Nothing is so dangerous for the proletariat, especially in the present situation, as the sugared poison of false hopes. Nothing increases the insolence of the fascists so much as ‘flabby pacificism’ on the part of the workers’ organizations. Nothing so destroys the confidence of the middle classes in the working-class as temporizing, passivity, and the absence of the will to struggle.
— Leon Trotsky, The Workers’ Militia and Its Opponents (1934) [via]
Revolution on a worldwide scale will unfold at a very slow pace. It is beginning to happen. What we need to do in order to recognize this fact is to stop thinking of revolution as a singular thing, as one great cataclysmic break. Instead, we should be asking ourselves what revolutionary action is. Revolutionary action is any collective action that rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and, in doing so, reconstitutes social relations. Revolutionary action does not necessarily have to be so grandiose that it aims only to topple governments. Something so small as attempting to create autonomous communities in the face of opposing power would, for instance, be revolutionary acts. If we accept this definition, then we accept the fact that quiet revolutions have been occurring all over the world.
While certain feminist thinkers put forth an analysis of violence and hierarchical power relationships that is well worth considering, a wholesale condemnation of revolutionary violence aimed at the destruction of that which oppresses us is a gross oversimplification of an extremely complex situation: that is, the web of patriarchal tyranny that all of us, wimmin and men alike, find ourselves born into, where violence is used by our oppressors to enforce our political and social submission, and where we are all desperately looking for effective ways to reclaim our lives … This article will not attempt to defend armed struggle (because in our opinion it requires no justification) but will instead focus on two very specific groups (of many) that engaged in violent rebellion against the institutions of patriarchy.
A lot of the systems we now seek to smash were created with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, there were a few oversights. Once you overthrow the old world order, do you have something better to put into place?
These past few years, it is here that I have been making my revolution: in the painful reality of my dysfunctional family; in that dangerous and fruitful wilderness beyond the safe garden of denial; in the tangled, unspoken history of male suffering caused by patriarchy; in my heart, which is simultaneously broken and whole, full of poison and medicine, which I am learning to fill with more and more love.
Why, no, the peasants didn’t get any more bread, and the Revolution is a no-go. But check it: we totally made Marie cry. Schweet.
We cannot build a state that has another state inside it, we cannot build an army that has armies inside it.
This is just a collection of things I think are neat.
A general overview of 'things I think are neat':abandonment/the post-industrial midwest, anarchism (syndicalism, insurrectionalism, etc), race/ethnicity (esp. defining/constructing the boundaries of whiteness), gender, class (talking/thinking about class generally seems to be an underrated activity), health care (access to, the experience of obtaining, etc), art, science fiction, punk music, conservative talk radio and anthropology (which probably incorporates almost everything else about people).
