Revolt Library : The Written Word to Help You Revolt!

Introduction: A Dispatch from the Hyperpower As the US enters yet another election cycle (though it is hard to say whether the US is ever not in election mode these days), it is worth interrogating the current state of the world’s unipolar hyperpower – and of the foreign policy, red in tooth and claw, that affects us all. I arrived in the USA on the eve of the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, spent just over a month there, and left just after visiting the Occupy Wall Street sit-in on Columbus Day. Book-ended by these two great, emotive American commemorations, my visit to the US was the first I had made there in 27 years and I was very curious to see how things had changed since the Wild West heyday of Reaganomics. Visiting as a teenager, albeit one from the side aligned with the West against the Soviet Bloc, I had been overwhelmed by the brash displays of American consumerism. I was, after all, visiting from the gr... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Everything that lives, does so under the categorical condition of decisively interfering in the life of someone else.... The worse it is for those who are so ignorant of the natural and social law of human solidarity that they deem possible or even desirable the absolute independence of individuals in regard to one another. To will it is to will the disappearance of society.... All men, even the most intelligent and strongest are at every instant of their lives the producers and the product. Freedom itself, the freedom of every man, is the ever-renewed effect of the great mass of physical. intellectual, and moral influences to which this man is subjected by the people surrounding him and the environment in which he was born and in which he passed his whole life. To wish to escape this influence in the name of some ... self-sufficient and absolutely egoistical freedom. is to aim toward nonbeing. To do away with this reciprocal influence is tantamount to deat... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Defend Lesbian and Gay Rights We in Workers Solidarity Federation say that gay and lesbian rights are human rights. People should be free to live their lives as they choose, so long as this does not harm other people’s freedom. This must include people’s right to choose the emotional and sexual relationships that make them happy. There is nothing wrong with homosexuality. Love between consenting people is not “immoral” or “repulsive”. Homosexuality has always been part of human society, including in Africa. What is wrong is the oppression which gays and lesbians suffer: job discrimination, violence, police raids and so on. We must see that this is one more way that the bosses divide the workers and the poor, and that some people are kept afraid and rightless. The only way to consolidate and advance gay and lesbian rights which are protected by the new constitution is grassroots action. Therefore we must take up the issue of the r... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Abstract This paper examines a relationship between heresy and utopianism forged in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist histories to reveal a significant, pervasive fault-line in the ideological construction of anarchism. It first looks at Marxist narratives which trace the lineages of socialism back to medieval religious dissent and argues that a sympathetic assessment of European heretical movements was qualified by a critique of utopianism, understood as the rejection of materialist ‘science’. It then argues that strands of this narrative have been woven into anarchism, looking at three examples: E.V. Zenker’s Anarchism , James Joll’s The Anarchists (1964/1979) and Saul Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan . The dominant theme is that anarchism promises the transformation of corrupted nature and aims to achieve it though ecstatic violence, cataclysmic revolution and future perfection. Altho... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Late 2008 saw the Irish capitalist class wage a major ideological struggle against the Irish working class. They called for workers to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis. Print media, TV and radio carried segment after segment where well-paid commentators argued that workers, in particular public sector workers, were earning too much, had overly generous pensions and that the public had unrealistic expectations of public services. We were told that in order for recovery to happen we would have to have all these rolled back. Private sector workers, we were told, were over-paid and had to become ‘competitive’ again. The offensive quickly shifted from rhetoric to reality. A significant number of private sector workers have had pay cuts in the months since. Many private sector workers and large numbers of contract public sector workers lost their jobs. By the middle of 2009, a huge pay cut had been imposed on the public sector and detailed plans had been drawn... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

(1931 - 1994)
Guy Louis Debord (/dəˈbɔːr/; French: [gi dəbɔʁ]; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1945 - )
Ken Knabb (born 1945) is an American writer, translator, and radical theorist, known for his translations of Guy Debord and the Situationist International. His own English-language writings, many of which were anthologized in Public Secrets , have been translated into over a dozen additional languages. He is also a respected authority on the political significance of Kenneth Rexroth. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(2008 - ) ~ The Shining Light of Anti-Authoritarianism and Anti-Capitalism of the Caribbean
The Cuban Libertarian Movement tries to articulate and increase anti-authoritarian revolutionary activism in Cuba, in a particular way and in the American continent in general, with the aim of building a more effective anarchist movement that actively participates in the struggles of the real movement of l @ s oppressed for the control of their lives and in the international countercultural resistance. We are not just another anarchist organization, much less, a closed circle of "chosen ones" that seeks to monopolize or claim the representation of Cuban anarchism. On the contrary, we are a network of collectives and individuals with sections in different cities of the world, which attempts a more effective coordination between the different currents that today make up Cuban anarchism from anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary anarchism, anarcho-communism, cooperativism, communalism, primitivism, eco-anarchism to libertarian insurrectionalism. If you are an anarchist,... (From : MLC.)

This is an autobiographical blurb I wrote for the Fiftieth Anniversary Memorial Book for my 1953 High School Class Reunion (Slightly edited. This was on hand. I may try to post a more orthodox resume later, although it may be hard to force an unorthodox life into an orthodox resume.) Born in 1935 in Pryor, Oklahoma. The high point of my life was getting to participate in the world revolution of 1968. I was at Columbia University in New York City at the time and took part in it from that vantage point. I sort of divide my life into Before 1968 and After 1968. Until 1968 I was in school and college, except for the three years in the army; after 1968 I devoted myself to the revolutionary movement to achieve direct democracy in America and the world. Two other really good years before 1968 though were the year I spent as a senior at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon (with travels in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine) in 1956-... (From : JamesHerod.info.)

With Strictures On Political And Moral SubjectsTO M. TALLEYRAND PERIGORD, LATE BISHOP OF AUTUN. Sir:— Having read with great pleasure a pamphlet, which you have lately published, on National Education, I dedicate this volume to you, the first dedication that I have ever written, to induce you to read it with attention; and, because I think that you will understand me, which I do not suppose many pert witlings will, who may ridicule the arguments they are unable to answer. But, sir, I carry my respect for your understanding still farther: so far, that I am confident you will not throw my work aside, and hastily conclude that I am in the wrong because you did not view the subject in the same light yourself. And pardon my frankness, but I must observe, that you treated it in too cursory a manner, contented to consider it as it had been considered formerly, when the rights of man, not to advert to woman, were trampled on as chimerical. I call upon you, therefore, now to weigh what...

Or, the Wrongs of WomanEarnestly as Maria endeavored to soothe, by reading, the anguish of her wounded mind, her thoughts would often wander from the subject she was led to discuss, and tears of maternal tenderness obscured the reasoning page. She descanted on “the ills which flesh is heir to,” with bitterness, when the recollection of her babe was revived by a tale of fictitious woe, that bore any resemblance to her own; and her imagination was continually employed, to conjure up and embody the various phantoms of misery, which folly and vice had let loose on the world. The loss of her babe was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she labored to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of futurity, while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope, since happiness was no where to be found.—But of her child, debilitated by the grief with which its mother had been assailed before it saw...

A Tale
[Begun to be written in the year 1787, but never completed] CAVE OF FANCY. CHAP. I. Ye who expect constancy where every thing is changing, and peace in the midst of tumult, attend to the voice of experience, and mark in time the footsteps of disappointment, or life will be lost in desultory wishes, and death arrive before the dawn of wisdom. In a sequestered valley, surrounded by rocky mountains that intercepted many of the passing clouds, though sunbeams variegated their ample sides, lived a sage, to whom nature had unlocked her most hidden secrets. His hollow eyes, sunk in their orbits, retired from the view of vulgar objects, and turned inwards, overleaped the boundary prescribed to human knowledge. Intense thinking during fourscore and ten years, had whitened the scattered locks on his head, which, like the summit of the distan... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Introductory Letter. Letter II. Management of the Mother during pregnancy: bathing. Letter III. Lying-in. Letter IV. The first month: diet: clothing. Letter V. The three following months. Letter VI. The remainder of the first year. Letter VII. The second year, &c: conclusion.LETTER I I ought to apologize for not having written to you on the subject you mentioned; but, to tell you the truth, it grew upon me: and, instead of an answer, I have begun a series of letters on the management of children in their infancy. Replying then to your question, I have the public in my thoughts, and shall endeavor to show what modes appear to me necessary, to render the infancy of children more healthy and happy. I have... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

[SCENE.—A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer’s study. Between the doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door, and beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door; and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects; a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a fire burns in the stove. It is winter. A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to open. Enter NORA, humming a tune and in high spirits. She is in outdoor dress and carries a number of parcels; these she lays on the table to the right. She leaves the ou...