This is completley unbalanced and untrue. If you are a student then it is not history you are attempting to study! Generals were safe and drank wine in their Chateau? Wrong! Over 200 were killed in action! Read 'bloody red tabs' by Davies and Maddock. Alternatively look at the excellent Birmingham University School of first world war studies website:  http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/. This is worth checking out. You driveled something about the war being unjust or it all being down to imperialism, reality check! the Kaiser's Germany was a militaristic, autocratic regime that invaded Belguim and France (both emerging democracies in comparison) and had it seized the ferry ports we would have have been done in. Germany started the war, UK and France had to defend themselves. The war was undeniably tragic, but it was with a few exceptions well fought and just. British casualties in action were actually less than thoose in the German or French Armies. Consult websites such as the above and not your ill informed peers before casting judgement on an entire generation, wise up! And get a poppy!

This trolling has sunk to new depths. I never thought I'd see the day when anyone would describe WW1 as well fought and just. Try telling that to the small handful of centenarians who survived the war to this day and they'd probably explode with rage and feel absolutely sickened by your delusional ramblings. I'd rather believe the seven or so of them that are still hanging in there than any number of poncy academics. The war really was started by a single assasins bullet and eventually millions were killed. How can that be just? Britain itself was NOT threatened. We were just paranoid about our foreign (stolen) empire being threatened. That was the only reason all those poor squaddies were ordered to their deaths.

Obviously no-one can say that WW1 was a good thing - millions of innocent young people died on all sides. But to say Britain had no reason to be involved is nonsense. We had long-standing committments to Belgium. Should we have let an innocent nation get run over by the German army? To have one country, Germany, dominate the whole of Europe would also have clearly been bad. Or do anarchists, like the German Social Democrats and Marx, support a great Germanic empire?

The war was triggered by the assasin's bullet, but that was not its cause. Serbia was a magnet to the South Slav peoples under Austro-Hungarian tutelage. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy therefore wanted any excuse to crush Serbia. The cause of the war was the completely unacceptable (deliberately so) ultimatum that they then presented to Serbia.

The causes of WW1 are of course debated. Austria may only have wanted a limited Balkan war. Most no longer believe that Germany deliberately planned war for 1914, but most agree she seized the opportunity to start a war she knew would eventually come if she wanted to fulfill her national goals of dominance.

Try working with historical truth rather than just propaganda that suits your ideology.

"We had long-standing committments to Belgium. Should we have let an innocent nation get run over by the German army?"

We ? It amazes me how much you identify with the British state, you must be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Most of the dead only had long standing commitments to their friends and family. Oh plucky Belgium, were there nuns being murdered and babies being thrown out of carriages ( or was that Kuwait ) ? If the Germans had conquered France then they would have nicked all the best wine and art and went back to Germany 6 months later, as always happened in imperial wars. If that had happened then we wouldn't have seen Versailles, the Nazis and Stalinism although the war still wouldn't have ended all wars.

And 200 dead generals proves what exactly when compared to the millions and millions of killed under their command ?





Well, how'd you do, Private Willie McBride,
D'you mind if I sit down down here by your graveside?
I'll rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
Been walking all day, Lord, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died "clean,"
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?


Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did the pipes play the "Floors1 O' The Forest"?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger, without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Well, the sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land;
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "the cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/05/arts/music/05folk.html

www.cranfield.ac.uk/experts/expert_details.cfm?id=119 - 9k . Just one of the 'poncy academics' that says so! So Belguim and France should have remained under militaristic German rule then? They were still there 4years later and never went home six months later ! We were right to help Belguim and France.

... who

"wrote that what anti-militarism means is that you never take up arms for your masters and that you only fight for the social revolution. He pointed out that it is impossible to work out who the aggressor is in a war such as World War I. If you ask people to fight against the aggressor in a war you are as good as asking them to just obey the orders of your respective governments, who will tell you that it is the other side who is the aggressor."1

The troops were victims of a vicious, pointless, imperial bloodbath. The christmas truce of 1914, which "occurred in spite of opposition at higher levels of the military"2, was a glimpse of another path, but sadly the narratives of the nation-state (backed by the threat of execution/incarceration (by actual cowards) for 'cowardice') triumphed over the narritive of class liberation.

As to leaving occupied countries at the mercy of their occupiers, we should recognise that all states are to one degree or another an occupying power (the baniliues see this). The options are not limited to inaction or inter-state warfare - a false dichotomy always presented to justify the unjustifiable, most recently the massacre in Iraq. The International Brigades in the Spanish revolution/civil war, though ultimately sabotaged by the Soviet Union, are another example of how ordinary people can come to the aid of their peers without the need for state warfare and its inevitable consequence; the conquest/subjugation dynamic which gave us the Versialle treaty, the Nazis, and following their defeat, the decimation of the resistance movements by the 'liberating' armies.

One can never side with the state, any state, in the name of self defence, as the state is an inherently violent institution permanently in a state of war with its subjects.

NEVER AGAIN means we must not repeat the follies of the past. NEVER AGAIN means the troops must mutiny and refuse to be tools of empire.

"The Daily Mail stated that those who died in WW1 "died bravely for their king and country."

Well in reality they did not die for their king but were murdered by their King and murdered by their government"

NEVER AGAIN

1  http://prole.info/pamphlets/malatesta.pdf
2  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

So Britain, Belguim and France should not have fought to resist the Kaiser's Germany! No one should have joined the Armed Forces to defend their country and families from attack. Instead we should have waited for the hordes of well meaning inter-nationalist marxist volunteers who would have flooded Europe and saved us instead! I am not being derogatory about the international brigades, I'm pointing out that anyone who feels that the above is a formula for a democratic nation to sucessfully defend itself is grossly misguided. Also ww1 never caused ww2, Germany took advantage from the mismanaged peace afterwards for it's own ends. Had the league of nations remained strong and Versailles been actually implemented, Germany could not have started another aggressive war. WW1 was tragic, but it was a necessary defensive measure against the German invader of western europe.

Saved us from what Arthur ? Lager and sauerkraut ? What exactly did the Kaiser threaten the rest of Europe with that was worse than a single day of battle ? If they had invaded England then one Germanic King would the replaced his cousins the "Windsors" as nominative head of state - a family coup surely preferable to mass slaughter. The German invaders of western Euope have been quite successful you know. They have successfully occupied Germany for quite some time. And why was it evil for the Germans to occupy Belgium but okay for the Belgians to be occupying the Congo ?


Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.

And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water;
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was waitin', he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
Well, we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

And those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
Never knew there was worse things than dying.

For I'll go no more "Waltzing Matilda,"
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more "Waltzing Matilda" for me.

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory,
And the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.

But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

I'm inclined to agree with Gary. It seems too few of you can.

The writers of history are the winners of history...it's true. Germany was made out to be the bad guy simply because they were the most powerful. Of course the most definitive histories on the war were written in the countries that won - but to look at the First World War as anything other than the stupid family feud that it was, a family feud based in and emanating from "Old" Europe that dragged America into the mix and set the stage for the future murder of millions, yes, by their own governments a little over 2.5 decades later.

But the overall point that World War One was a pointless war, where the young of Europe were sent to die for leaders that cared not a thing for them, I agree with. What we Americans call Veteran's Day is a remembrance day for those who need never have died in the first place.

the point about the international brigades was not that threatened peoples should sit and wait for well meaning lefty sympathisers to fly in and save them, but that the IBs went to the assistance of a strong, well organised indigenous liberation movement (CNT/FAI, UGT/POUM etc) based in workplaces and communities.

The popular militias in spain for example were instrumental in stopping franco's advance by seizing arms and defeating coup-supporting army units on the streets of barcelona etc.

Belgians etc in 1914 could have acted similarly, as could have German, Austrian workers etc... there was no need for mass state-sponsored slaughter which claimed millions of (mainly workers') lives. The christmas truce was a sign of the possibilites of working class direct action, in this case non-violent, to end the war and empire in general.

Being anti-militarist and anti-state does not mean people should not defend themselves. On the contrary, self defence is *the* justifying principle for any violence. But state wars always result in subjugation, humiliation and defeat for ordinary people, with the only victories being for one elite group over another.

Im gonna keep this short. Look at the alliances formed before the war. Look at the mess they created amongst the colonies and the tension that caused between the two sides. The entente and the alliance were both scavenging as imperialists tend to do and it was innevitable that it would lead to conflict. THe war started in 1914 but the world was on a collision course with war from the turn of the century and you can blame britain as much as germany for that. Both were greedy, both were pillaging the earth.

Arthur claims over 200 Generals were killed in action, citing the book 'bloody red tabs' as source. Except that the book gives that figure as the number of dead, wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. The actual number killed was less than 50 on the Western Front, and around 75-80 in all.

Of the 'Chateaux Generals', the General Officers Commanding Divisions, only 12 perished, thirteen, if Lord Kitchener is included. Of those, in five cases, death was not strictly war related - two of the generals were drowned, two were possible suicides and one died in a flying accident.

So, Arthur and Jo, please "Try working with historical truth rather than just propaganda that suits your ideology."

The comments made by Danny are particularly foolish, lager and sauerkraut? Well I meant democracy is worth fighting for! If you prefer tyranny then that's your look out, bit ironic you make that point on Indymedia that's all! You seem to enjoy freedom of speech!The article itself makes several silly statements, not least about the 'wine drinking chateau Generals' a number of whom became casualties, in spite of what the article itself rants on about that and other subjects. To say ww1 was just about imperialism is rather silly, not least as most of the fighting occurred in Western Europe! Perhaps we must agree to disagree but the individual who actually disagreed with me and dissected the statistics in 'bloody red tabs', is only one of you who really made a comment that approached being balanced and intelligent! Right it's saturday night, I have other things to do!

"To say ww1 was just about imperialism is rather silly, not least as most of the fighting occurred in Western Europe!"

yeah, between rival camps of imperial powers. what possible reason could they have to fight each other?

"Well I meant democracy is worth fighting for!"
I agree. It would be nice if we could try democracy for once.
Remind me, how many women could vote in 1914 in England ?
In what way could the English Empire ( sorry, British Empire) claim to be more democratic or progressive than the German state of the time ? In what way did Germany suffer from being conquered by Napoleon previously that could compare to the suffering of the "great war" ? There was no reason to go to war and there is none now.

"If you prefer tyranny then that's your look out, bit ironic you make that point on Indymedia that's all!"
I can't say one false and foriegn monarch is any worse than any other. I am free and oppose tyranny - can you claim the same ?

"You seem to enjoy freedom of speech!"
I enjoy freedom of everything.

"The article itself makes several silly statements, not least about the 'wine drinking chateau Generals' a number of whom became casualties, in spite of what the article itself rants on about that and other subjects."
The generals killed some 15 million by their idiocy, their obediency, and yet you seem to be calling or their veneration when a few of them strayed into harms way. I'd piss on their graves.


"To say ww1 was just about imperialism is rather silly, not least as most of the fighting occurred in Western Europe!"
The Roman Empire occurred mostly in Western Europe - what is your point ? Do you think empires are what the west does to the rest of the world ? It's a global curse I'm afraid. Too many enslaved folk willing to obey orders - and judging from you, willing to believe in them too despite all the evidence placed before you.


"Perhaps we must agree to disagree but the individual who actually disagreed with me and dissected the statistics in 'bloody red tabs', is only one of you who really made a comment that approached being balanced and intelligent! Right it's saturday night, I have other things to do!"
I agree, that was the best rebuttal of your comments. Pity you didn't respond to him, but it is Saturday night and theres good TV on after all.

Arthur's responces are interesting from a "1984" point of view.

This concept that Germany was the Evil Enemy and that Britain was the poor victim is very Orwellian.

The fact is that in 1914 the most Imperial Country in the World was Britain. They invaded, conquerored, imposed dictatorships and did all the bad things which they complained Germany did.

WW1 was never about liberation, freedom or defending democracy. Britain was to blame for WW1 just like Germany was to blame. It is true that Germany was aggressive but so were the British and so were Britain's allies.

And even if i agreed the war was just, at the very least what Britain should have done should have been to just defend the line rather than do their "pushes" which lead to the death of 100,000s.

On the Generals: Well, one should not be naive. The Generals lived, ate, and "fought" very very different to how the privates would.

Finally, Enrico, I found your posts to be extremely interesting and intelligent.

WW1 ? seems that a lot of IMC folks don't have a clue !
As is the norm anyone who puts a few historical facts together must be a raving conspiracy theorist.
Carl Duisberg went to the front to personally supervise the "trials" of chemical weapons on the british troops.
After the war these "weapons" became pesticides, much used in the next 50 or 60 years.
Bayer are stilkl going strong and check some other "theories" below ..

 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0305/S00092.htm

For at least four years while living in Hamburg during the 1990’s terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta was part of a 'joint venture' between the U.S. and German Governments, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, an elite international “exchange” program run by a little-known private organization with close ties to powerful American political figures like David Rockefeller and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The jointly-funded government effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istanbul, and Aleppo in Syria during the years 1994 and 1995, as well as employing him as a “tutor” and “seminar participant” during 1996 and 1997.
Moreover Atta’s financial relationship with the U.S.—German government effort may even extend back to his initial move from Egypt to Germany in 1992, after being “recruited” in Cairo by a mysterious German couple dubbed the “hijacker’s sponsors” in a recent news account in the Chicago Tribune.
Mohamed Atta, before becoming a ‘terrorist ringleader,’ enjoyed the patronage of a government initiative, known as the “ Congress-Bundestag Program," overseen by the U.S. State Department and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, the German equivalent of the U.S. Agency for International Development busy currently supervising the secretive bidding race for tens of billions of dollars of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
All The News That Fits...Under The Rug

Carl Duisberg Mohamed Atta

News that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of the elite international program surfaced in a curious way just a month after the 9/11 attack: a brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the headline “ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS.”
The story quoted spokesmen for “ Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft,” described as a “German international further education organisation,” as having admitted paying Hamburg cadre principal Atta as a “scholarship holder” and “tutor,” between 1995 and 1997.
But what makes the story curious is that the German paper concealed the shocking implications of their story—-that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of a joint U.S.-German government program—-through the simple expedient of neglecting to mention that the “Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft” was merely a private entity set up to administer the "exchange" initiative of the two governments.
The U.S. end of the program is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York by CDS International. The letters stand for Carl Duisberg Society, also the name of its German counterpart in Cologne, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duisberg, a German chemist and industrialist who headed the Bayer Corporation during the 1920’s.
The list of elite power brokers backing CDS International ranges from the aforementioned Kissinger and Rockefeller to former President Bill Clinton and other Democratic heavyweights like former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Clinton White House adviser Ira Magaziner.

 http://www.cbgnetwork.org/277.html

FROM ASPIRIN TO FORCED LABOR
Products like ASPIRIN are not the only things that have been connected to BAYER throughout its history, which extends well into the 19th century. The company is also identified with chemical warfare agents, for "medications" such as HEROIN (an early BAYER trademark), and for countless insecticides and household poisons. The company only thinks of its own profits and continually works with dictators and war criminals - from Hitler to Pinochet. BAYER head Carl Duisberg personally propagated the concept of forced labor during First World War.

 http://pubs.acs.org/journals/pharmcent/company5.html

HERE’S A CUTTING FROM :
THE PHARMACEUTICAL CENTURY, TEN DECADES OF DRUG DISCOVERY 
In 1913, Bayer was Germany’s third largest chemical company and had more than 10,000 employees worldwide. It held 8000 patents for dyes, drugs, and chemicals, including the first patent for synthetic rubber. The company was ideally positioned to aid its country during World War I, but Duisberg, who was chief executive at the time, initially balked at converting Bayer’s dye and chemical factories to explosives production plants. Within months of the 1914 declaration of war, however, Bayer bowed to government pressure and began manufacturing trinitrotoluene (TNT). Other military chemicals soon followed, including chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gases for use in chemical weapons. By the end of the war, Bayer was Germany’s foremost explosives manufacturer, but that focus cost Bayer its position as a dominant chemical company. To make matters worse, the Treaty of Versailles ordered the confiscation of German foreign assets. Sterling Drug of New York acquired American rights to Bayer’s patents, the Bayer name, and other trademarks, including Aspirin.
After the war, inflation and economic depression crippled Germany. Many major industrial companies weathered the difficult period by consolidating. Carl Bosch, of the chemical company BASF, and Duisberg orchestrated a merger of the eight largest German drug and chemical manufacturers in 1925. The resulting Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbenwerke, or I.G. Farben, was then the fourth largest corporation in history. Although Bayer technically ceased to exist after the merger, all I.G. Farben pharmaceuticals were marketed under the Bayer trademark.

This is my last comment on these matters; I will not try to change any minds. I did point out that there is a dearth of academic and other material that contradicts the views on ww1 that are espoused in the article. Presumably you have looked at the Birmingham University website I mentioned earlier or read 'bloody red tabs' and stuck to your opinions anyway. Fair enough. What I think we may even actually begin to agree on is that the article's original point about 'wine drinking generals' is simply untrue. British General's often became casualties themselves, if 75-80 of them were actually killed, then they clearly didn't always stay out of harms way! Furthermore if there was approximately one officer of general rank for every 10 000 'tommies', then that figure equates to the number of overall British fatalities. Being approximately 700 000 killed in western Europe. A truly tragic and terrible war undoubtedly.

Now possibly the more astute will point out that as a general is supposed to control the battle from his headquarters and not expose himself to unnecessary risk, it could be said that many of the generals themselves took unnecessary risks with their own safety! That would actually be a fair criticism perhaps. Accusations of incompetence are also hard to level, bloody mistakes were made but British casualties were less overall than those for the French or Germans. Read Gary Sheffield 'forgotten victory' for further information on that one and other relating issues. Some of you correctly refer to the imperial rivalries of the time. Yet the war never broke out in Africa or Asia, it was in Western Europe with Kaiser’s Germany invading France and Belgium that necessitated a defensive response from the UK. As for the point about 'sauerkraut and lager' that is a joke I assume as a serious comment it is crassly silly. Also what are you on about with references to Napeleon? He was another despot who required a military campaign to end his reign of terror or have you forgotten? WW1 was undeniably tragic, but to suggest that those who fought it were somehow duped into fighting for imperialism and not to defend their country is to demean the intentions of brave men. Should we not have bothered in 1914-18? And let Europe be ruled by a despot? Forget democracy then? Parliamentary rule and instead just have a dictator like the Kaiser? I for one can see the sense in maintaining a civic democracy over that.

"Kaiser’s Germany invading France and Belgium that necessitated a defensive response from the UK"

Your views are completely reasonable witin the framework of statist dualism - 'state A does X which means state B must send its youth to die'. It is that framework i'm questioning, and by extension your conclusions.

As I mention above, there are more options than just inter-state conflict. Militant international resistance like the spanish militias and the International Brigades, or non-violent direct action like the christmas truce are but two examples.

"suggest that those who fought it were somehow duped into fighting for imperialism and not to defend their country is to demean the intentions of brave men."

Thats non-sequitor, if they were duped, they neccessarily did something contrary to their intentions. And they were duped, and in no small measure coerced.

"Should we not have bothered in 1914-18? And let Europe be ruled by a despot? Forget democracy then?"

Back to the statist dualism, 'you're either with us or you're with the terrorists'. No state war is defensive, and this applies doubly to Britain which was *the largest empire in history*, because states are neccessarily based on domination; even if you consent to be ruled by a state, what do you think would happen if you tried to withdraw that consent? COINTELPRO is a clear example ... Consent that cannot be revoked is no consent at all.

If we care about democracy we must support *people* not states, because democracy is 'rule by the people'. Examples include the spanish militias/international brigades, the christmas truce of 1914 and the (pre-bolshevik coup) russian revolution which created direct democracy in many areas and undermined the (former) Tsarist state's capacity for war. Supporting the most powerful imperial state in the world (at the time) in the name of freedom and democracy (sound familiar?) is doublethink of the doubleplusgood order.

There wasn't even universal suffrage in WWI britain, let alone the colonies. We still can't recall elected delegates, something which might raise the system to the *minimum* requirements of a functioning democracy.


We may have to agree to disagree, but whilst the statist paradigm persists, empires will continue to wreak suffering on the ordinary people of the world. Much history is written within this paradigm, or episteme if we want to be all Foucaultian (which is not a bad idea when discussing history as a discourse of power, as we are effectively doing). Its the episteme i'm attacking, not your conclusions per se which are perfectly rational *within* the irrational episteme of our time: statism, empire and permanent war.

My conclusions stem from a rather different assesment of the possibilites, which I have already explored.

all the best

i'm aware i'm using bits of possibly obscure jargon etc to make my case. nothing a search www.wikipedia.org can't fix - thats where i've learned half of it!

And Gary24, thanks, I'm just elaborating on your comments, which i've found useful. Since Arthur offered some sources (the online ones weren't actually to any specific information, but hey), it seems more useful to engage than allow the groupthink anti-troll kneejerk response (which is often justified) to kick in.

I thought this was an interesting discussion.

I liked Arthur's comments even though i disagree.

Finally, I disagree with enrico on one thing. I do think today our government is far less oppressive and far less imperialist etc.............and as a result i think that an Armed Uprising is not neccersary.

But i do agree with the anarchist idea as an ideal society to live in.

In fact the only moral society man should live in is the Libertarian Socialist society which is otherwise known as the anarchists.

what i take from the malatesta quote is that we should 'fight' for social revolution, not neccessarily with violence. I agree that armed uprising is not neccessary (at the moment at least), not least because it would be massively counter-productive in the absence of widespred popular grassroots organisation. I think violence is only justified in the minimum amount neccessary for self-defence, although i do think revolutionary violence can meet this test in certain circumstances (most obviously uprisings against totalitarian regimes etc).

Our priority, both to avoid the slaughters of the past and for all our futures, should be to build 'a new society in the shell of the old' - by spreading horizontal forms of organisation as much as possible. Argentina has seen a surge of this kind of self-activity. Here, social centres, if they can avoid being subcultural ghettos, could play a similar role to those in pre-revolutionary Spain in being hubs for self-organisation. If our efforts are attacked by the state, that may be the time for armed struggle, or for that matter mass nvda. I think it was Gandhi who said 'you should be the change you want to see'. Wise words.


constructive debate, thanks all

You people are so far up the garbage arse of "official history", you can't smell the stench. Your ignorance is astonishing and very sad.

FOLLOW THE MONEY, you bloody idiots.

"Your ignorance is astonishing and very sad"

Censored, that isn't any sort of argument. If you want to refute "official history" then produce a credible counter-argument, supported by reasoned argument and substantive evidence. Elsewise it is your arguments which are astonishingly sad and ill informed.

You oinking twit. There are scores of books on the market which refute the fabricated garbage that is "Official History". Get them and pull your head outta your arse, FFS.

FOLLOW THE MONEY, ignorant moron.

hav you even read this thread?

Really? That many? By reputable sources? Not some WW1 equivalent of David Irving?

Give us the titles then.