Revolt Library : Revolutionary Materials from the Past

A secret children’s book passed from hand to hand, invisible to the market. After a decade and a half, we’re finally offering a zine version of The Secret World of Duvbo, the companion to our other children’s book, The Secret World of Terijian. This is a story about the furtive outlets we create for the parts of ourselves that do not fit into our ordinary lives—about the potential for transformation hidden within seemingly staid and conservative communities—about how the courage of one can become the courage of all. This story has followed a long and winding path to reach your hands. The plot line was conceived in São Paulo, Brazil in early 2000. The first draft was composed at the end of January 2002, at Demonbox, a now-defunct collective house in Stockholm that, incidentally, was also the original European publisher of Days of Love, Nights of War. It was written as a gift for Arwin, who was born the followin... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

An impression is abroad, to some extent, that the “Equity movement” is necessarily characterized by an unusual latitude in the Marriage relations—I as one, protest against this idea. “The Sovereignty of every Individual” is as valid a warrant for retaining the present relations, as for changing them; and it is equally good for refusing to be drawn into any controversies or even conversations on the subject. I find no warrant in my “sovereignty” for invading, disturbing, or offending other people, whatever may be their sentiments or modes of life, while they act only at their own Cost: and would again and again reiterate in the most impressive possible manner that the greatest characteristic of this movement is its “INDIVIDUALITY”—that the persons engaged in it are required to act entirely as Individuals—not as a Combination or Organization That we disclaim entirely, all responsibility for the acts, opinio... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Only necessity, and not the desire for entertainment, could bring us to discuss marxist anthropology and its advantages, drawbacks, causes, and effects. For, in spite of the fact that ethnomarxism is still a powerful current in the human sciences, marxist ethnology is of an absolute, or rather, radical nullity — null at the root. It is not necessary to go into a detailed treatment of its arguments, for the abundant production of ethnomarxists can be taken as a unit, a homogeneous unit equal to zero. Let us examine this nothingness that overflows with being — what being is involved shall be seen further on — this marriage of marxist critique with primitive society. The development of French anthropology over the past twenty years is due firstly to institutional backing of the social sciences, and secondly through creation of ethnology programs in universities and at the National Center for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.). But, in addition, French an... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

This article is based on a talk give at the Radical Routes Conference, “Practical Economics: Radical alternatives to a failed economic system,” held on May 23, 2009. To quote someone who sums up the intellectual times in which we live, Sarah Palin: “Now is not the time to experiment with socialism.” This, during the worse crisis since the 1930s! Anarchists would say that is precisely the time – but only as long as we are talking about libertarian socialism! Capitalism in crisis (again!), and the failure of state socialism could not be more clear. Social democracy has become neo-liberal (New Labor? New Thatcherites!) while this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. With its state capitalism and party dictatorship, Stalinism made the disease (capitalism) more appealing than the cure (socialism)! In this anarchists should be feel vindicated – the likes... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

By definition no consistently anti-statist libertarian believes that government property is legitimate. The state, by its very nature, cannot be meaningfully consented to; its claims to ownership are the claims of a ranting madman armed to the teeth and soaked in blood. It is also broadly recognized that, because the state is aggression at its very core, many acts against it are justified as defense. Some take this to mean that assassinating say the entire New York Police Department would not only be justified but valorous. Yet however repugnant and perhaps irredeemable police are they are in some meaningful, if remote, sense human beings with agency. Killing an agent, an individual mind, unquestionably constitutes violence, regardless of whether one claims it’s justified. (Disclaimer: This article will use “justified” in a broad moral sense, avoiding contextual arguments about strategic optimality, public relations, etc. The question of whether s... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

(1882 - 1960)
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (born 5 May 1882 in Manchester – died 27 September 1960 in Addis Ababa) was an English campaigner for the suffrage and suffragette movement, a socialist and later a prominent left communist and activist in the cause of anti-fascism and the international auxiliary language movement. She spent much of her later life campaigning on behalf of Ethiopia, where she eventually moved. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1995 - )
Sitting in a haze of exhaustion. The modern world runs on this same sleep deficit. The primary experience in this modern world is work. But work is no longer confined to the factory or the office but rather spills over everywhere. Today work is decomposed into its component parts - boredom, frenzy, effort, distraction and sloth. Even if you are unemployed, you can get much of the experience of a job just by driving through downtown, standing in a welfare line or going to the emergency ward. (From : ASAN Introduction.)

(1928 - 2019)
Donald Rooum (born 20 April 1928, died 31 August 2019) was an English anarchist cartoonist and writer. He had a long association with Freedom Press who have published seven volumes of his Wildcat cartoons. In 1963 he played a key role in exposing Harold Challenor, a corrupt police officer who tried to frame him. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1953 - )
Janet Biehl (born September 4, 1953) is an American political writer who is the author of numerous books and articles associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. Formerly an advocate of his antistatist political program, she broke with it publicly in 2011. She works as a freelance copy editor for book publishers in New York. She currently focuses as well on translating, journalism, and artmaking. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

(1854 - 1909) ~ Translator of Tolstoy, Encyclopedic Contributor, Novelist, and Internationalist
Bain was born in London in 1854 to David and Elizabeth (born Cowan) Bain. Bain was a fluent linguist who could use over twenty languages. Besides translating a number of books he also used his skills to write learned books on foreign people and folklore. Bain was a frequent contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica. His contributions were biographies and varied from Andrew Aagensen to Aleksander Wielopolski. He taught himself Hungarian in order that he could read Mór Jókai in the original after first reading him in German. He translated from Finnish, Danish and Russian and also tackled Turkish authors via Hungarian. He was the most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century. He married late and died young after publishing a wide range of literature from or about Europe. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery. (Source: Wikipedia.org.) After education at private schools, he was for some years a shorthand... (From : Wikipedia.org / Dictionary of National Biography, ....)

Or, the Wrongs of WomanTHE WRONGS OF WOMAN, like the wrongs of the oppressed part of mankind, may be deemed necessary by their oppressors: but surely there are a few, who will dare to advance before the improvement of the age, and grant that my sketches are not the abortion of a distempered fancy, or the strong delineations of a wounded heart. In writing this novel, I have rather endeavored to pourtray passions than manners. In many instances I could have made the incidents more dramatic, would I have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. In the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy; and the history ought rather to be considered, as of woman, than of an individual. The sentiments I have embodied. In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a train of events a...

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. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

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.)

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, t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Night in a prison cell! A chair, a bed, a small washstand, four blank walls, ghastly in the dim light from the corridor without, a narrow window, barred and sunken in the stone, a grated door! Beyond its hideous iron latticework, within the ghastly walls, -a man! An old man, gray-haired and wrinkled, lame and suffering. There he sits, in his great loneliness, shut in front all the earth. There he walks, to and fro, within his measured space, apart from all he loves! 'There, for every night in five long years to come, he will walk alone, while the white age-flakes drop upon his head, while the last years of the winter of life gather and pass, and his body draws near the ashes. Every night, for five long years to come, he will sit alone, this chattel slave, whose hard toll is taken by the State, -and without recompense save that the Southern planter gave his Negroes, -every night he will sit there so within those four white walls. Every night, for five long years to... (From : Anarchy Archives.)