October 5, 2010
The library is pleased to announce that a set of 2 CD-ROM images is
available for download via BitTorrent. Grab it here:
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/docs/TheAnarchistLibrary-2010-10-stable.torrent
The images (one for A4 and one for letter paper) can be burned on a physical CD for distribution, or simply extracted on your hard-drive to be browsed. They contain a full mirror of this site as seen on October 1st, 2010, featuring the new EPUB format for mobile devices and many, many improvements.
More about this release here: http://bookshelf.theanarchistlibrary.org/TheAnarchistLibraryOnTorrent
This is the 3rd torrent we release. Feel free to let the outdated ones die.
Please be patient during the download and keep seeding.
...I found, again and again, that the conclusions I slowly and imperfectly arrived at were already fully and demonstrably (and I may say, beautifully) expressed by Karl Marx. So I too was a Marxist! I decided with pleasure, for it is excellent to belong to a tradition and have wise friends. This was Marx as a social psychologist. But as regards political action...it never seemed to me that the slogans of the Marxians, nor even of Marx, led to fraternal socialism (that... requires the absence of state or other coercive power); rather they led away from it. Bakunin was better. Kropotkin I agree with. (Paul Goodman, 1962; p. 34)
The current world-wide revival of anarchism is premised on the decline of Marxism. Yet there remains a strand of Marxism (libertarian or autonomist Marxism) to which anarchists often feel close and whose followers often express a closeness to anarchism. Its libertarian-democratic, humanist, and anti-statist qualities permit anarchists to use valuable aspects of Marxism (such as the economic analysis or the theory of class struggle). Yet it still contains the main weaknesses of Marxism. And in certain ways it has the same weaknesses of much of anarchism, rather than being an alternative. This version of Marxism has much to offer anarchists but remains fundamentally flawed, as I will argue.
There has been a spurt of interest in a small radical book titled “The Coming Insurrection” (“TCI”), with authorship attributed to the “Invisible Committee” (IC). It was originally published in France in 2007. That country's police cited it as evidence in a trial of “the Tarnaq 9,” radicals who were accused of planning sabotage. The French Interior Minister called it a “manual for terrorism” (quoted on p. 5). A U.S. edition got an unlikely boost by the far-right tv talk show clown Glen Beck. He has repeatedly identified it as a manual for a take-over of the U.S. by the left, by which he means everyone from the mildest liberal Democrats leftward. “This [is a] dangerous leftist book....You should read it to know what is coming and be ready when it does” (Beck, 2009). The interest of many on the left has been piqued; Michael Moore is reported to have read it.
So the anarchist individualist as I mean it has nothing to wait for [...] I already considered myself an anarchist and could not wait for the collective revolution to rebel myself or for communism to obtain my freedom.
— Renzo Novatore
I conceive of anarchism from the side of destruction. This is what its aristocratic logic consists of. Destruction! here is the real beauty of anarchism. I want to destroy all the things that enslave me, enervate me, and repress my desires, I want to leave them all behind me as corpses. Remorse, scruples, conscience are things that my iconoclastic spirit destroyed [...] Yes, iconoclastic negation is most practical.
— Armando Diluvi
First of all, there is nothing inherently primitivist about a critique of civilization, particularly if that critique is anarchist and revolutionary. Such critiques have existed nearly as long as a self-aware anarchist movement has existed — and not always even connected to a critique of technology or progress (Dejacque felt that certain technological developments would allow human beings to more easily get beyond civilization; on the other hand, Enrico Arrigoni, alias Frank Brand, saw civilization and industrial technology as blocks hindering real human progress). The real question, in my opinion, is whether primitivism is any help at all to an anarchist and revolutionary critique of civilization.
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The Committee exists to perpetuate the name of Marie Louise Berneri. Besides the present volume, we shall be editing a selection of her writings for publication in 1950, as well as arranging with her publishers for a special edition of A Journey through Utopia to be made available to her friends and comrades. At a later date we shall publish a full-length biography of Marie Louise.
We propose also to publish a series of volumes of works, some of which have been out of print for many years, whilst many will be available for the first time in the English language, which had a deep influence on Marie Louise's life and work, and which she had often expressed the hope of seeing one day published in this country.
On May 26, 1958 at midnight, Chiu Tsai-kang, a steel worker of the Shanghai No. 3 Steel Works, was burned by molten steel. The affected area extended over 89 per cent of his body, 20 per cent being third degree burns with the muscles and bones involved. According to Western medical authorities, a patient with such severe burns would be likely to die. But due to the affectionate' concern of the Communist Party, to the great efforts made by the medical staff and to the widespread support of society at large, Chiu Tsai-kang is still alive. After being treated for more than five months his wounds are now completely healed and covered by grafted skin. On November 23 he was transferred to the Sino-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Peking for further treatment. Three months later the function of his joints was restored and he could walk without the aid of crutches. During his stay in Peking, Chiu Tsai-kang was able to attend' and speak at the National Conference of Active Young Builders of Socialism. On March 19, 1959 he returned to Shanghai to convalesce.
Submission to domination is enforced not solely, nor even most significantly, through blatant repression, but rather through subtle manipulations worked into the fabric of everyday social relationships. These manipulations — ingrained in the social fabric not because domination is everywhere and nowhere, but because the institutions of domination create rules, laws, mores and customs that enforce such manipulations — create a logic of submission, an often unconscious tendency to justify resignation and subservience in one’s everyday relations in the world. For this reason, it is necessary for those who are serious about developing an anarchist insurrectional project to confront this tendency wherever it appears — in their lives, their relationships and the ideas and practices of the struggles in which they participate. Such a confrontation is not a matter of therapy, which itself partakes of the logic of submission, but of defiant refusal. It requires a subversion of the existent, a development of different ways of relating to ourselves, each other, the world and our struggles, ways that clear reflect our determination to refuse all domination and to reappropriate our lives here and now. I am talking here of a real revolution of everyday life as the necessary basis for a social revolution against this civilization founded on domination and exploitation. The following essays appeared in Willful Disobedience as the series “Against the Logic of Submission”. By no means do they exhaust the question, but I think they provide a basis for discussion as to how we can create ourselves, our relationships and our struggle as our own in defiance of all domination.
If the Green Capitalist response to climate change will only add more fuel to the fire, and if government at a global scale is incapable of solving the problem, as I argue in previous articles [1] [2], how would anarchists suggest we reorganize society in order to decrease the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and to survive an already changed world?
There is no single anarchist position, and many anarchists refuse to offer any proposal at all, arguing that if society liberates itself from State and capitalism, it will change organically, not on the lines of any blueprint. Besides, the attitude of policy, seeing the world from above and imposing changes, is inextricable from the culture that is responsible for destroying the planet and oppressing its inhabitants.
The following essays examine several of the various institutions, structures, systems and relationships of domination and exploitation which define our current existence. These essays are not intended to be comprehensive nor to be final answers, but rather to be part of a discussion that I hope will go on in anarchist circles aimed at developing a specifically anarchist theoretical exploration of the reality we are facing. A great deal of the analysis that currently goes on in anarchist circles is dependent on marxist or postmodernist categories and concepts. These may indeed be useful, but to simply accept them a priori, without examining social reality in terms of our own specifically anarchist revolutionary project indicates an intellectual laziness. So I hope we can begin to discuss and examine the world in terms of our own projects, dreams and desires, certainly grasping all analyses that we find useful, but in order to create our own theoretical and practical revolutionary project.
The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century is one of the classics of anarchist literature.[1] Written in the aftermath of the 1848 French Revolution, it sets forth a libertarian alternative to the Jacobinism which at that time still dominated the republican and revolutionary movements in France. It contains a critique of existing society and its institutions, a vision of a free society based on equality and justice, and a detailed strategy for revolutionary change. Despite its ambivalent position regarding government initiated reforms, it set the tone for subsequent anarchist propaganda as anarchism began to emerge as a significant force on the revolutionary left.
Its author, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was born on 15 January 1809 in the town of Besançon in Franche-Comté, a province in the east of France bordering the Jura region of Switzerland. His parents were poor and republican, but due to the determination of his mother and a modest bursary he was able to attend school for a time, where he regularly won the class prize despite being too poor to afford his own books. Eventually he was forced to quit school in order to support himself and his family. He became a printer. Religious tracts formed the bulk of the material he worked with, and they had the unintended effect of eroding his religious belief.
Chinese society is at the darkest stage now. Under such circumstances, young people become impotent and weak without the power to resist corruption. Even the brave ones can only keep quiet and submit to fate. When it is really unbearable, suicide is the only way out. China is paralyzed; where can we find happiness? Some conscious youth believe that the only way to improve China’s current situation is to promote “nationalism,” and identify “nationalism” as the only road to happiness for the Chinese. Voices of “nationalism” have spread all over the nation. I shudder at such a thought. “Nationalism” is in fact the obstacle to human progress. Being a member of this society, I cannot accept nationalism against my conscience. I have to argue against nationalism and demonstrate the real road to happiness for the Chinese. My words are sincere and I wish to receive sympathy from people who refuse to ignore their conscience.
I’ve just been reading an extract from a letter from our valiant comrade A[lfonso] Petrini [1] who is in the USSR, under banishment. There I came upon the following lines: “(...) They’re locking us all up, one by one. Real revolutionaries may not enjoy freedom in Russia. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech have been wiped out, so there is no difference between Stalin and Mussolini.”
I have deliberately emboldened the last phrase, for it is spot on. However, for the accuracy of this short phrase and all its ghastly realism to be appreciated, it is essential that we have a deep and clear-cut grasp of fascism: deeper and more clear cut than is generally the case in leftist circles.
These days these words “freedom and equality” are part of the vocabulary of each and every one of us. But make a few inquiries and ask: What is freedom? and you will be told “Freedom means freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly, the freedom of secrecy of correspondence”.
Ask: What is equality? and you will be told: “All citizens are equal before the law, with no difference between the high-born and the yokel.” Now, such narrow definitions have nothing to do with true freedom, true equality. Don't believe me? Then have a read of the following.
The blight upon the people's freedom is the State. Ever since the State came into existence, we have stopped being free. No matter what we do or say, the State sticks its nose in. All we ask is to live in love with our brethren from other nations, but the State would have us patriots at any price, enrols us in its armies and forces us to murder our neighbours. And here in China the situation is even worse: here we have Chinese murdering other Chinese. For a number of years now, in Hunan and Shaanxi and Szechuan, “the tide of blood has been running high and the corpses are piling up”.
The anarchist movement and the labor movement follow two parallel lines, and it has been geometrically proven that parallel lines never meet.
And since our good burghers, even those who pretend philanthropy redeems usury, will never stop being exploiters or give back what they have unjustly taken; the anarchists, including those who abhor violence and bloodshed, are compelled to conclude that the expropriation of the ruling class will have to be accomplished by the violent social revolution. And they dedicate themselves to this, seeking to prepare the proletariat with every means of education, propaganda and action at their disposal.
Do not forget and do not delude yourselves! The proletariat is still a mass, not a class. If it were a class, if it had a clear, full consciousness of its rights, of its function, of its strength, the egalitarian revolution would be a thing of the past, freeing us of these melancholy and bitter musings.
The Association for Ontological Anarchy gathers in conclave, black turbans & shimmering robes, sprawled on shirazi carpets sipping bitter coffee, smoking long chibouk & sibsi. Question: What's our position on all these recent defections & desertions from anarchism (esp. in California-Land): condemn or condone? Purge them or hail them as advance-guard? Gnostic elite... or traitors?
Actually, we have a lot of sympathy for the deserters & their various critiques of anarchism. Like Sinbad & the Horrible Old Man, anarchism staggers around with the corpse of a Martyr magically stuck to its shoulders — haunted by the legacy of failure & revolutionary masochism — stagnant backwater of lost history.
Between tragic Past & impossible Future, anarchism seems to lack a Present — as if afraid to ask itself, here & now, what are my true desires? — & what can I do before it's too late ?... Yes, imagine yourself confronted by a sorcerer who stares you down balefully & demands, “What is your True Desire?” Do you hem & haw, stammer, take refuge in ideological platitudes? Do you possess both Imagination & Will, can you both dream & dare — or are you the dupe of an impotent fantasy?
In our last edition we carried the news that Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy had died on the morning of 30 November this year in Astapova.
We mentioned at the time something which, albeit a matter of interpretation, is nonetheless true: the report of his death was like a shooting star. Ten days have elapsed since he died and nobody mentions him any more.
Within a few years no one outside of the world of literature proper, where he earned his spurs as long ago as 1863 with War and Peace and Anna Karenina, will have anything more to say about his teachings, his philosophical and moral writings. And rightly so.
Because his entire philosophy boils down to a sterile attempt at an impossible revival of Christianity and his entire morality finishes in the most mischievous teaching of resignation and forbearance, in the duty of non-resistance to evil. […] In his eyes, the whole essence of Christianity was summed up in the address that, according to legend, Christ delivered to his disciples on the Mount of Olives:
Our task as anarchists, our main preoccupation and greatest desire, is that of seeing the social revolution realized: terrible upheaval of men and institutions which finally succeeds in putting an end to exploitation and establishing the reign of justice.
For we anarchists the revolution is our guide, our constant point of reference, no matter what we are doing or what problem we are concerned with. The anarchy we want will not be possible without the painful revolutionary break. If we want to avoid turning this into simply a dream we must struggle to destroy the State and exploiters through revolution.
But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the most exploited of the masses and the most politically sensitized minority, opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider strata of exploited in a flux of rebellion which could lead to the revolution but could also end up in the establishment of a new power or a bloody confirmation of the old one. In the case of the latter, although the insurrection begins as a liberating uprising it concludes bitterly with the re-establishment of State and private dominion. That is the natural way of things. Insurrection is the indispensable element of the revolution without which, without a long and painful series of which, there will be no revolution and power will reign undisturbed in the fullness of its might. We are not to be discouraged. Once again, obtusely, we are preparing and struggling for the insurrection that will come about, a small part of the great future mosaic of the revolution.
To fully understand the context of global environmental problems, one must assess the role that humans have played in the destruction of the nature. Environmentalists and social science scholars have argued on behalf that social justice and environmental justice go hand-in-hand. Long time Vermont resident and activist Murray Bookchin brought forth the philosophy of social ecology, which laid out the ideological framework that bridged social and environmental justice movements. In his seminal work Post Scarcity Anarchism, Bookchin argues to challenge the social order that is rooted in the exploitation of man and nature alike. He writes, “ Owing to its inherently competitive nature, bourgeois society not only pits humans against each other, it also pits the mass of humanity against the natural world. Just as men are converted into commodities, so every aspect of nature is converted into a commodity, a resource to be manufactured and merchandised wantonly” (85).
Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade
Feb.14,1994
The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas has suddenly taken on a certain importance. Despite its small scale it has not yet been crushed, apparently because the PRI fears public outrage. Moreover, municipalities in various places in Mexico have been taken over by various groups in sympathy with the Zapatistas. This news has been blacked out in the US media, doubtless for reasons connected with NAFTA. If the PRI begins to totter, US involvement becomes probable.
A reading of Zapatista communiqués and manifestos (as translated by the RESIST! group in California) reveals a program completely in keeping with the principles of Ernesto Zapata himself — modified for contemporary relevance but basically anarcho-agrarian — “Tierra y Libertad”. As anarchists we should remember that Zapata's goals were supported by the Flores Magon brothers, who worked behind the front organization of the “Mexican Liberal Party”, but were in fact out revolutionary anarchists. In 1911, European and N. American anarchists ranging from Individualists to Wobblies participated in the short-lived Republic of Tijuana. The revolt in Chiapas which began last New Year's Eve would appear to be the first non-authoritarian movement with real revolutionary potential since Paris '68 or Italy in the early '70s. We should not let marxist-leninist groups in the US “monopolize” the Zapatistas. We should demonstrate our support, and we should make it clear that we offer this support as anarchists.
I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.
I was asked to write on decentralism in history, and I find myself looking into shadows where small lights shine as fireflies do, endure a little, vanish, and then reappear like Auden's messages of the just. The history of decentralism has to be written largely in negative, in winters and twilights as well as springs and dawns, for it is a history which, like that of libertarian beliefs in general, is not observed in progressive terms. It is not the history of a movement, an evolution. It is the history of something that, like grass, has been with us from the human beginning, something that may go to earth, like bulbs in winter, and yet be there always, in the dark soil of human society, to break forth in unexpected places and at undisciplined times.
Palaeolithic man, food-gatherer and hunter, was a decentralist by necessity, because the earth did not provide enough wild food to allow crowding, and in modern remotenesses that were too wild or unproductive for civilized men to penetrate, men still lived until very recently in primitive decentralism: Australian aborigines, Papuan inland villagers, Eskimos in northern Canada. Such men developed, before history touched them, their own complex techniques and cultures to defend a primitive and precarious way of life; they often developed remarkable artistic traditions as well, such as those of the Indians of the Pacific rain forests and some groups of Eskimos. But, since their world was one where concentration meant scarcity and death, they did not develop a political life that allowed the formation of authoritarian structures nor did they make an institution out of war. They practised mutual aid for survival, but this did not make them angels; they practised infanticide and the abandonment of elders for the same reason.
