Are insurrectionary communists at odds with insurrectionary individualists?

Question

If individualists do not want to be subsumed under mass organizations, than wouldn't individualists be against the autonomous base nucleii envisioned by the insurrectional anarchist communists from Italy?

Answer 1

To the first question: yes.

To the second: The Italian comrades you mention were among those trying to work out an alternative to the conflicting approaches.

In fact, the "middle-way" between or beyond communism and individualism is one of the most clearly defining features of the insurrectional anarchist trajectory, with Galleani and Bonanno for example promoting approaches along such lines.

For their part, the author(s) of Autonomous Base Nucleii have this to say about organization: "One of the most difficult problems anarchists have had to face throughout their history is what form of organisation to adopt in the struggle. At the two ends of the spectrum we find on the one hand the individualists who refuse any kind of stable relationship; on the other those who support a permanent organisation which acts on a programme established at the moment of its constitution. Both of the forms sketched out here have characteristics that are criticizable from an insurrectional point of view."

They go on to propose informal organization between anarchists in affinity groups as well as intervention in autonomous organizations involving non-anarchists engaged in mass struggles.

But there is by no means a final answer claimed on such questions among insurrectionary anarchists, nor does one seem to be sought for the most part. From the same text: "We go forward by trial and error, and say to whoever has a better method — carry on."

Finally, it could be argued that none of these are really departing very much from Stirner, who I believe was involved in forming some kind of food cooperative :)

Answer 2

AFAIK Alfredo Bonanno both proposes the autonomous base nucleii and draws upon Stirner, pointing to a belief in the synthesis of association and autonomy.

More specifically, in Armed Joy he wrote, "The need for communism transforms everything. Through the need for communism the need for non-work moves from the negative aspect (opposition to work) to the positive one: the individual’s complete availability to themselves, the possibility to express themselves absolutely freely, breaking away from all models, even those considered to be fundamental and indispensable, such as those of production."

He also wrote, "The code of the need for communism takes the place of the code of the need to produce. In the light of this need in the community of play, the decisions of the individual become meaningful."

It seems that at least for Bonanno, communal experience and individuality go hand in hand. Insofar as Bonanno represents the thinking of insurrectionary anarchists in Italy in general, it seems like they do not presume hostility.