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 64,666,072 words or 404,275,056 characters.

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Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism

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.

"'But,' it is usually asked, 'What will there be instead of Governments?' There will be nothing. Something that has long been useless, and therefore superfluous and bad, will be abolished. An organ that, being unnecessary, has become harmful, will be abolished." -- Leo Tolstoy

Today, rather than speaking of the working class, it might be more precise to speak of the endangered class. In this account, a delivery driver at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in Manhattan describes the conditions that workers are exposed to and the stark class relations between the vulnerable and the protected, concluding with a call for solidarity among all on the receiving end of capitalist violence and inequality. With all these calls coming out for solidarity among all humanity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d like to be specific about where my solidarity lies and to encourage others to do the same. While some of us are risking our lives, others are pulling the strings from above as they ride this pandemic out in comfort. While “we are all in this together,” we are not all enduring the same conditions or facing the same risks. The reality that we have been numb to for so long... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

An uprising began in Algeria in April, 2001. Riots began after police murdered a high school boy on April 18 in Beni-Douala, an area of Tizi Ouzou in the region of Kabylia about 70 miles east of Algiers. Riots and demonstrations quickly spread to other villages in the region. Rioters attacked police stations and troop detachments with stones, molotov cocktails and burning tires, and set fire to police vehicles, government offices and courts. Government attempts to quell the uprising failed. From the beginning, the rebels showed an unwillingness to negotiate and refused all representation. By the end of April, targets of collective rage broadened to include tax offices, all sorts of government offices and the offices of political parties. Rebels blockaded the main roads and looted government buildings and other property of the rulers. The entire region of Kabylia was in open insurrection. The state sent in its guard dogs to repress the revolt, leading to open conflicts with deaths... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fellow Citizens, We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities. As the civilized world is at present constituted, there are two classes of Society - the one possessing wealth and the instruments of its production, the other producing wealth by means of those instruments but only by the leave and for the use of the possessing classes. These two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another. The possessing class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on the unpaid labor of the producers - the more unpaid labor they can wring out of them, the richer they will be; therefore the producing class - the workers - are driven to strive to better themselves at the expense of the possessing class, and the conflict between the two is ceaseless. Sometimes it takes the form of open reb... (From : Marxists.org.)

A Study of Conduct, from the Viewpoint of the Man Awake
When we were little we were taught to mind. It used to be the fashion to teach children to mind. Obedience was the sine qua non of childhood. A child with a will of its own was marked for special discipline at the hands — often, literally at the hands — of the alarmed parent. A will of its own was a dangerous possession and must be broken at all costs. So the little will was broken; the costs were too often handed down, even unto the third and fourth generation. On the whole we learned to mind; learned it so well that most of us have minded ever since, becoming devout Christians and exemplary citizens; following the beaten path, thinking the time worn thoughts, molding our lives after the antique pattern esteemed by our ancestors. To be “good” was to do as we were told — “ours not to make reply, ours not to reason why” — ours to conform to the adult life around us, and to cause as little inconvenience as possible. Th... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Note: This piece appeared as Vol. 1, No. 6 of Comment: New Perspectives in Libertarian Thought, edited by Murray Bookchin. Anarchism: Past and Present Note: The following issue of COMMENT was presented as a lecture to the Critical Theory Seminar of the University of California at Los Angeles on May 29, 1980. My remarks are intended to emphasize the extreme importance today of viewing Anarchism in terms of the changing social contexts of our era - - not as an ossified doctrine that belongs to one or another set of European thinkers, valuable as their views may have been in their various times and places. Today, more than ever, the viability of Anarchism in America will depend upon its ability to speak directly -- in the language of the American people and to living problems of the American people -- rather than to resurrect ideas, expressions, slogans and a weary vernacular that belong to eras past. This is not to deny the internat... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

People : Persons and Individuals Involved with the Revolution

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.

"EPOPS: They speak of benefits so great it is impossible either to describe or conceive them; all shall be yours, all that we see here, there, above and below us; this they vouch for. CHORUS: Are they mad? EPOPS: They are the sanest people in the world." -- Aristophanes

I am a literary critic and historian of Black and South Asian people in Britain and Europe. Spanning the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, I research and write about race, resistance, and revolution, focusing particularly on Indian anticolonialism, nationalism, and anarchism, as well as the contemporary legacies of colonialism, racism, riots, and human rights. (Source: olebirklaursen.wordpress.com.) Ole Birk Laursen is a Lecturer in English at New York University London. He has taught and supervised at the University of Oxford, King’s College London, and Queen Mary, University London, and held major research fellowships at universities across Britain and Europe. Interdisciplinary by training, his research concerns the literature and history of South Asia, and Black and South Asian people in Britain and Europe, with a particular focus on anticolonialism and anarchism, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. (Source: fmsh.fr... (From : OleBirkLaursen.wordpress.com.)

(1946 - 1986)
Kuwasi Balagoon (December 22, 1946 – December 13, 1986), born Donald Weems, was a New Afrikan anarchist and a member of the Black Liberation Army. After serving in the U.S. Army., his experiences of racism within the army led him to tenant organizing in New York City, where he joined the Black Panther Party as it formed, becoming a defendant in the Panther 21 case. Sentenced to a term of between 23 to 29 years, he escaped from Rahway State Prison in New Jersey and went underground with the BLA in 1978. In January 1982, He was captured and charged with participating in an armored truck armed robbery, known as the Brinks robbery , in West Nyack, New York, on October 20, 1981, an action in which two police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady, and a money courier (Peter Paige) were killed. Convicted of murder and other charges and sentenced to life imprisonment, he died in prison of pneumocystis pneumonia, an AIDS-related illness, on December 13, 1986, aged 39. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(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.)

(1864 - 1930)
Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse (28 May 1864 – 30 August 1930), better known as Zo d'Axa (French pronunciation: ​[zo daksa]), was a French adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille. A descendant of the famous French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, he was one of the most prominent French individualist anarchists at the turn of the 20th century. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1805 - 1881)
Louis Auguste Blanqui (French pronunciation: ​[lwi oɡyst blɑ̃ki]; 8 February 1805 – 1 January 1881) was a French socialist and political activist, notable for his revolutionary theory of Blanquism. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

Feminism : Women's Rights

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

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.)

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.)

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.)

[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...

No one at all capable of an intense conscious inner life need ever hope to escape mental anguish and suffering. Sorrow and often despair over the so-called eternal fitness of things are the most persistent companions of our life. But they do not come upon us from the outside, through the evil deeds of particularly evil people. They are conditioned in our very being; indeed, they are interwoven through a thousand tender and coarse threads with our existence. It is absolutely necessary that we realize this fact, because people who never get away from the notion that their misfortune is due to the wickedness of their fellows never can outgrow the petty hatred and malice which constantly blames, condemns, and hounds others for something that is inevitable as part of themselves. Such people will not rise to the lofty heights of the true humanitarian to whom good and evil, moral and immoral, are but limited terms for the inner play of human emotions upon the human sea o... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

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