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Title: The Rebellions of Misery Author: Gustavo Rodriguez Date: September 1, 2020 Language: en Topics: insurrectionary, revolt, Fascism, Anti-fascism Source: Retrieved on 2021-03-22 from https://325.nostate.net/2020/09/24/the-rebellions-of-misery-by-gustavo-rodriguez/ Notes: Excerpted from the brochure “The Aroma of Fire: The Rage of Despair in a Tri-Polar World”, September, 2020.
“All control systems are based on the punishment/award binomial. When
punishments are disproportionate to rewards and when employers no longer
have any rewards left, uprisings occur.”
Burroughs[1]
In the second decade of this century, urban revolts are becoming more
frequent throughout the global geography, with subtle variations in
duration and intensity. Hong Kong, France, Algeria, Iraq, Haiti,
Lebanon, Catalonia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Sudan, Chile, Belarus, and now the
United States of America, have been the sites of massive protests widely
reported in the means of mass domestication. As I have pointed out on
other occasions, these demonstrations have very particular motivations
that explain them; however, it is indisputable that they all possess an
intangible link that serves as a common denominator of most of these
mobilizations: the weariness and rage of despair.
Far from the leftist rhetoric that insists against all evidence that “as
long as there is misery there will be rebellion,” what has really
motivated the recent rebellions has not been “misery” but the
conjunction of weariness and despair. These two factors – which drive
the nostalgia for the “devil you know” and yearn for the return to the
welfare state, to industrial capitalism and to the society of labour –
are the causes of the widespread unrest that has led to the global
revolt of our days.
It is increasingly axiomatic that “misery” only produces “misery.” That
is to say, servitude, begging and even the loss of all dignity. As the
proverb goes, “hunger is a bad counsellor.” She is the mother of all
those specimens that hang a sign around their neck that says “I will do
any work” (even for the SS, as George Steiner reminds us). Therefore,
instead of creating rebels and refusers, misery breeds disease,
malnutrition, mortality, fear, sexual exploitation, corruption,
soldiers, police, informants and voters: human misery.
This is why misery is exalted by the left, knowing that the future is
fattened in its jaws, as that is where future votes are counted. All we
have to do is to consign some “prizes” and, to state abracadabra: the
corpse-like clientele will remain guaranteed for a relatively long
period of time, until “there are no more prizes” (Burroughs dixit) and
the uprisings return.
This was already inferred by the famous author of Les Misérables, paving
his brilliant political career with his successful literary career. In
Book Seven of his well-known novel, entitled “The Slang,” the poet and
novelist finishes off:
“Since 1789, the whole population is expanded in the sublimated
individual; there is no poor person that, having his right, does not
have his light ray; the most miserable and helpless feels in himself the
honesty of France; the dignity of the citizen is an inner armour; he who
is free is scrupulous; he who votes reigns. Hence incorruptibility;
hence the abortion of disordered and unhealthy lusts; hence the heroic
lowering of eyes in the face of temptation.”[2]
Victor Hugo, after throwing himself into the deep pool of misery, sees
its wonderful potential. As Walter Benjamin rightly points out:
“He was the first great writer to use collective titles in his work: Les
Misérables, Les travailleurs de la mer. The crowd meant to him, almost
in an old sense, the crowd of customers — that is, his readers — and of
his masses of voters.”[3]
Certainly, misery has fuelled countless revolts in history but,
unerringly, they have been “pacified” with proportional doses of garote
(neutralization by fear), bread (neutralization by subsidisation[4])
and, circus (consolation prizes and political reforms). It is precisely
in the proportional application of these rations that lies the
culmination of the “proletarian” concept, in reference to the landless
citizens lacking work who made up the most miserable class of the Roman
cities (proletarius), whose only utility — for the State — was their
capacity to generate proles (descendants/children).
These hordes of excluded people were pacified with cudgels, bread and
circuses and, used as a “repressive hand” (legionaries), swelling the
reserves of the armies of the Empire. Such reflection, motivated Saint
Charlie of Trier — fourteen centuries later — to make use of the term
“proletarian,” landing its only definition in a tight note as pagefooter
among the copious folios of Das Capital, where he delimits a priori all
the botched work of the contemporary Marxians who try, arbitrarily, to
subsume within the “proletarian” concept the most unbelievable
configurations of identity (indigenous peoples and people of African
descent) in an attempt to correct the racist constraints and the
economic narrow-mindedness of the Marxian vision.[5]
Regarding “pauperism” or the general misery of the working classes,
already in 1844–46, Proudhon said quoting Antoine Eugène Buret[6]:
“The description of the misery of the working classes […], has something
fantastic that frightens and oppresses the heart. These are scenes that
the imagination refuses to believe, despite the certificates and
government records. Naked husbands, hiding at the bottom of an
unfurnished room, with their children also naked; entire populations
that do not go to church on Sunday because they do not have even rags to
cover themselves with; unburied corpses that lay for eight days because
the deceased did not even have a shroud to wrap them in, nor money with
which to pay for the coffin and the undertaker, while the bishop enjoys
four or five hundred thousand francs in rent; whole families crowded
together in miserable pigsties, living together with the pigs, and
already in a life earned by rotting, or living in holes like the
albinos; octogenarians sleeping naked on naked boards; the virgin and
the prostitute expiring in the midst of the same nakedness and
destitution; everywhere despair, consumption, hunger, famine! … And that
people, who atone for the crimes of their masters, do not revolt!”[7]
(my underlining).
And yes, of course, the “people” have rebelled countless times. The
“bread riots,” caused by the deprivation of basic foodstuffs, have been
the answer of the children of famines since the dawn of civilization,
leaving a rich record of ephemeral uprisings from the 14^(th) to the
20^(th) century, with a marked frequency in the 17^(th), 18^(th) and
19^(th) centuries.[8] As Bakunin well warns:
“Since the existence of political societies, the masses have always been
dissatisfied and have always been miserable, because all political
societies, all states, whether republican or monarchical, from the
beginning of history to the present day, have been founded exclusively
and always, with only the difference in degree of frankness, on the
misery and forced labour of the proletariat. […] Hence the eternal
discontent. But this discontent rarely produced revolutions.”[9]
One of the most well-documented hunger riots, characteristic of the
pre-industrial era, occurred in the spring of 1652 in the city of
Córdoba, in the region of Andalusia.[10] Near the end of the century,
but on this side of the Atlantic, there was another riot caused by
misery: the 1692 Mexico City Famine, also known as the “Motín del
Pulque.”[11] In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries,
there were also riots caused by misery. However, from the second half of
the eighteenth century, these revolts would be effectively exploited by
the “putschiistas” devoted to the coup d’État. Misery would begin to
give birth to revolutions.
The career of the “professional revolutionary” began to bear fruit in
the 19^(th) century, consolidating the coup d’État strategy towards the
“seizure of power.” For this reason, for St. Charlie, Blanqui and his
comrades were the living embodiment of “the real bosses of the
proletarian party.”[12] In this way, the formation of ‘specialists’ in
the needs of the Revolution was encouraged and politics was ‘sacralized
,’ transforming the Nation, the State, the People, the Race or, the
Proletariat, into a sacred entity, that is, a supreme, intangible and
transcendent entelechy, erected as the axis of a system of values,
symbols, rites, myths and beliefs, that demands sacrifice, militancy,
fidelity, worship and subordination of the individual and the
collective. Thus political symbolism took shape in mass society[13] and
propagated ‘a way of conceiving politics that goes beyond the
calculation of power and interest, and extends to the definition of the
meaning and ultimate end of existence.’[14] To this end, the masses were
given hope in the future (another world is possible!), while they were
trained as cannon fodder; that is, while they learned the art of the
imbeciles and prepared themselves to kill and die in the name of the
Truth that will make them happy, enunciated by some clown and/or
prophet.
To say it with comrade Bonanno:
“If there was a time when I thought it would be useful to be a clown for
the revolution, and rallies are certainly a theatrical activity like any
other, now I no longer believe in this need, not because of the specific
uselessness of the clown, which will always have its role in all
political movements, but for the possibility that the revolution can be
achieved by playing the lyre to the people, with all the strings of
established harmony […] Bringing up the truth as a symbol of the
sacrifice for which one is willing to die, and therefore to kill,
suggests to others, if there is a shred of intelligence, the solution to
the enigma, the place of the trick to be solved for the benefit of all.
But who answers to the sphinx?”[15]
At the end of the 19^(th) century, misery incubated the snake’s egg. The
nineteenth century famines fertilized the land for the fascisms (red and
brown). Since 1890, a succession of bad harvests in the Volga regions
caused havoc for millions of peasants in Czarist Russia. Entire
communities fled to the cities in search of food. More than half a
million people literally died of hunger or as a result of typhus and
cholera. Despite the famine, the authorities allowed the export of
grain, which provoked countless peasant riots and rebellions that would
be repressed by the imperial army by blood and fire. This situation led
the populist leaders to promote their call “for the people,” enrolling
hundreds of students from the major cities who, from their romantic
vision, conceived the village as a harmonious collective community that
embodied the socialist aspirations of the “peasant soul.” Thus would
conclude the last decade of the 19^(th) century, marked by the abysmal
inequalities of the Russian empire, with a stream of privileged
aristocrats and an enormous “mass” of miserable people beset by hunger
and disease.
During the first years of the 20^(th) century, misery in the rural areas
continued to rise, while in the cities unemployment reached unusual
levels, triggering a wave of demonstrations and strikes, mostly called
by anarchists. In the summer of 1903, a gigantic general strike shook
the south of Russia; meanwhile, the “revolutionary Marxists” tore off
their leather during their Second Congress in the midst of a pitched
battle for control of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, which
caused the irreconcilable division between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
The “revolutionary consciousness” had increased considerably with the
progressive schooling of the countryside, which, together with the
general discontent over the military defeat of Japanese imperialism,
brought the mood to the brink of social revolution.
In the early days of 1905, strikes broke out in several cities across
the country. On January 9, a massive demonstration took place in
Petrograd (St. Petersburg), led by the priest Gueorgui Garpón. More than
140 thousand women, men and children, carrying religious images and
portraits of the Tsar, marched towards the Winter Palace begging the
“Little Father of the People” to alleviate the tremendous misery they
were enduring. The Cossacks opened fire on the demonstrators, leaving
thousands of dead and wounded. Gorki would baptize that massacre as “Red
Sunday” and Lenin — the new clown/prophet, — interpreted it as “the
agony of the traditional faith of the peasants” in the “Litte Father
Tsar,” and the birth of the revolutionary people.[16] However, by 1913
the wretches of all Russia — to the cry of “God save the Tsar” — were
getting ready to celebrate the three hundred years of rule of the
Romanov dynasty.[17] By the middle of the next year, the patriotic
drunkenness was leading the wretches to war again as cannon fodder.
By the end of the Great War, the scene was chaotic throughout Russia.
The exiguous industry was devoted to satisfy the military needs (“the
hunger of warfare”) and, although agricultural production was not
interrupted, the ample network of railroads of the Empire was put to the
service of the war, paralysing the flow of food to the cities. The
resulting famine gave way to intense protests and riots.
On February 23, 1917, the workers of the Petrograd textile factories –
under the orders of the Bolshevik party – took to the streets en masse
with the slogan “No more hunger,” initiating the so-called “February
Revolution” that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. On April 3,
the clown/prophet of the new Revolution would arrive at the train
station of the former imperial capital from Zurich, counting on the
punctual financing of the Reich.[18] Thirty-four weeks later, red
fascism would be set in motion, prolonging itself until the end of 1991.
Hunger did not disappear with its establishment, but all the hunger
riots were drowned in blood.[19] Neither did the ‘pacification’ with
cudgels, bread and circuses end with Lenin’s death (21 January 1924), on
the contrary, it intensified with his successor Joseph Stalin. The new
clown/prophet would impose a gigantic network of concentration camps,
sadly known as the Gulag.[20]
With different protagonists, although with the same script — an
experience from which we could and, we should, extract important clues
to help us understand the present, — the incubation of fascism continued
its course. From the end of the eighteenth century until 1913, during
the so-called “Giolittian Era,” the Kingdom of Italy promoted the
integration of its economy into the international capitalist context,
fostering “economic and social modernization.” The great inflation
resulting from the First World War, derived in the generalized misery
from 1918, sowed discontent among the excluded. In the face of the
“crisis,” the working class called for a strike, extending the conflicts
throughout the Italian boot. The rapid decomposition of the post-unitary
liberal state and the revolutionary turbulence,[21] fertilized the
ground for Benito Mussolini’s rise to power.
With the arrival of this clown/prophet, a new totalitarian regime was
established with the same features of ‘generic fascism.’[22] It quickly
incorporated its own elements, building an Italian-style ‘paradigm’
(‘specific fascism’), founded on corporatism, the exaltation of the
‘people ,’ workers’ redemption and, nationalism. The ideology of this
other fascism was also presented as a revolutionary doctrine, anointed
with socialist principles (anti-capitalist, anti-parliamentary,
anti-liberal and, of course, anti-Marxist and ultra-nationalist), which
advocated the intervention of the State by means of professional
corporations which would bring together workers and businessmen attached
to the single-party regime.[23] To guarantee the proper functioning of
the system, it would be necessary to consolidate the terror against
dissident intellectuals, ethnic minorities and, the opponents of the
regime (traitors to the nation), through an extremely repressive police
apparatus; to strengthen the armed forces at the service of the leader
and his party organization — and willing to extend the fascist project
abroad-; to undertake the permanent mobilization of society in order to
strengthen the State.
An essential characteristic of fascism is its anti-capitalist and
anti-bourgeoisie mood,[24] manifested in its criticism of the prevailing
materialism of capitalism, for which it demands its transformation
towards an “organized capitalism” (State Capitalism or, Totalitarian
Monopoly Capitalism) strongly regulated, which permits the
“redistribution of social, political and economic power.”[25] To this
end, it appeals to feelings strongly rooted in the “people,” embodying
those feelings and emotions in symbols and their representation in the
State, through the establishment of direct links between the “masses,”
the leading party and the leader.[26] In this way, every sphere of human
activity is subject to state intervention. As the Duce put it:
“everything within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside
the state.”[27]
But despite this “forced nationalisation” (or thanks to it), the fascist
regime is going to enjoy great popularity and total acceptance among the
“masses.” The encouragement of popular leisure activities; the policy of
integration; the construction of the “new man” through the system of
education and; the promotion of social security through the “Letter of
Labour”[28] — promising social rights and, an order of peace and harmony
between workers and bosses, as productive forces are put at the service
of the Nation, — will give popular approval to fascism, endowing this
political phenomenon with specificity.
In Germany, the situation would not be much different. The German
National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei) came to power in 1933 amidst great social upheaval and a
deep economic depression. The 1929 Wall Street crash had severe
repercussions as a result of the enormous dependence on short-term loans
from abroad, paving the way for the National Socialist Revolution. The
unemployment rate between 1929 and 1932 increased from 6 to 18%,
industrial production registered a drop of 40% and per capita income
contracted by 17%. This combination of factors stimulated “the rise of a
new mass movement that, in a period of crisis, mobilized a great
proportion of the population, seduced by the attractions of a
charismatic leader like Hitler.”[29]
Since the 1890s, the Völkisch movement had gained strength through its
cohesive discourse, despite its multi-faceted organization and diverse,
sometimes contradictory and competing ideological concerns, but
unmistakably oriented towards anti-Semitism, pan-Germanism, eugenics,
and the reformation of cultural and religious life. Within this
movement, the presence of young people was gaining strength, “literally
shaking off the repressions and coercion of a stale bourgeois
existence.”[30] At the beginning of the twentieth century, the popular
movement would reap support in the face of the economic difficulties
brought about by the First War. The German economy was severely affected
by the prolongation of the conflict. Misery caused hunger riots (1915)
and important strikes (1917), undermining morale on the internal front.
In mid-1917 – under the military dictatorship of Lundendorff and
Hindenburg – the German Patriotic Party (Deutsche Vaterlandspartei/DVLP)
was founded, with the support of the Alldeutscher Verband. It has an
ultra-right-wing, nationalist and militarist orientation. The new
political formation welcomed the Völkisch movement into its midst,
together with other anti-Semitic currents of radical German nationalism,
reaching a membership of 1,250,000. After the revolution of November
1918, which put an end to the monarchy of William II and gave way to a
parliamentary republic, the Patriotic Party was dissolved. Many of its
members would join the ranks of the National Party of the German People
(DNVP); the rest of its members, under the leadership of the railroad
worker Anton Drexler and the journalist Karl Harrer, formed the
Political Circle of Workers (Politischer Arbeiterzirkel). Radically
opposed to capitalism and communism, the “Circle” dedicated itself body
and soul to activism and political agitation among the workers.
On 5 January 1919, Drexler and Harrer founded the German Workers’ Party
(DAP) in Munich with only 40 members. One of its future members would be
Adolf Hitler, who two years later would become the undisputed leader of
the party. After his active participation in the brutal crushing of the
Spartacist insurrection, together with the volunteer militias
(Freikorps), the political formation would change its name to the German
National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and would make public its
25-point Program — authored by Drexler and Hitler — on February 24,
1920.
In the heat of the misery, the ultra-nationalist spirit and the racist
culture grew, which facilitated the accelerated increase of the party’s
militancy. The demagogic discourse of the NSDAP, centered on the attack
on the banks and big companies, together with the defense of State
socialism as an economic proposal guaranteeing social security, exerted
great influence among the workers and a great general acceptance,
providing it with two victories with a simple majority in the democratic
parliamentary elections of 1932 and, the subsequent appointment of
Hitler as Chancellor (1933).
The most notorious subsistance revolts at the end of the last century
were those in Argentina in 1989, during the hyperinflation of the last
days of Raúl Alfolsín’s government, highlighting the proliferation of
“popular pots” and the collective expropriation of the Cruce Castelar
shopping center in the municipality of Moreno in Buenos Aires.[31] That
experience would soon be neutralized with official measures of
containment through the provision of food to popular areas,
consolidating as clientelist practices that favoured the empowerment of
leaders and social leaders as mediators to the system of domination,
guaranteeing social control and systemic recovery. The subsistence riots
would be repeated in the southern country at the beginning of this
century, originating with the uprising of December 2001 that produced
the fall of Fernando De la Rúa’s government. Once again they would be
pacified with clubs, bread and circuses, while the future of the
Kirchners (2003 to date) was being paved with the assured vote for the
Left.
In the course of the 21^(st) century, there has been a long string of
protests and rebellions over hunger. In January 2007, under the slogan
“without corn there is no country” and against the ratification of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), tens of thousands of
demonstrators took to the streets of Mexico City to protest the rise in
the price of corn. In September of that same year, in Myanmar (formerly
Burma), the increase in the prices of food and gasoline provoked the
insurrection of the Buddhist nuns and monks known as the “saffron
revolution.” During the spring of 2008, riots broke out in different
cities in Egypt, Morocco, Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Malaysia, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Burkina
Faso.
The rebellions of misery intensified with the so-called “international
financial crisis” that aggravated hunger around the world with the
growing volatility of agricultural products being included in the
“commodity” exchanges, as a result of the incursion of speculative funds
in these areas. Since then, prices have continued to rise, throwing more
than 100 million people into misery. The paradox is that with the
industrialization of agriculture – hand in hand with pesticides and
biotechnological manipulation – current agricultural overproduction is
exuberant. Today, famines are not due to hardship or misfortune, but to
other factors.
Financial speculation in food products has forced 820 million people
around the world to live in extreme poverty, of which 265 million could
die of hunger, according to the most conservative projections of the UN
World Food Program. An estimated 12,000 people will die of hunger every
day as a result of the economic impact of the pandemic, far more than
those who will die from the after-effects of the Covid-19 virus.
Meanwhile, eight of the largest food and beverage corporations have
distributed more than $18 billion to their shareholders since the health
crisis began. Economists expect that the contraction of global
production will generate around 450 million unemployed people in the
world but, from January to date, the 12 wealthiest billionaires on the
planet have increased their fortunes by more than 40%.
Very probably, this announced misery will give rise to countless
rebellions that will facilitate the rise of new clowns/prophets and the
establishment of new populist governments. But none will lead to the
decline of capitalism or the end of domination. With the “new-normality”
imposed on us, capital is reinvented and domination is renewed,
returning to strong states and nationalist rhetoric, in a framework of
reorganization that once again leaves individual and collective freedom
outside the text in search of “urgent solutions,” strengthening the
authoritarian temptations.
Once again, misery incubates fascism (red and/or brown) disguised as a
revolutionary solution and radical transformation and, it is instituted
as the reason for struggle that attempts to replace the old reality. The
contemporary rise of fascism and its rampant institutionalization
reveals its evident acceptance through the repeated narrative of “the
recovery of lost values” that capitalizes on the past – which is
supposedly “heroic” and always better than the present – and moulds it
as a product available for a better future.
We cannot fall into the trap of “urgency” and lower our guard against
the authoritarian replacement of reality. Power keeps reality captive
from the first day of its existence on the face of the Earth. Hence the
impossibility of transforming it — as cynically proposed by the left in
all corners-; the cantaleta of “Another world is possible” is the
contemporary trap to prolong the homonymy “Power=Reality.” Hence the
appetite to put into practice a thought-action capable of demolishing
reality. Not to transform it. Only in this way is the trap of totality
disarmed. Therein lies the need to think about anarchic praxis in its
excessive dimension, the need to move from prepositional syntagmas to
the paradigm. However, in order to create a new anarchic paradigm it is
essential to burn all the road maps.
Let us imagine for a moment that the “normal” is not capitalism or the
continuity ad infinitum of domination but that world in ruins which we
have never feared. Let us think of the definitive destruction of labour,
the demolition of everything that exists, the complete collapse of
civilization. Let us walk, without deviation, toward that goal. The
skill of fire is a tempting gamble that encourages our yearning for
total liberation and drives the fight. Today, the only thing we have to
save is fire. The rest: let it burn to ashes!
Gustavo Rodriguez,
Planet Earth, September 1, 2020
[1] Odier, Daniel, The Job. Interviews with William Burroughs, Enclave
de Libros Ediciones, Madrid, 2014.
[2] Víctor Hugo, Les miserables, Fourth Part, Book Seventh-El argot,
Garnier Hermanos Libreros-Editores, Paris, 1901, p. 282.
[3] Benjamin, Walter, Baudelaire’s Paris, 1^(st) Edition, (Mariana
Dimópulos, trad.), Eterna Cadencia Editora, Buenos Aires, 2012, p.136.
[4] This neutralizing strategy is very common in Latin America,
generally orchestrated by a clientelistic network, woven by political
parties and a diverse set of social organizations that have established
themselves as interlocutors with the State, either through mobilization
and / or through negotiation and agreement with domination.
[5] ‘By “proletarian” can only be understood, from the economic point of
view, the wage earner who produces and valorizes “capital” and who is
thrown into the streets as soon as he becomes superfluous for the
valorization needs of “Monsieur Capital,” as Pecqueur calls this
character. “The sickly proletarian of the virgin forest” is a gentle
chimera of Mr. Roscher. The inhabitant of the virgin forest owns it and
treats it as nonchalantly as the orangutan does, that is, as his own
property. He is not, therefore, a proletarian. It would be if the virgin
forest exploited him, and not he the virgin forest. As for his state of
health, he would not only stand up to comparison with that of the modern
proletarian, but also with that of syphilitic and scrofulous
“respectable people.” It is likely, however, let Mr. Wilhelm Roscher
understand by virgin forest his native moors of Lüneburg.’ Marx, K., Das
Capital, Volume I, Vol. 3, chapter XXIII: The general law of capitalist
accumulation, Siglo XXI editores, México, 2009, note number 71, p. 761.
[6] Cf. vid. Buret, E: De la misère des classes laborieuses en France et
en Angleterre, Paris, 1840.
[7] Proudhon, PJ, System of economic contradictions or Philosophy of
misery, (F. Pi and Magall, trans. And prologue), First Part, Ch. VI, The
Monopoly, Alfonso Durán Library, Madrid, 1870, pp 312–313.
[8] Until the second half of the 19^(th) century, the causes of famine
were poor harvests caused by constant frosts, floods and devastating
droughts caused by the famous “Little Ice Age,” to which must be added
–as an aggravating factor– habitual outrages against the dispossessed
and the draconian measures imposed by the ruling classes.
[9] Bakunin, Miguel, Complete Works, Vol.1, 3^(rd) Ed., Las Ediciones de
La Piqueta, Madrid, April 1986, p.159.
[10] After the terrible plague epidemic that devastated the region
between 1649 and 1650, there was a substantial increase in wheat prices
causing famine among the most deprived. The death by hunger of a child
in the San Lorenzo neighbourhood would set off an angry riot at the
beginning of May. A multitude of peasants would raid the house of the
magistrate and prominent wealthy people in the city, massively
expropriating the grain they had hoarded. The rebellion would be
appeased with the mediation of Diego Fernández de Córdoba, who agreed to
replace the magistrate (viscount of Peña Parda) and establish a fixed
price for bread, demanding that the Cordovan peasants surrender their
weapons and return to their homes. King Felipe IV ordered the delivery
of resources to the city for the purchase of wheat and granted the
pardon to the mutineers,ending the revolt with an abundance of grain and
the cheapening of bread. Cf. vid, Díaz del Moral, Juan, History of
Andalusian peasant agitations, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1967.
[11] After a prolonged period of torrential downpours and floods in the
Valley of Mexico, which severely affected agricultural areas, a
chiahuixtle plague followed that accounted for the few crops that had
survived the waters. The shortage of corn and wheat and, the speculation
of the merchants, induced a rise in the price of grains, unleashing
hunger in the midst of the measles epidemic in the excluded sectors –
«Indians, blacks, Creoles and muzzles of different nationalities,
Chinese, mulattoes, Moors, zambaigos, wolves and Spanish zaramullos (who
were the rogues, pimps and snatchers) »-; Faced with the shortage of
food, indigenous women threw themselves into the alhóndiga in search of
sustenance. Immediately there was a revolt in squares, markets and
pulquerías, emboldened and euphoric by the effects of the “nectar of the
gods..” To the shout of ‘Viva el pulque!’ the anger of the mutineers was
unleashed who headed for the Zócalo, ready to burn down the palace, kill
the viceroy and the magistrate. At five in the afternoon on June 8,
1692, with stones and machetes in hand, the rebels burned the viceregal
palace, the town hall houses, its courts and clerks’ offices, the door
of the Royal Court Prison, the alhóndiga and the drawers and stalls of
the main square. The expropriations of goods and food were massive, with
stores of merchandise, seeds, iron, pottery and other goods being
looted. The next day the repression would not wait, many of the rioters
would be hanged, others flogged and the indigenous population would be
expelled from the city to the peripheral neighbourhoods. After the
tumult, there was enough corn and wheat that they brought from the city
of Celaya to appease the rebels. Cf. vid, Robles, Antonio de, Diary of
notable events (1665–1703), vol. III, Porrúa, México, 1945. And,
Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos, “Alboroto y Mutín de México del June 8,
1692,” in Historical Relations, UNAM, University Student Library,
Mexico, 1954. Another version of the events, affirms that “the tumult
had not been motivated by the lack of corn, but rather they had a lot
hidden in their houses; that they had hidden it to have it stored for
when they revolted, and that since the corn crop had been lost and there
was little and expensive, they bought much more than necessary and
buried it so that with it the poor people and these would lack. The food
was worth so much they would be on the side of the rebels. Letter from a
religious leader about the rebellion of the Mexican Indians of 1692,
Editor Vargas Rea, Mexico, 1951, collected in Feijóo, Rosa, El Tumulto
de 1692, Revista Historia Mexicana, El Colegio de México, Vol. XIV, N °
4, April-June 1965, p. 458.
[12] Marx, K., The 18 Brumaire of Luis Bonaparte, Federico Engels
Foundation, 2003, p.21
[13] Cf. vid. Mosse, George L., The Nationalization of the Masses.
Political symbolism and mass movements in Germany from the Napoleonic
Wars to the Third Reich, Ediciones de Historia Marcial Pons, Madrid,
2005.
[14] Cf. E. Gentile, “The sacralisation of politics and fascism,” in J.
Tussel, E Gentile, G. Di Febo, (Eds.), Fascism and Francoism face to
face. A historical perspective, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2004, pp
57–59. See also, Gentile, Emilio (1973), The Italian way to
totalitarianism. Party and state in the fascist regime, Siglo XXI,
Madrid, 2005; and, Gentile, Emilio, Fascism: history and interpretation,
Editorial Alliance, Madrid, 2004.
[15] Bonanno, Alfredo, Miseria della cultura. Cultura della miseria,
Colla Pensiero e azione, Part Seconda, Cap. IV, Edizioni Anarchismo,
2015, p.175.
[16] Lenin, VI (1905), «The “little father Tsar” and the barricades», in
Complete Works, Volume VIII, Akal Editor, Madrid, 1976, p.108.
[17] The main streets of Saint Petersburg were decked out in imperial
colours and portraits of the Tsars, while long strings of coloured
lights lit up at night with the legend 1613–1913 and the empire’s
double-headed eagle, dazzling outsiders, many of which had never seen
electric light. ‘The city was abuzz with onlookers from the provinces,
and the usually well-dressed passers-by who strolled around the Winter
Palace were now outnumbered by the unwashed masses (peasants and workers
in their blouses and caps, and women dressed in rags with headscarves)
». Cf. vid. Figes, Orlando, The Russian Revolution: The Tragedy of a
People (1891–1924), Edhasa, Barcelona, 2010.
[18] The Germans provided financial aid to Lenin and the Bolsheviks,
with the intention that the revolution in the rear would force the
withdrawal of the Russian troops from the front, as it happened. In
March 1918, Russia and Germany signed an armistice in the border city of
Brest-Litovsk (Belarus), under which the Russians renounced large
territories (Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine) and, half
of their industry. At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union
recovered all that was lost in Brest-Litovsk and implanted Red Fascism
throughout its sphere of influence.
[19] The most suppressed hunger riot in the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics was the “butter mutiny” in the city of Novocherkassk, during
the first days of June 1962. In full splendour of the Red Empire, in the
heat of the so-called “Cold war,” Nikita Khrushchev ordered the
installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with the intention of
intimidating the United States and preventing another military
escalation against his new satellite. Aware that the decision could
unleash World War III, he demanded that the Soviet military-industrial
complex increase the production of weapons, decreeing drastic budget
cuts in any sector that was not related to the military sphere. On June
1, the Central Committee of the PCURSS announced an increase in the
prices of the basic basket (the value of meat rose,butter and eggs). The
hardest hit by the rise in prices was suffered by workers whose
companies had just cut wages. Employees of the Novocherkassk “Budyonny”
Electric Locomotive Factory would be one of the most affected groups.
Faced with the situation, the workers declared themselves in a permanent
assembly, which led to a massive protest in which more than 5,000
protesters participated. The communist authorities sent the Red Army
tanks with the aim of frightening them, but when they could not persuade
them, they ordered to open fire on the workers, killing 26 demonstrators
and wounding 87. Seven people were accused of illegal association and
executed for the events; One hundred and five protesters would also be
sentenced, accused of sedition and sentenced to 10 and 15 years in
prison,who at the end of their sentence were forced to sign a document
swearing that they would never divulge these facts. Cf. vid. Mandel, D.,
ed., Novocherkassk 1–3 yunya 1962, g .: zabastovka i rasstrel, Moscow:
Shkola trudovoi demokratii, 1998. Y, Siuda, Pyotr, Novocherkassk
Tragedy, Obschina, 1988.
https://libcom.org/files/1962%20The%20Novocherkassk%20Tragedy.pdf
[20] During the great purge of 1937–38 alone, more than a million people
were killed or perished in the frozen forced labour camps, most of them
former members of the Bolshevik party, workers and peasants.
[21] Cf. vid, Luebbert, Gregory M., Liberalism, fascism or social
democracy. Social classes and political origins of the regimes of
interwar Europe, Presses Universitarias de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, 1997.
[22] Griffin, Roger, “Swastika crosses and forked roads: the fascist
dynamics of the Third Reich,” in Mellon, Joan Antón, Orden , hierarchy
and community. Fascisms, dictatorships and post-fascism in contemporary
Europe, Tecnos, Madrid, 2002, p.109; Payne, Stanley G., History of
fascism, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1995, p.12.
[23] Cf. vid, Preti, Domenico, La modernizzazione corporate (1922–1940):
economy, public health, istituzioni e professioni sanitarie, Franco
Angeli, Milano, 1987; Economia e institzioni nello Stato fascista,
Editori Reuniti, Rome, 1980. And; Pinto, António Costa (ed), Corporatism
and Fascism. The Corporatist Wave in Europe, Routledge, London, 2017.
[24] Paxton, Robert O., Anatomy of fascism, Ediciones Peninsula,
Barcelona, 2005, p.11.
[25] Ibid, pp. 18–19.
[26] Op.Cit, Mosse, George L., pp. 69 et seq.
[27] Mussolini, B., Fascism, Bau Ediciones, Barcelona, 1976.
[28] In the «Carta del Lavoro» (Labor Charter), «political document of
the party» authorized by Benito Mussolini on April 21, 1927 –
anniversary of the founding of Rome, — dictated by the Great Council of
Fascism and published in Il Lavoro d’Italia two days later (23), “the
social rights of Italian workers” would be proclaimed in a
juridical-political-ideological plot that “represents the culminating
point of the great work of renovation of the general legislation that
has harmonically reconstructed the entire Italian legal system, basing
it on the fundamental principles of the Fascist Revolution […] This
document of our Social Revolution as corporate […] presents a happy
synthesis between the two forces that have always accompanied the
millenary history of Rome:tradition and revolution […] the luminous
ideality that the revolution of the black shirts, bathing the tormented
fields of Europe with its blood, in sowing a higher social justice
between individuals and between peoples, tends […] to lead towards
victory, with his strength and with his indomitable spirit, against the
enemies of an enemy word of Faith and Civilization. ” Vine. Mazzoni,
Giuliano, The principles of the “Carta del Lavoro” in the new Italian
codification, Revista de Estudios Políticos, 6, pp. 227–249. Available
at:
Dialnet-LosPrincipiosDeLaCartaDelLavoroEnLaNuevaCodificaci-2126260.pdf
(Consulted 8/30/2020). For additional information see also: Heller,
Hermann, Europa y Fascismo, Condes, FJ (trad.), Preliminary Study
«Fascism and the political crisis of Europe» by José Luis Monereo Pérez,
Editorial Comares,Granada, 2007.
[29] Fulbrook, Mary, History of Germany, Beatriz García Ríos (trans.),
Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.241.
[30] ‘Members of the Wandervögel (‘wandering birds’) dressed in loose
and comfortable sports clothes and went hiking and camping in the
countryside, singing and trying to adopt a lifestyle as natural as
possible; These groups, while still critical of official policy
(especially disregarding parliamentary party politics) and the
established education system, tended to be not only highly
nationalistic, but at the same time anti-materialist and anti-Semitic,
given that modern society identified the Jews with the gross
accumulation of money. ” Ibid, pp. 202–204.
[31] From May 24 to 31, 1989, 282 mass expropriation actions were
registered in Rosario, Córdoba, Mendoza, Tucumán and the Federal
Capital.