New Cities/New Soviets

April 15, 2005

arms & money

During the storms of 1905, all parties had sanctioned defensive arming: for the protection of meetings, leaders, racial minorities. But there agreement ended. The Mensheviks were slower to advocate the formation of armed bands when the tempest was rising, more insistent on their purely defensive function once they came into existence, swifter to demand their dissolution as soon as calm returned...Lenin had only scorn for Martov's twice-removed formula for 'Arming the people with the burning desire to arm themselves'." -- Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution

"...whereas Machiavelli proposes that the project of constructing a new society from below requires 'arms' and 'money' and insists that we must look for them outside, Spinoza responds: Don't we already possess them? Don't the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and prophetic power of the multitude? Perhaps we, too, locating ourselves within the revolutionary desire of postmodernity, can in turn respond: don't we already posess 'arms' and 'money'?" -- Hardt and Negri, Empire

"[The people must be supplied with] rifles, revolvers, bombs, knives, brass knuckles, clubs, rags soaked in oil to start fires with, rope or rope ladders, shovels for building barricades, dynamite cartridges, barbed wire, tacks against cavalry..." "They must begin their military training immediately, in direct connection with practical fighting actions. Some will immediatly kill a spy or blow up a police station; others will organize an attack on a bank, in order to confiscate funds for the uprising..." -- Lenin, two letters from Switzerland, October 1905

Posted by Sam at April 15, 2005 05:01 PM

nice citations

martov types
can get ya killed

to them
its way kooler
to be a beautiful dead loser

than a gun toting bank robber


remember

in martov think

if you die
unarmed
marchin
for "the cause"
you go straight to
the main exhibit room
of
martyrs' for
a better social justice
(MBSJ)

THE MBSJ HALL OF FAME IS
VERY CROWDED

Posted by: pink at April 16, 2005 11:01 AM

"Don't the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and prophetic power of the multitude"


'creative' ' prophetic '
both words
perfect examples
of flung dung

Posted by: meat me at April 20, 2005 07:53 PM

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