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Translating the revolution

Anonymous | 10.06.2009 23:20 | Analysis | World

We must put more effort into translating revolutionary literature, but also street news, in more languages.


A translator acts as a bridge across cultures by importing or exporting not only books but also concepts and fresh ideas across distant countries. Most importantly, however, the translator is capable of transferring new innovations across linguistic and political boundaries; innovations that might be scientotechnological, artistical, philosophical, or political - the latter category being of special interest to revolutionaries.


The proletarian struggle, especially its anarchocommunist and autonomist currents, is internationalist because the proletariat confronts the same cruel exploitation everywhere. Thus, revolutionaries need to escape the language boundaries in order to reach the minds of comrades in different places. Translation of new revolutionary innovations becomes even more important in a world where the bourgoisie is being globalized, which results in easy propagation of new security measures across the states.


It is necessary to put more effort in translating in as many languages as possible revolutionary, anarchist, and autonomist literature, but also news from the street and briefings on imprisoned comrades. Translations into languages spoken by immigrant communities is also very important. While some languages might seem more popular than others, all are important.


Some texts are too large to be translated by a single working comrade. Therefore, it would be a good idea to set up anonymous wikis on the internet and put the original text there, allowing any visitor to translate from a single word to whole chapters. This way, everyone will be able to contribute something, no matter their free time. A well-built wiki software package can be found at  http://www.mediawiki.org/


Teaching foreign languages can also be organized in squats and other social centres used by our movement. Some squats around the world already organize free lessons for various languages, and this trend should continue.


Anonymous

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?

11.06.2009 00:27

arn't proletarians the "workers"?

sled


always

11.06.2009 00:49

Not always, proletarians aren't necessarily the workers. A proletarian is a person who has no wealth, and therefore their only way to survive in a capitalist society is to sell their labour, ie to work. But it isn't necessarily for a person to work in order to be a proletarian. A proletarian can be an unemployed person or a student. As long as your only source of income is work, then you are a proletarian, but it isn't necessary to work in order to be one, just to have no other possible income sources than work. So, all workers are proletarians, but not all proletarians are workers. The distinction is mostly an academic one, though. What matters is that there are the rich and the poor, or the powerful and the oppressed, or the capitalists and the common people. There are two groups of people with common characteristics amongst them, two social classes, that have different views on how to organise politically, the capitalists wanting private property and the common people wanting to share everything, as they do in P2P (peer to peer) networks and the free software (mistakenly called opensource) community.

Not


to Not

11.06.2009 12:01

To Not,

Hmmm....I'm not sure the world can be divided up quite so simply as you suggest: between a rich class who are property owning, and a proletarian one that want to share everything. If only it was that black and white! I think there are plenty of so-called proletarians who believe just as firmly in private property, for whatever reason. The whole idea of a 'property-owning democracy' as Thatcher put it, managed to seduce a huge amount of people: just look at how many former council tenants took up the right-to-buy scheme. Today, in property-obsessed Britain there is a mad scramble to get on the property ladder which cuts across social classes. Of course, if you are right at the bottom, you are much less likely to own property. Yet it is an aspiration that is inculcated in many people and which makes distinctions such as the ones you used increasingly blurry.

tree frog


false consciousness

11.06.2009 21:54

Everyone who has to work is a proletarian, whether they understand it or not. Most proletarians dont understand their position because they have a false consciousness, imprinted to them by the bourgeoisie media. This false consciousness is destroyed pretty easily once a proletarian comes into contact with revolutionary social movements and develops a basic understanding of social theory.

Decembrist


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haves and have-nots

12.06.2009 01:52

You could argue that "life is what you make it".

If you gathered all the wealth in the world up and split it equally it would still not fix the problem. One person would go to the pub everynight and spend it on beer, whilst another would invest it in tools, training or a small business.

To force either person to change their behaviour is being a fascist and removing their freedom, so there really is nothing you can do about it.

There will always be "haves" and "have nots". And the "have-nots" will always be jealous of the "haves". Even if we get rid of money and abolish paid work, you will always get someone whos got more grain than the next man. Then the moaning and complaining will start all over again.

joseph


Long time from May til December

14.06.2009 18:04

>Everyone who has to work is a proletarian

Is an utterly meaningless and empty simplistic statement. Nobody needs to work, nobody needs to do anything, class is about the level of coercion brought against the disobedient by states and employers.

Danny


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