Ian Chinich and his epic things

A whimsical display of nerd-dom

[ianchinich]

"People dont live in America..... but under it" - Nicola Sacco, executed by the state of Massachusetts 1927

[ianchinich]

[ianchinich]

"When in 1956, after the capitulation of Monsieur Guy Mollet to the settlers in Algeria, the Front de Libération Nationale, in a famous leaflet, stated that colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat, no Algerian really found these terms too violent. The leaflet only expressed what every Algerian felt at heart: colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence. At the decisive moment, the colonialist bourgeoisie, which up till then has remained inactive, comes into the field. It introduces that new idea which is in proper parlance a creation of the colonial situation: non-violence. In its simplest form this non-violence signifies to the intellectual and economic elite of the colonized country that the bourgeoisie has the same interests as they and that it is therefore urgent and indispensable to come to terms for the public good. Nonviolence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem around a green baize table, before any regrettable act has been performed or irreparable gesture made, before any blood has been shed. But if the masses, without, waiting for the chairs to be arranged around the baize table, listen to their own voice and begin committing outrages and setting fire to buildings, the elite and the nationalist bourgeois parties will be seen rushing to the colonialists to exclaim, “This is very serious! We do not know how it will end; we must find a solution–some sort of compromise.” This idea of compromise is very important in the phenomenon of decolonization, for it is very far from being a simple one. Compromise involves the colonial system and the young nationalist bourgeoisie at one and the same time. The partisans of the colonial system discover that the masses may destroy everything. Blown-up bridges, ravaged farms, repressions, and fighting harshly disrupt the economy. Compromise is equally attractive to the nationalist bourgeoisie, who since they are not clearly aware of the possible consequences of the rising storm, are genuinely afraid of being swept away by this huge hurricane and never stop saying to the settlers: “We are still capable of stopping the slaughter; the masses still have confidence in us; act quickly if you do not want to put everything in jeopardy.” One step more, and the leader of the nationalist party keeps his distance with regard to that violence. He loudly proclaims that he has nothing to do with these Mau-Mau, these terrorists, these throat-slitters. At best, he shuts himself off in a no man’s land between the terrorists and the settlers and willingly offers his services as go-between; that is to say, that as the settlers cannot discuss terms with these Mau-Mau, he himself will be quite willing to begin negotiations. Thus it is that the rear guard of the national struggle, that very party of people who have never ceased to be on the other side in the fight, find themselves somersaulted into the van of negotiations and compromise–precisely because that party has taken very good care never to break contact with colonialism." -Franz Fanon, "The Wretched of the Earth"

[ianchinich]

"The organization of real equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the enjoyments of the few, of solitary pleasures, of personal ease will cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality. Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do against a mass of happy people"

-Gracchus Babeuf, French Revolutionary and member of the "Conspiracy of Equals", executed 27 May 1797 by the French Directory after a failed revolt.

[ianchinich]

"The fight against fascism can only be waged effectively if it is stricken through the political and economic institutions of which it is an outgrowth and from which it draws sustenance. Moreover, revolutionaries aiming to bring down Capitalism and the State, if they were to allow themselves to be drawn out by fascism like a lightning bolt diverted by the lightning rod, and to devote all of their efforts and exhaust themselves on the fight against fascism alone, would be playing into the hands of the very institutions that they would like to see demolished. Using the fascists as a bogeyman, the capitalistic state would not only succeed in protecting itself and living a easier life, but would also succeed in persuading a segment of the proletariat to work in cooperation with it and to take its part. Even today, whilst on the one hand capitalism uses fascism to blackmail the state, the state itself uses fascism to blackmail the proletariat, giving out the message: “Give up on your dreams of political and economic expropriation and order your leaders to cooperate with me in strengthening the institutions of state, or I will stand by as you are beaten and killed by the fascists and, if they are not up to the task, I will lend them a helping hand myself!”

Luigi Fabbri, Italian Anarchist militant, "Preventative Counter Revolution" (1920)

[ianchinich]

An interesting anacdote from Victor Serge's memoir on the Second Congress of the Comintern (1919):

"The anarchist delegates, with whom I held many discussions, had a healthy revulsion from ‘official truths’ and the trappings of power, and a passionate interest in actual life; but, as the adherents of an essentially emotional approach to theory, who were ignorant of political economy and had never faced the problem of power, they found it practically impossible to achieve any theoretical understanding of what was going on. They were excellent comrades, more or less at the stage of the romantic arguments for the ‘universal revolution’ that the libertarian artisans had managed to frame between 1848 and 1860, before the growth of modern industry and its proletariat. Among them were: Angel Pestaña of the Barcelona C.N.T., a watchmaker and a brave popular leader, slender in build, with beautiful dark eyes and a small moustache of the same hue; Armando Borghi, of the Italian Unione Sindicale, with his fine face, bearded, young and Mazzini-like, and his fervent but velvety voice; Augustin Souchy, red-haired and with an old trooper’s face, the delegate from the Swedish and German syndicalists; Lepetit, a sturdy navvy from the French C.G.T. and Le Libertaire, merry but mistrustful and questioning, who suddenly swore that ‘in France the revolution would be made quite differently!’ Lenin was very anxious to have the support of ‘the best of the anarchists’."

[yungcommunard]

By Center for Especifismo Studies, 2023 Clear ideology ensures the consistency of our principles, concepts, and ideal objectives. It not only helps us navigate, but it also reveals a through line b…

[ianchinich]

[ianchinich]

"This vicious circle has led reformist socialists to devise the curious theory that in their strikes the workers should worry about the interests of the employers and the conditions of their industry… Thus are the workers on strike wrong-footed and the capitalist taken as being right, all in the name of a brand new interpretation of socialism. It has been overlooked, however, that it is the workers who always have right on their side, always, always, even when they declare an ill-timed strike that harms themselves. True, they are not doing the right thing in launching a dispute in unfavorable circumstances, when their defeat is a certainty; but the damage they are doing is to their own interests and not because the boss is in the right or because the industrialists are right rather than the wage earners. For as long as the worker works a single hour for the benefit of an employer, for as long as the boss makes a penny out of a worker’s labors, that worker will always have right on their side - the sacrosanct right which is the very basis of socialism and of anarchism…” -Luigi Fabbri, 1906

[ianchinich]

The union can not, therefore, be a solid enough foundation to build, from it, a revolutionary movement. Therefore, if you want to carry out a consistent line of combative action at the mass level, in addition to acting as a union, you have to group yourself as a trend, which implies a first degree of definition, greater than the union. Participating in the trend means accepting a set of definitions that can be shared by comrades from different ideological extractions, but that clearly entail certain exclusions (such as reformists, for example) that are essential if a minimum of true operational coherence is to be achieved. Although obvious, it is necessary to keep it in mind, so as not to fall back on old mistakes.... The groupings of tendencies coordinated among themselves and rooted in the set of the most combative sectors of the people, in the neighborhoods, are a superior level to the previous one. But the fundamental transformation of the system can only be achieved to the extent that there is a specific political organization capable of competing with the ruling classes for power. And for this, forms of organization and methods of action are necessary, which only an ideologically homogeneous organization capable of acting in all fields can achieve.

"Anarchist Strategy: Unions and Tendency" Letters of the FAU, April-May 1970

[lit-sideblog]

Those anarchists who call themselves communists (and I am one of them) do so not because they wish to impose their particular way of seeing things on others or because they believe that outside communism there can be no salvation, but because they are convinced, until proved wrong, that the more human beings are joined in brotherhood, and the more closely they cooperate in their efforts for the benefit of all concerned, the greater is the well-being and freedom which each can enjoy. They believe that Man, even if freed from oppression by his fellow men, still remains exposed to the hostile forces of Nature, which he cannot overcome alone, but which, in association with others, can be harnessed and transformed into the means for his own well being.

-Errico Malatesta, Anarchist-Communism

[ianchinich]

"The rights!—Ah! the right to toil,

That another, idle, may reap;

The right to make fruitful the soil

And a meagre pittance to keep!

The right of a woman to own

Her body, spotlessly pure,

And starve in the street—alone!

The right of the wronged—to endure!

The right of the slave—to his yoke!

The right of the hungry—to pray!

The right of the toiler—to vote

For the master who buys his day!"

-Voltairine De Cleyre

[ianchinich]

“The revolution in the past was a ‘revolution’ in which people remained being ruled as before even though the power of A was transferred to the power of B by the so-called revolution, because people were the slaves of the state dominated by the privileged power class that kept control over the people.”

From the "Revolutionary Manifesto" of the Korean Anarchist Federation (1924)

[ianchinich]

"Even anarchists do not think of expropriation in terms of some sort of "help yourself” operation, left to personal judgment, in the absence of any order. Even were it possible to predict as inevitable that expropriations, once disorder sets in, would take on an individualistic complexion - say, in the furthest flung places or certain areas of the countryside - anarchist communists have no intention of adopting that sort of an approach as their own. In such cases, all revolutionaries would have an interest in averting too many clashes with certain strata of the population who could later be won over more easily by propaganda and the living proof of the superiority of libertarian communist organisation. What matters, above all else, is that the day after the revolution no one should have the power or the economic wherewithal to exploit the labor of another.

But we anarchists are of the opinion that we must begin now to prepare the masses - in spiritual terms through propaganda, and in material terms by means of anarchist proletarian organisation - to get on with discharging all functions of the struggle and with social, collective living, during and after the revolution; and one of the first among those functions will be expropriation.

In order to steer expropriation away from the initiatives of individuals or private groups there is in fact no need for a gendarmerie, and there is in fact no need to jump out of the frying pan into the fire of state control"

-Luigi Fabbri, Italian Anarchist and theorist responding to Bukharin's attack on Anarchism

[ianchinich]

"... Electoralism "of the left" means, in short, a utopian attempt, out of time, to restore to the bourgeois Parliament a prestige already lost.... There are those who hold the possibility and the convenience of simultaneously using the parliamentary route and the trade union and popular way.... This implies accepting the philatelic task of collecting parliamentary seats as an important aspect, which little by little is becoming fundamental ... parliamentary activity and its electoral prelude absorbs, supplements or subordinates all other forms of socio-political action.... It is true that the Parliament can leave, and occasionally leave, some laws that suit the workers. But when that happens, it's because of popular pressure, not because of the persuasive action that leftist legislators exercise over their colleagues.... We do not believe that the essential issue is ultimately to vote or not to vote. What matters is what is done and not what is voted. The defining thing is not the attitude on an isolated Sunday in late November, each sticking paper in a hole inside a secret room ... What defines is what is done, and how it is done and why it is done, all the days that precede and all those that follow that folkloric Sunday ...Only by direct action is a strong people forged"

-Gerardo Gatti, Uruguayan Anarchist Federation militant and labor leader in the National Workers Convention (CNT), who was tortured and dissapeared in Argentina in 1976.

[ianchinich]

The Sandinistas survived a civil war with thirty thousand dead, but did not survive being in government.

-Hugo Cores, Uruguayan Anarchist Federation/PVP.

[ianchinich]

"Reformism places the insurrection in the sky of unattainable ideals. Exalting her verbally they try - in fact - to prevent others from preparing. In that disagreement, in that incoherence between ones counterrevolutionary political practice and their verbalism about a final insurrectional outcome, they seek to substantiate their eternal affirmation that “they lack conditions.” every time you try to move the process of political struggle forward, applying means not included in their very limited recipe book. This is basically limited to two things: a) in the economic level of the class struggle, the wage claim action, developed with the highest respect for bourgeois and therefore peaceful "legality"; b) at the political level, Parliamentarism, Electoralism, as a way to politically capitalize the results of the economic struggle. Confining your practice at all levels within the increasingly narrow frames of the bourgeois legality, reformism creates the conditions for its increasing integration into the system . It hinders and tries to prevent the development of the conditions for its destruction. It is obvious that if the program and the revolutionary project are not present guiding the practice and daily struggle at all levels, there will never be a process for a revolutionary outcome. The capitalist system will not be destroyed by following the rules of the game that are designed to ensure its continuity. That continuity is what contributes to maintaining the culture of those who agree to do only what bourgeois legality allows, that is, only what legality managed by the bourgeoisie recommends be done. So the reformist line can only arise in growing reformism, a growing backward step from the famous insurrectional outcome that they postpone for an indefinable "opportune moment". So they cannot formulate,nor do they want to, no strategic-military guidelines.By converting the idea of ​​the “proletarian insurrection” into myth, the reformists turn it into legitimating pretext for his counterrevolutionary practice, so useful to the system. Far from representing an alternative opposite to this, aimed at destroying it, such reformism becomes daily practice, in fact concrete and daily, in a way to "perfect" it, to correct it in its manifestations more extreme and visible injustice.It is important to insist on this, because the myth of an unfathomable future insurrection, sudden and miraculously emerged, without anyone preparing it, as a paradoxical end to a practice." -COPEI, by the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation, 1972.