WAR & REVOLUTION — The Writings of Camillo Berneri edited by Frank Mintz (Kindle edition — £1.29; $2.13; €1,52)

 Spanish Revolution/Civil War  Comments Off
Oct 192013
 

Layout 1WAR & REVOLUTION — The Writings of Camillo Berneri (edited by Frank Mintz) ISBN 978-1-873976-65-4 published in 2013 by ChristieBooks, Hastings, East Sussex UK —  Check out all Kindle editions of ChristieBooks titles  NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE — £1.29/€1,52/$2.13  READ INSIDE!  ¡LEER EL INTERIOR!

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‘To guarantee revolution, it is not enough for the mob to be armed or for them to have expropriated the bourgeoisie: it is necessary for them to destroy the capitalist system entirely and to organise their own system. They must be able to combat the ideas put forward by Stalinist and reformist leaders with the same vigour with which they attack capitalist individuals and the leaders of the bourgeois parties. As of May 1937, any revolutionary endeavour that does not remain faithful to this experience condemns itself purely and simply to not existing. Attacking the state, unhesitatingly confronting the Stalinist-reformist counter-revolution: such are the distinctive characteristics of the coming revolution.‘

These extracts from the secret republication in Spanish of Berneri’s writings in 1973 by the Iberian Liberation Movement (whose symbolic figure is Puig Antich, who was garrotted on 2nd March 1974), and explain the reason for their re-publication. Also included are some  of Berneri’s articles from this period that best reveal his thoughts on Marxism and the militias.

Contents: Preface; Camillo Berneri; Unpublished letter on militarisation; The State and Classes; The Abolition and Extinction of the State; What can we do?; Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State Socialism; Beware, Dangerous Corner!; Madrid, sublime city; Between the War and the Revolution; The Third Stage; Interview in Spain and the World; The Wisdom of a Proverb; Problems of the Revolution: the City and the Country; Open Letter to Comrade Federica Montseny; War and Revolution; Counter-Revolution on the March; The Death of Berneri; 1937-1978: Four Decades without a History

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NOTES ON LA FELGUERA IN THE ASTURIAN REVOLUTION OF OCTOBER 1934 (by a prominent participant in the October events) — with a commentary on the life and death of death of José Maria Martinez, Gijón CNT leader in 1934 (translated by Paul Sharkey)

 Anarchism in Astuirias  Comments Off
Oct 092013
 

Octubre 34Calm and courageous from the outset, the handsome gladiator who is to scatter the seeds of a new society of active producers who shall live without masters and without tyrants, in perfect harmony with other producers and other villages where other guerrillas gladiators as handsome and courageous as himself, will have established Libertarian Communism as a superior arrangement for a life of justice and dignity

Published by the Grupo Cultural de Estudios Sociales de Melbourne/Acracia Publications, October 2013

By Way of a Preamble

 “One of the best known CNT and FAI militants in La Felguera (Asturias), the leading steel town in the province, sent us the following account of what he witnessed during the October 1934 Asturian uprising. We think that these brief jottings will help shed light on matters that deserve to be known.”

Introduction by the original publishers of Cultura Proletaria (New York), republished as a CNT document in late 1973 by the Fomento de Cultura Libertaria (Paris). From exile, October 2013

******

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THE PLACE OF POWER IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE by Saul Newman (International Political Science Review (2004), Vol 25, No. 2, 139–157 (a discussion document)

 anarchism, Anarchist ideas  Comments Off
Oct 022013
 

The following article on the ‘place of power in political discourse’ by Australian political scientist/theorist Saul Newman first appeared in The International Political Science Review in 2004. The subject it deals with, the nature and concept of power — as outlined by Michel Foucalt — relates to the anarchist critique of — and struggle against— the State. We welcome any contributions to the discussion, which should be emailed to us; these will be posted in due course.

Foucault5

Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) – French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic

ABSTRACT. This article examines the concept of a central, symbolic place of power in political theory. I trace the genealogy of “place” from sovereign conceptions of power in classical political theory to the problem of state power in radical politics. I then examine the theoretical and political implications of Foucault’s reconfiguration of the concept of power, in particular, his contention that power does not have a place, but rather, is dispersed throughout the social network.  I argue that this decentralization of the concept of power denies a universal dimension that “sutures” the political field.  I critically engage with the limitations and flaws of Foucault’s theory of power, and turn to the work of Lefort and Laclau for a more viable understanding of the relationship between power, its place or non-place, and the contemporary possibilities for radical politics.

This relationship of domination is no more a “relationship” than the place where it occurs is a place. Michel Foucault  (1984:85)

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ADA MARTÍ (1915-1960) by Agustín Guillamón

 Obituaries  Comments Off
Sep 302013
 
Ada Marti

ADA MARTÍ (1915-1960)

Maria de la Concepción Martí Fuster, better known as Ada Martí, was born into a middle class family in Barcelona on 1 July 1915. She became an anarchist, a highly cultivated intellectual and a writer of great fluency in Spanish and Catalan. A university graduate, leader of the Federación Estudiantil de Conciencias Libres (Student Free Thought Federation), and active in the Mujeres Libres, she impressed and charmed the youngsters of her generation with her beauty, intelligence, wide reading, educated conversation, intellectual passion, her flowing dark hair and white clothing.

During the fighting in October 1934 she was wounded alongside Jaume Compte defending the CADCI building. Well versed in — and could quote from — Kierkegaard, Unamuno, Freud, Reich, Romain Rolland, Gide and Rabelais … she corresponded with Pio Baroja whom she regarded as her mentor. In April 1936 (and again in October) she published two stories in the ‘Novela Ideal’ series published under the auspices of the Revista Blanca.

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WE, THE ANARCHISTS! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937 by Stuart Christie (fully revised and updated) Kindle edition £2.58/€3,05/$4.13

 Anarchism in Spain, Spanish Revolution/Civil War  Comments Off
Sep 242013
 

wecoverWE, THE ANARCHISTS! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937 (fully revised and updated) ISBN 978-1-901172-06-5 published in 2013 by ChristieBooks, Hastings, East Sussex UK —  Check out all Kindle editions of ChristieBooks titles  NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE — £2.58/€3,05/$4.13  READ INSIDE!  ¡LEER EL INTERIOR!

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Since the official birth of organized anarchism at the Saint Imier Congress of 1872, no anarchist organization has been held up to greater opprobrium or subjected to such gross misrepresentation than the Federación Anarquista Ibérica. Better known by its initials, the FAI, was a group of twentieth-century militants dedicated to keeping Spain’s largest labour union, the CNT, on a revolutionary, anarcho-syndicalist path.

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NOSOTROS LOS ANARQUISTAS! Un Estudio de la Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) 1927-1937, Stuart Christie (Spanish Edition) [Kindle Edition, £2.64 ; €3,13 ; $4.13]

 Spanish anarchism, Spanish Revolution/Civil War  Comments Off
Sep 102013
 

FAIsmallNOSOTROS LOS ANARQUISTAS! Un Estudio de la Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) 1927-1937, Stuart Christie ISBN 978-1-873976-64-7, published in 2013 by ChristieBooks, Hastings, East Sussex UK —  Check out all Kindle editions of ChristieBooks titles  NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE — £2.64/€3,13/$4.13  READ INSIDE!  ¡LEER EL INTERIOR!

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Desde el nacimiento oficial del anarquismo organizado en el Congreso de Saint- Imier de 1872, ninguna formación anarquista se ha visto sujeta a una tergiversación tan flagrante como la Federación Anarquista Ibérica. La FAI era un grupo de militantes del siglo XX dedicado a mantener el sindicato más grande de España, la CNT, en un camino revolucionario y anarcosindicalista.
Esta obra posee dos dimensiones. La primera es descriptiva e histórica: repasa la evolución del anarquismo en España y su relación con el movimiento obrero en general y, al mismo tiempo, permite comprender mejor las ideas que convirtieron al movimiento obrero español en uno de los más revolucionarios de los tiempos modernos. La segunda es analítica, puesto que el libro trata — desde una perspectiva anarquista— el problema de entender y saber sobrellevar el cambio en el mundo contemporáneo: ¿cómo pueden los ideales sobrevivir al proceso de la institucionalización? El libro constituye un relato apasionante y una rectificación histórica e informativa que va más allá de la historia aportando lecciones para las organizaciones contemporáneas y para las luchas individuales que buscan el cambio social y económico.

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With That Outsider’s Face – The journey of Maria Occhipinti (Con quella faccia di straniera – Il viaggio di Maria Occhipinti) a documentary review by Pippo Gurrieri (Sicilia Libertaria)

 Anarchism in Italy  Comments Off
Aug 222013
 
Maria-Occhipinti-Ragusa

Maria Occhipinti (1921-1996)

25 March 2013 saw the Italian premiere of Luca Scivoletto’s documentary Con quella faccia di straniera – Il viaggio di Maria Occhipinti (With That Outsider’s Face – The journey of Maria Occhipinti). This film — the third documentary devoted to the life of Maria Occhipinti (1921-1996)— is built around interviews with three women closely connected to Maria: her sister Rosina, her daughter Marilena and her grand-daughter Lorenza. The film opens – it could scarcely have done otherwise – with the widespread Non si parte/ ‘Don’t go!’ anti-war movement of January 1944-December 1945. It was a revolt that, in Sicily’s Ragusa province, took on the features of an open uprising, of which Maria was the protagonist. The revolt, then internment and prison, these are the starting points point of this film, with great care being taken with the details, and the teasing out of the personalities of the interviewees: the upheaval it caused in their lives and the trail it left  — especially so in the case of Maria’s sister and daughter — by the volcanic, tortured life of this 20th century rebel.

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CAMILO CIENFUEGOS by Carlos Franqui (English edition translated by Paul Sharkey. Kindle – £2.66)

 Anarchism in Cuba  Comments Off
Aug 172013
 

CienCovercoloursmallCamilo Cienfuegos, Carlos Franqui. (translated by Paul Sharkey) ISBN 978-1-873976-08-1, published in 2013 by ChristieBooks, Hastings, East Sussex UK —  Check out all Kindle editions of ChristieBooks titles  NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE — £2.02/€2,33/$4.07 READ INSIDE!  ¡LEER EL INTERIOR!

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Born in Havana on February 6, 1932 into an immigrant working-class family of Spanish anarchists (who left Spain prior to the 1936 Revolution), Camilo Cienfuegos —who firmly believed in the libertarian tenets of anarchism (if not himself an anarchist) — will, forever, be inseparably linked to the idealistic period of the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Wounded and arrested in anti-Batista demonstrations in the mid-1950s, Camilo sought asylum in New York and, later, Mexico where he joined Castro’s ’26 July Movement’ (named after the first anti-Batista attack in 1953) and eventually returned to Cuba in December 1956 on board the ‘Granma’. By April 1958 he had been appointed ‘Comandante’, and on December 30 1958 his column, along with that of Che Guevara, successfully captured the provincial capital of Santa Clara. Next day Fulgencio Batista, the USA’s proxy dictator, fled Cuba. On January 8, 1959, during the triumphal entry of the ‘barbudos’ into Havana after two years of guerrilla warfare, the 27-year-old Cienfuegos, the ‘Third Man’ of the Revolution, was acclaimed by millions of Cubans — becoming, in the process, an exceedingly dangerous libertarian ‘leader’. Ten months later he died when his Cessna 310 mysteriously disappeared into the sea after leaving Camaguey en route to Havana. In this account of Cienfuegos’s life Carlos Franqui, a close friend, details the dramatic events and circumstances that led up to his death, events that were to change Cuba’s destiny — and along with it the hopes and aspirations of the Cuban people.

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Civil War and Civil Peace. Libertarian Aragon 1936-’37 by Graham Kelsey (with an appendix by anarchist historian Eduardo Pons Prades on the failure to take Zaragoza — translated by Paul Sharkey)

 Anarchism in Aragón  Comments Off
Aug 112013
 

KelseyCovercolour1Civil War and Civil Peace. Libertarian Aragon 1936-’37, Graham Kelsey. ISBN 978-1-873976-06-7. First published Cambridge 1985 by The Anarchist Encyclopaedia (an imprint of Cienfuegos Press/Refract Publications) This, second (revised and corrected) edition, published in 2013 by ChristieBooks, Hastings, East Sussex UK (includes an appendix by anarchist historian Eduardo Pons Prades on the failure to take Zaragoza — translated by Paul Sharkey) Check out all Kindle editions of ChristieBooks titles  NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE — £2.02/€2,33/$3.07 READ INSIDE!  ¡LEER EL INTERIOR!

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Civil War and Civil Peace. Libertarian Aragon 1936-’37  provides an overall vision of the situation created in the Spanish north-eastern region of Aragon subsequent to the military uprising of July 1936 against the legally constituted republican government of the Second Republic.   Supported by the majority of the paramilitary forces in the region, Civil Guards and Assault Guards, and joined by various hundreds of local right-wing thugs, the uprising led immediately to the collapse of established government, swept away in an orgy of detentions and summary executions in that part controlled by the fascist rebels.   However, in that part which was liberated by militias, organised in nearby Cataluña but joined by thousands of local Aragonese people, the rapid creation of village collectives, agricultural but often involving the complete panorama of village activities, led to the establishment of a genuinely libertarian regime inspired by the village militants of the anarchosyndicalist CNT trade union movement, the dominant socio-political force in the region prior to the uprising.   It would take another military ‘uprising’, this time led by forces of the Stalinist party (PCE), an uprising within the civil war, to eliminate the collectivist experiment put into place by village militants in Aragon.    This work was written nearly thirty years ago but, despite the enormous development of historical research, in particular since the start of the new millennium, by a new generation of students, it continues to provide a clear vision of the situation created by the uprising of fascist military officers in July 1936.

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ANARCHIST CINEMA DURING THE SPANISH REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR by Emeterio Diez [Kindle Edition, £2.02]

 Documentaries, Feature, Films, Spanish Revolution/Civil War  Comments Off
Aug 082013
 

CinemaCoversmallANARCHIST CINEMA DURING THE SPANISH REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR by Emeterio Diez* — with appendices on Armand Guerra, Aranda’s ‘Libertarias’ (a review by Andrew H. Lee), and a general database on anarchist films by Santiago Juan-Navarro. These articles first appeared in Arena 1 (2009), Editor Richard Porton — LOOK INSIDE!

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*Emeterio Diez is a Spanish historian specialising in Spanish cinema whose published work has appeared in Archivos de la Filmoteca, Secuencias, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Cuadernos de la Academia and Historia 16.

‘Pedagogical imperatives also come to the fore within Emeterio Diez’s discussion of the role of film in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War. The films of the CNT-FAI, in addition to having performed the traditional functions of agitation and propaganda traditionally embraced by a political faction during wartime, are now important documents that illuminate the anarchist experiments in self-management during the early days of revolutionary upheaval. Diez’s discussion of the anarchist “socialisation” of the Spanish film industry — particularly attempts to assert workers’ control over the realms of production and exhibition — is the most complete treatment of the subject I am aware of. While Diez ultimately pinpoints major contradictions that stymied the socialisation process (which included internecine conflicts among the anarchists themselves and the cinemas’ dependence upon Hollywood film which clashed blatantly with the CNT-FAI’s revolutionary ethos), his article nevertheless chronicles a seminal utopian moment in the history of the anarchist movement.’

Richard Porton (editor), author of Film and the Anarchist Imagination, teaches cinema studies at New York University, writes on film for a variety of publications, and is on the editorial board of Cineaste.

See also ‘The Spanish Civil War on Film‘ (1-8) introduced by Julián Casanova (with English subtitles)

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