The Anarchist Library

Author: Anonymous
Title: At Play in Hell
Subtitle: For a Halloween Uprising
Date: October 30th, 2026
Notes: Translated by Ill Will
Source: https://illwill.com/at-play-in-hell
 

The following text circulated anonymously on message boards in Italy on October 29, 2026. Drawing inspiration from the riotous legacy of “Black Halloween” in the United States, and echoing the emphasis on joyful conspiracy from the Invisible Committee’s recent interview and video-tract, the authors enunciate an offensive position within the ongoing youth insurgency spreading across Europe and beyond.

 

We do not judge our times. Our times judge us. The times are so revolutionary, and yet so far from our liking. We have only ourselves to blame. —Guy Debord, “Second Report on the Construction of Situations”

C’est les ténèbres[1]

Out of the dark, I cut the cord Tore down the wall, changed my name —Visino Bianco

1.1 Since October 17, we’ve once again been confusing names, masks, and roles. Journalists and government officials — in cahoots, as usual, with the Instagram autonomists — feel duped. They wanted a movement, an organization, students, second-generation activists, and prominent figures. In short, they desperately wanted a subject. Having woven the web of their desires (“pro-Palestine” and “second-generation,” of course, and above all intellectual), they even managed to lure a poor soul into it — whose most radical act, aside from organizing a few rallies, was writing for Il Fatto Quotidiano.

1.2 Not even Halloween managed to spark the imagination of our enemies. Instead, they’re trying to pull the same old trick on us, yet again: to pin us down to ourselves. To force us, yet again, to speak up: “Who are you? What do you want? What are you against?” Only those who are scared to death ask questions like that. To exorcise their fear, they conjure up the specter of the “Maranza,” of young people, of social centers, even the long arm of Russia. Any name will do, just so they don’t have to listen to the cosmic silence; any mask will do, so long as it covers over the only face that truly terrifies: the one that isn’t there.

Subjects for sale

2.1 Thrown into disarray, the government, the cops, and the media demand a subject, a purpose, a reason. Imbeciles of every kind leap to their rescue: “Autonomists against data centers!”, “Communists against the government!”, “Students against the war!”, “Citizens against the high cost of living!” When society needs reassurances, activists are there to provide it. They craft slogans for journalists seeking stories, demands for politicians seeking votes, marches for cops seeking blood, anxieties for psychotherapists in search of money, and above all, subjectivities, subjectivities, subjectivities! — to soothe the nightmares of our enemies.

2.2 When 10,000 people are paraded around in a march for four hours, sapping everyone’s strength and cheerfulness and giving the cops time to plant traps at every intersection and square in the city, only to then triumphantly lead the surviving demonstrators straight into the wolf’s jaws, to be massacred between Piazza Baldissera and Piazza Crispi, one should have the good sense to lock oneself away and reflect for a few years, perhaps outside of Turin. But there doesn’t seem to be a defeat harsh enough, nor a humiliation deep enough, to dissuade the militants from thrusting their stupidity upon us. Fortunately, experiences like the one on Saturday, October 24, are revealing. Now we know that the only interesting marches are the wild ones; that real demands aren’t shouted through a megaphone; that an insurrection isn’t launched on Instagram; and that only those who know how to laugh together can build collective power.

2.3 The activist is the piece of chewing gum that any official, breathing a sigh of relief, sticks haphazardly into the cracks of the social dam.

Trusting our yawns

Memorizing politics of ancient history Flung down by corpse evangelists… Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now —Bob Dylan

3.1 Anyone who has attended a general assembly has experienced firsthand the full range and nuances of boredom. The wretchedness of the speeches — which compete to miss the point — is surpassed only by that of the proposals, which seem designed to discourage anyone from carrying them out. But it would be too easy to blame things upon this or that Marxist-Leninist, feminist, autonomous, or environmentalist group. If assembly statements are so deadly boring, it’s ultimately because what they desperately communicate is always the same thing: “Here I am!” Nothing is sadder than witnessing the compensatory rituals of those who, lacking all vitality, must constantly reassure themselves that they exist.

3.2 Moreover: nothing is more humiliating than playing the role of an audience in the spectacle of assemblies. Sacrificing one’s enthusiasm, one’s need for friendship, one’s hatred for this shitty world on the altar of activism. Accepting the assembly-form means resigning oneself to communicating from a place of absence: absent from the situations in which one finds oneself, absence of joy, absence from others and from oneself. Thanks for not coming!

...

Author: James Michael Yeoman
Title: Salud y Anarquía desde Dowlais
Subtitle: The translocal experience of Spanish anarchists in South Wales, 1900–15
Date: 2016
Source: Yeoman, J.M. (2016) Salud y Anarquía desde Dowlais: The translocal experience of Spanish anarchists in South Wales, 1900–15. International Journal of Iberian Studies, 29 (3). pp. 273–289. ISSN: 1364-971X
Abstract

In the early twentieth century a group of Spanish anarchists settled in the town of Dowlais, South Wales, as part of a wider migration to the area prompted by the town’s ironworks. Over the following fifteen years this community kept in constant contact with their comrades in Spain through the networks sustained by the anarchist press. Examination of these records reveals the dislocation experienced by these migrants, and their efforts to retain their identity and standing within the movement they had left behind. This study highlights the benefits of a translocal approach towards anarchist internationalism, which focuses on the experience of ordinary members of the movement and their struggles to overcome the challenges presented by international movement.

Keywords

Anarchism Spain Wales internationalism translocalism migration

Introduction

Studies of turn-of-the-century anarchist transnationalism are often framed around elite figures and propagandists (Bantman 2006: 961–62), such as Pyotr Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol. Many of these figures lived truly fascinating lives, moving regularly through major cities on both sides of the Atlantic, driven by a combination of devotion to the cause and a need to stay one step ahead of the law. Influenced by the broader shift towards transnational labour history, some recent studies of anarchist internationalism have sought to flesh out the experience of these figures more fully (Levy 2010) while others have shifted their focus away from these exceptional, and largely atypical, individuals altogether. Far more attention is now directed at the experience of ordinary anarchists, whose reasons for movement were – like most migrants of the era – as much material as political, and who often had little time or resources to engage in extensive political activity (Goyens 2007; Bantman 2013). Of particular relevance for this study is the increasing number of works dedicated to transnational networks formed between radicals separated by geographic and political borders (Turcato 2007; Khuri-Makdisi 2010). The Spanish movement has not been entirely isolated from these historiographical trends. Anarchist migration and networks between Spain and Latin America have received some attention from scholars such as Moya (1998), Sánchez Cobos (2008) and Shaffer (2010), as have anarchist links between Spain and the Philippines (Anderson 2005). Nevertheless, the trans-Atlantic networks of Spanish anarchism remain understudied; a fact noted by Martha Ackelsberg elsewhere in this special issue. Likewise, the movement of Spanish anarchists within Europe has received little attention in recent scholarship.

While the turn to transnational anarchist history is welcome and important, some questions about the premises of such studies remain. Many transnational studies focus on the period when the international anarchist movement was at its strongest, from the late nineteenth century up to the outbreak of World War I, which overlapped with one of the great periods of globalization. Capital flowed into and out of nation states, borders were relatively fluid and movement of people was both an opportunity and a compulsion for many. This situation presented internationalists with an unprecedented context in which to spread their message to the working class of Europe and the Americas. There is a risk, however, that transnational studies portray cross-border activity as a straightforward and ultimately positive activity, obscuring the difficulties and failures experienced by those engaged in transnational radicalism. For many, migration was an undesired and distressing experience, and even those of an internationalist outlook often maintained parochial or nationalistic ideas and practices (Bantman 2006: 961, 970). Likewise, states and borders continued to function in the increasingly globalized world, presenting huge and complex obstacles for those who wished to undermine them (Bantman and Altena 2015: 7–10).

A further problem lies in the concept of transnationalism itself. While the state should not be ignored, its defined political and geographic frontiers can be problematized, yet concentrating on activity across national borders does not necessarily achieve this. Instead, it can maintain the ‘notion of the world as formed and ordered by a static framework of clearly distinguishable nation states’ (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013: 374). If historians of transnationalism are interested in the negotiations between individuals and communities, flows of information, exchanges and the crossing of boundaries, they should acknowledge that these processes occurred within as well as between nations. Far from undermining the study of internationalism and arguing for a return to national meta-narratives, this perspective asks the scholar to disrupt the fixed image of the state, regarding international exchanges and networks as part of a process, which continued into national interiors and localities (Werner and Zimmerman 2006: 36–37, 43–44).

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Author: Arthur Maglin
Title: Zine Reviews: Hip Culture & The Cultural Revolution
Date: March 19, 1971
Source: The Militant. <www.marxists.org>

Hip Culture: 6 Essays on Its Revolutionary Potential. Times Change Press. New York, 1970. 63 pp. $1.25.

The Cultural Revolution: A Marxist Analysis by Irwin Silber. Times Change Press. New York, 1970. 62 pp. $1.25.

The material contained in these two pamphlets constitutes a useful resource for the study of what the youth culture is and what it means. The fact that there is not all that much agreement among the authors represented here points out the difficulties some radicals have had in figuring out this phenomenon.

In his pamphlet The Cultural Revolution and in his essay in Hip Culture, Irwin Silber takes an almost wholly negative view of the youth culture. He views it as escapism On the part of white middle-class young people. Of the 1969 Woodstock music festival, he writes: “Creating a mini-society for three days, they enacted a ritual of that revolution which the estranged young of America’s White middle and upper echelons envisage as liberation.” As Silber sees it, the envisaged liberation is utopian because it is anti-technological and is not to be attained through political struggle.

Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman of the Young Lords Party is in general agreement. With Silber’s line of thought. He thinks the youth culture is a white thing that is counterposed to organizing for social change.

Paula Marcus, a radical high school student, thinking along the Same lines as Silber and Guzman, writes: “Hip culture broke away from previously established culture. It fell into similar ruts and prejudices that exist in the former culture.” She, too, concludes that the youth culture is a diversion from struggle.

By way of contrast, George Metefsky, writing for the Yippies, takes a much more enthusiastic attitude toward the youth culture. Rather than viewing the youth culture as a diversion from revolutionary struggle, he thinks it is the essence of revolutionary struggle, needing only an extra bit of politicizing to make it perfect: “That hip culture has only slowly developed a Communist politics shows the tremendous anti-communist brainwashing in this society. But freeks have made the massive rejection of repressed behavior for free activity—of capitalist accumulation in favor of consumption ‘by each according to his needs.’”

Murray Bookchin, well-known anarchist theorist, also thinks that the youth culture essentializes the priorities of social struggle: “In its demands for tribalism, free sexuality, community, mutual aid, ecstatic experience. and a balanced ecology, the Youth Culture prefigures, however inchoately, a joyous communist and classless society, freed of the trammels of hierarchy and domination, a society that would transcend the historic splits between town and country, individual and Society, and mind and body.”

One of the greatest dangers to the youth culture’s development, as Bookchin sees it, comes from “Bolshevik-type organizations” currently “infiltrating the Youth Culture.”

Taking things from another angle the Lower East Side Women’s Liberation Collective exposes the hip culture’s rampant male chauvinism. AS in the society at large, from breakfast to bed, a woman’s work is never done: “The hippy woman cooks, washes, cleans house, and she does it Without all the modern conveniences capitalist society has produced to ‘lighten woman’s load.’ Preparing and cleaning up from macrobiotic meals is not much different from any other full course meal, except that it is a lot harder to fix than prepared food — like an hour and a half longer.”

Viewing these essays as a whole, With the exception of this last article Which deliberately limits itself to a critique of “cool” sexism, one is struck by the fact that all of these writers tend to view the youth culture as a stable, unchanging phenomenon that must be either a diversion from or the essence of revolutionary activity. But the youth culture is neither a finished nor a stable phenomenon. The youth culture is an integral part of the combined and uneven development of the worldwide youth radicalization. It has long since ceased being—if it ever really was—a white middle-class thing. On the contrary, it is international and interracial—in this country it clearly overlaps with Black culture and for good reason.

The youth culture represents a revolt from the transmitted values of the status quo — bigotry, the authoritarian family, puritanism, money ae a way of life, militarism, self-effacing conformity in personal appearance, and so on. Many people Who start at this gut level make their way in time to Marxist revolutionary consciousness (and Murray Bookchin is right from his point of view to be worried about this phenomenon).

These two pamphlets can be ordered from Times Change Press, 1023 Sixth Ave, New York, N. Y. 10018.

Author: Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
Title: Don’t Forsake Us!
Subtitle: Zapatista Women in ’94
Date: 1994
Notes: Originally published by Ediciones OnA, València-Chiapas: 1st edition May 2018, 2nd edition January 2019, 3rd edition July 2019, 4th edition January 2020.
English translation by Ediciones Bloodfruit/Malvivientes, 2026.
Source: Retrieved 10/30/26 from https://www.patreon.com/bloodfruit/posts/dont-forsake-us-173797846

The money raised from the this first volume are going to the benefit of Compañera M. Mother,
Social Warrior, Multiply Employed, Indigenous.

The best way to understand the path of the women who struggle is through their own words. These brief texts, interviews and declarations of the women of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation in the first months of the armed uprising of 1994 showcase the situation of indigenous women in Mexican territory, and are a mirror of the dignity that has kept the Zapatista struggle alive despite male chauvinism, racism and capitalism.

This edition was part of a mutual aid initiative to redistribute the
funds of the circulating texts and “Independent” editions among
the struggles’ female protagonists

Words From Comandanta Ramona and Major Ana María

Another concern that indigenous
women have is the free choice of partners.

“The dowry custom still exists,
the girl is never taken into account,
she is sold off (in this region,
the average price of nuptial dowry is
two thousand pesos). The idea of
having a boyfriend doesn’t exist; it is sin.”

Ana María, Infantry Major: “Don’t Forsake Us!” is the desperate plea of the women of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation so that their hopes of being heard within and without their communities may not die. “We ask all women to fight alongside us” is what Comandanta Ramona and Major Ana María say in Tzotzil and Spanish. Their call to Mexican women is not one to take up arms, but rather so that, within their spaces, they may support the changes proposed by the Revolutionary Law of Women, as well as their extensive list over equality, justice, health, education and housing. That night, the penultimate they would spend at the Cathedral, they arrived through the back of the altar, accompanied by Subcomandante Marcos.

He, dressed in his unmistakable military uniform. Some steps behind, the only two women of a group of the 19 delegates of the Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee. “I’ll leave them with you so that you can speak to them about anything you wish,” he said in a joking tone as he bid his farewell to the group of five female reporters and two photographers intent on interviewing the women of the Zapatista Army. Ramona’s wide and sharp eyes revealed weariness. The black wool skirt, the beautifully embroidered loom-woven blouse, and her short stature contrasted with Ana María’s gray ruana and sturdy frame. Alongside them, Comandante Javier remained behind (to translate Ramona’s Tzotzil’s words into Spanish). The words of the Comandanta, even if in Tzotzil, flow smoothly from her indigenous heart.

I left my community in search of work because of necessity itself, there was no longer anything to live off of. When I arrived someplace else I began to learn that it wasn’t the same situation as that of women in the countryside. I learned there to understand and gain conscience of the differences, that’s how I learned of the organization (EZLN), and that it was also necessary to organize women.

Within EZLN women’s participation in key. Ramona belongs to the political group that works in the communities; Ana María is part of the approximately 30% of female combatants/insurgents who voluntarily refuse to form a family in order to engage in armed struggle.

“I am an insurgent. I’ve dedicated my entire life and time to the cause,” affirms Ana María, a 26 year old Infantry Major who, when speaking of displacement and suffering endured, furrows her brows in sadness, the only sign of expression able to be seen beneath her balaclava. “It’s a long story,” she says,

Ever since I was eight years old I took part in peaceful struggles, in marches, in meetings. My family was one that fought, that always organized in order to have a dignified life, but that never achieved it through that route. We were in an organization —won’t say which— with other persons, with other peoples. We would go there, the children too, and that’s how we went began to learn that we weren’t going to achieve anything through peaceful struggle. It had been like that for years and years. My family, before I was even born, had been fighting. I arrived [to EZLN] very young; I was fourteen years old when I joined the fight. At first we were just two women out of the eight or ten who started the movement. Many women have joined EZLN without telling their families.

When I left home and found out that there was an armed struggle I took a decision and said to myself, “I will also take up arms!”, because one of my brothers was already a member; but my parents, most of my family knew nothing. So I fled from home and went in search of my comrades in order to be able to join as well, and I spent many years learning and participating in it without my family finding out. This has happened in many places, within many families.

There, my brother and I learned how to read and speak in Spanish. They then taught us battle and political tactics in order to be able to speak to the people and explain our cause to them. We asked for land and the government would not give it, so we began the take-overs and repression was their reply.

...

Author: Indigenous Action
Title: Voting is Not Harm Reduction
Date: February 5, 2020
Source: http://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/

When proclamations are made that “voting is harm reduction,” it’s never clear how less harm is actually calculated. Do we compare how many millions of undocumented Indigenous Peoples have been deported? Do we add up what political party conducted more drone strikes? Or who had the highest military budget? Do we factor in pipelines, mines, dams, sacred sites desecration? Do we balance incarceration rates? Do we compare sexual violence statistics? Is it in the massive budgets of politicians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars competing for votes?

Though there are some political distinctions between the two prominent parties in the so-called U.S., they all pledge their allegiance to the same flag. Red or blue, they’re both still stripes on a rag waving over stolen lands that comprise a country built by stolen lives.

We don’t dismiss the reality that, on the scale of U.S. settler colonial violence, even the slightest degree of harm can mean life or death for those most vulnerable. What we assert here is that the entire notion of “voting as harm reduction” obscures and perpetuates settler-colonial violence, there is nothing “less harmful” about it, and there are more effective ways to intervene in its violences.

At some point the left in the so-called U.S. realized that convincing people to rally behind a “lesser evil” was a losing strategy. The term “harm reduction” was appropriated to reframe efforts to justify their participation and coerce others to engage in the theater of what is called “democracy” in the U.S.

Harm reduction was established in the 1980s as a public health strategy for people dealing with substance use issues who struggle with abstinence. According to the Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC) the principles of harm reduction establish that the identified behavior is “part of life” so they “choose not to ignore or condemn but to minimize harmful effects” and work towards breaking social stigmas towards “safer use.” The HRC also states that, “there is no universal definition of or formula for implementing harm reduction.” Overall, harm reduction focuses on reducing adverse impacts associated with harmful behaviors.

The proposition of “harm reduction” in the context of voting means something entirely different from those organizing to address substance use issues. The assertion is that “since this political system isn’t going away, we’ll support politicians and laws that may do less harm.”

The idea of a ballot being capable of reducing the harm in a system rooted in colonial domination and exploitation, white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, and capitalism is an extraordinary exaggeration. There is no person whose life is not impacted every day by these systems of oppression, but instead of coded reformism and coercive “get out the vote” campaigns towards a “safer” form of settler colonialism, we’re asking “what is the real and tragic harm and danger associated with perpetuating colonial power and what can be done to end it?”

Voting as practiced under U.S. “democracy” is the process with which people (excluding youth under the age of 18, convicted felons, those the state deems “mentally incompetent,” and undocumented folx including permanent legal residents), are coerced to choose narrowly prescribed rules and rulers. The anarchist collective Crimethinc observes, “Voting consolidates the power of a whole society in the hands of a few politicians.” When this process is conducted under colonial authority, there is no option but political death for Indigenous Peoples. In other words, voting can never be a survival strategy under colonial rule. It’s a strategy of defeat and victimhood that protracts the suffering and historical harm induced by ongoing settler colonialism. And while the harm reduction sentiment may be sincere, even hard won marginal reforms gained through popular support can be just as easily reversed by the stroke of a politician’s pen. If voting is the democratic participation in our own oppression, voting as harm reduction is a politics that keeps us at the mercy of our oppressors.

While so many on the left–including some Indigenous radicals–are concerned with consolidation of power into fascists hands, they fail to recognize how colonial power is already consolidated. There is nothing intersectional about participating in and maintaining a genocidal political system. There’s no meaningful solidarity to be found in a politics that urges us to meet our oppressors where they’re at. Voting as harm reduction imposes a false solidarity upon those identified to be most vulnerable to harmful political policies and actions. In practice it plays out as paternalistic identity politicking as liberals work to identify the least dangerous candidates and rally to support their campaigns. The logic of voting as harm reduction asserts that whoever is facing the most harm will gain the most protection by the least dangerous denominator in a violently authoritarian system. This settler-colonial naivety places more people, non-human beings, and land at risk then otherwise. Most typically the same liberal activists that claim voting is harm reduction are found denouncing and attempting to suppress militant direct actions and sabotage as acts that “only harm our movement.” “Voting as harm reduction” is the pacifying language of those who police movements.

...

Author: Zoé Samudzi
Title: Black Feminist Anarchism & Leftist Neglect of the African Continent
Date: March 21st, 2018
Source: https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism/posts/transcript-black-17686926
Introduction

This week we’re excited to bring you a conversation with Zoe Samudzi.

Zoé is a freelance writer and doctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work is broadly around different aspects of race and coloniality, specifically through a black feminist lens. We had an opportunity to talk with Zoé about Black Feminist Anarchism. We also talked more broadly about how the necessity for US leftists to develop fuller understandings of the continent of Africa and its current conditions. Zoé talked about how her mother’s memory of Rhodesian colonialism has informed her anti-fascism, and she suggests that if the US is to unify around anything meaningful, it will be on the ground meeting the material needs of marginalized communities, not developing a post-revolutionary theory upon which we’re all going to agree. Zoé is a co-author of the forthcoming book As Black As Resistance on AK Press.

This is the second transcript we’ve published in our attempt to transcribe all of our episodes to increase the accessibility of our podcast. All of our transcribers have volunteered to do this, and we would like to thank @pauisanoun on twitter for transcribing this. The original audio version can be found https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-2-black-15022605

Start

Jared: Welcome to “Millenials Are Killing Capitalism”. This is Jay, Josh will be joining the episode in a minute once we jump into the interview. This week, we’re excited to bring you a conversation with Zoé Samudzi. Zoé is a freelance writer and a doctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work is broadly around different aspects of race and coloniality, specifically through a Black Feminist Lens. We had an opportunity to talk with Zoé about Black Feminism, the complex relationship she sees between the standard, anti-imperialist binary, and the experiences she and her family have had on the continent of Africa and, specifically, in Zimbabwe. We also talk more broadly about the necessity for U.S. leftists to develop fuller understandings of the continent of Africa and its current conditions, which differ broadly across the 54 countries on the continent. Zoé talked about her mother’s memory about Rhodesian colonialism and how that has informed her anti-fascism. Finally, Zoé suggests that if the U.S. leftists unify around anything meaningful, it will be on the ground meeting the material needs of marginalized communities, not developing a post-revolutionary theory that we are all going to agree to. We hope you enjoy our conversation.

Josh: So, Zoé, we know the political systems in Africa have not always existed through forms of bureaucratic rule. There were and are plenty of African peoples who found it possible to do without any regular apparatus of government. African communities were able to live peacefully together, to defend themselves, enlarge their wealth with very little help of central authority. We watched your speech on Black Feminist Anarchism — talk to us more about anarchistic elements in many traditional people in African societies.

Zoé: Yeah, in a lot of parts of the continent, people lived in communal systems where labor was divided, social roles were allocated in these kind of particular ways but goals were collectivized, justice was a kind of collective endeavor. That’s obviously not to historicize and pretend that there were no highly centralized communities and structures. There were kingdoms across the continent, where power was extremely centralized and where systems were extremely hierarchical, so I think there was a combination of these two things.

Josh: Absolutely, and also on that speech, I loved the emphasis you put on, in a lot of these structures and practices, from Black and brown organizers — organizations, I should say — rather than simply reading theory from cis, white dudes — and, by the way, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment — would you recommend that approach to understanding anarchism to anyone that’s new to the theory?

Zoé: You know, my entry to anarchism was through theory and a lot of comrades I know, you know, we go to school with nazis and nazis are beating people up.

Josh: Absolutely.

Zoé: So we’re gonna go beat up nazis. And so, I think, something that’s been really beneficial to me has been to have conversations with people whose entrance into anarchism was through praxis, was through mutual aid, was through feeding communities, was through community defense. I think there’s a lot that happens in certain kinds of praxis that isn’t in a lot of the theory. Emotional labor, for example, and kind of supporting parents and having these new understandings of raising kids — that’s something that Bakunin doesn’t talk about. That’s something that a lot of the theory doesn’t talk about. A lot of anarchist theory doesn’t talk about race until Black anarchists started getting shine and attention. I would very much recommend that the orientation is through praxis, is through looking at the ways that communities have organized the resistance to the state, have provided resources to themselves outside of the state, and kind of supplement that understanding with good theory from Black folks, anarcho-feminists, from disabled folks, from queer anarchists, from queer and trans anarchists.

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Author: Ruslan Bulgakov
Title: Free Moral Behavior
Subtitle: Why you are an anarchist by nature
Date: September 18, 2026
Source: https://www.google.de/books/edition/Free_Moral_Behavior/poyR0gEACAAJ?hl=en
Free Moral Behavior: Why You Are an Anarchist by Nature Introduction

If freedom is not a natural need for our species, then it only remains for us to conclude that it is a spontaneous product of culture. There is still a desperate need for a theory of free behavior in philosophy. I do not mean freedom from causality, freedom as a political ideal, freedom expressed in a set of rights, or freedom as an existential burden of human condition. What I mean is a mechanistic description of an explosive psychological potential for actual observable resistance to limitation. This is what I mean by freedom.

I find myself obliged to fight morality as it is usually reduced to a system of prohibitions, which does not leave any theoretical possibility for someone to behave morally correct in a situation of complete freedom. Both freedom and morality become subjects of disputes and discussions only when they are violated. This means that for us they are already given as a naturally necessitated reality, and not as some distant ideas that, needing metaphysical justification, take their empirical origin in some kind of agreement or other such magical moment. Any attempt to prove the necessity of these principles only distorts their meaning. At most, we can confidently say that freedom and morality have practical value in moments when they are violated. What, then, is the original norm of free moral behavior for a human as a biological organism? This I hold to be the most relevant question for philosophy today.

It is customary to speak of freedom in relation to morality either in the language of political rights, in the language of metaphysical principles, or in the language of empirical science. We’ll join the last tradition. When defining freedom, we will, however, with some reservations, start from the division into positive freedom (for) and negative freedom (from), proposed by philosopher Isaiah Berlin in 1958. Berlin himself understood negative freedom as the condemnation of any coercion and the practice of non-interference. He understood positive freedom as the tyrannical coercion of persons to engage in certain activities in the name of the true nature of humanity – the idea born out of the troubled mind of Rousseau, as Berlin himself would define it. For Berlin, the question of freedom is a question of such a distribution that leaves all parties satisfied as much as possible – this is his ideal of negative liberty.

Speaking about the boundaries of non-interference, Berlin writes: "But whatever the principle in terms of which the area of non-interference is to be drawn, whether it is that of natural law or natural rights, or of utility, or the pronouncements of a categorical imperative, or the sanctity of the social contract, or any other concept with which men have sought to clarify and justify their convictions, liberty in this sense means liberty from: absence of interference beyond a certain frontier" [7]. I argue with this statement. In my view, principles such as natural right, natural law, and the social contract themselves distort the perspective on the relationships between people in society so much that it is no longer possible to speak of "liberty from," however paradoxical it may seem, even if the initial discussion is about non-interference. These principles are based on false pessimistic views of human nature, and therefore, in their context, freedom always acquired the status of a commodity, the status of an object that can be possessed, an object that can be taken away or delegated (distributed also). So, the principles on which someone will interpret non-interference have enormous importance for whether you are at all talking about freedom or, perhaps, about something like an ultimate set of rights, which is how we propose to understand positive freedom, thereby dividing Berlin’s understanding of negative freedom in two.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett proposed to consider the evolution of freedom as the evolution of the ability of man to consciously manifest and control a wider range of behaviors, thereby increasing our freedom from genetic determinism [19]. He considered the most successful short definition of freedom to be the definition of philosopher Nicholas Maxwell – "the capacity to achieve what is of value in a range of circumstances". Dennett also claimed that "human freedom, in part a product of the revolution begat of language and culture, is about as different from bird freedom as language is different from birdsong" [19]. By bird freedom, he meant the freedom of a bird to fly wherever it wants.

It is striking how quickly we notice in the definition favored by Dennett that very "freedom for" – achieving what is valuable does not mean doing it freely or choosing what to pursue by oneself. Moreover, freedom from genetic determinism suffers from the lack of possibility to be realized as such, for only a scientist can understand from the outside perspective that a certain species A, by demonstrating behavior B, frees itself from genetically predetermined set of behaviors C, the actual contents of which are never known in full detail to any scientist. Furthermore, the ability to control a range of behaviors is nothing but free will, not freedom as such – this thesis requires clarification.

...

Author: Rasmus Hästbacka
Title: Landmark Collective Agreement for Migrant Workers
Date: November 1, 2026
Notes: More articles by the author here. Photo below: migrant workers after the agreement was signed. Photographer: Valeriia Eltarenko.
Source: Znetwork

Workers at the construction of Microsoft’s data center outside the city of Gävle in Sweden secured a collective agreement under threat of strike action through the syndicalist union SAC. The case has attracted attention from a large number of European media outlets.

The Guardian has published a five-month investigation into conditions for migrant workers on data center sites across Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. The investigation uncovers evidence of dangerous conditions and unpaid wages, including at the Microsoft site outside Gävle.

“Days before publication of this investigation, the syndicalist union, representing 70 Romanian workers at Microsoft’s site in Gävle, brokered a settlement with BenBau, which it says will give workers back pay and allow unions access to sites,” reports the Guardian. The back pay amounts to 15 million Swedish kronor (roughly 1, 5 million US dollars).

On October 25, this group of workers voted unanimously for a collective agreement with BenBau AB, one of the companies building Microsoft’s server halls, reports the Swedish newspaper Arbetaren. The deal raises wages to 260 kronor an hour (26,46 US dollars), includes a time bank for longer leave periods in the workers’ home countries, and allows the workers to elect health-and-safety delegates from their own ranks.

The agreement opens with the statement: “This collective agreement is the first Swedish collective agreement written by and for migrant workers.” Since the deal was struck, even more workers have joined the union at the construction site.

This outcome is the latest result of the syndicalist union’s years of organizing among migrant construction workers, particularly those from post-Soviet countries who use Russian as a common language. Freelance journalist Volodya Vagner has reported extensively on these efforts. “By confronting exploitative employers with aggressive litigation and long-forgotten methods of struggle, like blockading the construction sites of contractors with wage debts, the union has managed to redistribute millions of dollars in unpaid wages and damages,” writes Volodya Vagner.

The collective agreement at the Microsoft site is consistent with SAC’s new collective agreement-strategy articulated in 2020. This strategy is a response to a Swedish anti-strike law that entered into force in 2019. The strategy was presented on the Counterpunch news site: “According to our assessment syndicalists can still fight lawfully for both collective agreements and alternatives to such agreements”, SAC representatives stated.

Yet collective agreements are nothing new for Swedish syndicalists. During the 20th century, Swedish syndicalists entered into hundreds of collective agreements.

SAC was founded in 1910. Fittingly, the vote on the 2026 collective agreement took place in the childhood home of the legendary Joe Hill.

This rewrite was made by Rasmus Hästbacka, labor lawyer and member of SAC

Author: Kevin Morgan
Title: A ‘splendid field’? Emma Goldman in South Wales
Date: 2009
Source: Retrieved on Nov 1 2026 from https://www.academia.edu/33805349/A_splendid_field_Emma_Goldman_in_South_Wales

In May 1925 the ‘anarchist communist’ weekly Freedom carried a glowing report of the meetings in Britain of the American anarchist Emma Goldman. The object of Goldman’s meetings was to expose the tyranny of the Bolshevik regime and publicise her campaign for the defence of Russian political prisoners. Fearlessly she took this message, not only to London and the English provinces, but to what she called the ‘very hotbed of Communism’ in the South Wales coalfield.[1] Speaking in the Rhondda, in Penygraig, Treorchy, Pentre and Trealaw, she succeeded, according to Freedom, in reducing the Bolsheviks’ supporters to sullen acquiescence. Just for once, the ‘Communist dovecotes of the Rhondda Valley’ had had a proper shaking.[2]

Papers of radical movements would have no purpose if they never exerted themselves to promote the standard-bearers of their cause. Nevertheless, the discrepancy between Freedom’s claims and Goldman’s private observations was in this instance more than usually wide. The Welsh in Goldman’s view had one indispensable advantage: that they were not the English. Beyond that, her experience in South Wales induced a mood that was close to despair. Her marriage of convenience to the Ammanford miner Jim Colton has occasionally suggested a more romanticised treatment of the connection. Goldman certainly admired the miners’ fortitude and humanity, and the ‘splendid material’ that existed in the union rank and file. Nevertheless, the immediate political prospects seemed about as gloomy as they could be, and the communist dovecotes almost unassailable. For Goldman, the 1920s was a decade of relentlessly declining expectations of the anarchist movement.

Ironically, it was in Ammanford, where at least it had a presence, that she found herself wondering whether there was something inherently the matter with the movement that it could take no root either in Britain or America.[3]

The aims of the present article are modest. It seeks to show why the South Wales coalfield figured so prominently in Goldman’s itinerary. It gives a sense of her first-hand impression of the coalfield as a cultural and political outsider. And it offers her reflections on why the seed fell on such stony soil, even where an anarcho-syndicalist strain within the British labour movement proved relatively resilient. As far as possible, it presents the story in her own words, using the comprehensive microfilm edition of her correspondence produced by the Emma Goldman Papers Project.[4] It would be interesting to view the episode from the perspective of the coalfield itself, through local newspapers or the Welsh labour press. It would also be worth locating within a longer sequence of transnational exchanges: for example, by comparing it with what appears to have been the more effective visit to the coalfield of the American syndicalist Big Bill Haywood in 1910. For the time being, however, the focus here is very much on Goldman’s own immediate reactions to what she saw in South Wales.

The wider significance of her comments need not be overstated. Goldman’s, as will be seen, was very much a surface impression of the area, based on just a few weeks’ stay. Nor indeed did she suggest otherwise: and with the exception of the brief account that appeared in her autobiography Living My Life, none of these observations appeared in print.[5] Goldman’s political capital was not immediately transferable into the British labour movement currency, and the failure of her campaign can be explained in a number of ways. Indeed, it would doubtless have been less comprehensive had Goldman herself understood these better. Even so, and when all

such personal factors have been taken into account, the insight she provides into the prevalence of pro-Bolshevik views in Britain is an important one. In spite of ‘incessant hammering’, she concluded mournfully, in Britain the socialist and trade-union element ‘will have nothing whatever to do with critical work on Russia’.[6]

‘Nothing short of a bomb explosion’: Emma Goldman in London

Her timing was anything but auspicious. Arriving in Britain at the tail-end of the first Labour government, in September 1924, Goldman straight away witnessed the government’s fall over the issue of the Russian treaties. In the ensuing general election Labour was then exposed to the most flagrant red-scare tactics in British history. Had Goldman primarily aimed to link up with the ailing British anarchist movement, this might have had a very different bearing on her fortunes; indeed, would most likely have led to her status in Britain being viewed rather differently by the incoming Conservative government. Goldman’s ambitions, however, were set much higher than this. Her first British engagement, two weeks after the election, was a ‘semi-private’ dinner at London’s Anderton hotel attracting some 250 well-wishers. Among them were such luminaries of the intellectual left as Harold Laski and Bertrand Russell – the latter, according to Freedom, providing the evening’s ‘most complete avowal of Anarchist convictions’.[7] Also providing a speech of welcome was the feminist writer Rebecca West,who was to prove one of Goldman’s most steadfast supporters. Presiding over the meeting was the Liberal-turned-Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood, who had described himself to Goldman as the sole member of parliament who disapproved of the Bolshevism regime from a radical standpoint.[8] As Goldman at the dinner declared her intention of adding her own voice to the clamour against Bolshevism, she got a sense straight away of how true that was.

...

Author: Iain Mckay
Title: Michael Bakunin, Anarchist & Syndicalist
Date: 2026, Fall
Notes: Publication information is available online at https://syndicalist.us/
Source: Scanned from Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #95, Fall, 2026, page 40

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Michael Bakunin (May 30, 1814, to July 1, 1876). While best known for his struggle against Marx in the (First) International and his correct prediction that the so-called workers' state would generate a new ruling class, there is much more to Bakunin than that. He wrote on a wide range of subjects which activists today will find of interest—the nature of a social revolution, union organizing, nationalism and national liberation, atheism, the need for a specific anarchist organization, amongst others.

It is important to stress that the conflict within the International was not a personal one. Bakunin championed a tendency that had existed within the International since the start, one which could be termed (to use a later word) syndicalist—that argued for struggle on the economic terrain and favored federalist socio-economic organization which prefigured the socialist world desired. This inevitably brought the federalist wing of the International into conflict with Marx who favored political action (electioneering) and centralized political organization (parties). Bakunin championed this tendency (which was supported by the majority of the International) and became its best-known advocate.

As is clear from the writings included in this issue, Bakunin advocated syndicalist tactics and specific anarchist organization. However, this is often ignored by commentators upon him and anarchism. Instead, Bakunin's constructive ideas are replaced with suggestions that he was an advocate of pan-destruction and terrorism. Suffice to say, comparing hostile accounts of Bakunin to anarchist ones and the reader would not be condemned if they concluded that there were about two different people with the same name.

Often this criticism is based on works for which any actual evidence of Bakunin's authorship is lacking or, at best, limited, superficial or dubious. These date from his short association—and infatuation—with the Russian Nihilist Sergei Nechaev and many of the commentators seem blissfully unaware of any research conducted since Marx and Engels first made the assertion, research which shows that Bakunin had no role in the infamous works written during that short period and that Nechaev was their author. This explains why their content is so at odds with Bakunin's other writings, whether public or private.

Bakunin's advocacy of syndicalism can be seen from his public writings, his letters to comrades and his posthumously published works. Thus we see him argue for economic organization and struggle, reject electioneering and correctly predict it would lead to reformism, see the general strike as a means of commencing the social revolution (although not rejecting the need for insurrection) and a host of other ideas which are associated with the later syndicalism which is all too often claimed to be different to revolutionary anarchism or a new development produced by the failure of "propaganda by the deed" (again, wrongly all too often proclaimed the anarchist tactic).

Yet we find Bakunin arguing that the "International, by thus placing the proletariat outside the politics of states and the bourgeois world, constitutes a new world, the world of proletarian solidarity across all countries. This world is that of the future... it is the organisation of international solidarity for the economic struggle of labor against capital." Likewise, he indicated that the organs formed to fight capitalism (unions, councils) would be what replaced it:

This completely practical, completely vital study of social science undertaken and constantly pursued by the workers themselves, both in their respective trade sections and in these trades councils, will necessarily lead and has already led to a large extent to produce in them this unanimous and fully considered conviction, demonstrable both in theory and in practice, that the serious, final, complete emancipation of the workers is possible only on one condition, and that this condition is the appropriation of capital, that is to say the raw materials and all the instruments of labor, including land, by the workers collectively....The economic question considered in this extent and embracing both all conditions of labor as well as those of the just distribution of the products of labor, is the real terrain that the worker must never abandon. As soon as he abandons it, he loses himself in metaphysical, juridical, political, theological abstractions, and disorientated, deprived of his two faithful guides, his common sense and the awareness or instinct of his real interests, he always finds himself once again, to his great surprise, the slave and exploited of the bourgeois. While remaining on the economic terrain, the worker will be all powerful....

The organization of trade sections, their federation in the International [Workers'] Association and their representation by trade councils [Chambres de travail] not only creates a great Academy where all the workers of the International, uniting practice with theory, can and must study economic science, they even carry the living seeds of the new social order that is to replace the bourgeois world. They create not only the ideas but the very facts of the future.

...

Author: Dani Burlison
Title: Aradia: A Divine Ally In Times Of Revolt
Date: 26 Oct 2026
Source: Retrieved on October 31 2026 from https://www.cawshinythings.com/aradia-a-divine-ally-in-times-of-revolt/

You may have heard of her: Aradia, daughter of Diana, the Roman moon goddess, and Lucifer, the personification of the morning star. Siblings in this particular tale, they create and birth Aradia with the sole purpose of sending her to earth to help liberate Italian peasants from the crushing weight of the ruling class. The lore says she was meant to teach witchcraft and sorcery to the disempowered resistance, so they could utilize the teachings to rise up and win the class war. To poison the powerful. To bind them and their oppressive deeds from causing further harm.

At least this is what Charles Godfrey Leland relayed in his slim, influential 1899 book, Aradia: Or The Gospel of the Witches.

“And thou shalt be the first witches known;
And thou shalt be the first of all i’ the world:
And thou shalt teach the art of poisoning;
Of poisoning those who are the great lords of all;
Yea, thou shalt make them die in their palaces;
And thou shalt bind the oppressor’s soul (with power)”

The book itself includes invocations, spells, tales of Aradia’s origins, and claims of a secret witch society who had a long, unbroken lineage of practicing folk magic and pre-Christian spiritual and healing traditions throughout Italy. In the book, followers of Aradia are instructed to gather in groups and have monthly naked meetings in forests during the full moon in honor of Diana until “…the last of your oppressors shall be dead.”

“If I were just to look at the book itself without the modern view, I would say Aradia is an initiator, she is someone who elevates people who are really not just disenfranchised, but slaves; enslaved in their souls, enslaved in their bodies,” says Dr. A.D. Manns, cultural historian and author of Aradia’s Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister (Hexen Press, 2025). “And through her intervention, she’s bringing these subjugated peoples to another level, allowing them to gain a certain degree of mastery.”

It is thrilling to consider; not a savior coming to rescue everyone, but rather a divine ally of sorts arriving with the power of organizing with the people and providing them with more tools to fight.

Poison those in power. Cast spells. Achieve collective freedom.

A woman named Maddalena (sometimes known as Margherita or Maddalena Talenti) was Leland’s paid informant who collected, and provided Leland with, information detailing Aradia’s origin story as the symbol of resistance and uprising she is portrayed as in Aradia. Maddalena herself claimed she was a link in the unbroken lineage Leland described in the book, a Tuscan and Etruscan witch, a role she said was passed down to her through generations.

Reception of the book has been complicated. It has been discussed, critiqued, praised, referenced, evaluated. It even influenced the modern witchcraft and neo-pagan revivals in the mid-1900’s. Wicca has roots in Leland’s Aradia, too; Gerald Gardner was deeply inspired by the book and adopted much of what he read and wove it into spells and rituals for his Gardnerian Witchcraft teachings. Doreen Valiente’s Charge of the Goddess, which is an influential piece of Gardnerian Wicca’s Book of Shadows, was also heavily inspired by Aradia’s modern lore. And Stregheria, or Italian American witchcraft, which was popularized by Raven Grimassi’s work, can also follow its threads back to Aradia. Tales of everyday people being taught to fight back against oppression is a strong and enduring theme that has led these spiritual traditions to carry on, growing in popularity even more so in the rapidly tilting times we are in today.

<em><em>Aradia book cover (Wikicommons image)</em></em>

Born in Pennsylvania in 1824, Charles Godfrey Leland was somewhat of an armchair anthropologist and self-taught journalist, with a law degree and an education dabbling in languages and poetry. He fought in the French Revolution of 1848 and had a keen interest in the arts, founding and directing the Public School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia in 1880, an institution that taught crafts to the disadvantaged children of the city.

Aside from his eclectic education and an interesting assortment of career paths, Leland is probably known best today as a Folklorist; he traveled extensively and took a special interest in the Roma of Europe, Native Americans, Irish Travelers, and other marginalized and oppressed people, writing books and magazine articles about them; some of Leland’s perspectives and writings are fairly problematic, with stereotyped perspectives on the cultures he studied, especially in regard to the Roma. It can be assumed that some of this seeped through in Aradia.

He attributed his varied interests in everything from the occult to the arts and law—and as a Union soldier who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg—to an incident he claimed happened while still a newborn. In her biography of Leland, his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell writes that Leland often shared a story of his Dutch nurse performing a ritual on him in the family’s attic, which included candles, a bible, a key, a knife, salt and even some money to set him on his path to becoming “a scholar and a wizard.”

...

Author: Warzone Distro
Title: A is for Nihilism
Date: 2017/09/08 04:28
Source: Retrieved on 01/17/2026 from https://warzonedistro.noblogs.org/post/2017/09/08/a-is-for-nihilism/

“We’re all animals prescribed medication in the form of artificiality. Moral values, roles and “higher purposes” are socially constructed and assigned to us to reinforce social control. Individualist anarchy contradicts the homogeny of civilized order. Our animality is imprisoned by an institutional society that enforces its order through domesticated membership. Beneath all of the socially constructed identities, roles, conditioning and subservience we crave anarchy-acting and experiencing life out of bounds, above and beyond indoctrinated captivity. When we undress all of these assignments and refuse the medication of civilized order we are naked, wild and unique. Life opens up as a playground, and like within a self-aware dream in which we decide to have fun, it becomes a playground of limitless potential. In a self-aware dream, we know we must hurry and have fun before we awake. Life is a dream in which we must hurry and play before we wake up dead.” — Blitz Molotov

Introduction

Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing”. As a philosophical position, nihilism involves rejecting certain existence claims. Two prominent forms of nihilism are existential nihilism, whch rejects claims that human life is meaningful, and moral nihilism, which rejects claims that human actions can be right or wrong. Other forms include epistemological nihilism, mereological nihilism, and political nihilism. As with any other philosophical label, there is diversity within nihilism and disagreement over what counts as nihilism. Labels with some overlap include existentialism, absurdism, fatalism, and pessimism. Some people embrace nihilistic conclusions as a philosophical matter, while other people relate to nihilistic themes more as a matter of intuition, personal experience, or personal expression. With that said, this zine does not represent any “official” definition, nor a new program or political ideology. Instead it merely presents some common anarchist-nihilist ideas which encourage an anti-political critique of all social control and order, in favor of individual empowerment, anarchy and insurrection.

A is for Anarchy beyond (the nostalgic captivity of) leftism.

Critiquing the Left

• Critiquing civilization as the logic, institutions, and physical apparatus of domestication, control, and domination.

• A critique of communism, socialism, and all other left ideologies as they merely seek to redistribute the exploitations of the earth more evenly among classes of humans without addressing the destructive relationship between mass society and the earth.

• Understanding that an attack upon capitalism that fails to target civilization can never abolish the institutionalized coercion that fuels society.

• Critiquing the Left as nebulous, anachronistic, distracting, a failure & at key points a counterproductive force historically (“the left wing of capital”).

• Critiquing Reductionism (Only particular aspects of the social struggle are included in leftist organizations. Other aspects are ignored, invalidated or respressed, leading to further and further compartmentalization of the struggle. Which in turn facilitates manipulation by elites and their eventual transformation into purely reformist lobbying societies with all generalized, radical critique emptied out.)

• Critiquing Leftist activists for political careerism, celebrity culture, self-righteousness, privilege politics, vanguardism & martyrdom.

• Critiquing Specialization or Professionalism (Those most involved in the day-to-day operation of the organization are selected — or self-selected — to perform increasingly specialized roles within the organization, often leading to an official division between leaders and led, with gradations of power and influence introduced in the form of intermediary roles in the evolving organizational hierarchy.)

• Critiquing the tendency of Leftists to insulate themselves in academia, scenes & cliques while also attempting to opportunistically manage struggles.

• Critiquing collectivism, the subordination of the individual to the group. Critiquing the ideology of collective responsibility (a critique that does not mean the refusal of social or class analysis, but rather that removes the moral judgment from such analysis, and refuses the dangerous practice of blaming individuals for activities that have been done in the name of, or that have been attributed to, a social category of which they are said to be a part, but about which they had no choice — e.g., “Jew”, “gypsy”, “male”, “white”, etc.)

N is for moral nihilism

“And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river, wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.” — Renzo Novatore

...

Author: Murray Bookchin
Title: The Youth Culture
Subtitle: An Anarcho-Communist View
Date: 1970
Notes: Published in Hip Culture: 6 Essays on Its Revolutionary Potential; Yippie, Third World, Feminist, Marxist, High School Student, Anarchist.
Source: <https://archive.org/details/HipCulture>

The “hip culture”—the word is really the youth culture and I will use it from now on—does not really need any “defenders”.[1] As an elemental phenomenon, its own existence and development must eventually constitute its only “defense”. What the Youth Culture does need, however, is a better interpretation than it has received up to now—and this would be impossible to achieve without dealing with its critics.

Bourgeois critics may be dismissed out of hand. Generally, criticism of this kind takes the form either of a patronizing psychoanalysis (the classical image of the “rebellious sons” slaying their “fathers”) or simply a brute condemnation directed against the “impudence” of young people. The most serious criticism, or at least the most systematic, comes from the orthodox Marxists, who usually complain that the Youth Culture is not sufficiently “revolutionary”. On close inspection the criticism from this quarter centers around the notion that the Youth Culture is “elitist”, “escapist”, “bourgeois”, “anti-rational” and should all else fail—nonpolitical.

Here, one comes up against a vexing problem. Polemics with orthodox Marxists usually appear in a false light—and for both sides of the argument. Any revolutionary who attempts to interpret the Youth Culture from a non-marxian viewpoint tends to appear like a spiritualized vapor, or “worse” (horror of horrors!), a “petty bourgeois hedonist” who is far removed from the bread-and-butter issues and oppressions of daily life. The Old Left “critic” of the Youth Culture, in turn, seems to live in an unreality of his/her own, patently ignoring the brute fact that long-hairs and students are far in advance of the workers on all the critical issues of the day. The two sides become polarized into “either... or” positions, as though oppression can be defined in only one of two ways: spiritual or material, psychic or economic, alienative or exploitative. This, or course, is pure bullshit. Both go together. They interpenetrate in varying degrees and assume different degrees of weight, depending upon the situation in question. The crisis of bourgeois society is universal’, it can no longer be boxed into the neat little compartments that the orthodox Marxists have constructed, polished, and labored to preserve for nearly a century. As women and blacks well know, every form of material oppression is marked by spiritual oppression and every form of spiritual oppression by material oppression. In the case of many white young people, material oppression may not have as much weight as spiritual, but it is nonetheless real and particularly visible on campuses, where students are processed by an “educational” system that operates along factory lines.

The most astonishing thing about the traditional Marxists is their utter inability to see how enormously the terrain of the revolutionary struggle has expanded with the development of capitalism. Marxian orthodoxy is still fighting the battle of “socialism”: a very specific historical terrain, delimited by the old coal-steel technology of the Industrial Revolution, the cry for “justice,” the killing exploitation of the “factory hand,” and a conception of revolution mediated by “transitional stages” (the “proletarian dictatorship” and “socialist state”) designed not only to deal with counterrevolution but, in the words of Marx and Engels, “to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.” In the century and more since Marx and Engels penned these words, capitalism itself has increased “the total of productive forces” to a point where even toil, not only material scarcity, is being brought into question—and these new “productive forces” could easily be extended to the Third World following a revolution in America and Europe. What the traditional Marxists can’t get into their heads is that capitalism has finally created the material preconditions for communism (libertarian communism, flttflrctocommunism), not “socialism”; for freedom, not “justice” (or what used to be called “social democracy”).

This enormous change has profoundly affected all the issues and movements of our time. Owing to the explosive tensions between “what-is” and “what-could-be,” between the potential for a post-scarcity society and the actuality of an enforced system of scarcity, capitalism and all its values now seem more irrational, indeed, more artificial, than ever before. The system seems like an immense madhouse-not so much because a mystical insight “suddenly” makes its social features intolerable, but because they become intolerable in the light of the new potentialities. Hence the remarkable fact that many social features of the system which were passively “endured” only two or three decades ago become utterly insufferable today. One has only to look at the scope as well as the growth of black liberation movements, women’s liberation, gay liberation, and high school liberation groups, indeed, the upheavels in some of the most staid professional organizations, to see how every sensibility to oppression and domination is awakened. What the present social development brings into question is domination, not only exploitation; hierarchy, not only political inequality; toil, not only material want; alienation, not only repression; psychic oppression, not only class and racial oppression; patriarchalism, not only the abuse of women; the monogamous family, not only the patriarchal family; the city, not only the megalopolis; the myth that nature can be dominated by man, not only the domination of man by man. In this universalization of issues, the social development brings into question the institutions and values of hierarchical society as these have existed for thousands of years, not only the institutions and values of capitalism.

...

Author: a stargazer
Title: The Leeches that Steal its Soul
Subtitle: a response to “Goodnight Eurocentric Pride”
Date: 2026/07/29
Source: https://unravel.nublogs.org/index.html%3Fp=2684.html

“Just as we arm our hands to strengthen our blows, we must also fortify our minds. Our imagination, nourished by memories of resistance that has come before, bolstered by a precise projectuality, sharpened by critical thinking and corrosive insight, proves to be an arsenal of choice. […] Obviously there is no shortage of military and political campaigns against existing powers to inspire those who don’t concern themselves with ethical and practical coherence, dismissed as an excess of purism, but there is also no scarcity of revolts against the long conquest of domination over life. And while the tension towards freedom transcends all “isms,” for anarchists, the two-fold challenge is to both grasp the particularities of our contexts with realism and draw on historical experiences that resonate with our uncompromising ideals.”
–History Drowned in Lethe

There was a world in which I was tempted to be charitable to the author of “Good Night Eurocentric Pride“. The article in Tinderbox #9 which it is criticizing certainly had a limitation. On the one hand, it calls us towards a profoundly difficult task: to separate ourselves from the heavy legacy of organized confusion in which revolt has been conflated with its enemies. As “History Drowned in Lethe” astutely analyzes, this confusion was an industry perpetuated by the commissars of the Soviet Union’s departments of propaganda and the ethically and intellectually bankrupt armchair academics who penned various marxist cultural theories that continue to go in and out of fashion. The article suggests, instead and against all this, a project of permanent research, interwoven with all other avenues of struggle, to recover the memory of the rebellions which, wherever and whenever they erupted, left the political charades and armed party cliches behind. On the other hand, the references of “History Drowned in Lethe” itself were thin, and centered — out of a well warranted but perhaps naive enthusiasm — on the intransigent italian anarchist minority in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. There is certainly an incoherence here. Many, many, realities of struggle have contained an incalculable libertarian and informal fringe whether they have taken on the name of anarchism or not, and the article says little to demonstrate in practice how to go about making these inquiries that it argues are completely necessary. In opting for a single example furnished to us in a widely distributed book, Plain Words, the article contravenes the effort which it (rightly) invites all of us to begin making.

But contrary to how the response portrays “History Drowned in Lethe”, at no point does it make the argument that anarchists should not seek to contribute to non-anarchist struggles, whether anti-colonial or otherwise. It’s clear that the text is instead arguing, in light of a widespread tendency to romanticize authoritarian points of reference, that this romanticization doesn’t serve us. To address this obstacle, it proposes making a greater effort to familiarize ourselves with the subversive currents of the anarchist heritage, as well as the “revolts against the long conquest of domination over life”. It should go without saying that this is a far cry from the solipsism of claiming that only struggles characterized by anarchist participation are worth contributing to or learning from, particularly as situations characterized by mass-anarchist participation are also criticized (Spain ’36). Rather, it’s a question of nourishing and sustaining an anarchist dream of freedom while intervening in social reality — a reality which cannot be confused with the anarchist movement.

Reading on, I cannot make a reasoned engagement with “Good Night Eurocentric Pride”. All such illusions quickly fall away given that the entire substance of “History Drowned in Lethe” — and despite its limitations, the exact danger it seeks to warn of — is evidenced clearly in the very fabric of this response.

The response alleges that “History Drowned in Lethe” ignores the “emerge[nce of the] Black Liberation Army from tensions with the authoritarian central leadership of the Black Panther Party”. It is very difficult to evaluate a statement like this. The Black Liberation Army was an avowedly marxist-leninist armed organization which directly discouraged the idea and practice of a full autonomy within the black liberation armed struggle, as this section from the B.L.A. Study Guide (compulsory reading for all members by 1977) sums up: “[Regarding democratic centralism] some complain bitterly of the authoritarian aspect and prefer a loose federation of individuals and/or collectives, each free to pursue their own course, and none bound to the will of the majority. Such a mode of operation causes factionalism, disintegration, and often a spilling of blood of our own people. This rightest error stems from petty bourgeois individuals and opportunism and has no place in Marxist Leninist Organisation.”

...

Author: Camilla Power
Title: Royal Wedding Arrests
Subtitle: The Guillotine Three and the Zombie Wedding
Date: July 7 2011
Notes: Camilla Power tells the story of her arrest for attempted street theatre on the occasion of the royal wedding. An edited version of this article was previously published in the Times Higher Educational Supplement, under the title ‘By royal decree: the zombie orgy is off’.
Source: Retrieved on Oct 29 2026 from https://libcom.org/article/royal-wedding-arrests-guillotine-three

ARREST FOR ATTEMPTED STREET THEATRE
by Camilla Power

On Mayday morning, I’m wondering whether to head to Clerkenwell on the day when pagan, anarchist and socialist hope springs eternal. If I step onto the Green, I am liable to arrest under bail conditions imposed after 25 hours detention in Lewisham Police Station from around 6 pm on the eve of the royal wedding.

What did I do to be banished from the sacred Mayday space? Nothing…yet. I was picked up in one of last week’s preemptive raids during what’s become known in ‘activist’ circles as the Great Royal Wedding Purge. The police have begun to arrest people whom they suspect of thinking of doing something.

These arrests have been written about in terms of democratic rights to free speech. From my perspective, it’s about the human right to ritual participation. My work as an anthropologist combines Darwinian and Durkheimian models on the evolution of ritual as the necessary condition for language. Performative deeds precede and provide the necessary scaffolding for speech. In activist mode, I put theory to empirical test, helping create ritual street theatre to move into and around politically contested spaces, at ritually charged ‘cracks’ in time, establishing symbolic presence. As part of a motley crew known as the Government of the Dead, I’ve worn silly costumes, devised ways to hang and decapitate effigies, spilt fake body fluids, committed cannibalism, cast spells, bodypainted, sung and danced badly.

On the eve of the wedding, several cars and a van load of police – maybe twenty odd officers of the law – swooped on a south London street corner to round up a theatrical troupe. Suddenly I was in the midst of the most extraordinary street theatre yet; what’s so exciting is you never know who is going to turn up and take part. The police were the ones in costume, apart from the detective and shifty undercover surveillance; we were distinctly underdressed. We’d been moving theatrical props – some quite heavy. And the police knew the drill of the choreography, stringing themselves into a line between us and the suburban street, backing us steadily against the London brick walls behind. Slyly, they ringed around a white van which they suspected we were walking towards. We just waited expectantly to be auditioned while the detective in the suit flashed his badge and pointed to some of us, denying others – ‘no, he’s alright’ – as if he were casting us for roles. The only one who happened to be wearing some fancy dress got picked on; as did my close friend and colleague Chris Knight, a Professor of anthropology – best known for his top hat, dark glasses and vampire blood Baron Samedi look – but now in a motheaten jumper. By a stroke of fortune, a Channel 4 documentary team and an independent filmmaker were on hand to film the whole episode. A friend pointed out later, more police officers were needed to arrest us than for the Krays!

I was under suspicion of conspiring to cause a public nuisance. But what had I done? No ritual had yet been performed. The police wanted to know about a superbly crafted guillotine, decked with red and red-and-black flags either side of the legend ‘Some Cuts Are Necessary’ and louchely associated with a cariacature dummy Prince Andrew, adorned with a cardboard Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. This august decoration was in fact pinned onto the flesh and blood Andrew by his mum in an investiture on March 26. No one noticed the goings on that Saturday at Court. Some royal rituals are best kept under wraps, it seems.

After the ritual drama on the street, the procedural boredom of the booking in, and then, the royal dungeon: perpetual fluorescent glare which never acknowledges circadian rhythm, the hard and sticky plastic mattress, steel loo, ‘cushion’ on the ledge which can never be angled right to rest your neck comfortably…even a numb doze is rudely disturbed by random clattering checks through the cell door aperture and callouts for inedible meals. With the demeaning requirement to ask humbly for every petty comfort, this had a special character of intermingling Monarchical and Disciplinary Punishment

As Victor Turner tells of such liminal states of sensory deprivation, you enter ‘the realm of primitive hypothesis’, where you have power to take apart and put together the world as you know it in novel combinations. Could it be that the Royal Household, amid all the Kate/Wills mania, images plastered ubiquitous as maoist icons of young love, felt challenged? Could they be sufficiently challenged in their pageantry by our cardboard cutout, straw-stuffed constructions held together with cable ties and gaffer tape that they let fall to their inner cabal, they would not be amused by any rival rebellious spectacle? The police, smarting from the anarchist poke breaching Charles and Camilla’s body politic, would have scrambled into action.

The Government of the Dead is versed in lowdown mummer’s tricks for transforming corpses into the stuff of feasts. It regularly rehearses a Rabelaisian carnival of bloodshed and dismemberment, ruthless slaughter ‘transformed into a merry banquet’, as Bakhtin puts it: ‘bloodshed, dismemberment, burning, death, beatings, blows, curses and abuses – all these elements are steeped in “merry time”, time which kills and gives birth’. EAT THE BANKERS was the slogan under which top-hatted Chris Knight/Mister Mayhem zombie-walked, urging fellow zombies to ‘snack on bankers’ brains’ at the April 1 G20 Financial Fools Day Banquet at the Bank.

...

Author: Leonard Peltier
Title: Solidarity From Anti-Authoritarians
Date: 1990
Notes: An untitled statement made to the International Tribunal on Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in the US, published in ‘Open Road’, Vancouver (Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory), BC, Winter 1990; ‘Prison News Service: A Bulldozer Publication’, Toronto, Dish With One Spoon (Haudenosaunee/Anishinaabe) territory, March/April 1991; and ‘Bayou La Rose’, Tacoma (Puyallup territory), Washington, early 1991?
Source: Retrieved on October 28, 2026 from historykeepshappening.wordpress.com

Upon my arrest on Feb/6/76, some of the first groups of people who came to show solidarity, along with my own People, in recognition of my status as a Prisoner of War, were the anti-authoritarian groups of both Canada and the U.S.A. The respect, recognition, love and solidarity they gave not only to me but to my People is something I will always cherish and hold dear to my heart. This show of solidarity proved to me that not all Euro-Americans were our enemy.

Throughout the first months of our organizing the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC), the anti-authoritarians were the people who gave us what knowledge, resources, and skills they had to build an effective organization. I questioned why they would help my People and myself, as at the time, we believed all white people were wasichus; the evil ones. They proved to us that this was not the case and that they too hated the wasichus. They too were resisting and fighting imperialist oppression being committed by their race, but not their People. They did not consider themselves to be part of a People so evil.

Now that my case has gained international attention and is becoming a cause to rally around, other Peoples are standing with us. But the first people who supported us, at least the strong-hearted ones, are still with us. These people, whom my own People call the good-hearted ones, were with me from the beginning of my imprisonment. I was very concerned when I heard that some of them, who are also imprisoned warriors, were not going to be recognized as political prisoners or POWs. Neither I nor my People want to work with those who will not recognize their own warriors. So I was pleased to hear that FN! [Freedom Now!] and other such organizations have changed their views on this very critical issue.

From the beginning of these new organizations, one of the questions I repeatedly asked was how they defined political prisoners and prisoners of war. Some wanted to blanketly define all Indian prisoners as political prisoners or POWs. This I could not agree with. There is a certain truth to it; because of imperialist oppression, through socio-economic conditions or outright aggression against Indian Nations, all Indian prisoners are in a sense political prisoners. But I for one, along with all traditionalist and progressive Indians, cannot identify as political or justify in any way, someone who has, for example, raped a sister, molested a child, or murdered an elder. I decided I would have to withdraw my name from any organization which used this blanket type of definition. Again, I was pleased to learn that this was not going to be the policy of these organizations.

My greatest disappointment, in all my years of struggle, occurred just recently, when I saw the lack of support for the courageous warriors at Oka. The knowledge that some of my own People failed to stand up to protest the invasion of Oka broke some of my spirit as a warrior. But it also awakened me to the realization that I must work harder to build unity among my own People and their nations.

In today’s world, we see nations whom many of us considered allies turning into new imperialists to join the old. We as warriors, and our organizations, must build our own foundation of unity from which to struggle, to protect the environment, stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and to resist colonialism. There are still a few small nations holding strong — but in truth, we now have to depend on ourselves for sanctuary in the struggle to free our homelands. We must build a unity so strong that no matter how oppressive our enemy becomes, they cannot destroy it.

Through this Tribunal, let us begin a new day, a new organization, a new movement. Let us hold our fists high, and put the oppressors on notice that we have just begun to fight, for not only our political prisoners and prisoners of war, but for our nations and for our freedom.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Author: Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement
Title: This Halloween...Abolish The Zombie Monarchy!
Date: October 29 2018
Notes: On 31st October two members of the Windsor family will be visiting Rotorua, Aotearoa/New Zealand as part of their nationwide tour. The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) has distributed this brief leaflet in anticipation of the visit.
Source: Retrieved on Oct 29 2026 from https://libcom.org/article/halloweenabolish-zombie-monarchy

Halloween is nearly here and the ghouls are coming out to haunt us. In Rotorua they are taking the form of Harry and Meghan Windsor. These two visitors and their entourage are about to descend upon us. Who are they? They are pretty masks covering ugly political zombies. In any genuinely progressive and democratic society, these parasites would have no social influence or special place worthy of anybody’s attentions because the institution of hereditary monarchy they represent, wouldn’t exist.

THE BASIC PROBLEM

Hereditary monarchy is unfair and elitist. We are expected to defer to someone simply because of their birth. The people in those positions aren’t the most intelligent in society, the hardest working or the most talented in any way. The order of succession in a monarchy specifies a person who will become head of state, regardless of qualifications. You are born into it and that’s the only way you can get there. Hard work or real talent and abilities won’t make you a Prince or Queen. As the teenage philosopher Lorde astutely put it “We will never be royals”.

In some cases it isn’t really clear what they do have going for them. In fact it’s just that their ancestors managed to wrestle power for themselves and made others accept them in that role through control of the military and ideological tools such as religion. Then they spread their influence across the globe, robbing and plundering along the way. Only due to sustained resistance from indigenous people in the colonies (Ireland, India, Aotearoa etc) and ordinary people in the ‘motherland’ have we reached the stage where the monarchy is more of a figurehead than an absolute power. While appearing outwardly strong, this form of rule does not make for a society that is at ease with itself. By maintaining a privileged royal family, society is diminished because it encourages a sense of dependency in people. Instead we should have confidence in ourselves as ordinary working people.

BUT CAN’T WE SAY..?

Since it is no longer absolute in its powers, the monarchy has been scrambling to justify its continued existence and there is an entire media industry and various other apologists helping them do this. The result has been a number of arguments that don’t really stack up.

For example, that the monarchy is good for tourism. The visit by Charles Windsor and his wife Camilla to Aotearoa in 2015 cost the tax payer $1.4 million (Stuff NZ 5/5/16). Not a small amount and you have to wonder… why can’t they pay for it themselves, the way the rest of us have to pay for our own holidays? One justification offered for that visit and the upcoming one by Harry Windsor is that they are worthwhile for the tourism spinoffs. Though it’s hard to show whether that has been the case and even if it was, is that really a good enough reason for having them? In the case of Britain itself, research from VisitBritain (the national tourist agency) indicates that people go there to see all sorts of other attractions rather than for example, Windsor Castle, which is way down the list of sites people go to. But so what if it was true anyway? Is selling itself as ‘Better than Disneyland’ the best the monarchy can come up with?

Oh but the Windsors do heaps for charity. Firstly, in many cases they are aligned with some charities on paper and in name only, not doing active work for them. In some cases adding their name might raise the profile of that charity but on the other hand, there are millions of normal people whose names we don’t know, who do tonnes of constructive work day after day, often on a voluntary basis. If the monarchy ceased to exist, would those charities collapse? It’s unlikely.

For those with a financial bent, we sometimes hear that the royals are good value for money. In reality, it has been estimated that the cost of the monarchy is 345million pounds (https://www.republic.org.uk/sites/default/files/Royal-Expenses-Report-2017_0.pdf). In this regard ‘the palace’ is totally unaccountable, as they are completely exempt from The Freedom of Information Act so the public can’t get detailed data on how they spend the money working people provide them via taxes. They can therefore operate with far greater secrecy than other areas of the state. Every now and then a bit of the financial reality gets revealed, as the Paradise Papers which came out a few years ago showed. These documents exposed the fact that Betty and Charles Windsor were tax dodging, with the funds ending up in Carribean tax havens (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/stories/queen-elizabeth-ii).They can also lobby the government and actually have to give their active consent to any government bill that challenges their hereditary revenues or property.

There are other minor arguments raised from time to time, but the above seem to be the most common.

THE SOLUTION

Some may suggest a series of reforms that they would argue make this parasitic monstrosity palatable. Though this really seems pointless. Surely society can function perfectly well without humans in unmerited and unaccountable positions of wealth and influence? It would seem even these leeches themselves recognise this. Harry Windsor has been quoted as saying “Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time” (NZ Stuff 23/6/17). Well, perhaps it’s about time we took this arduous burden off their hands.

...

Author: Anonymous
Title: Devil’s Night Against Landlords
Date: November 17, 2023
Source: Retrieved on Oct 29 2026 from https://mtlcounterinfo.org/devils-night-against-landlords/

Devil’s night is traditionally a time of mischief and subversive activity, striking fear into the forces of order. On this night, the weekend before Halloween, we took the form of mischievous creatures and decided to haunt the Upper Westmount mansion of the real estate boss Stephen Shiller. Stephen is one half of Shiller Lavy, and his son Brandon Shiller runs Hillpark Capital. These firms are responsible for renovicting and pricing out many tenants in the Montreal area in the past decade, putting hundreds of people out on the street.

The action was simple, any trickster could do it: we inserted a garden hose left outside into the mail slot of the front door and turned on the water, before disappearing into the night.

We summon others in the fight against Bill 31 to join the incantations of anti-landlord discourse with nocturnal rituals of anti-landlord action.

While we targeted Stephen Shiller for being an especially horrific landlord, we recognize authority must be washed away wherever it appears.

— some anarchist ghouls

La nuit du démon est traditionnellement un moment de malice et d’activité subversive, saisissant de peur l’ordre des choses et leurs protecteur·ices. Cette nuit là, durant la fin de semaine précédant Halloween, nous avons pris la forme de créatures maléfiques et avons décidé de hanter le manoir du haut Westmount appartenant au patron de l’immobilier Stephen Shiller. Stephen représente la moitié de la compagnie Shiller Lavy et son fils Brandon Shiller dirige Hillpark Capital. Ces firmes sont responsables de la rénoviction et de l’augmentation abusive des loyers pour de nombreux·ses locataires à Montréal ces dernières années, mettant à la rue des centaines de personnes.

L’action était simple, n’importe quel petit fourbe pourrait le faire : nous avons inséré un boyau d’arrosage laissé dehors dans la fente à courrier de la porte avant puis allumé l’eau, avant de disparaître dans la nuit.

Nous invoquons d’autres dans la lutte contre le projet de loi 31 à joindre les incantations des paroles anti-proprios à des rituels nocturnes d’actions contre elleux.

Bien que nous ayons visé Stephen Shiller pour être un proprio particulièrement horrifiant, nous reconnaissons que l’autorité doit être lavée à grande eau partout où elle apparaît.

Des goules anarchistes

Author: John Moore
Title: Book of Levelling
Date: 1995
Source: Retrieved on May 24, 2011 from radicalarchives.org

And the Prime levelling, is laying low the Mountaines, and
levelling the Hills in man. But this is not all.

Abiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll

Let history be your hymn of penance,
Farm your parents and the races in the ground,
Not for pelf but for remembrance,
And make ready for the festival of ruin.

Edward Dahlberg, Cipango’s Hinder Door

Foreword

It is those who are left behind, not those who go beyond, that are sad. The shape shifters have their own concerns. But this is a text as much concerned with life as with death. The metaphors are there for all to see. In the tradition of the I Ching and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, this is a book of change, a book of transformation, transmogrification, a book of insurrection and resurrection... a book of levelling.

JM
St. Ives, Cornwall
1 January 1995

* * * * *

 

So this is what happened.

I’m going to chop it off, she said.

Why?, I said. What for?

I want to, she said. And anyway you don’t need it anymore.

That’s true, I said. But what will you do with it?

There are all kinds of things I can do with it, she said. You’ll see. Bring it here.

With this she motioned me toward an old, unvarnished kitchen table. The surface was grainy. As I was naked already, I placed my cock flat on the surface, pressing my groin tightly to the edge. It was just the right height. My cock laid there, flaccid and shrivelled. The tabletop was cold.

It won’t be much use to you like this, I said. It’s too small. You need it bigger, at its full size.

You’re right, she said. And immediately began rolling it back and forth with her hand, as if it were a roll of dough.

The tabletop was rough, grooved and hard. Her hand was soft, dry and piercingly cold. The contrast between the two was curiously arousing and soon my prick engorged with blood. Achingly stiff, continually straining to rise to an acute angle but constantly flattened onto the tabletop by her insistently rubbing hand, my cock grew to the size she required.

At any moment I expected her to chop it off. She obviously knew that a cock is hardest and largest just before orgasm. But here her compassion became evident. Building to a climax, hot gouts of cum spurted explosively across the tabletop and I let out a yelp of joy. But instantaneously, from somewhere deep in the shrouds of her jet-black shift, seemingly from nowhere, she whipped out a cleaver and severed my dick cleanly at the root.

My immediate response was amazement. Not at the pain. There was none. Then or later. Ever. But at the severed cock and at the sight of the white spurts of my cum so swiftly counterpointed with the red splats of my blood.

She reached forward and grasped my cock. No, not my cock anymore. The cock. And lifted it high in her outstreched hand, waving it above her head like a trophy, and let out a whoop.

But seeing me aghast, her mood softened. Now, she said, now you’ll see what I can do with a cock. Such as, she said, thinking, pausing, such as ... using it to write with.

Wiggling the prick between figures and thumb, she made as if to write with it on the tabletop. Obligingly, some cum oozed out the tip in imitation of ink. I laughed.

Or, she said, twisting the cock in her fingers, I can use it as a cigar. Holding it out between forefinger and thumb she tapped it with her middle finger as if to knock off excess ash. A drop of spunk dripped on the floor. Responding to her playful mood, I snorted in amusement.

But of course, she said, a good cigar needs to be smoked. And with this she inserted the bloody end of the stump between her hemlock lips. Toking on the cock, a small drop of blood collected at the comer of her mouth. The effect was striking. Her long straight black hair framed the palest of pale faces. Her sharp black eyebrows arced over her liquid black eyes. And the stiff cock, bloody at one end, cum-stained at the other, oozed crimson on her blood-red lips .

I guffawed loudly. I couldn’t control myself. It was just too, too funny.

Or then again, she said, I could make myself into a unicorn. Popping the cock out of her mouth with a sucking sound, she held it to her forehead, making neighing sounds and pawing the ground with her foot.

By now I was laughing uproariously, her actions were so outrageous. And her appearance became even more scandalous, even funnier, when she lowered her horn, leaving a bright red smear in the middle of her brow. Oh, marvellous third eye!

And finally, at least for now, she said, there is my pièce, my piece (she lingered over it) de résistanae. And with that, in a most coarse and suggestive manner, but with an unmistakable elegance and grace, she hoisted up her shift and planted a foot right up on the edge of the tabletop, revealing a shaggy mass of black pubic hair.

Only one thing, I thought, could happen. It did. But it wasn’t the only thing. Of course she opened her cunt lips and inserted the stump, so that a cock now nestled inside that dark bush. A drop of blood from the dick dripped onto her thigh and gave her that menstruating look.

...

Author: Errico Malatesta
Title: The Situation
Date: 1922
Notes: Manually translated from ‘Umanità Nova’, December 2, 1922, Rome, edited by Errico Malatesta
Source: Retrieved on October 28, 2026 from historykeepshappening.wordpress.com

Mussolini continues to tower above and parliament crawls at his feet more than ever.

Full powers have been granted with the care of servants who compete with each other in degradation. Mussolini had said, “give them to me or I’ll take them”, and no one had the dignity to answer, take them from us, but don’t force us to play the part in a comedy of the bosses, when we are servants and are pleased to be so.

The socialists themselves have not understood that they cannot remain with dignity in an assembly that functions under the terror of the baton, or of dissolution, and where opposition can only be a farce.

Dictatorship triumphs: a dictatorship of adventurers without scruples or ideals, which came to power and remains there due to the disorientation of the proletarian masses and the anxious avarice of the bourgeois class in search of a saviour. But everyone feels that the situation is such that it cannot last, and the most enlightened conservatives, while paying due homage to the masters of the hour and revealing with every word the fear that dominates them, demand the restoration of the “liberal state”, that is, a return to constitutional deception.

The method by which Mussolini came to power does not allow deception, and this is what torments the innocent souls of the conservatives.

Mussolini, if he manages to consolidate his power, will do no more and no less than any other minister would: he will serve the interests of the privileged class, and will charge for his services. But he won’t make anyone believe that he arrived in government by the will of the people. His tyranny is too recent for him to be able to hide its origin: perhaps for this reason his murky conscience advises him to appeal to God!

We do not want to deal with the new government’s plans and intentions, whether new or old, sincere or otherwise. It’s always the same habitual rehashing of old lies, the old attempt to repair a collapsing house with a coat of paint.

For us, the only important change is this: we were enemies of government because government is no more than the armed defender of all social injustices, the creator of new injustices, the enemy of freedom, the material obstacle along the path of civilization. And we were enemies of fascism because it is a movement intended to defend bourgeois privileges, to impede the ascent of the proletariat, to choke out any aspiration towards a society more just and free; and it used brutal, ferocious and vile means to achieve its goals.

Now government and fascism have become the same thing, and are made up of the same personnel: there is therefore no longer the possibility of hesitation as there was when those two forces of oppression seemed to oppose each other.

Simplified situation: so much the better. So much the better if this can serve to reunite all the forces of progress in the struggle against triumphant barbarism.