Revolutionaries

"The defeated of today, they will have learned. They will be cured of the delusion of being able to find their salvation in the help of masses of confused soldiers; cured of the delusion of being able to trust in leaders who prove themselves to be feeble and impotent; cured of the belief in independent social democracy, which disdainfully abandoned them. Left only to their own devices, they will fight their coming battles, gain their coming victories. And the watchword, that the liberation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, will have gained for them a new, deeper meaning."

"The tide of events mount into the heavens – we are accustomed to being catapulted down from the peak into the depths. But our ship continues on its straight course proudly sailing to its goal. And whether we will still be alive when it is reached – our programme will live; it will rule the world of humanity redeemed. In spite of everything!"

"I hope that you’ll do better than us when the time comes. Makhno has never refused a fight; if I’m still alive when your revolution begins, I’ll be one fighter among many."

"Our agrarian commune in Ukraine was active, in the economic as much as political terrain, and within the federal and mutually supportive system that we’d created. There was no personal egoism in the communes; they relied on solidarity, at the local as well as regional level. Our successes made it clear that there were different solutions to the peasant problem than those imposed by the Bolsheviks. There wouldn’t have been the tragic divide between the countryside and city if the rest of the country had practiced our methods. We would have saved the Russian people years of hunger and prevented the pointless conflicts between workers and peasants. And, most importantly, the revolution would have taken a different route. Critics say that our system was unsustainable and couldn’t grow because of its peasant and artisanal base. That’s not true. Our communes were mixed—agricultural and industrial—and some were even specifically industrial. But it was something else that made our system strong: the revolutionary participation and enthusiasm of everyone, which made sure that a new bureaucracy didn’t emerge. We were all fighters and workers at the same time. In the communes, the assembly was the body that resolved problems and, in military affairs, it was the war committee, in which all the units were represented. What was most important to us was that everyone shared in the collective work: that was a way to stop a ruling caste from monopolizing power. That’s how we united theory and practice. And it’s because we showed that the Bolsheviks’ tactics were unnecessary that Trotsky and Lenin sent the Red Army to fight us. Bolshevism triumphed in Ukraine and Kronstandt militarily, but history will vindicate us one day and condemn the gravediggers of the Russian Revolution."

"The Communist challenge to the capitalist world system also started with the Great War. The war split Social Democratic parties everywhere into prowar and antiwar camps. Some Social Democrats supported the war efforts out of a sense of obligation to the nation. But in Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, minority socialists, including the Russian Bolsheviks, condemned the fighting as a conflict between different groups of capitalists. Karl Liebknecht, the only socialist who voted against the war in the German parliament, bravely argued that “this war, which none of the peoples involved desired, was not started for the benefit of the German or of any other people. It is an imperialist war, a war for capitalist domination of world markets and for the political domination of important colonies in the interest of industrial and financial capital.” Revolutionaries such as Liebknecht and Lenin contended that soldiers, workers, and peasants had more in common with their brothers on the other side than with their superior officers and the capitalists behind the lines. The war was between robbers and thieves, for which ordinary people had to suffer. Capitalism itself produced war and would produce more wars if it was not abolished. The answer, the ultra-Left proclaimed, was a transnational form of revolution, in which soldiers turned their weapons on their own officers and embraced their comrades across the trenches."

"From these unfolding vistas of human misery and from personal misery, man must forge convictions, call other men his brothers, and fight for freedom. Man is only free if he is prepared to kill every hangman and every power magnate if they do not wish to stop their shameful tasks. He is only free if he does not put a prime on changing his government and is not led astray by the “Workers’ Republic” of the Bolsheviks. He must vouch for the establishment of a truly free society based on personal responsibility, the only really free society. His pronouncement on the State must be one of total destruction."

"The freedom of any individual carries within it the seed of a free and complete community without government, a free society that lives in organic and decentralized totality, united in its pursuit of the great human goal: Anarchist Communism!"

"Conditions are better in Spain than in Russia for carrying out a revolution with a strong anarchist content, given that there is a peasantry and proletariat with a great revolutionary tradition. Perhaps your revolution will arrive early enough for me to have the pleasure of seeing a living anarchism inspired by the Russian Revolution! You have a sense of organization in Spain that our movement lacked; organization is the foundation of the revolution. That’s why I not only admire the Iberian anarchist movement but also think that it’s the only one presently capable of making a deeper revolution than the Bolsheviks’ while also avoiding the bureaucratism that threatened theirs from the outset. But you have to work hard to preserve that sense of organization and don’t let those who think that anarchism is a theory closed to life destroy it. Anarchism is neither sectarian nor dogmatic. It’s theory in action. It doesn’t have a pre-determined worldview. It’s a fact that anarchism is manifest historically in all of man’s attitudes, individually or collectively. It’s a force in the march of history itself: the force that pushes it forward."

"White stele, on the place you fell, let it stand. That you fell to not be written. White with the Homeland's icon. Only this is suitable to mourn your death; white, marbled, and to mourn."

"Am I a nationalist? Am I a socialist? All of these! But above all I am Human."

"None of those who witnessed Dalton’s death have been willing to talk in public about what happened. His son Juan José, now a journalist, says that former members of the ERP... told his family in Cuba in 1978 that it was Villalobos who killed Dalton... the life Villalobos leads today resembles the one promised to Dalton by the CIA in 1964, ‘a life with all the possibilities’"

"Salvadoran revolutionary poet Roque Dalton, murdered by a different faction of his own country's left, wrote in his poem "Todos," "Altogether they have more death than we, but altogether we have more life than they." For this to be true, we must hold a larger vision of what is possible than the people who kill and torture and ravage."

"In more ways than one, poetry must recall us to our senses-our bodily sensual life and our sense of other and different human presences. The oceanic multiplicities of this art call us toward possibilities of relation still very much alive in a world where violent material power can speak only to and of itself, yet in which-in the words of the Salvadorean revolutionary poet Roque Dalton-"poetry, like bread is for everyone.""

"Back in San Salvador... aware that the police were looking for him again, Dalton broke the rules of life underground and, as he put it... ‘exercised my right to go out and drink a beer’. The police found him on a bar stool and ‘disappeared’ him... Dalton... was interrogated by a CIA agent. The military planned to kill him, the American told him, but he had come to offer him a way out. ‘It won’t be just any life...but a life with all the possibilities... where we have every resource available, in France, in Chile, in England. You should live like a writer, like a scholar, not like a criminal. Why die now, like a fool?’ Dalton wasn’t swayed, and after several nights the American tried a final ruse. The CIA, he promised, would use its operatives in the Salvadoran Communist Party to spread the word that Dalton had co-operated. ‘We’ll tell them that before dying you tried to save your skin... You won’t go down in history as a hero but as a traitor.’ Dalton was shaken, but he didn’t talk..."

"Born in 1935, Dalton was the illegitimate son of a U.S. coffee plantation owner and a Mexican single mother... educated by the Jesuits... He blamed their hypocrisy and support for the status quo for his break with Catholicism. One of his first political acts was a high school valedictory speech blasting his teachers for their tacit support of the school caste system by which poor children were demeaned."

"Las leyes son para que las cumplan los pobres. Las leyes son hechas por los ricos para poner un poco de orden a la explotación. Los pobres son los únicos cumplidores de leyes de la historia. Cuando los pobres hagan las leyes ya no habrá ricos."

"The ones who filled the bars and brothels... the ones who were mowed down with bullets while crossing the border, the ones who barely made it back... the eternal illegals... the saddest sad people in the world, my countrymen, my brothers."

"You’ve already eaten the body of Francisco Morazán... and now you want to eat Honduras You need to be slapped given electric shocks psychoanalysed to return to your true self"

"The death of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton in 1975 is one of the great tragedies of Latin American literature and of the Latin American left... Most of his best writing came during his exile in Cuba, where he wrote seven books of poetry, and Miguel Marmol,a biography of a 1930s Salvadoran revolutionary that’s one of the great, underappreciated masterpieces of Latin American historical writing."

"Decades later, when Lloyd George explained to Winston Churchill his admiration for Dhingra’s patriotism, it is said that Churchill exclaimed: ‘Dhingra’s last words are the finest ever made in the name of patriotism’ and even compared him with Plutarch’s immortal heroes."

"I admit, the other day, I attempted to shed English blood as a humble revenge for the inhuman hangings and deportations of patriotic Indian youths. In this attempt I have consulted none but my own conscience; I have conspired with none but my own duty. I believe that a nation held in bondage with the help of foreign bayonets is in perpetual state of war. Since open battle is rendered impossible to a disarmed race, I attacked by surprise; since guns were denied to me, I drew forth my pistol and fired. As a Hindu, I feel that a wrong done to my country is an insult to God. Poor in health and intellect, a son like myself has nothing to offer to the Mother but his own blood, and so I have sacrificed the same on her altar. Her cause is the cause of Shri Rama. Her services are the services of Shri Krishna. This War of Independence will continue between India and England so long as the Hindu and the English races last (if this present unnatural relation does not cease). The only lesson required in India at present is to learn how to die and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. Therefore I die and glory to my martyrdom. My only prayer to God is: may I be reborn of the same Mother and may I re-die in the same sacred cause till the cause is successful and she stands free for the good of humanity and the glory of God. Vande Mataram!"

"Fascism has made grandiose Social Revolution, Mussolini and Lenin, Soviet and Fascist corporate state, Rome and Moscow. Several stands already taken had to be rectified, we have nothing of which to ask pardon for as both in present and past we are impelled by the same ideal: the triumph of work."

"Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

"I saw that it was this that tormented him the most: the attraction that fascism exercised upon the extreme left. He had been a teacher with Mussolini in a little Italian village, he knew him well and even while hating him liked him a little."

"Long live Mussolini! Long live socialism!"

"Mussolini is clever, demagogic, devoid of scruples, and he has learned a great deal from the Russian Revolution."

"The god of the white man inspires him with crime, but our god calls upon us to do good works. Our god who is good to us orders us to revenge our wrongs. He will direct our arms and aid us. Throw away the symbol of the god of the whites who has so often caused us to weep, and listen to the voice of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of us all."

"Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together."

"غازیوں میں بُو رہے گی جب تلک ایمان کی تخت لندن تک چلے گی تیغ ہندوستان کی"

"دوست آں باشد که گیرد دست دوست در پریشان حالی و درماندہ کی دوست مشمرآنکه در نعمت زند لاف باری برادر خواندہ کی"

"My heart has no repose in this despoiled land Who has ever felt fulfilled in this futile world? The nightingale complains about neither the sentinel nor the hunter Fate had decreed imprisonment during the harvest of spring Tell these longings to go dwell elsewhere What space is there for them in this besmirched heart? Sitting on a branch of flowers, the nightingale rejoices It has strewn thorns in the garden of my heart I asked for a long life, I received four days Two passed in desire, two in waiting. The days of life are over, evening has fallen I shall sleep, legs outstretched, in my tomb How unfortunate is Zafar! For his burial Not even two yards of land were to be had, in the land of his beloved."

"I wish you had made me the master of royals, Or made my crown the bowl for alms and betrayals. You should have made me mad, crazy only for you, Why did you make me wise, capable of denials? You made me poor, fit only for sifting through dust, And I wish the dust of her feet were my trials. If you made me intoxicated with love, Why did you make the measure of life small vials? A wretched heart torn a hundred times over lives, To be the shoulder to rest her hair is my desire. If I were not worthy to be with the Sufis, Could have been good for the company of drunks, defiant? If you wished to burn me by parting from the pourer, Should have made me the lamp of the tavern’s foyer. The fire of beauty was not unveiled in the garden, Or the bulbul too would have been made a moth on fire. This incessant world is a vile place, O Zafar, Its cities should have been desolate and dire."

"The heart is asunder, singed to a kebab, This love has been the disaster of my life. My murder rests good on you, don’t worry, You have found grace, I am away from strife. “Enamoured” one day, “mad” on another, Each day I was given new names, new life. Why should I not drink my blood in envy? When today, with my rival they wine. The goblet’s lips kissed yours in ecstasy, My victory was to bite into mine. For you, I wandered streets with tearful eyes, Setting my heart on you was misery. We have washed your street with a storm of tears, Our begging bowl of a cap is now empty. Without replies now, this is what we found, That the messenger is our sole reply. Had asked for your picture to console my heart, Looking at it I am more uneasy. Your tyranny — boundless, day of reck’ning —one, I wonder how the account is compiled. Zafar, change the refrain, recite that ghazal, Of which each verse is your picked poetry."

"I am the sinner’s fault, somewhat, Your devotee, O God, somewhat. I do not understand whole or part, In my heart, I know not all, somewhat. I remain loyal to you, Faithful I am, faithless – somewhat. Since I do not meet any other, With him I have communion – somewhat. The intoxication of love has given me flight, In bliss, I fly some things, somewhat. My dreams lie in wakefulness, I see visions better there, somewhat. I may not be anyone, yet, Don’t ask — I am what I am – somewhat. Let them think me their humble servant, I am the dust of the road, of the feet – somewhat. I have got the blessed eye of faith, O Zafar, from something I have moved to somewhat."

"Thus, since 1947, several legal amendments to prohibit and effectively thwart conversions by force or fraud (practices documented in the 1956 Niyogi Committee Report, internationally misrepresented by missionaries as an attack on the freedom of religion) were pushed by tribal MPs. For another example, the genuinely indigenous revolt led by Birsa Munda in 1899 was modelled on the Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj (he wanted his fellow tribesmen to renounce witchcraft, intoxication and animal sacrifices, and to wear the Brahminical sacred thread), and started with an attack on a mission post. Birsa receives only a single and quite scornful mention in this book, eventhough he is still a national hero for the Mundas."

"Abua raj seter jana, maharani raj tundu jana ("Let the kingdom of the queen be ended and our kingdom be established")"

"Birsa Munda, whose Munda rebellion started with attacks on mission posts in 1899, claimed to have visions after the mode of the Biblical prophets, but told his flock to give up animal sacrifice, witchcraft and intoxication and to wear the sacred thread, all amounting to a kind of self-sanskritization. While such charismatic leaders come and go, the tradition of tribal nativism continues, and the VKA seeks to channel it towards integration into a larger Hindu activism. Gérard Heuzé ... aptly notes that the tribal rebellions of the 19th century, such as the 1830 Kol movement, the 1855 Santal Hoot and the 1899 Birsa rebellion, were incorporated by the Freedom Movement in its vision of a native tradition of struggle against foreign invaders (embodying 'the authentic spirit of the nation'), though in fact, exploitation by native (Hindu and Muslim) landlords and money-lenders had also played a role in provoking the tribals into rebellion."

"Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint Louverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin."

"Since the revolution, I have done all that depended upon me to return happiness to my country and to ensure liberty for my fellow citizens. Forced to combat internal and external enemies of the French Republic, I made war with courage, honor and loyalty. I have never strayed from the rules of justice with my enemies as much as was in my power I sought to soften the horrors of war, to spare the blood of men."

"Idleness is the source of all disorders, and if it is at all tolerated, I shall hold the military commanders responsible, persuaded that those who tolerate idleness and vagabonds are secret enemies of the government."

"...We have no other resource than destruction and flame. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest aliment. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains; burn and annihilate everything, in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of hell which they deserve."

"When the people of St-Domingue first tasted the fruit of liberty that they hold from the equity of France; when to the violent upheavals of the revolution that announced it succeeded the pleasures of tranquility; when finally the rule of law took the place of anarchy under which the unfortunate colony had too long suffered, what fatality can have led the greatest enemy of its prosperity and of our happiness still to dare to threaten us with the return of slavery?"

"It is for you, Citizen Directors, to remove from over our heads the storm that the eternal enemies of our liberty are preparing in the shades of silence. It is for you to enlighten the Legislature, it is for you to prevent the enemies of the present system from spreading themselves on our unfortunate shores to sully them with new crimes. Do not allow our brothers, our friends, to be sacrificed to men who wish to reign over the ruins of the human species. But no, your wisdom will enable you to avoid the dangerous snares which our common enemies hold out for you."

"He was one of the leaders. There were others: Boukman, a Jamaican who in 1791 organized a Vodou ceremony where people pledged to fight for liberty or to die. There was Mackandal. And then L’Ouverture, who was on a plantation, who started organizing, and had military training. There were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, “Cut their heads off, burn their houses.” L’Ouverture was taken from Haiti and imprisoned in France, where he died. Wordsworth wrote a poem about him. One of L’Ouverture’s most quoted sayings was, when he was about to be taken off by the French, “You can cut the branches of the tree of liberty, but you can’t destroy the roots because they are too strong and too many.” He was a phenomenal leader, but it’s important to acknowledge the others. Because it’s a problem we have thinking that one person can make a revolution, whether it’s now or in the past."

"We are black, it is true, but tell us, gentle men, you who are so judicious, what is the law that says that the black man must belong to and be the property of the white man?"

"For too long, gentlemen by way of abuses that one can never too strongly accuse of having taken place because of our lack of understanding and ignorance - for a very long time, I say - we have been victims of your greed and your avarice. Under the blows of your barbarous whip we have accumulated for you the treasures you this colony; the human race has suffered to see with what barbarity you have treated men like yourself..."

"Let the sacred flame of liberty that we have won lead all our acts. Let us go forth to plant the tree of liberty, breaking the chains of those of our brothers still held captive under the shameful yoke of slavery. Let us bring them under the compass of our rights, the imperceptible and inalienable rights of free men. [Let us overcome] the barriers that separate nations, and unite the human species into a single brotherhood. We seek only to bring to men the liberty that [God] has given them, and that other men have taken from them only by transgressing His immutable will."

"For too long we have borne your chains without thinking of shaking them off, but any authority which is not founded on virtue and humanity, and which only tends to subject one's fellow man to slavery, must come to an end, and that end is yours."

"That so long as we, or any other, doth own the Earth to be the peculier Interest of Lords and Landlords, and not common to others as well as them, we own the Curse, and holds the Creation under bondage; and so long as we or any other doth own Landlords and Tennants, for one to call the Land his, or another to hire it of him, or for one to give hire, and for another to work for hire; this is to dishonour the work of Creation; as if the righteous Creator should have respect to persons, and therefore made the Earth for some, and not for all: And so long as we, or any other maintain this Civil Propriety, we consent still to hold the Creation down under that bondage it groans under, and so we should hinder the work of Restoration, and sin against Light that is given into us, and so through fear of the flesh man, lose our peace. And that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murther, or Theft; and all landlords lives in the breach of the Seventh and Eighth Commandements, Thous shalt not steal, nor kill."

"O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War."