This category describes social struggles of previous ascription by social kind, and redefinition on new terms.
Two articles – Self Management and Hierarchy and The Hungarian Source – by Castoriadis, leading member of the Trotskyite French radical libertarian socialist group Socialisme ou Barbarie that argue for the disruption of workplace hierarchy through worker self-management turning to the often overlooked 1956 Hungarian Uprising as example.
Ferreras, Méda, and Battilana Covid-19 inspired Manifesto subsequently published in 43 Newspapers in 36 countries, calling for a revival of the workers councils, the decommodification of labor, and the disruption of environmental degradation.
To join project or downloading manifesto in 27 other languages go to: https://democratizingwork.org/
“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”
A collection of slogans spray-painted on the walls and halls of Paris in May 1968.
In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices. We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy. Barricades close the streets but open the way. Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible
Now classic text by French collective – The Invisible Committee describing the present impasse through seven circles of hell and the way out through the insurrectionary commune.
The goal of any insurrection is to become irreversible.
It becomes irreversible when you’ve defeated
both authority and the need for authority, property
and the taste for appropriation, hegemony and the
desire for hegemony. That is why the insurrectionary
process carries within itself the form of its victory, or
that of its defeat. Destruction has never been enough
to make things irreversible. What matters is how it’s
done. There are ways of destroying that unfailingly
provoke the return of what has been crushed.
Luci Cavallero and Verónica Gago discuss the March 8th feminist strike in Argentina in both global and historical context. They argue that the strike disrupts multiple domains of patriarchal society – weaving together judicial power as a gear in patriarchal violence, financial-economic power, and the urgency of demands for economic autonomy as an indispensable part of any confrontation with sexist violence.
The feminist strike enables other meanings capable of responding to pain, but without becoming trapped in victimism.
The first written essay by Subcomandante Marcos serving as “tour guide” to the state of Chiapas, desecrated by years of extractive neoliberalism. Written a year and a half before the Zapatista uprising, it outlines all the reasons that prompted the revolt.
“Everyone is dreaming in this country. Now it is time to wake up…
The storm is here. From the clash of these two winds the storm will be born, its time has
arrived. Now the wind from above rules, but the wind from below is coming…
The prophecy is here. When the storm calms, when rain and fire again leave the country
in peace, the world will no longer be the world but something better.”
– The Lacandon Jungle, August 1992
Stirring poem by the EZLN describing the meaning behind the Zapatista mask. A mask that negates and raises their indigenous identity into a universal subjectivity gathering all who have been excluded, forgotten, beaten, and despised. A short and beautiful text given below and as PDF.
This is who we are.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army.
The voice that arms itself to be heard.
The face that hides itself to be seen.
The name that hides itself to be named.
The red star who calls out to humanity and the world
to be heard, to be seen, to be named.
The tomorrow to be harvested in the past.
Behind our black mask,
Behind our armed voice,
Behind our unnameable name,
Behind us, who you see,
Behind us, we are you.
Behind we are the same simple and ordinary men and women,
who are repeated in all races,
painted in all colors,
speak in all languages,
and live in all places.
The same forgotten men and women.
The same excluded,
The same untolerated,
The same persecuted,
We are you.
Behind us, you are us.
Behind our masks is the face of all excluded women,
Of all the forgotten indigenous,
Of all the persecuted homosexuals,
Of all the despised youth,
Of all the beaten migrants,
Of all those imprisoned for their words and thoughts,
Of all the humiliated workers,
Of all those dead from neglect,
Of all the simple and ordinary men and women,
Who don’t count,
Who aren’t seen,
Who are nameless,
Who have no tomorrow.
Brothers and Sisters
You can see we are the rebellious mirror
that wants to be a pane of glass and break.
You can see we are who we are so we can stop
being who we are to become the you who we are.
General Command of the EZLN
Opening Ceremony of the First Intercontinental
Encuentro for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism
July 1996
(Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, 2001c: 111-112)
In which the rebel girl describes various forms of sabotage including limiting the over-supply of workers through contraception
It is my hope that workers will not only ‘sabotage’ the supply of products, but also the over-supply of producers. In Europe they are saying, “We are going to limit the supply of workers on the market. We are not going to have 10, 12, 14 children for the army, the navy, the factory, and the mine.”
Speech given by Bill Haywood in New York City on March 16, 1911 and subsequently published by I.W.W. in pamphlet form. Delivered on the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Haywood traces the history of the general strike since 1871, its use as a disruptive tactic, and its relation with the ballot
When anything happens to disturb the profits, what do the capitalists do? They go on strike, don’t they? They withdraw their finances from that particular mill. They close it down because there are no profits to be made there. They don’t care what becomes of the working class. But the working class, on the other hand, has always been taught to take care of the capitalist’s interest in the property. You are always looking after the interest of the capitalist, while a general strike would displace his interest and would put you in possession of it.
A pamphlet giving the day by day account of the 1981 Brixton Uprisings, race tension/solidarity, and theoretical reflections on the rise of the “Impossible Class”. Written at the height of capital restructuring in the UK and articulated with Italian Autonomist flair, Here it is, in two parts.
We are interested less in how the working class suffers unemployment than in how the class becomes recomposed in ways which undermine the discipline of the entire labour market which tries to label us as the “the miserable unemployed” in the first place.
Where Naft (aka Arnold Roller) argues for the social general strike as the weapon come of age for the working class. Countering social democratic critics, Naft argues that the disruptive effects of the general strike would precipitate, if not be, the revolution itself.
The social general strike will completely interrupt production in the whole country, stop communication and consumption for the ruling classes long enough to totally disorganize the capitalistic society; so that after the complete annihilation of the old system, the working people can take possession through its labour unions of all the means of production.
The Social General Strike points to a thorough change of the present system: a social revolution of the world; an entire new reorganization; a demolition of the entire old system of all governments.’
French anarco-syndicalist Pouget‘s classic work on collective Sabotage as a critical disruptive strategy of the working class. The short treatise was influential in popularizing sabotage as a disruptive tactic for workers in Latin Europe and – through the IWW – in the United States.
Sabotage: A pestiferous epidemic, becoming to the body social of capitalism more dangerous and incurable than cancer and syphilis are to the human body
Carla Lonzi, leading member of the Italian feminist collective Rivolta Femminile, 1970 pamphlet against patriarchal thought, history, and time. In this text Lonzi attacks Hegel (and Marx’s) notions of antagonism, progress, and historical development and calls for a subaltern history of women through the recovery of her perishable traces.
We consider incomplete any history which is based on nonperishable traces.
The future of the world does not lie in moving continually forwards along a path mapped out by man’s desire for overcoming difficulties.
Not being trapped within the master-slave dialectic, we become conscious of ourselves; we are the Unexpected Subject.