<nettime> RE: [postanarchism] Parigi: "The Undesireables"

["J. B. Mollitt" <xentr0py@netscape.net>]

The following rousing coda is undoubtedly pleased to be reacquainted 
with its body...


THE UNDESIRABLES
http://guerrasociale.org/indesiderabilinglese.htm

MARCH 2000

PONT ST. MARTIN (AOSTA) - PARIGI
...

"The history of modern capitalism opened with a vast insurrection of
workers and craftspeople who refused to manufacture shoddy goods and to
have no control over the machines and production. It was 1811 in England,
and the insurgents were called luddites. Their spontaneous and informal
organization, which developed throughout the city and the countryside,
extended to all workers without distinction by trade. They passed into
history for destroying industrial machinery by beating them with
sledgehammers and for the powerful conspiracy of a population that the
police could not force to snitch. The "criminals" were everywhere and
nowhere thanks to the complicity of unknowns. The army was not sufficient
for reestablishing order: some of the rebels required the control of the
unions and the blackmail of elections, others required the gallows. The
machines destroyed their communities; they destroyed the machines. They
wanted to decide for themselves how they would relate together. They were
proud of their hands which had not yet been reduced to prostheses of
capital.

In this harmful and moribund time, technology not only forces emigration
and precariousness, poisons the food and air and connects the masters,
their knowledge and their police; it also serves to control the poor, to
standardize behavior and to repress revolt as well. Today, like yesterday,
it is the center of capitalist dispossession; it reduces human ability and
increases competition, uproots the poor and isolates them, spies on the
restless, terrorizes the undocumented and denounces the outlaw. The
integration it imposes is in reality an accumulation of ghettoes.

The time has come again to attack the thousand nodes of our misery and our
submission—new hammer blows for a luddism that is even more lucid and
radical. Brothers and sisters, the time has come for a new anonymous and
seditious solidarity without leaders or mediators. The time has come for a
new conspiracy."


<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Marshal: A Devil of a philosopher so puzzled
my brain about the Parents, the Apple, the
Serpent that I was ready to believe nothing at
all. Not that I see more reason it it now; on
the contrary, I see less than ever.

Father: So much the better, my lord. No
Reason! That's the true religion. No Reason!
What an extraordinary grace has Heaven
bestowed upon you!

- Saint-Evremond(1728)



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