Revolt Library : Revolutionary Materials from the Past

Have you noticed how there aren’t any new French intellectuals any more? There was a veritable flood in the late ’70s and early ’80s: Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Lyotard, de Certeau ... but there has been almost no one since. Trendy academics and intellectual hipsters have been forced to endlessly recycle theories now 20 or 30 years old, or turn to countries like Italy or even Slovenia for dazzling meta-theory. Pioneering French anthropologist Marcel Mauss studied “gift economies” like those of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia. His conclusions were startling. There are a lot of reasons for this. One has to do with politics in France itself, where there has been a concerted effort on the part of media elites to replace real intellectuals with American-style empty-headed pundits. Still, they have not been completely successful. More important, French intellectual life has become much more politically engaged. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Self-Government and the Citizen-State
[The State] is itself, if I may put it this way, a sort of citizen…” —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon For more than a hundred years, anti-statism has been a key principle of anarchism. But this was not always the case. A search of English- and French-language sources suggests that for much of the nineteenth century, the term “statism” (or “étatisme”) did not have its present meaning. In the political realm, it simply meant “statesmanship.” As late as the 1870s, the American anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews used the term to mean “a tendency to immobility,” without apparent fear of confusion, and the American Dental Association considering adopting Andrews’ coinage, apparently without fear of entering political territory. Anarchism emerged as a political philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century, when much of the... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

1 I have always considered my inclination to anarchy to be irreducible to a politics. Anarchist commitments run deeper. They are more intimate, concerning supposedly personal or private matters; but they also overflow the instrumental realm of getting things done. Over time, I have shifted from thinking that anarchist commitments are more than a politics to thinking that they are something other than a politics. I continue to return to this latter formulation. It requires thinking things through, not just picking a team; it is more difficult to articulate and it is more troubling to our inherited common sense. I do not think I am alone in this. It has occurred to some of us to register this feeling of otherness by calling our anarchist commitments an ethics. It has also occurred to some of us to call these commitments anti-political. I think these formulations are, for many of us, implicitly interlinked, though hardly i... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

In the second half of the nineteenth century there was a reaction against individualism. The most widespread moral theories, for example those of August Comte in France, John Stuart Mill in England, and Schopenhauer in Germany, had the common characteristic of preaching altruism. Was it that the philosophers wanted to maintain Christian morality at a moment when they renounced belief, or did they think themselves obliged, as Nietzsche maintained, to show themselves to be more disinterested than the Christians themselves? Whatever the case, they condemned egoism and the isolation of the individual. In the same way, in politics the national and social ties that united individuals were insisted upon and solidarity was preached. But in Germany around 1890 people began to talk about two philosophers who admitted neither moral altruism nor social solidarity. Stirner, who in his lifetime had enjoyed but an ephemeral glory, had been revived by a fanatical disciple, J.H. Ma... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

I had the distinct displeasure of looking at Mike Gonzalez’s new book, “A Rebel’s Guide to Marx,” recently. Gonzalez, for those who do not know, is a long time leading member of the SWP hierarchy. Given how the SWP seem incapable of writing anything truth or accurate about anarchism, I was prepared for the worse when it came to his account of Marx’s conflict with Bakunin. I was not disappointed. According to Gonzalez Bakunin was no friend of the working class because he was opposed to working class people organizing! This was because it would result in “authoritarianism.” He was addicted to conspiracy, arguing for secret cells which would attack the state on behalf of the working class and was opposed to Marx’s dictum that the emancipation of the workers was the task of the workers themselves. What a travesty of the truth! Anyone even faintly familiar with Bakunin’s ideas would kno... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

(1878 - 1945)
Amédée Dunois (16 December 1878 – March 1945) was a French lawyer, journalist and politician. Amédée Catonné was born in Moulins-Engilbert, Nièvre on 16 December 1878. He came from a respectable family. He was a brilliant student, already displaying literary gifts and cultural tastes that would distinguish him as a humanist. He earned a doctorate in law in 1899. He adopted the name Amédée Dunois, and worked as a journalist for Temps nouveaux (1906–07) and La Bataille syndicaliste (1908–12). From 24–31 August 1907 he attended the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam with Pierre Monatte, Benoît Broutchoux, Erné de Marmande, Henri Beylie and others. In 1908 he joined the Anarchist Federation of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise. Amédée Dunois worked with Jean Jaurès as political editor of L'Humanité from 1911, and became general secretary of the... (From : Wikipedia.org.)

Editor and Writer of Anarchist FAQ's, Histories, and News

First of all, mazal tov to April Rosenblum for being listed as one of The Forward’s “Forward 50,” of American Jews who made their mark in 2007. She is someone I’ve come to know slightly from our involvement in the Facing A Challenge Within conference in Newark in 2006, for left-wing activists concerned about anti-Semitism within the left. I have a copy of her 32-page pamphlet about antisemitism on my PC’s desktop and I may write something of a critique, particularly regarding her harsh, dogmatic opposition to Zionism. (From : ProgressiveIsrael.org.)

(1872 - 1952)
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (Russian: Алекса́ндра Миха́йловна Коллонта́й, née Domontovich, Домонто́вич; 31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1872 – 9 March 1952) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician. Serving as the People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin's government in 1917–1918, she was a highly prominent woman within the Bolshevik party and the first woman in history to become an official member of a governing cabinet. (From : Wikipedia.org.)

ADVERTISEMENT. Mr. Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution first engaged my attention as the transient topic of the day; and reading it more for amusement than information, my indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense. Many pages of the following letter were the effusions of the moment; but, swelling imperceptibly to a considerable size, the idea was suggested ivof publishing a short vindication of the Rights of Men. Not having leisure or patience to follow this desultory writer through all the devious tracks in which his fancy has started fresh game, I have confined my strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he has leveled many ingenious arguments in a very specious garb. A LETTER TO THE Right Honorable EDMUND BURKE. SIR, It is not necessary, with courtl...

(A lecture presenting the negative side of the question, whose positive was argued under the heading "They who marry do well," by Dr. Henrietta P. Westbrook; both lectures delivered before the Radical Liberal League, Philadelphia, April 28, 1907.) LET ME make myself understood on two points, now, so that when discussion arises later, words may not be wasted in considering things not in question: First -How shall we measure doing well or doing ill; Second -What I mean by marriage. So much as I have been able to put together the pieces of the universe in my small head, there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity, depending on the consciously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names "right" and "wrong," truly, are of human invention only; but the c... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard-of conditions," and lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror. It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated. How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue? To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Pros... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

To the Editor of The Open Court: Possessed of rather more than ordinary interest in the sex question, and agreeing with Professor Cope that any proposition for the amelioration of the condition of women should be discussed and decided by women, I am moved to certain remarks suggested by his article on “The Material Relations of Sex” in the first number of The Monist. All through its perusal I was impressed by his unconscious recognition of an underlying question, which, apart from woman’s inferiority, determines the relations of the sexes. This is plainly apparent in the paragraph alluding to the communistic system of wealth production and distribution, in which he admits the possibility of promiscuous sex-relations. While I agree with Professor Cope that to institute communism would be a decided blow at progress, since progress consists in a constant widening of individual liberty while communism invokes authoritarian d... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Though the king of Denmark be an absolute monarch, yet the Norwegians appear to enjoy all the blessings of freedom. Norway may be termed a sister kingdom; but the people have no viceroy to lord it over them, and fatten his dependents with the fruit of their labor. There are only two counts in the whole country who have estates, and exact some feudal observances from their tenantry. All the rest of the country is divided into small farms, which belong to the cultivator. It is true some few, appertaining to the Church, are let, but always on a lease for life, generally renewed in favor of the eldest son, who has this advantage as well as a right to a double portion of the property. But the value of the farm is estimated, and after his portion is assigned to him he must be answerable for the residue to the remaining part of the family. Every farmer for ten years is obliged to attend annually about twelve days to learn the military exercise, but...