The Industrial Workers of the World is the last child born of the great surging struggle in the world’s arena between labor and capital. It is a child vigorous and aggressive, gaining in strength, expanding in power, and commanding attention and respect. This young child is the progeny of a long line of the Earth’s stalwarts who have engaged in the onward march towards a better world.
The IWW is urging the workers to set aside the first of May, 1912 to demand of the master class an eight-hour working day. Of course if the working class are not sufficiently awake to their own interests to come out and stand like men for this very just and modest demand, the IWW will not abandon the agitation; on the contrary, it may agitat... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Cast a spell.
People in North America are already under a spell: the spell of private property, of the legitimacy of government, of hopelessness. None of these are inherently real; they derive their reality from our collective belief and activity. You have to be hypnotized indeed to believe that property is more sacred than the needs of human beings—that the decisions of the government are more legitimate than your own judgment. To break this spell, cast another. When a few people invest themselves entirely in another vision of reality, they open up space for others to invest in it as well. It doesn’t have to be realistic at first—it just has to spread until it creates the conditions of its possibility. The original call ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
1.
Pay attention to where and how you spend your money. Is your money going to support companies that don’t care about you? Are they destroying the environment, killing animals, treating your friends who work for them like shit? Are they trying as hard as they can to sell you a product that gives you cancer? Are their advertisements designed to manipulate you, to make you feel insecure or make their product seem like more than it really is? You don’t need to give those motherfuckers your money! For that matter—do you buy many things that you don’t need? Soft drinks and junk food at convenience stores, for example? Do you end up spending a lot of money whenever you want to relax and have a good time? There are a thou... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
First Published: April, 1916: Banned in Germany. Source: Rosa Luxemburg: Selected political writings, edited and introduced by Robert Looker. Translated: (from the German) W.D. Graf. Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford/Brian Baggins with special thanks to Robert Looker for help with permissions. Copyright: Random House, 1972, ISBN/ISSN: 0224005960. Printed with the permission of Random House. Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2004.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Revelation, III 15:16
Comrades! You are all aware of the division that exists in the bosom of the intra-party op... (From: Marxists.org.)
If elections are, as Sartre said, “a trap for fools,” then recent voting trends are in hopeful contrast with other signs of social somnolence. Not that election results are getting any better. They never will, so long as anybody wins. The good news is the steady growth of the nonvoting majority of eligibles which has been “winning” elections for over sixty years. In place of “majority rule” we see an increasingly unruly majority.
The 1984 presidential election — the Comet Kahoutek of recent politics — should have sharply reversed the trend; in fact it only stalled it. Despite a flashy ideological incumbent; despite the antics of Jesse Jackson, the Preacher from the Black Lagoon; despite... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The Australian Federal election campaign grinds on, with most people being heartily sick of the whole thing. Neither the Liberals nor Labor are trusted by most voters and the major parties are horrified at the drift of voters to minor parties of all stripes. Anarchists have something to say about this, something deeper than just advising people about voting. We say if you’re looking to fiX the problems in society, Parliament is the wrong place.
Real power in a capitalist society doesn’t reside in Parliament, but in the boardrooms of the major companies, in the editorial rooms of the mainstream media, in the officers’ mess of the military, in the courts and in the offices of top public service mandarins. Even if a governme... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Published: International Socialist Review, vol. 12, no. 9, March 1912. Translation: William E. Bohn. Transcription/Markup: Micah Muer, 2017. The elections to the German Reichstag have resulted in a great victory for
the Social Democratic Party. In 1907 the Socialists entered the national
assembly with 43 members, and by means of victories at by-elections this number
was raised to 53. The great electoral battle of 1912, however, gives us quite a
different story to tell. The first ballot, on January 12, gave the Socialists 67
seats, of which 25 represent newly conquered districts. The party of the
working-class was, moreover, left as contestant in 121 reballotings. The second
elections have netted 43 seats. Thus the Social Democratic ... (From: Marxists.org.)
Translated by Robert Helms
"Des ilections" first appeared in La France (Paris), Aug.12, 1885.
What's going to happen? Where will we flee? Already the
election campaigns are infected by a terrible leprosy. The cabarets roar, rolling over with drunken eyes. Looming above the intersections, the red, blue, and yellow posters explode across the walls of solitary houses. The peasants hurry to gather their wheat and oats before the political whirlwind blows in, like a devastating sirocco. The bad smell of spilled wine is hanging in the air, and the deafening clamor of committees comes from everywhere, left, right, and center, calling for an encore, and marking time on the bass drum of alcoholic frenzy.
People walk by, cross the... (From: Mid-Atlantic Infoshop.)
Introduction by Adam Weaver
Pledging to make Jackson become “the most radical city on the planet,” the July 2017 election of Chokwe Antar Lumumba as Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi is by many accounts an inspiration as to the ability of the left to critically engage in social change through elected office. By no means an isolated effort, Lumumba’s election is the result of decades of base building and social movement growth, most notably highlighted in their use of community assemblies and the work of Cooperation Jackson, which promotes the creation of worker cooperatives.
The origins of the campaign are rooted in the politics of Black self-determination and is spelled out in the Jackson-Kush Plan (referred to ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
We must choose between two paths: the road of El Salvador, of a lethal sidetrack into capitalist politics which is actually a prelude to world war, or the road of Poland, of mass and autonomous confrontation against the capitalist state.
For the past several months since the proclamation of the Left’s “final offensive”, we have witnessed a further scourge of capitalist brutality in El Salvador. Within the countryside the guerrillas are completely on the defensive, having been sacrificed for “reasons of (capitalist) state” as the modern-day La Passionaria, Ana Guadalupe Martinez, will argue. The F.D.R. now cynically admits that its meager military offensive was nothing but a bargaining ploy against the Du... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
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