Once again saying they are the opposite of things in italics, once again rupturing with things, once again universalizing bourgeois French intellectualism, once again referencing their own concepts to generate the illusion of importance (à la Bob Avakian). Again all this: sex, action, excitement, big words, petty leftist squabbling (and it’s new!).
To begin with, the book is premised on the notion that we need to scrap the idea of class, a notion only possible from the same position that waxes political over the pressing concerns of alienation at “the dinner party”. Historical conflict now apparently bears striking resemblance to the way liberalism envisions it: on the terms of the universal abstract individu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Honest minds of the Russian anarchist movement have long noted that a significant array of anarchist activities of our era is rather an imitation of activity. The most sorrowful type of imitation is an imitation of an organization.
A dozen years ago, when we were young, many of us realized it. But unfortunately we were almost completely deprived of worthy mentors and were forced to “build a house from its foundation”. It was the time when we concluded that affinity-grours,informal unions, individual and collective initiatives are more effective than “chimerical” organizations.
It was our inconception but it was a necessary step towards a better understanding of the mechanics of the revolutionary struggl... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The attack is the most beautiful moments an anarchist can undertake. Feeling the adrenaline of rushing to a window with a rock in hand, or the moments before striking a cop with your fist. Planting the bomb, pulling the trigger, shouting FUCK THE POLICE!. The attack is an experience unlike any other, one many of us desire to experience, and many of us have experienced. We get tingles and a rush of adrenaline just thinking about it. Picturing ourselves tossing the lit Molotov at a line of riot police is one of the most entertaining daydreams all of us have. Power alone in scandalous thoughts many in our own milieu have tried to extinguish. They tell us we can’t blow up a social relationship, but time and time again we show them we had ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Civilization is Exploitation
Mass society is too complex to work without specialization. Specialized division of labor alienates us from each other and creates a hierarchy needed to co-ordinate production. Hierarchy divides society into the powerful and powerless. The powerless are treated as objects to be exploited. Exploitation on grounds of class, gender, ethnicity and sexual preference is intrinsic to mass society. Mass society cannot be reformed. It must be replaced.
Small is Beautiful
Mass society must be replaced with communities small enough for each person in them to be respected as an autonomous individual. In small communities, self-determination would replace hierarchy. You can’t fight mass with mass. If o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
One would think that a political doctrine and system that was propagated by the bourgeoisie in their rise to power, that is promoted world-wide by the Western ruling class and that has only existed in its so-called “pure” form on the backs of slaves, would at least be suspect in the eyes of those who oppose the present social order. But such is not the case. The “new movement” of opposition to the global order that is said to have been born on January 1, 1994 with the Zapatista uprising and had its coming out party in Seattle at the demonstration against the WTO has taken as its slogan: “This is what democracy looks like.” And that without a hint of irony. But this is fitting for a mov... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The necessity for space is eminently political. The places in which we live condition the ways in which we live, and inversely, our relationships and activities modify the spaces of our lives. It’s a question of daily experience, and yet we seem incapable of drawing the tiniest result from it. One only needs to take a walk through any city to understand the nature of the poverty of our way of life. Almost all urban space responds to two needs: profit and social control. They are places of consumption organized according to the increasingly strict rules of a market in continuous expansion: the security market. The model is that of the commercial center; a collective privatized space, watched by the people and instruments provided by th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I’m standing by the edge of the river. My bare feet gently touch the surface of the crispy mulch leaning against the cold solid rocks. From my skin rises a slow pliant steam following every movement I make as I walk further down. As slowly as I can I immerse myself in the dark waters. I want to feel it all, the fullness of every tiny step.
It’s late fall, and the moon is close to dark. Amanitas and Liberty caps has been gathering in witch rings and shit dungs all around my cabin. I knew this was the time, and I felt that the sauna was the obvious choice. So, one by one, cap and stem, I had put them under my tongue, let those weird mycelial creatures sink through the floor of my mouth, penetrate my intestinal wall, enter m... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
We know how painful it’s to be separated from our own comrades, and we have no recipes nor lessons to give about the way to take them out the fastest (to take them all out, forgetting the distinction between ‘guilty’ and ‘innocent’). The rapid notes that follow are the fruit of several thoughts born out of different experiences lived in Italy, hoping they could be useful to our French comrades.
The Tarnac arrests represent a serious fact, not only as an attack against everybody who already fights, with critics and practices, against the State and the Capital, but also as a tentative of intimidation against all the potential allies of a social war more diffused. Actually, the repression aims at hitting, f... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Bickford world is on fire,
and there are evil clouds over the country!
“Adaptatsiya”
Those of us who understand revolution as something real, as something that will inavoidably occur in foreseeable future, face a number of painful contradictions. Sometimes it seems that there is a whole gulf between revolution and our reality.
History gives us a consolation. It teaches us that even the darkest eras, when society is enmeshed in reactionary obscurantism, passivity and indifference, can suddenly be replaced by a tremendous liberation movement in a very short time.
Perhaps, we are spectators of the first signs of awakening. The period of total loyalty to the regime and system, the peak of whick fell in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Bibliography / further reading
Andrew X (2001) “Give up Activism.” from Do or Die, issue 9
Anonymous (2001) At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders and its False Critics (London: Elephant Editions)
Anonymous (2003) Call
Anonymous (2011) Desert (St. Kilda, UK: Stac an Armin Press)
Anonymous (2006) Down with the Empire, Up with the Spring! (Wellington: Rebel Press)
Anonymous (2003) “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack!” from Do or Die, issue 10
Anonymous (2013) The Issues are not the Issue
Anonymous (2015) “The Veil Dops.” from Return Fire, issue 3
Bari, Judi. (1995) “Revolutionary Ecology: Biocentrism & Deep E... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
This article has had to go though numerous revisions and rewrites in a desperate and often failing attempt to stay ‘current’. Indeed one of the most difficult things we face in resisting Capital’s bloody adventures (or bloody banalities if you prefer) is the global dimensions of this global war. By this I don’t just mean physical space, but maybe less tangible elements that work to reinforce the tangible nature of our current oppression. For one the “war on terror” is working to reinforce and deepen a globalized temporal order. The global size of the planning and execution of the war (and its simultaneous transformation into news/entertainment/marketing) happens in a digital/artificial... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Publisher’s note
To the Wanderers is a text put together by some Italian comrades and the details about detention centers and immigration laws refer to the situation in Italy, but the conditions under which undocumented aliens are forced to live and the universal uprooting of which these conditions and this forced wandering are a symptom are universal. I think this text provides an important analysis for all of us who are seeking to take back the capacity to determine our lives.
* * * * *
We asked for labor powers, men came.
Max Frisch
No one emigrates for pleasure — this is a very simple truth that many want too hide. If someone willingly leaves their land and their loved ones,... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
We’ve been in a state of emergency for over a week now. The destructive capacity of the virus is no longer in question. But we would like to make some notes on its non-clinical consequences and on its origins.
Whether the COVID-19 virus came about because of a bat or an American attempt that has gotten out of hand, to disable the Chinese economy, we think is irrelevant now. This virus, like others before in history that massacred entire populations in the Amazon, Mesoamerica, Africa and Oceania, is a biological phenomenon. But the context in which it was born, how it spreads and how it is managed are social issues. This virus is the result of a system that commodifies every process, object, relationship or living being on earth... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Environmental restoration may be the art form of the twenty-first century”
— from Helping Nature Heal (Ten Speed Press, 1991)
Environmental restoration is the other side of the coin to much of the activity that Earth First! has so far been engaged in — that is, grappling with the toxic forces of ‘law’ and ‘order’ in a very overt way. Such activity is the defensive work, a holding operation, crucial in many ways and important for bringing people together as a group, cementing the bonds between them in shared, often harrowing experience. However it is important not to get hung up on the adrenaline and peculiar glamour of such frontline situations.
Environmental restorat... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Tuli Kupferberg is gone. We always had an appreciation for his sense of humor, as expressed in his band The Fugs and his cartoons. He died at the age of 86 in Manhattan.
The Fugs exemplified a certain time and place. They formed in 1964, and frequently played at Vietnam War protest rallies, and had a knack for the “Theater of the Absurd”. They never took themselves too seriously, which allowed them to have a good time playing music.
Tuli’s comics were on the crude side of things — like the lyrics that were written for various songs by The Fugs — in many ways. Even so, they still make me laugh.
Tuli’s understanding of poetic forms and the structure of music was impressive. Kupferberg d... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The overthrow of the odious dictator, Fulgencio Batista, by a few thousand armed irregulars and the not-too-passive resistance of the whole Cuban people, has thrilled all lovers of Liberty and has given new hope to the millions still writhing under the heels of tyranny in many countries. It has given new hope to the people of Santo Domingo and Hungary, of Nicaragua and Korea, to the tormented masses of Russia and of South Africa. Every tyrant that falls renews the hope for a better ultimate tomorrow.
In its subservience to the North American sugar interests and also to the foreign gambling racketeers, in the venality within its ranks, and in the excessive brutality of its police forces, the Batista dictatorship was excelled only by t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Athena: I do only as I am asked. Ask for the city to function with harmony, and I will bind the slave and fatten the master. For this is how harmony is forged from chaos. All of those who flock to and live off fair Athena accept this bargain, whether their ignorance of this bargain be sincere or feigned. To dwell within my city requires submission. Just as the ox that carries water submits to a yoke, so must the citizen submit to the laws of the city. But should you grow tired of this, should the wine cause sickness and the grapes rot on the vine, I will gladly destroy what you have asked me to create. But I have yet to hear any of you mortals, rebels or kings, ask me to carry out this final task: let Chaos reign over the fields of Athena. ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Translator’s Introduction
The Undesirables was originally a one-shot paper published in Italian and French with a Spanish translation planned by the originally publishers. Its analyzes of the changes in the tools and methods of exploitation and domination that have happened in recent years were significant, so I translated it into English as a pamphlet. The refusal of those who wrote these brief pieces to accept the simplistic non-analysis of those who cry perpetually over “globalization”, their insistence on recognizing the unity of exploitation throughout the world — i.e., that the exploited of the so-called first world are not privileged but simply experiencing a somewhat different intensity of exploitation... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
On 15 November 2019, unemployed anarchist drug users in the notoriously conservative city of Meanjin/ Brisbane, visited the offices of Endue Financial Services Ltd, to express disgust and class rage at this shameless corporate exploiter of the poor. The group operated under the moniker Irredeemable Nihilist Druggies Unashamedly Embracing Sabotage + Undermining Capitalist Killer Systems (ENDUE SUCKS).
Background to the Endue Cashless Debit Card/ Healthy Welfare Card
In the last two decades, people residing in the occupied territories of so-called ‘Australia’, receiving paltry welfare payments from the Federal Government through the Department of Human Services’ Centrelink portfolio, have been subjected to increasi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
November 9--the fourteenth anniversary of the popular uprising that destroyed the Berlin Wall--was also an international day of protest against the more than 400 miles of wall being built by the Israeli government around and through Palestinian communities in the West Bank. All over the globe, special events and actions took place in solidarity against this construction project.
Work on the Wall began in June 2002 and is expected to take three years to finish at the cost of $1.7 million per mile. To date, about 90 miles of the Wall have been completed through the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Qalqiliya regions, adversely affecting the lives of more than 200,000 people.
Additionally, the construction project has enabled the annexation a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Statement about the events of February — March 2014
One doesn’t have to be a genius to forecast that the sorry socio-economic situation in Venezuela, inherited after 14 years of Hugo Chavez’s government and made worse in a little over a year with Nicolas Maduro, was creating a conflict ready to erupt, particularly when the huge income from “black gold”, which up until 3 or 4 years ago sustained the fantasy of “oil socialism”, stopped. The income is still abundant, but the waste, the incompetence, the corruption and the greed of those who rule are still greater. Between the narco-generales and other predators in uniform, highly placed bureaucrats who run the gamut from avid greed to nothingnes... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
As capitalist imperialism consolidates its economic borders through an ongoing paramilitarisation process and harmonized internal policing structure to cope with increased external war and social-ecological collapse, there is an amplification of repression in response to the manufactured ‘crisis’ of the bankers. Enough decentralization in the hegemony is maintained to allow internal security services to retain sufficient self-rule to operate according to the local situations, but generally speaking , the areas of amplification — ‘terrorism’ and immigration (specifically mass incarceration and deportation) — correspond with a rise in an encouraged nationalism and the prison-society.
The legislature ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In a time when words seem to lose their meaning, when the language of power tries to penetrate all our conversations, we think it is even more indispensable to make an effort in order to speak clearly. Let’s stop parroting what the newspapers say, television shows and the powerful want us to believe. The point is neither to agree at all costs nor to convert everything, but it is to try to speak with our mouth, our words, our pains and our hopes.
War… or revolution
The beginning of Nato bombardments against the forces loyal to Gaddafi in Libya marked a fatal step. At the beginning, what was undoubtedly an armed insurrection of a significant part of the population against the regime, is slowly transforming into a milita... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The battery feels cold against my fingertops. I stop grubbing about in the desk drawer. Slowly the filter of the cigarette pastes itself onto my lips. The thread of steel wool from the workshop is diligently prepared with the eyes and the fit for the battery. Solemny I construct the smoldering gear. First at the positive pole. Important that the smoldering point, the eye, is proper. And so the other end follows at the negative pole. The smoldering appears quickly. Hurriedly the tobacco filled mouth of the cigarette meets the glowing eye. Puff. Puff. The cigarette is litten. The smell of burned metal, battery acid and tobacco smoke. It is past lockup. I'm really not the smoker type, I'm doing the snuff but then again the forbidden smoking ri... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
They are old things, from another century. Poverty, which progress seemed to have banished from the West, comes back to make us feel its bite. Bankers aren’t jumping from windows yet, but the poor are filling the streets. Factories and shops close their doors. Millions of people find themselves with no means for facing the future. They were promised that a life passed on their knees, between a job that profited a boss and obedience to the will of the government would at least ensure a quiet survival for them. Now it’s clear to all that this was a lie.
They are old things, from another century. The lines are swelling in front of soup kitchens. The number of thefts in supermarkets is constantly growing. Foreclosure proceedi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
To those disaffected and affected by the budget cuts.
To those laid-off faculty who have been sent off this campus because Robert Corrigan values his six-figure income more than your pedagogy.
To those workers, always the unseen heroes who are the first to take the sacrifices.
To those janitors, who were denied from doing their jobs because of us. We do this for you.
40 years ago on this campus, San Francisco State College gave in to the demands of the 5-month Ethnic Studies strike, which gained valuable educational and economic opportunities for all Black and Third-World people. Self-determination for people of color was the word of the day, and although concessions were made, the struggle for self-determination of the working... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
We’ve seen you. We’ve heard you. Now you are everywhere. We know who you are. You are the 99% who protest against against the excesses of capitalism and the abuses of the State. You are the 99% who demand electoral reforms, social alternatives, economic aid, political measures. You are the 99% distressed at losing your future, at no longer being able to live as you have up to now: a job, a wage, a loan for your house, a pension. Live and let live, as a minimum. A career, as a maximum. This is what you ask. You don’t want to pay for the “crisis,” you want everything to return to what it was. Let no one turn off the screens that have day after day drained your life of meaning and emotion, condemning it to the sad... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)