Category Archives: Commentary

An anniversary of lives in movement: Spain’s 15M

The upcoming 15th of May marks a commemoration, not of anniversary of a past reality, but of a present, in movement.  Spain’s 15M, over three years, has multiplied, proliferated, metamorphosised; to become not larger in numbers, but in deeper in … Continue reading

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Rethinking Anarchism: Carlos Taibo

The following is a partial translation of the “Prologue” and a complete translation of “Chapter 1” of Carlos Taibo’s Rethinking Anarchy: Direct Action, Self-Management, Autonomy (La Catarata, Madrid, 2013).  We have translated and posted work by Taibo before, but this … Continue reading

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On the Passage of a Few Thousand People Through a Brief Period of Time

The following is a critical description and an analysis of almost four years of political protest in portugal; critical both for its understanding of social movements and as a point of comparison with other contemporaneous movements.  Posted on  libcom.org (07/05/2014), … Continue reading

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Recuperation as eviction, resistance as occupation

“Spain shows again that it has regained the confidence of the markets.” (Le Monde 04/05/2014)  The interest rate on the spanish debt, at ten years, has dropped below 3%, Madrid’s stock market registers an increase in value of 25.58% over … Continue reading

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An anarchism of the vernacular: James C. Scott’s “Two Cheers for Anarchism”

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the way it really was”. … It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy … Continue reading

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25th of April: Revolutions within a revolution

The portuguese government and opposition parties in parliament today commemorate the forty years of the 25th of April revolution; yet they do so fearful of the very word “revolution”.  To commemorate is already to disarm, to confine the event to … Continue reading

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The body as a space of dissidence

… the body is not a thing, it is a situation … Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex The body, we have long learned, is not a mere neutral physical, biological reality, vehicle for an animating soul, or the underlying … Continue reading

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Occupy everthing!

To the question “What is property?”, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously answered, “It is theft”.  That it could be taken for a right was already a conceptual confusion, for unlike liberty, equality, integrity of person, the “right” to property was not unqualified.  … Continue reading

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Integral Revolution: Enric Duran

It is difficult to imagine a radical change away from capitalism exclusively through protest.  Even if the taking of the State by an anti-capitalist movement (peacefully or violently) is conceded as a possibility, it is not at all clear how … Continue reading

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All power to the plenums: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s insurrection

Generalised self-management is simply the totality in accordance with which the councils unitarily inaugurate a style of life based on permanent and collective imagination … Raoul Vaneigem … power does not define itself only by its capacity to make itself … Continue reading

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