Revolt Library : The Written Word to Help You Revolt!

In this essay I would like to talk about people who lost everything. Imerina (the traditional name for the northern half of the central plateau of Madagascar) is a place where people attach enormous importance to the memory of their ancestors and the lands on which their ancestors once lived. History, in Imerina, is largely a matter of placing the living in an historical landscape created by the dead. About a third of the Merina population, however, is made up of the descendants of slaves, and in Madagascar, slaves are by definition people without ancestors, ‘lost people’ (obna very) who have been ripped from their ancestral landscapes, left unanchored to any place. These were people who had been literally stripped of history. Even today, almost a hundred years after emancipation, most ‘black people’ (as their descendants are called) remain in a kind of historical limbo, unable to make a real claim to the territories in which they live and are bu... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Esteemed comrades, We regret to have to draw to your attention a serious and urgent question about which you would ordinarily know more than we, who are far away and foreigners. But we are obligated to note the diverse circumstances that until now have made it impossible for you to know certain facts or their meaning. We believe it necessary, therefore, to clearly expose those facts to you, as well as the circumstances that have prevented them from reaching you. At this moment, more than fifty libertarians are being held in the prisons of Spain, and many among them have been held many years without being tried. The whole world, which every day hears about the struggles of the Basques, completely ignores this aspect of the reality of today’s Spain. Even in Spain, the existence and names of these comrades are sometimes revealed to a narrow sector of opinion, but generally there is silence about what they [the imprisoned libertarians] have do... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Carlo Tresca is one of those rebel workers whose memory deserves to be honored and Pernicone’s excellent biography does just that. Pernicone’s has previously produced an excellent history of the Italian anarchist movement (“Italian Anarchism: 1864–1892”, Princeton University Press, 1993) and this work is of equal quality and of interest to anarchists. He obviously understands anarchism and writes with sympathy and knowledge about it. Such historians are rare. Tresca was born to a middle-class family in Italy in the 1879. He soon became a socialist and became active in the Italian Railroad Workers’ Federation before emigrating to America at the age of 25. Once there he was elected secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation of North America and he took a full part in the class struggle. He switched political sympathies from social democracy to syndicalism as he realized the inherent reformism of the former and the impor... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Forward The recent struggle in and around the shipyards of Puerto Real, Spain, in both workplace and community, against threatened closure witnessed the anarcho-syndicalist union CNT playing both a prominent and decisive role. The CNT’s involvement meant that the methods of organizing and the forms of act taken departed from those common to reformist unions — with dramatic consequences. When the PSOE government (socialist in name, but Thatcherite in practice, announced a program of ‘rationalization’ at the Puerto Real shipyards, the workforce came out on strike. The CNT was at the forefront in spreading the action to the surrounding population. Not only was the government defeated, but a number of pay and condition improvements were secured. In this not only did the great determination and ingenuity on the part of the workers bring results, but that of the communities too. Mass assemblies both in the yards and surrounding... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

“Dans la rue avec la CGT on fout le zbeul” (“In the streets with the CGT fucking things up”) –Graffiti 06/02/16 Nantes El Errante Nantes, Pays de la Loire. Another day. Another manif against the Loi du Travail. This time, Nantes. I had wanted to see Nantes; it is near the ZAD and had been the scene of some of the more furious riots over the past months. Some of the video of the action shows the torching of a Porsche, black bloc versus CRS clubfests, and the arrest of dozens of protesters. Indeed, of those protesters held on house arrest as of 06/02/16 nationwide, the vast majority were residents from the area in and around Nantes. There are a number of reasons for this, the city saw a unique upswing in student revolutionary activity in the late sixties of sufficient size to warrant a trip to the city by Vaneigem to see what, in fact, was happening. The Nantes unions had declared for a Commune which lasted from 23 Ma... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

(1886 - 1961)
Karl Korsch (German: [kɔɐ̯ʃ]; August 15, 1886 – October 21, 1961) was a German Marxist theoretician and political philosopher. Along with György Lukács, Korsch is considered to be one of the major figures responsible for laying the groundwork for Western Marxism in the 1920s. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

Flower Bomb is an anarchist writer, adventurer and trouble maker who enjoys anarchy as a lived experience of individualist revolt. Flower Bomb is the founder of Warzone Distro and has written texts on many topics including radical sobriety, veganism, and queer nihilism. (Source: FestivalOfDebate.com.)...

(1856 - 1938)
Joseph Reifgraber, an Austrian machinist, became president of the Metal Workers Union and was Editor of ‘Die Parole’, St. Louis. He was buried at Bellefontaine Neighbors, St. Louis County, Missouri, USA. (From : RevoltLib.com.)

Interests: Marxism, Radical Feminism, Continental Philosophy... (From : philosophy.uoregon.edu.)

Speaking of Puritanism in relation to American art, Mr. Gutzon Borglum said: "Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical for so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that there can be neither truth nor individualility in our art." Mr. Borglum might have added that Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty. Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destr... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

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...

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.)

Wednesday Morning [Paris, Aug. 1793]. You have often called me, dear girl, but you would now say good, did you know how very attentive I have been to the —— ever since I came to Paris. I am not however going to trouble you with the account, because I like to see your eyes praise me; and Milton insinuates, that, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words. Yet, I shall not (let me tell you before these people enter, to force me to huddle away my letter) be content with only a kiss of DUTY—you must be glad to see me—because you are glad—or I will make love to the shade of Mirabeau, to whom my heart continually turned, whilst I was talking with Madame ——, forcibly telling me, that it will ever have sufficient warmth to love, whether I will or not, sentiment, though I so highly respect principle.—&mdas...

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 rising and... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)