case and to conjure up new charges in the election period? I have the impression that this is the way things are going. We’ll have to wait and see if this is how it turns out. What is certain is that the whole affair is dragging on and on. It’s like some endlessly self-reproducing amoeba. The ferocity of the counterattack. Precisely at this moment, when it seems that my candidacy is bringing about new political possibilities. The ferocity of an institutional attack against an experience of struggles, which were intent on changing the institutions through the institutions. But this is too much! What do they want? Did they feel, maybe, themselves to be heroes, being shot at and killed? Why? Why do they not acce
pt the symbol of peacemaking that my presence in the elections represents? The fact is that the mixing in of politics with the trial proceedings – that unnatural coupling which was wanted from the start, by the PCI, by Gallucci, by Calogero – is now reproducing itself never-endingly. The ferocity is located in the subjective political valence, which preserves the continuity of this relationship. I am obliged to hold onto it, even though I denounce it. And they are obliged to reproduce it, even though they are its prisoners. I have the impression that the issue of a correct refounding of the relationship between the political and the juridical – in other words, the breaking of the imbalances created by the political functioning of the magistracy – are problems which affect everybody. Enough of this net in which we are all caught! However, it makes me very tired to be endlessly driven onwards by a constitutional mechanism which is utterly corrupt. Breaking these dynamics is going to take a lot of political planning. Claiming constitutional justice instead of these depravations of the political spirit demands a lot of strength. We have neither the one nor the other – for the moment, I resist by means of anger. But not without hope. (G12 Rebibbia – 20 June)

  Folio 48

  The trial is postponed yet again. The lawyers’ strike continues.

  There’s a huge amount of tension. Mine, and also that of the comrades. I have a long talk in prison with Don Nicola. He is accused of things to do with the ’ndrangheta. We have been friends for a while now. He is an exquisite person. He nurtures a nostalgia for the old Calabrian system of justice, and he hates the bands of young men who have destroyed that ethics. As for the justice of the state, with which he has had a lot to do, he sees it for what it is: a settling of accounts between gangs; a corruption, abstraction and alienation of the real relations of justice, which people live and produce. I enjoy talking with him. I like the formality of a relationship, even one of friendship, which is hard to arrive at in prison. We address each other in the plural, ‘voi’. I ask him what he thinks of this new volley of warrants, which have been dumped on me during election week. After the Perugia ones I am sure that others will arrive shortly. ‘Vendetta,’ he replies. ‘But don’t you think that it might be counter-productive?’ I say. ‘Professor,’ he replies, ‘you do not know these men of power. Power gives them pleasure. One man might like women, and another the oranges in his garden – but these people like power. Power is a rent. They say that it’s not like that, but here it’s now just the same as in America. When I realized this, that a tax could be put on power, just as you put a tax on someone who has too fat an income, I was happy. That’s what I do to him – because power is wealth.’ Again I reply: ‘But these little provincial judges who are persecuting me today, right in the middle of the election period, I hardly think that they are earning or gaining from it.’ He replies: ‘Professor, you, who profess to be a teacher of men, understand very little about people. Excuse me, professor, I wouldn’t want to offend you … that’s the furthest thing from my mind. But you do not know them. After four years of prison and of persecution, have you not yet realized that justice is a small but arrogant power? These microbes are vain-glorious, green with envy. They like the power they have, and they want to see it grow. All you need to find out is who pays them – believe me, not with money or chickens (or maybe also with money and chickens, but they are only half men if they are content with that …). Paying them means giving them power, and prestige, or maybe sometimes even the chance to recover honour. One time there was a judge whose wife had been sleeping with another man. So that the village didn’t talk about it, he sold his soul. You don’t know how much shit there is in people’s minds, professor, if you will excuse the expression. It is for that reason that I like you … You can’t be bought because you don’t have shit in your heart. But them, they are all the same. Slip them a bribe and you’ll discover the nature of their souls. The minute you let them sniff power, they become like bull mastiffs. They will do anything and everything if you show them a bit of money. There is only one law: buy this one, because for sure someone else has bought the other one. You professor … there is nothing that is going to lift a life sentence off your head, because they’re building their power at your expense – and every extra year you do in prison is a treasure for them, a gift. So relax – you’re a good man, but you’re just out of luck.’ ‘Don Nicola,’ I say. ‘How much longer do you think this can go on? I have had enough of it.’ ‘It will go on for ever. Justice is dead.’ Justice is dead. Don Nicola confronts me with this atavistic sensation that I have experienced before. But justice today is worse than dead. It has become a servant. A slave to masters who are sadistic and mad.

  ‘So,’ says Don Nicola, ‘don’t go thinking that things are any different from how they’ve always been. Justice has died of old age. This eternal repetition of itself as a copy of power without the understanding of life. What has died is its internal law. But you, you will shortly be free. I have told the lads to vote for you. You be thinking about life and youth. Get yourself a young wife, and find yourself the warmest sun. The only justice is that of desiring beautiful things for everyone. One time I saw a shepherd up on a mountain. He told me: “Watch out for them, for the judges, for the carabinieri, for the bosses, they carry on killing your sheep like under the law of Cain. The only justice is the vendetta that is born of love.” Do it. Get yourself a young woman.’

  I am sitting here waiting for new warrants to arrive – I wait for them with the kicking desperation of a hunted animal. I can’t be wise about all this. Nor can I take on board entirely the teachings of Don Nicola. But I love the man. (G12 Rebibbia – 21 June)

  Folio 49

  In the afternoon they summon me to make an electoral tape-recording. They take me to the prison governor’s office. They put me down at a tape recorder, and they sit in front of me – the governor, the deputy governor, a couple of uniformed officers and the sound technician. A small bare room. To whom am I speaking? The tape will go out to the radio and TV. I can’t imagine … What I have sitting in front of me is just prison officials. I speak to them – the rest of what I say escapes me, carried away by the tape. The situation is hallucinatory. I didn’t expect it. Now they tell me that I have to hurry up. They show me the phone message from the ministry. Twenty minutes. What the hell am I supposed to say to these gentlemen, and to this machine? Now it is evening and I am in my cell, and I have no idea what I recorded. However, I can say what I would have wanted to say. Why do I want to get elected and get out of prison? Because I am a revolutionary. I speak to you as man to man. I believed in justice, and now I find myself faced with this persecution. Now I place my reliance on the community of prisoners, on its powers of resistance. I want to get out of here in order to be able to tell people everything that the community of prison has taught me, and the hope of revolution which it has renewed. I want to lay claim to the truth and values of revolution, which these comrades have lived – and to attack and abolish, or at any rate transform, the laws, the pre-judgements and the political agendas that keep us locked up in here. I look each of my comrades in the eye as I continue my discourse – in my mind’s eye, I mean. Concretely, in reality, what I have here is the faces (fairly kindly, as it happens, given the nature of the occasion) of the prison screws. But here I’m straying from my argument. I want to act as a spokesperson, as a megaphone. Imagining the faces of the comrades gives me the strength to speak in this surreal situation. What would you say, Paolo P., if you were in my position? I think you would say that the revolution has been the great possibility of change – of an internal change, which develops densely between the infinite possibilities of the world – so that liberty becomes collective, within great mass dimensions. For the first time, in this relationship between the individual and collectivity, we have seen a fundamental role being played by the body, by the physicality of that liberation. Isn’t that so, Luciano? And you, Tino, you would add that this happiness does not remove rigour and commitment, but encourages them and multiplies them in
a concrete hope. I continue talking to the machine. I have an impetuous desire to speak of revolution. To repeat the aristocratic contempt that Francone has for the old world, and the very powerfully aggressive intellectual candour of Paolo V. Then a desperate recall to the truth which destroys all mystification – now I hear the breathing of Monfe and Arrigo and Schroffen. Then comes the shrill intrusion of an irony that breaks and destroys all cynicism – that’s Lucio next to me. But perhaps desperation itself can become irony, ironical resistance, implacable serenity? But no, Marione and Emilio, you must not permit serenity to cancel out anger. Now I hear again the proletarian resistance of Oreste Str., as hard as it is intelligent, and, once again, the prophetic indignation of Chicco, as spiky as it is generous. I talk into the machine: what I want to say is that revolution is love and irony, sobriety and abundance of passions, desperation of internal renewal, intelligence and utopia. Facing me I have deaf faces. I continue talking into the machine: to so many people, while I think and hope that the microcosm of prison corresponds to all other microcosms. Little by little I convince myself of this. Who can tell me that this is not the telling of a truth? It is a concert – yes, my dear prison guards, you who are listening to me in perplexity – it is beautiful music. It is not me that is playing it. We are saying it, many of us, in order to make ourselves understood to equally many. I admit that it is a strange symphony – but a symphony it is nonetheless. I launch these appeals to the world outside, a world I love. I wish they could be stones hurled against the windows of power. And in fact they are. The electoral campaign is a huge sounding board for our battle. This accumulation of injustices can be shown for what it is. The faces I have before me blanch, or blush, and sometimes they show a hint of humour. I continue – now a healthy excitation is getting to me. Now I really am talking with the people, and with the comrades outside. I overcome the impediment of the machine, and my psychological resistance to expressing myself in this bizarre little room. There’s no longer any point in my talking about the past and the injustices suffered, of the struggles and the closure which the 7 April case has forced on them, criminalizing them. There’s no longer any point in singing the song of the present and of our dignity. So let us speak of the future. It really is like a concert. I find myself listening to it even as I’m playing it. Look, a door is opening onto the future. There is a sense of expectation. We all know what its themes are, and we await their development. The future is made by us. We have it already prefigured in our minds, and the instruments are performing it. I talk into the machine about the future – paradoxes of democracy and of machinery. I speak slowly – then more loudly – and then passion takes over. For one comrade I say shit to the bosses, for another, I speak of liberating desire and of the joy of communism; for another, I speak of our justice and hope; for another, I stress their cruelty and the horror of their ideology. Let us change all this by going to the roots of things: by transforming people. We, here in prison, are people who have been transformed. It has cost us, but that is what we are. The revolution has taken place within us, and it is the constant of our existence. I have a habit of beginning to raise my voice, keeping it right on the subject, when I am coming to the end of a lesson or a speech. Here, in that moment, I was calm: I waited to allow our collective hope to speak out coolly. (G12 Rebibbia – 22 June)