Revolt Library : The Written Word to Help You Revolt!

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.)

With respect to the situation in Cuba these past few weeks, the Cuban Libertarian Movement – MLC (affinity group of Cuban anarchists in exile) speaks up to answer the unknowns and the challenges facing Cuban society. Ours is the voice of uncompromising commitment to freedom, equality and solidarity that has always been the sound of the Cuban anarchists. Indeed, something begins to smell different in Cuba; perhaps in tune with the flavor of the post-Fidel era. For starters, that verbosity that filled all spaces until the 26 of July of 2006 is no longer there, where it was heard for almost half a century. Since then, the prostrate “commander” has begun to write, but we all know that the written word doesn’t have the same spell as the spoken word and even less when it is elusive, erratic and lacking in interest to anybody who thinks outside of the personality cult. Maybe that is why so many, more than was foreseen, in the streets, in clandestine films,... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Tibetan people’s revolt against the Chinese occupation has once more brought to the attention of the world the state of subjection in which the territory has been held for decades by the military presence of China’s “People’s Liberation Army”. Tibet is geographically strategic. After the discovery and consequent ransacking of raw materials that are essential to China’s economy (uranium in prime position), reducing the country to little more than a nuclear dump, Tibet has also had to put up with the Beijing regime’s demographic policies of Sinization, part of a general plan for the entire Far East that China has been pushing since the 1960s, with no qualms about the use of fiercely repressive measures to do so. Tibet is thus another area of strategic importance to China, along with Burma or Darfur, where Chinese interests are protected and defended by local regimes with the use of systematic repression of all forms of struggle. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

With the crisis in the finance markets rumbling on, it is hard to make any comments on it as it is sure to become redundant. Its roots lie in the nature of financial capital, in its tendency to generate bubbles as resources are poured into specific markets in an attempt to make money. Before the housing bubble, it was dot.com. Before dot.com, it was the Savings & Loans fiasco… The creation of such bubbles is just as regular as the denials that a bubble exists. Seeking profits, banks create credit and financial institutions speculate. The margins for error decrease as capital accumulates while rising inequality makes aggregate demand teeter on the edge. Rising debt cannot cover the repayments, new buyers cannot enter the market and the whole think collapses. Irrational exuberance gives way to fear and panic, easy credit turns into expensive, hard-to-find credit. Financial capital impacts on the real economy as industry cannot find funding and consumers cut-back o... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Women in the Spanish Revolution
The events of 1936 - 1939 brought massive upheavals to the daily lives of Spanish people. Working class women, in particular, participated in and witnessed great changes as the old order of Church and domestic culture were swept away by social revolution and war. Thousands of ordinary women were propelled by necessity into revolutionary events, from front line fighting and organizing community defense to collectivizing and running farmland and factories. When the revolution was crushed in 1939, the memories and bonds formed in the revolutionary period sustained them through long years of the Fascist dictatorship, in prison, exile, or continuing the struggle in the resistance movements. Much has been written about the war and the political organizations during this period. References to ordinary women and their activities are scarce. We have used first hand and eye witness accounts as much as possible because these stories are best told by those who lived them. The... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Alexander Reid Ross is a geography professor at Portland State University with fellowships at the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right and at Political Research Associates. He is author of Against the Fascist Creep. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1759 - 1797) ~ Grandmother of Modern, Western Feminism
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir of her life, revealin... (From : Wikipedia.org / Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosoph....)

“What do contemporary revolts produce? Who do the passionate communards of our day work for? These are probably the initial generating questions that help us to formulate new questions and to list doubts, fears, reflections and proposals, untangling the black threads of our historicity. In this way and only in this way, will we be able to weave the new plot and the warp of the coming struggles. … The new anarchic plots can only come about in a disruptive way, from an ethos that reaffirms the necessary destruction of work and the power of liberating fire. To continue in the repetition and the current stagnation, could take us back in history: to the imposition of global fascism (brown and/or red).” -- Gustavo Rodriguez (Source: tragedy-of-revolution.complit.lsa.umich.edu.)... (From : tragedy-of-revolution.complit.lsa.umich.edu.)

Founder of Tatort Kurdistan, German-Kurdish Anarchist Revolutionary, Rojava Activist, and Global Traveller
Ercan Ayboga has worked in the town administration of Diyarbakir (Amed) and was co-coordinator of International Relations and heritage sites, including the urban Tigris River project. At the same time is active in the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement, based in Turkish-Kurdistan. He is a coauthor of Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan (Pluto Press, 2016) which has been published also into German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Greek. (Source: OpenDemocracy.net.) Ercan Ayboga is an environmental engineer and activist who, while still in Germany, co-founded Tatort Kurdistan. He spends his time between Northern Kurdistan and Germany, the country in which he was born to Kurdish parents who arrived from Turkey. Ayboga is involved in the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement and, in particular, in the fight for the right to water. He worked firsthand on defending the Hasankeyf archaeological site and the Kurdish fami... (From : OpenDemocracy.net / LifeGate.com / PlutoBooks.com.)

Anthony J. Nocella II, Ph.D., award-winning author and educator, is an Executive Director of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, National Co-coordinator of Save the Kids, and co-founder and Editor of the Peace Studies Journal and Transformative Justice Journal. (From : anthonynocella.org.)

Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name When you sneer in my ears, "Thou bastard born?" Am I not as the rest of you, With a hope to reach, and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?" I am no monster! Look at me -- Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink! Is there aught in them you can see To merit this hemlock you make me drink? This poison that scorches my soul like fire, That burns and burns until love is dry, And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre, A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky? Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours; Perhaps a little more brown and grimed, For it could not be white while the drawers' and hewers', My brothers, were calloused and darkened and slimed... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

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.)

Under the above head will be continued for a few weeks brief sketches of the lives of women who have contributed their share in building the world’s history. While the editor will contribute a number of these sketches we also invite others, especially women, to send in brief sketches of famous women, if any such occur to their minds. Let these sketches be well stated, short and to the point. We hope if any are sent in that they will be far superior to those which we write ourselves. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.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...

It has been suggested that to create one genius nature uses all of her resources and takes a hundred years for her difficult task. If that be true, it takes nature even longer to create a great idea. After all, in creating a genius nature concentrates on one personality whereas an idea must eventually become the heritage of the race and must needs be more difficult to mold. It is just one hundred and fifty years ago when a great man conceived a great idea, Robert Thomas Malthus, the father of Birth Control. That it should have taken so long a time for the human race to realize the greatness of that idea, is only one more proof of the sluggishness of the human mind. It is not possible to go into a detailed discussion of the merits of Malthus’ contention, to wit, that the earth is not fertile or rich enough to supply the needs of an excessive race. Certainly if we will look across to the trenches and battlefields of Europe we will find that in a measure his pr... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)