Revolt Library : The Written Word to Help You Revolt!Welcome to RevoltLib! Here you will find an archive of materials from the past that once helped people to abolish the state, fight capitalism, end sexism, demolish imperialism, and eliminate all forms of social domination. Information is power -- arm yourself! This archive contains 15,612 texts, with 64,666,648 words or 404,279,283 characters. |
A collection of historic materials detailing Anarchism, Libertarianism, and Anti-Authoritarianism. By understanding more about the past, we can better apply the principles we discover today.
"It has cost mankind much time and blood to secure what little it has gained so far from kings, czars and governments." -- Emma Goldman
The Three Strikes strategy was thought up as a way of exposing dole workers and management who are using the JSA to harass claimants. Unions like the CPSA, as well as the TUC and many on the Left, have condemned this initiative. Indeed the CPSA counterposed the demand of security screens to protect dole workers from angry claimants. Nationally, the doleworkers unions have done little to practically resist the JSA, and their members have been implementing both the JSA and Project Work. Locally, some union leaders were threatening and pointing out unemployed activists. Unemployed activists in Edinburgh reported to the Groundswell meeting that a ‘Third Strike’ was being issued against a claimant adviser. The whole questioning of the Three Strikes strategy by the Left reveals that once again, they are not the solution, but part of the problem. For instance, one can read in Socialist Outlook, paper of the Trotskyist group of the same name, an article by one Keith Sinclair c... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Between 1918 and 1921, in the anarchist Ukraine, one of the greatest victories of the anti-hierarchical struggle inside the man class took place. Nestor Makhno — who was nicknamed ‘Batko’, that is, ‘Father’ — made some elegant speeches during the insurrection: (...) But when Makhno spoke of the emancipation of humanity, that did not prevent him, in his everyday behavior, from restricting membership of humanity. Voline, who took part in Makhno’s insurrectionary campaign, writes: ‘The second shortcoming of Makhno and many of his close associates — commanders and others — was their attitude towards women. Especially when inebriated, these men indulged in inadmissible acts — hateful would be more exact — going so far as to force certain women to participate in orgies.’ Women then were so little a part of the ‘humanity’ of the Ukraine libertarians that Voline considered r... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Commerce, which is vaguely defined as free exchange, is merely one method of free exchange, and not the best. To define it more precisely, commerce is a mode of exchange in which the seller has the right to defraud with impunity and to determine by himself without arbitration the profit which he ought to receive. The result is that the seller is the judge of his own case while the buyer is deprived of protection against the rapacity and cheating of the seller. It makes no sense to say: “Good faith ought to reign in commerce.” One should say: “Good faith ought to reign in order to destroy commerce.”... (From : Marxists.org.)
One of the most entrenched ideas in western thought is the notion that nature is a harsh realm of necessity, a domain of unrelenting lawfulness and compulsion. From this underlying view, two extreme either/or attitudes have emerged. Either humanity must yield with a religious, a more recently, “ecological” humility to the dicta of “natural law” and take its abject place side by side with the lowly ants on which it “arrogantly” treads or it must “conquer” nature with its technological and rational astuteness — an enterprise, I may add, that may very well entail the subjugation of human by human in a shared project to ultimately “liberate” all of humanity from the compulsion of “natural necessity.” This quasi-religious quietism, typified by certain schools of “antihumanism” and sociobiology, and the more conventional activism, typified by the liberal and Marxian image of an omn... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In December 1997 French left-wing paper Le Monde Diplomatique wrote an editorial for Tobin tax on international financial transactions. This launched discussion, which lead to foundation of Attac (Action pour une Taxe Tobin d’Aide aux Citoyens) the next June. Today Attac has spread to dozens of countries, but the strongest presence is by far in the France, where organization claims more than 30 000 members and 220 local organizations. Tobin tax Advocates of the Tobin tax never forget to mention that author of the idea, James Tobin, is a Nobel prize winning economist. And as most of the other Nobel prize winning economists, he is also disgusting advocate of any reforms of the far-right liberals, which supposedly progressive Attac seldom remembers. The original proposal was a 0.1% tax on international financial transactions, which would decrease the short-time speculation considered harmful. According to estimates, this way some 50–200 billion dollars... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
About the people and individuals of the past who have made up revolutions, whether they were active revolutionaries or brilliant theoreticians. If we know how they lived in the past, we might know what's possible to do today.
"The whole left-wing ideology, scientific and Utopian, was evolved by people who had no immediate prospect of attaining power. It was, therefore, an extremist ideology, utterly contemptuous of kings, governments, laws, prisons, police forces, armies, flags, frontiers, patriotism, religion, conventional morality, and, in fact, the whole existing scheme of things." -- George Orwell
(1999 - 2001)
Tiqqun was a French-Italian ultra-left anarchist philosophical journal or zine, produced in two issues from 1999 to 2001. Topics treated in the journal's articles include anti-capitalism, anti-statism, Situationism, feminism, and the history of late 20th century revolutionary movements, especially May 1968 in France, the Italian Years of Lead, and the Anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The journal's articles were written anonymously; as a result, the word "Tiqqun" is also used to name the articles' collective of authors, and other texts attributed to them. The journal came to wider attention following the Tarnac Nine arrests of 2008, a police operation which detained nine people on suspicion of having conspired on recent sabotage of French electrical train lines. The arrested were accused of having written The Coming Insurrection, a political tract credited to The Invisible Committee, a distinct anonymous group named in the journal. Julien Coupa... (From : Wikipedia.org.)
(1991 - 1999)
The Awareness League (AL) was a Nigerian anarchist organization active since 1991 to 1999. The Awareness League has gone through several periods of repression, making its own organizational efforts and continuity sporadic, as well as communications with the rest of the anarchist movement. AL was known to be anarcho-syndicalist in orientation, having joined the IWA–AIT at its Madrid congress in December, 1996. The membership of the AL was primarily students, professors, university teachers, journalists, and other activists on the Nigerian left. Its militants have been active in several public service strikes. Sam Mbah, author of African Anarchism: History of a Movement, was an active member in AL. (From : Wikipedia.org.)
Resistor of Oppression to Either Islamic Fundamentalism or Capitalist States
"The challenge of our times — for us proletarians who live in countries where Islam is part and parcel of the status quo — is to criticize this 'religion of the desert', not for God’s sake but for our very own." These are the words of our Anarchist revolutionary with regards to the Middle East.
Canenero was a newspaper in Italy started during the time of the Marini Trials, and inspired by the problems of anarchists in that time and place. This book is a selection of the articles from the paper that are relevant to today in the US anarchist scene. Translated by Wolfi Landstreicher (this newspaper is what inspired Landstreicher to learn and start translating Italian in the first place), this title includes newly translated pieces, as well as some of the first things he ever translated. (From : littleblackcart.com.)
A collection of historic materials detailing Feminism, Women's Lib, and the Women's Movement. By understanding more about the past, we can better apply the principles we discover today.
"May a new spirit awaken and infuse this enslaved girlhood to dare and feel an age-long resentment and may it give her courage to speak and act." -- Margaret Sanger
ADVERTISEMENT. Mr. Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution first engaged my attention as the transient topic of the day; and reading it more for amusement than information, my indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense. Many pages of the following letter were the effusions of the moment; but, swelling imperceptibly to a considerable size, the idea was suggested ivof publishing a short vindication of the Rights of Men. Not having leisure or patience to follow this desultory writer through all the devious tracks in which his fancy has started fresh game, I have confined my strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he has leveled many ingenious arguments in a very specious garb. A LETTER TO THE Right Honorable EDMUND BURKE. SIR, It is not necessary, with...
Friday Morning [Paris, Sept. 1793]. A man, whom a letter from Mr. —— previously announced, called here yesterday for the payment of a draft; and, as he seemed disappointed at not finding you at home, I sent him to Mr. ——. I have since seen him, and he tells me that he has settled the business. So much for business!—May I venture to talk a little longer about less weighty affairs?—How are you?—I have been following you all along the road this comfortless weather; for, when I am absent from those I love, my imagination is as lively, as if my senses had never been gratified by their presence—I was going to say caresses—and why should I not? I have found out that I have more mind than you, in one respect; because I can, without any violent effort of reason, find food for love in the same object, much longer than you can.—The way to my senses is through my heart; but, forgive me! I think there is...
Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard-of conditions," and lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror. It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated. How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue? To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Pros... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
THE popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it. On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from mar... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Her Evolutionary Development
In the earlier times of the world’s history when man was but little higher in the intellectual scale than the beast which he slew for food, and whose skins he used for raiment, muscular strength and physical endurance were the standards of excellence and the stamp of superiority which prevailed. As nature had not endowed woman with these requisites to the same extent she had man, he looked upon her as a being inferior to himself. Possibly this was the beginning of man’s domination and woman’s subjugation. But as man ascended in the social scale of development, he began to acquire property, which he wished to transmit along with his name to his offspring—then woman became his household drudge. She was regarded as a sort of necessary evil; as something to be used and abused; to be bought and sold—as a thing fit only to cater to his pleasures and his passions—this was woman’s lowly position. For countless centuries, the drudg... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)