“They sit there shouting Don t do it. Someone told them revolution looked like the Cosby Show. A slight tug with a good lesson. Revolution is a tough struggle between what was and what needs to be.”
“Da sind wir, neue Insekten im verwaisten Ameisenhaufen, mit unseren Taschen voller Pläne und unseren Hoffnungen darauf zu wimmeln.”
“Wir werden einander schlussendlich wiederfinden, wir haben die selben Ideen, die selben notwendigen Orte, wir werden uns von Weitem sehen, wir möchten lieber nicht reden, werden sowieso wissen, dass unser Entschluss gefallen ist. Gehen werden wir beide.”
“Aber was nennen Sie ruhig sein? Die Hände in den Schoss legen? Leiden, was man nicht sollte? Dulden, was man nicht dürfte?”
“At the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of revolution, was Combeferre, representing its philosophy. The difference between logic and philosophy is that one can decide upon war, whereas the other can only be fulfilled by peace.”
“Were revolutions ever really that we thought them to be?”
“We don t need unity in theory, we need solidarity in practice.”
“We re presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming to realize that even minds and societies emerge from interacting laws that can be regarded as computations. Everything is a computation.”
“Anarchy has the flexibility to overcome many of the traditional problems of activism by focusing on revolution not as another cause but as a philosophy of living. This philosophy is as concrete as a brick being thrown through a window or flowers growing in the garden. By making our daily lives revolutionary, we destroy the artificial separation between activism and everyday life. Why settle for comrades and fellow activists when we can have friends and lovers?”
“Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn t care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don t need to be convinced that the system is rotten, only, that there s something they can do about it. And at any rate, even if it were possible to have an anticapitalist revolution without gun-battles in the streets -- which most of us are hoping it is, since let s face it, if we come up against the US army, we will lose -- there s no possible way we could have an anticapitalist revolution while at the same time scrupulously respecting property rights. Yes, that will probably mean the suburban middle class will be the last to come on board. But they would probably be the last to come on board anyway.”
“Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be?”
“Hablar de revoluciones, imaginar revoluciones, situarse mentalmente en el seno de una revolución, es hacerse un poco dueño del mundo. Quienes hablan de una revolución se ven llevados a hacerla. Es tan evidente que tal o cual privilegio debe ser abolido, que se procede a abolirlo; es tan cierto que tal opresión es odiosa, que se dictan medidas contra ella; es tan claro que tal personaje es un miserable, que se le condena a muerte por unanimidad. Y, una vez saneado el terreno, se procede a edificar la Ciudad del Futuro.”
“When there is a grand cause to be won, he said, sometimes, there are unavoidable casualties. None of us are happy about that, but it’s a painful reality. He paused and added, We’ve all accepted our culpability…”
“আসছে ফাল্গুনে আমরা কিন্তু দ্বিগুণ হবো।”
“The voices of actual communities are alive in a way no theory could every be even if, for now, it takes the form of tiny acts of resistance. Who doesn t cheat on taxes, avoid cops, or skip class? These acts themselves may not be revolutionary, but they begin to unravel the control from above. Anarchist approaches must be relevant to everyday experiences and flexible enough to address struggles in different situations and contexts. If we can achieve this, then we may thrive in the world after the dinosaurs. We might even be fortunate enough to be in one of the communities that have a hand in toppling them.”
“Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.”
“Like any dissidents they were neurotic archivists. Agree, disagree, show no interest in or obsess over their narrative of history, you couldn t say their didn t shore it up with footnotes and research.”