First Measures of the Coming Insurrection

First Measures of the Coming Insurrection
Author: Eric Hazan
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783604123

We have witnessed a beginning, the birth of a new age of revolt and upheaval. In North Africa and the Middle East it took the people a matter of days to topple what were supposedly entrenched regimes. Now, to the west, multiple crises are etching away at a ‘democratic consensus’ that has, since the 1970s, plagued and suppressed any sparks of revolutionary potential. It is time to prepare for the coming insurrection. In this bold and beautifully written book, Eric Hazan and Kamo provide a short account of what is to be done in the aftermath of a regime’s demise: how to prevent any power from restoring itself and how to reorganize society without a central authority and according to the people’s needs. They argue that neither a leadership reshuffle, in the guise of constitutional progress, nor a transition period between a capitalist social order and a communist horizon will do. First Measures of the Coming Insurrection is more than the voice of a new generation of revolutionaries; it is the manual for the coming global revolution.

The Coming Insurrection

The Coming Insurrection
Author: The Invisible Committee
Publisher: Semiotext(e)
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2009-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

A call to arms by a group of French intellectuals that rejects leftist reform and aligns itself with younger, wilder forms of resistance. Thirty years of “crisis,” mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy... We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.” The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of “spreading anarchy and live communism.” Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.” Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.

Transformations of Contemporary Capitalism

Transformations of Contemporary Capitalism
Author: David J. Evans
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2023-10-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000967123

In recent decades, there has been many attempts to describe, explore, and explain the new ‘post-modern’ capitalism of the twenty-first century. In this context, this book looks at one of the most exciting strands of this research in the late twentieth century: the flexible specialisation research programme (FSRP). Drawing on the history of ideas, discourse, and literature on capitalism of the last four decades, this book shows that although ‘flexible specialisation’ anticipated some of the ways in which capitalism was being transformed in the late twentieth century, they underestimated and failed to anticipate the forms of ‘creative destruction’ and corporate digital control which were becoming embedded in the global capitalist accumulation dynamic itself. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the ‘end of history’ failed to open up the pathway for new forms of modern social democracy but gave rise instead to the new digital Behemoths. Today, the classical tendencies of capitalism as anticipated by Marx are all too present and, despite talk of ‘post-capitalism’ and ‘digital/techno-feudalism’, the landscape of monopolyfinance capital has consolidated itself. The book counterposes the FSRP with the various Marxist interpretations of the capitalist transition, together with the wider social and economic theories that emerged in the first decades for the twenty-first century around, for example, the ‘great acceleration’, de-growth, and post-growth. This book will be of interest to all readers concerned with heterodox political economy, critical social theory, intellectual history, and, above all, the prospects for social transformation leading to social justice and an ‘egalitarian enlightenment’.

First Measures of the Coming Insurrection

First Measures of the Coming Insurrection
Author: Eric Hazan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783604115

We have witnessed a beginning, the birth of a new age of revolt and upheaval. In North Africa and the Middle East it took the people a matter of days to topple what were supposedly entrenched regimes. Now, to the west, multiple crises are etching away at a 'democratic consensus' that has, since the 1970s, plagued and suppressed any sparks of revolutionary potential. It is time to prepare for the coming insurrection. In this bold and beautifully written book, Eric Hazan and Kamo provide a short account of what is to be done in the aftermath of a regime's demise: how to prevent any power from restoring itself and how to reorganize society without a central authority and according to the people's needs. They argue that neither a leadership reshuffle, in the guise of constitutional progress, nor a transition period between a capitalist social order and a communist horizon will do. First Measures of the Coming Insurrection is more than the voice of a new generation of revolutionaries; it is the manual for the coming global revolution.

To Our Friends

To Our Friends
Author: The Invisible Committee
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-04-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1584351675

A reflection on, and an extension of, the ideas laid out seven years ago in The Coming Insurrection. The Invisible Committee's The Coming Insurrection was a phenomenon, celebrated in some quarters and inveighed against in others, publicized in media that ranged from campus bulletin boards to Fox News. Seven years later, The Invisible Committee follows up their premonitory manifesto with a new book, To Our Friends. From The Invisible Committee: In 2007 we published The Coming Insurrection in France. It must be acknowledged that a number of assertions by the Invisible Committee have since been confirmed, starting with the first and most essential: the sensational return of the insurrectionary phenomenon. Who would have bet a kopeck, seven years ago, on the overthrow of Ben Ali or Mubarak through street action, on the revolt of young people in Quebec, on the political awakening of Brazil, on the fires set French-style in the English or Swedish banlieues, on the creation of an insurrectionary commune in the very heart of Istanbul, on a movement of plaza occupations in the United States, or on the rebellion that spread throughout Greece in December of 2008? During the seven years that separate The Coming Insurrection from To Our Friends, the agents of the Invisible Committee have continued to fight, to organize, to transport themselves to the four corners of the world, to wherever the fires were lit, and to debate with comrades of every tendency and every country. Thus To Our Friends is written at the experiential level, in connection with that general movement. Its words issue from the turmoil and are addressed to those who still believe sufficiently in life to fight as a consequence. To Our Friends is a report on the state of the world and of the movement, a piece of writing that's essentially strategic and openly partisan. Its political ambition is immodest: to produce a shared understanding of the epoch, in spite of the extreme confusion of the present.

Communist Insurgent

Communist Insurgent
Author: Doug Enaa Greene
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1608468887

In the revolutionary tradition, the name of Louis Blanqui is either remembered with derision or as a noble failure. Yet during his lifetime, Blanqui was a towering figure of revolutionary courage and commitment as he organized nearly a half-dozen failed revolutionary conspiracies and spent half of his life in jail. This is Blanqui's story.

The Making of an Insurrection

The Making of an Insurrection
Author: Morris Slavin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674543287

The insurrection of 31 May-2 June 1793 that overthrew the Girondins and brought the Montagnards to power was a decisive event in the history of the French Revolution. Morris Slavin's study is the first that discusses the background, the mechanisms, and the immediate results of the uprising, as well as the hidden forces that produced it and the contradictions that were inherent in it from the beginning. Slavin's approach to the controversy between the Gironde and the Mountain is from below (d'en bas), from the vantage point of the sections of Paris and their extralegal assembly, the Eveche assembly, and its Comite des Neuf. He shows how and why the Montagnards used the insurrectionary organs created by the sans-culottes for their own purposes, and how the Montagnards won them over against their Girondin enemies by granting the sans-culottes economic concessions, at the same time disarming them politically. This revelation of the profound differences between the sans-culottes and the Montagnards on the goals of the insurrection is a major contribution to understanding French revolutionary behavior. Slavin finds that the rank and file in the pro-Girondin sections were just as self-sacrificing and just as patriotic as the followers of the Mountain. The dispute between the Girondins and the Montagnards was an intraclass contest, not a class struggle.

Jacobin Republic Under Fire

Jacobin Republic Under Fire
Author: Paul R. Hanson
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780271047928

It is time for a major work of synthetic interpretation, and this is what The Jacobin Republic Under Fire offers.".

The German Revolution, 1917-1923

The German Revolution, 1917-1923
Author: Pierre Broué
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1021
Release: 2004-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9047405722

On 12 October 1923, Grigory Zinoviev, president of the Communist International wrote the following in Pravda: The German events are developing with the inexorability of fate. The path which it took the Russian Revolution twelve years to cover, from 1906 to 1917, will have taken the German Revolution five years, from 1918 to 1923. ... The proletarian revolution is knocking at Germany’s door; you would have to be blind not to see it. ... Very soon, everyone will see that this autumn of 1923 is a turning-point, not just for the history of Germany, but for the history of the whole world. In fact, far from being on the point of triumphing, the German Revolution was on the verge of an irredeemable disaster which would soon inflict terrible consequences on Germany and the world. In this magisterial work, first published 1971 and still unsurpassed, Pierre Broué meticulously reconstitutes the six decisive years during which — between ‘ultra-leftism and ‘opportunism’, ‘sectarianism’ and ‘revisionism’, ‘activism’ and ‘passivity’ — the German revolutionaries attempted to begin a new chapter in the history of the proletariat.