A reflection on Giorgio Agamben’s work, The Highest Poverty, or on the “way of poverty” against the “way of wealth or enrichment”, by Jacques Fradin. (lundi matin #186, 09/04/2019)
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In an italy of rising and self-legitimising neo-fascism, of growing State and non-State violence against “minorities”, dissidents and foreigners, it is fundamental to return to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s reflections on the subject, as well as to resist appropriations of his work, and that of other anti-fascists, by the very same new fascists (Matteo Salvini has seen fit to quote him against anti-fascist protests).
We share below an essay by the Wu Ming Foundation on Pasolini and the police and the State.
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John Holloway has been a keen observer of the zapatista movement since its beginning, and we share two reflections by him, as a closing contribution on the mexican revolution, or revolutions, both past and present.
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In continuity with our recent post on the mexican revolution, we share a rich article on the present day zapatista movement of Chiapas by Tikva Honig-Parnass, posted on Roarmag.
Our concern here is not to politically evaluate the movement (we are not in a position to do so, due to our ignorance, and we have no desire to fall into an abstract, ideological critique). If we share an interest in zapatista movement, it is because there are affinities between it and the anarchist tradition.
There is already an extensive literature on the zapatistas which can be easily and rewardingly consulted. We do however share an exchange that began with a negative article on the movement, published in Green Anarchy in 2001, and which elicited a well deserved response. The exchange merits a re-reading, for what it says about the blindness of ideology.
“Anarchism” was born in struggle. Its methods, ideals, goals, and so on, were not hatched in an academic incubator. And should it persist as an orienting thought or “theory”, then it must continue sinking its roots into the different soils of rebellion and revolution.
We close with a short documentary film series, also posted on Roarmag, entitled: “Dispatches from Resistant Mexico”.
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Performance art is the most democratic. Everyone can do it. You don’t need a technique, you don’t have to have gone through a fine arts school, nor be a specialist in anything. You only have to have the desire to do it. … Performance art is anarchist. … Performance is life and if it is not life, it is nothing.
Esther Ferrer, Periódico Diagonal (04/12/2009)
A letter from Esther Ferrer (performance and installation artist, essayist, feminist and anarchist) to John Cage.
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Rise, all of you, as one man! In the hands of all are tranquility [sic], well-being, liberty, the satisfaction of all healthy appetites. But we must not leave ourselves to the guidance of directors. Let each be master of himself. Let all be arranged by the mutual consent of free individualities. Death to slavery! Death to hunger! Long life to “Land and Liberty!”
Mexicans! With hand on heart and with a tranquil conscience we formally and solemnly appeal to you all, men and women alike, to embrace the lofty ideals of the Mexican Liberal Party. As long as there are rich and poor, governors and governed, there will be no peace, nor is it to be desired that there should be; for such a peace would be founded on the political, economic and social inequality of millions of human beings who suffer hunger, outrages, the prison and death, while a small minority enjoys pleasures and liberties of all kinds for doing nothing. On with the struggle! On with expropriation, for the benefit of all and not of the few! This is no war of bandits, but of men and women who desire that all may be brothers and enjoy, as such, the good things to which nature invites us and which the brawn and intelligence of man have created, the one condition being that each should devote himself to truly useful work.
Liberty and well-being are within our grasp. The same effort and the same sacrifices that are required to raise to power a governor — that is to say, a tyrant — will achieve the expropriation of the fortunes the rich keep from you. It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor — that is to say, a new yoke — or life-redeeming expropriation and the abolition of all imposition, be that imposition religious, political or of any other kind.
LAND AND LIBERTY!
from the Manifesto of the Mexican Liberal Party, 1911 (libcom.org)
In virtue of the fact that the immense majority of Mexican pueblos and citizens are owners of no more than the land they walk on, suffering the horrors of poverty without being able to improve their social condition in any way or to dedicate themselves to Industry or Agriculture, because lands, timber, and water are monopolized in a few hands, for this cause there will be expropriated the third part of those monopolies from the powerful proprietors of them, with prior indemnification, in order that the pueblos and citizens of Mexico may obtain ejidos [common lands], villages, and the legal foundations for pueblos, or fields for sowing or laboring, and the Mexicans’ lack of prosperity and well-being may improve in all and for all.
Emiliano Zapata, Plan de Ayala (1911-11-28)
The 100th anniversary of the murder of Emiliano Zapata by the Mexican military (10/04/1919) is the occasion to share texts on the country’s revolution (1910-1920), a revolution profoundly marked by anarchist ideals and practices, ideals and practices which very often found expression in much older indigenous social relations, and which have continued to resonate through the history of this land’s peoples.
Aside from two short pieces that summarise the history of events, which include below selections from the writings of Ricardo Flores Magón and Voltairine de Cleyre.
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The political soothsayers and diviners will cynically proclaim the yellow vests’ movement dead: Act XXI brought less than 25,000 people into the streets this last Saturday.
We however refuse to be political accountants. And rebellions and revolutions have never been about numbers, but about the intensity of the desires and creativity unleashed.
And we will continue to share the movement(s)’ voices.
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Beginning as a protest against a fifth presidential term for the half dead, 82 year old Abdelaziz Bouteflika (in power since 1999) on the 22nd of February, the algerian protests have swelled into a mass rebellion against against an authoritarian, rentier capitalism that seemed to have been frozen in time. If Bouteflika seems to have been sidelined for now, the risk of an Egyptian or Tunisian style “transition” is on the horizon. The weekly protests however promise so much more.
We share below a testimonial from algeria published with lundi matin.
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The gilets jaunes: Understanding the resistance of an insurrection
A further reflection on the yellow vests movement, as it continues to defy, on the occasion of Act XXIII …
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