Revolt Library : Revolutionary Materials from the Past

Or “how not to critique anarchism.”
As in any social movement which is just beginning, the current “anti-globalization” movement is a mixed bag with contradictory ideas. This is to be expected. Only by discussion and activity can those involved clarify and develop their political ideas. Part of this process is, by necessity, a critical evaluation of past social movements and revolutionary ideals. This, again, is natural and positive. Without discussion, without honest and principled debate, any movement with stagnant. Sadly, Louis Proyect’s “A Marxist Critique of Bakunin” is not honest nor principled. Rather, it is little more than a confused (and somewhat hysterical) cobbling together of Marxist prejudices and fallacies. His essay proves Albert Meltzer’s comments: “It is very difficult for Marxist-Leninists to make an objective criticism of Anarchism, as such, because by its nature it undermines all the suppositions basic to Mar... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Marxism & Hope for the Future Noam Chomsky is widely known for his critique of U.S foreign policy, and for his work as a linguist. Less well known is his ongoing support for libertarian socialist objectives. In a special interview done for Red and Black Revolution, Chomsky gives his views on anarchism and marxism, and the prospects for socialism now. The interview was conducted in May 1995 by Kevin Doyle. RBR: First off, Noam, for quite a time now you've been an advocate for the anarchist idea. Many people are familiar with the introduction you wrote in 1970 to Daniel Guerin's Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, but more recently, for instance in the film Manufacturing Dissent, you took the opportunity to highlight again the potential of anarchism and the anarchist idea. What is it that attracts you to anarchism? CHOMSKY: I was attracted to... (From : Flag.Blackened.net.)

Preface: Autonomy and the Fraudulent Self By Mark Mason I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property. ~ Norman O. Brown The specter of global plutocratic rule is maintained by a system of social reproduction controlled by wealthy capitalist elites. Social reproduction is that process by which the passive mentality of the working class is maintained across generations by institutions which claim to educate and inform. The state-run schooling systems indoctrinate the young into the cage of the obedient citizen. The state is controlled by the capitalist oligarchy and thus capitalist elites control what is labeled education: a misnomer. A fraud is perpetrated upon the young. A few children among the many resist. Control of adults begins with discipling the unruly child and all children are unruly. Every child born free; ever... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

On the evening of Sunday August 25th the hall of the Patriotic Club, Clerkenwell Green, London, E.C., was well-filled by Socialists anxious to bear the debate between our comrade John Turner, Anarchist Communist, and HERBERT Burrows, the Social Democrat. Morrison Davidson, who occupied the chair. said be sympathized with both Anarchists and Social Democrats. Anything that taught the English people to revolt against authority was, in his opinion, good. Anarchy was not as the ignorant imagined a synonym for disorder. Those who advocated it regarded. it as the highest form of order. They regarded Law as an evil in itself. They regarded the government of the majority as little better than the government of the oligarchy. He believed. however, that they would have to go through the stage which his old friend Herbert Burrows advocated. Yet he thought that the ultimate result would be what Mr. Turner advocated. It was simply a question of precedence. JOHN... (From : AnarchyArchives.)

Few writers have established their reputation so rapidly as Maxím Górky. His first sketches (1892-95), were published in an obscure provincial paper of the Caucasus, and were totally unknown to the literary world, but when a short tale of his appeared in a widely-read review, edited by Korolénko, it at once attracted general attention. The beauty of its form, its artistic finish, and the new note of strength and courage which rang through it, brought the young writer immediately into prominence. It became known that Maxím Górky was the pen-name of quite a young man, A. Pyeshkoff, who was born in 1868 in Nizhni Novgorod, a large town on the Volga; that his father was a merchant, or an artisan, his mother a remarkable peasant woman, who died soon after the birth of her son, and that the boy, orphaned when only nine, was brought up in a family of his father's relatives. The childhood of Górky must have been anything but happy, fo... (From : University of Virginia Library.)

In a society placing great value on imposed learning, Amos Keppler has taught himself everything he knows. Among those many things are writing, acting, photography and playing music and theater. He is a radical environmental activist, an eclectic witch emphasizing humanity's unbreakable bond with nature. Season of the Witch is the sixteenth book he has published in seven years. He isn't really that prolific, though, but just had lots of books ready for publication. (From : books.google.com.)

I am the Deputy Head of the School of Literature and Languages and the School's Director of Learning and Teaching. I teach French language, translation, culture and politics at all levels on the Undergraduate Language program. I supervise several research students working primarily in the field of transnational history, with an emphasis on the long 19th century and/ or the history of the anarchist movement. I welcome applications from postgraduate students in any of these areas. My own research focuses on the history of French anarchism from 1870 until 1939, with an emphasis on transnational networks. I studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure (1998-2003) and Paris 13 University (2002-2006), and attended Balliol College (Oxford) as a graduate visiting student (1999-2000). I joined the University of Surrey in 2009 as Lecturer in French, having previously taught at the University of Oxford (2001-2003), Paris 13 University (2003-2006) and Imperial College London (2006-2009). (From : surrey.ac.uk.)

(1897 - 1962)
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (/bəˈtaɪ/; French: [ʒɔʁʒ batɑj]; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, consumerism, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as erotism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1922 - 2017) ~ Australian Professor, Philosopher, and Anarchist
Allan James "Jim" Baker (22 July 1922 – 3 March 2017), usually cited as A. J. Baker, was an Australian philosopher who was best known for having systemized the realist philosophy of John Anderson. He studied under Anderson at Sydney University and had taught philosophy in Scotland, New Zealand, the United States and Australia. (Source: Wikipedia.org.) Baker added intellectual credence to his colleagues, who prided themselves on debating, criticizing, and endlessly disputing life – the examined and unexamined. Born on July 22, 1922, at Woolloomooloo, to Kenneth Baker, a farmer from Gunnedah and Mary Frederika Baker, (née Cross), bartender, from Moree, he was never far from poverty in his youth. Scholarships and several inspiring teachers encouraged him to pursue a stellar academic career. His father, , ruined by the seasons and the Great Depression, sold his land, briefly became a publican and ended up working on tramways in Sydney... (From : Wikipedia.org / SMH.com.au.)

(1886 - 1963) ~ Scottish Bakuninist and Anarcho-Communist from Glasgow : Guy Alfred Aldred had worked ceaselessly at his propaganda, writing, publishing and public speaking, he took on injustices wherever he saw it. He had spoken at every May Day for 60 years except the years he spent in prison. (From : Glasgow Caledonian University.)
• "It is only the effect of this menace, only the fear of the power of the revolutionary agitator outside parliament, that persuades the capitalist class to tolerate the presence of Labor members inside." (From : Socialism and Parliament.)
• "Anti-Parliamentarism is now the recognized Socialism of the Proletariat." (From : Socialism and Parliament.)
• "To dream of a society not founded on the 'law of constructive murder,' of a social state in which all are brethren and peace and good fellowship prevail, of a society founded on truth and freedom, is to become an enemy of the society that is, and to be regarded as a dreamer of the most fanatical type." (From : Studies in Communism.)

How many are there of the countless millions who have entered this life, passed through its changing scenes and at last have laid down to rest, of whom it can be truly said, “Here rest they who have labored for the uplifting of the oppressed, who have devoted their energies unstintingly in the interest of the ‘common people?’” We fear there are few indeed. A life devoted to the interest of the working class; a life of self-abnegation, a life full of love, kindness, gentleness, tragedy, activity, sadness and kind-ness, are some of the characteristics which went to make up the varied life of our comrade, Louise Michel. In the elderly woman, clad in simple black garments, with gray hair curling upon rounded shoulders and kindest of blue eyes glancing from the strongly marked face, none but those who knew her personally would in the last few years have recognized Louise Michel. Listening to her quiet musical voice, with its slightly ris... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Mary and Caroline, though the children of wealthy parents were, in their infancy, left entirely to the management of servants, or people equally ignorant. Their mother died suddenly, and their father, who found them very troublesome at home, placed them under the tuition of a woman of tenderness and discernment, a near relation, who was induced to take on herself the important charge through motives of compassion. They were shamefully ignorant, considering that Mary had been fourteen, and Caroline twelve years in the world. If they had been merely ignorant, the task would not have appeared so arduous; but they had caught every prejudice that the vulgar casually instill. In order to eradicate these prejudices, and substitute good habits instead of those they had carelessly contracted, Mrs. Mason never suffered them to be out of her sight. They were allowed to ask questions on all occasions, a method she would not have adopted, had she educated them f...

We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetish worship? True, our fetishes have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old. Our modern fetish is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity! Woman, even more than man, is a fetish worshiper, and though her idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her hands, ever blind to the fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus woman has been the greatest supporter of all deities from time immemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the price that only gods can exact,--her freedom, her heart's blood, her very life. Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Night in a prison cell! A chair, a bed, a small washstand, four blank walls, ghastly in the dim light from the corridor without, a narrow window, barred and sunken in the stone, a grated door! Beyond its hideous iron latticework, within the ghastly walls, -a man! An old man, gray-haired and wrinkled, lame and suffering. There he sits, in his great loneliness, shut in front all the earth. There he walks, to and fro, within his measured space, apart from all he loves! 'There, for every night in five long years to come, he will walk alone, while the white age-flakes drop upon his head, while the last years of the winter of life gather and pass, and his body draws near the ashes. Every night, for five long years to come, he will sit alone, this chattel slave, whose hard toll is taken by the State, -and without recompense save that the Southern planter gave his Negroes, -every night he will sit there so within those four white walls. Every night, for five long years to... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

The Pioneers of human progress are like the Seagulls, they behold new coasts, new spheres of daring thought, when their co-voyagers see only the endless stretch of water. They send joyous greetings to the distant lands. Intense, yearning, burning faith pierces the clouds of doubt, because the sharp ears of the harbingers of life discern from the maddening roar of the waves, the new message, the new symbol for humanity. The latter does not grasp the new, dull, and inert, it meets the pioneer of truth with misgivings and resentment, as the disturber of its peace, as the annihilator of all stable habits and traditions. Thus the pathfinders are heard only by the few, because they will not tread the beaten tracks, and the mass lacks the strength to follow into the unknown. In conflict with every institution of their time since they will not compromise, it is inevitable that the advance guards should become aliens to the very one[s] they wish to serve; t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)