Revolt Library : The Written Word to Help You Revolt!

I got a Signal message. It’s a link to John Prine’s obituary in Rolling Stone. My lover’s favorite musician. I call him. He yells in rage at the president, “You killed him, you shit head! He was a legend, and you’re a shit head.” I chime in unhelpfully, “It looks like he actually caught it on tour in Europe.” Silence. “But yeah. A lot of people are going to die because of Trump though. A lot of people.” “Yeah.” I know his thoughts go to all the unhoused folks he has gotten close to over the years serving in the park, some of whom are leaning on him more heavily than ever, some of whom will likely fall off the edge. I feel like an idiot. “I’m sorry he died.” “He was a legend.” The new dispatcher looks frustrated. “I can’t figure this out. I just can’t find it. I’m sorry.” I sc... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The need for a real alternative was confirmed when Labor and Democratic Left once again put the bosses’ interests first. They have agreed to a freeze on jobs in the public sector, a cut of £77 million in government spending and further cuts next year. This will mean longer hospital waiting lists, more overcrowded classrooms, less jobs. This comes from the same government which reduced the levy on massively profitable banks by £36 million, reduced Corporation Tax by 2% at a cost of about £57 million, and completely exempted some new multinationals from paying any Corporation Tax at all. Perhaps Employment Minister Richard Bruton best conveyed the government’s views when he welcomed the vote by Packard workers to reluctantly accept 400 redundancies by saying he was “delighted that our intervention has been successful” Of course these cuts don’t effect the ruling class and their pals. Matt Russell was removed fro... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

I At times Liberty takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in her time of her beauty and her glory. Macaulay: Essay on Milton. The men of order, those we call “honest folk,” demand nothing but gunfire and shellfire. Renan: Nouvelles lettres intimes. I read and hear it claimed that anarchism is beset by a crisis. This is not precisely correct. In truth, there is a conflict between the static and dynamic conceptions of anarchism, between those who want to gregarize and stabilize anarchism and those who want the revolutionary, individualist spirit to remain and simmer permanently within anarchism. At base, it is more a question of two methods than of two ideas. It... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The opinion expressed in your estimable letter, that the easiest and surest way to universal disarmament is by individuals refusing to take part in military service, is most just. I am even of opinion that this is the only way to escape from the terrible and ever increasing miseries of wardom (militarism). But your opinion that at the Conference which is about to assemble at the Czar's invitation, the question should be debated whether men who refuse military service may not be employed on public works instead, appears to me quite mistaken in the first place, because the Conference itself can be nothing but one of those hypocritical arrangements which aim not at peace, but, on the contrary, at hiding from men the one means of obtaining universal peace, which the most advanced men begin to discern. The Conference, it is said, will aim, if not at disarmament, then at checking the increase of armaments. It is supposed that at this Conference the representatives of governments... (From : Wikisource.org.)

This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. GREEN PERSPECTIVES Newsletter of the Green Program Project P.O. Box 111 Burlington, VT 05402 No. 1 January 1986 THE GREENING OF POLITICS: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice by Murray Bookchin There are two ways to look at the word " politics." The first -- and most conventional -- is to describe politics as a fairly exclusive, generally professional ized system of power interactions in which specialists whom we call "politicians" formulate decisions that affect our lives and administer these decisions through governmental agencies and bureaucrats. These "politicians" and their "politics" are generally regarded with a certain meas... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

On a sunny day in July 2008, six months before the publication of Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (Counter Power, Vol. 1), coauthor, Michael Schmidt, met with fellow members of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) at his cozy bungalow in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was a gorgeous day, so the four collective mates sat down comfortably on Schmidt’s wooden furniture in his spacious garden, near a lemon tree while his White Swiss Shepherd puppies, Loki and Freya, came out to sniff their guests. (From : Medium.com.)

(1844 - 1916) ~ Leader of the Anarchist Section of the First International : He later became one of the leading members of the Jura Federation, the Anarchist wing, of the First International. He met Bakunin in 1869, and adopted much of his anarcho-collectivist ideas. Both Guillaume and Bakunin were expelled from the International at the Hague Congress in 1872. (From : Anarchy Archives.)
• "It is not with decrees, with words written on paper, that the Revolution will emancipate the people but with deeds." (From : "Ideas on Social Organization," by James Guillaume....)
• "...in a free society, the voluntary union of a man and a woman will no longer be an official but a purely personal matter, not subject to, or requiring, public sanction." (From : "Ideas on Social Organization," by James Guillaume....)
• "...the priests and the bourgeoisie try to frighten the peasants by telling them that the Revolution will take their land away from them. This is an outrageous lie concocted by the enemies of the people. The Revolution would take an exactly opposite course: it would take the land from the bourgeoisie, the nobles, and the priests and give it to the landless peasants." (From : "Ideas on Social Organization," by James Guillaume....)

Anna Simone teaches political science at Università Roma Tre. She is the author of numerous books and articles on topics such as migration, neoliberalism, biopolitics, and feminism. Her most recent book is I talenti delle donne: L'intelligenza femminile al lavoro (Einaudi, Turin 2014). (From : Viewpoint Magazine.)

Translator of Leo Tolstoy. (From : RevoltLib.com.)

(1944 - )
Abdul Kader El-Janabi , born on July 1 , 1944 in Baghdad , is an Iraqi poet , journalist , writer and translator , libertarian . In his youth, several members of his family sympathize with the Iraqi Communist Party and it is influenced by surrealism . But in the 1960s, he was forced into exile following the establishment of a Baath party police regime encouraged by the United States . Exiled to Great Britain , he joined the Trotskyist movement, the International Marxist Group , led by Tariq Ali . He then left for France where he has lived since 1972 . He mounted various magazines including Le Désir Libertaire ('Ar Raghba El-Ibâhiyya'). He published texts by Muslim libertines from the time of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad as well as texts by Georges Henein , the forerunner of surrealism in Egypt . Refusing any sacred union in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , he binds himself with Israeli writers and calls for a just solution... (From : Wikipedia.org.)

Eleven days of weariness on board a vessel not intended for the accommodation of passengers have so exhausted my spirits, to say nothing of the other causes, with which you are already sufficiently acquainted, that it is with some difficulty I adhere to my determination of giving you my observations, as I travel through new scenes, whilst warmed with the impression they have made on me. The captain, as I mentioned to you, promised to put me on shore at Arendall or Gothenburg in his way to Elsineur, but contrary winds obliged us to pass both places during the night. In the morning, however, after we had lost sight of the entrance of the latter bay, the vessel was becalmed; and the captain, to oblige me, hanging out a signal for a pilot, bore down towards the shore. My attention was particularly directed to the lighthouse, and you can scarcely imagine with what anxiety I watched two long hours for a boat to emancipate me; still no one appeared. Every clou...

Kewanee, Ill., Oct. 2. The funeral of the victims of the tragedy of the Markham home Saturday, in which eight lives were taken by the mother’s insane act, was held today. Only two coffins were used, one for Mrs Markham and the other for the seven children she killed, whose charred bodies were taken from the ashes of the home. Who can tell the amount of pent-up woe the above brief telegram contains? Here was a young woman of thirty-five years who had given birth to seven children, the eldest one eleven years, the youngest four months old. There was no “race suicide” in that house. The father, we are informed, was a poor truck-farmer in summer and did odd jobs in winter for an existence. The father, on learning of the awful deed, committed suicide on the spot! So the entire family of eight are gone. The first dispatches inform us that Mrs Markham had become despondent over family cares and the loneliness of farm life. How many more... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

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.)

To the Editor of The Open Court: Possessed of rather more than ordinary interest in the sex question, and agreeing with Professor Cope that any proposition for the amelioration of the condition of women should be discussed and decided by women, I am moved to certain remarks suggested by his article on “The Material Relations of Sex” in the first number of The Monist. All through its perusal I was impressed by his unconscious recognition of an underlying question, which, apart from woman’s inferiority, determines the relations of the sexes. This is plainly apparent in the paragraph alluding to the communistic system of wealth production and distribution, in which he admits the possibility of promiscuous sex-relations. While I agree with Professor Cope that to institute communism would be a decided blow at progress, since progress consists in a constant widening of individual liberty while communism invokes authoritarian d... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Paris, February 15, 1793.         My dear friend, It is necessary perhaps for an observer of mankind, to guard as carefully the remembrance of the first impression made by a nation, as by a countenance; because we imperceptibly lose sight of the national character, when we become more intimate with individuals. It is not then useless or presumptuous to note, that, when I first entered Paris, the striking contrast of riches and poverty, elegance and slovenliness, urbanity and deceit, every where caught my eye, and saddened my soul; and these impressions are still the foundation of my remarks on the manners, which flatter the senses, more than they interest the heart, and yet excite more interest than esteem. The whole mode of life here tends indeed to render the people frivolous, and, to borrow their favorite epithet, amiable. Ever on the wing, they are always sipping the sparkling joy on the brim of the cup, le... (From : Gutenberg.org.)