Communist guerrilla against drug pushers in Italy 1978

18 June 1978, Rome: A notorious fascist belonging to the infamous Di Luia gang and boss of the heroin trade, is killed with three pistol shots. The action is claimed in a telephone call to Lotta Continua by Movimento proletaria di resistenza offensivo Nucleo Antieroina. (Anti-heroin nucleus of the Movement of Proletarian Resistance). On November
1 in Milan, Proletari Armati claim the killing of Giampiero Grandi, shopkeeper, belonging to an organisation that controls heroin traffic and the exploitation of prostitutes. Bomb at Mental Hygiene Centre in via Pancrazi, and a bar in via Degli Apuli. On November 6, still in Milan a bomb exploded in a bar in via Arsia, centre of heroin traffic in that area. On the 27th in Rome, Guerriglia comnunista ambush two heroin pushers; one is killed, the other wounded.
Here is the communique claiming the action:
WE CLAIM the execution of the heroin pusher and mafioso, Grandi Giampiero, and the bombings at the Centre for Mental Hygiene in via Pancrazi, the pushers’ lair of via Degli Apuli on 1.11.78, and the bar in via Arsia, centre of the heroin traffic in the Quarto Oggiaro area, on 6.11.78.
Communists are not generally against ‘drug addicts’ like the bourgeoisie and the forces of repression: they are against those who speculate on their skins. We know that heroin is an answer, although illusory and disgusting, to a real need for change in the quality of life. Heroin is the most beautiful of the false consumer products that capital has invented to mystify the reality of proletarian needs. To struggle against heroin pushers is for every heroin addict to struggle against those who seem to be giving him the only possibility of life and survival.
It wouldn’t be habit-forming if daily life weren’t shit. State and God, Work and Family, are deviating ideologies that serve to uphold and hide an unnatural, lousy, criminal social order which denies in all its relationships the legitimacy of the natural needs of man, and upsets his relationship with reality. Destruction of nature (Seveso is only a tiny example of capitalist criminality), destruction of man as a natural being.
What capital cannot exploit it destroys.
With the circulation of heroin and psychotropic drugs they are planning the destruction of entire generations. They destroy as the only way to evaluate the desire to live, to be well, to express the creativity which the young proletarians are the carriers of, in terms of profit.
Instead of the forced suicides of the Chilean type, capital is launching voluntary suicide on the market for common use.
Heroin in itself is a false problem: it is a consumer product invented to suffocate the real need to change the quality of life, the real problem is the existence of the capitalist social organisation, because it bends towards death and the destruction of all that is human. The drug addict becomes known and measured for the quantity of heroin he consumes, for the average number of thefts he commits, and not for being a human being who, like others, is trying to affirm his own right to existence. To speak of heroin gratuitously is useless if one doesn’t begin to organise the proletarian strength to destroy the present state of affairs at the same time. The proletarian revolution, the surpassing of the existing social order, is not a project to be defined in abstract, but begins in practice with the destruction of capitalist society.
All those who support the liberalisation of the heroin market without posing the problem of how to change the reality of proletarian life in the capitalist metropoli, are stupid opportunists.
The armed strength of the proletariat must aim to impose itself as a concrete element capable of self-determining social reality in its complexity.
Build proletarian unity in the struggle, establish and develop the political legitimacy of the revolutionaries among the proletariat, extend the space for building the real power of the proletariat armed.
The armed strength of the proletariat in struggle is the only practical instrument of liberation from capitalist dominion.
Heroin pushing, the exploitation of prostitution, the fencing of small thefts, are activities which correspond only to the law of capitalist accumulation. Communists are not against illegal activity that damages the bourgeois strata: they are against all those vile activities of proletarian exploitation. It is right to rob banks, to ransom the bourgeois strata, but enough opportunism! Whoever gets rich through the injury of other proletarians will be considered a vile traitor!
Vile is the pusher who earns his living through the deaths of others. Vile is the pimp who uses womens’ bodies as an instrument for his own profit. Vile is the fence who exploits the sweat labour of young proletarians when they are constrained to steal a stereo or spare tyres. All those, especially at a big level, are friends of the police and the carabinieri and enemies of the proletariat. They buy the freedom to continue their vile activities in exchange for tip-offs and prison for other proletarians. The carabinieri use them as informers and they use the carabinieri to get rid of those who are in their way. So the operations of the drug squad against the pushers are in the end nothing other than operations controlling the market to the benefit of those who really centralise the heroin commerce.
Whoever breaks proletarian unity, exploits and robs from the proletariat themselves, must the considered vile enemy and traitor: no solidarity in their divisions for subversive work among all the proletarians, for the destruction of capitalist society.
Expel the enemies of the proletariat, the spies and traitors, whether they be heroin pushers or trade union bosses, to build the unity of the proletariat in struggle.
Heroin is an instrument of social control that suits power. Alongside the pushers, and the forces of repression there exists another hierarchy of control over the proletariat: the medico-psychiatric one. The sanitary decentralisation, the opening of centres for hygiene and mental health in every area, are the new instruments which capital is using to keep the contradictions of the capitalist metropolis under control, to render stupid and to drug the forces of the proletarian revolution. Whoever goes beyond the rule of State, of Work, of Family, is ‘mad’, can be labelled as deviant from childhood. As such, capital assigns his ghetto; will give him more heroin free, will stuff him with psychotropic drugs from the beginning, so that he doesn’t disturb the regular functioning of the social order.
Doctors and psychiatrists who administer such rubbish, especially to young people and women, are mad criminals, labelling antagonism and proletarian rebellion as ‘social deviance’. Neurotic and psychopathic subjects only because they cannot support the disgust of capitalist society. What does a psychiatrist who has been able to study without lifting a finger until he gets his degree know of proletarian life in the ghettos?
What we are fighting for is the fundamental right to self-determination of the proletariat. It must be the proletariat themselves to decide how, where and why they want to live. The psychiatrists, the criminologists, the priests, the trade union bosses, in their positions as social controllers of the proletariat are enemies, and as such should be struck down.
Attack the forces of repression, carabinieri and police. Expel and strike their friends, the traitors, the informers, the spies, from the factories, from the proletarian areas.
Attack the hierarchy of medico-psychiatric control.
Break up the internal hierarchy of control within the proletariat, the pushers and the shit fences.
Build the power of the armed proletariat.
(Nov. ’78)
from 'Armed Struggle in Italy 1976-78' Elephant Editions