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CATALOG INDEX - Books - CD-ROM - Comics - Journals - Pamphlets

Venomous Butterfly Publications is a project intended to provide theoretical and analytical tools for use in developing an insurrectionary anarchist project with the aim of the complete transformation of our existence. Thus, nothing offered here is intended to be taken as a final answer. Rather these are ideas to be wrestled with, debated and experimented with in the attempt to realize liberation at all levels. It is necessary to question everything: all the institutions of society, the entirety of civilization, all of the historical practices of anarchists and revolutionaries and every word of every pamphlet offered here. Such critical thinking and debate are necessary to hone our theoretical and practical tools.

To contact Venomous Butterfly Publications directly, email acraticus@angrynerds.com
or write: VBP / 818 SW 3rd Ave. PMB #1237 / Portland, OR 97204

General Theory and Analysis

Willful Disobedience: Analysis and Theory, volume 2, #1-6, $3
A selection of articles from Willful Disobedience expressing social analysis and revolutionary anarchist theory intended as a tool for discussion and the development of a insurrectional anarchist practice. No final answers here.

Willful Disobedience: Analysis and Theory, volume 2, #7-9, $2
A continuation of the previous pamphlet with the same aim.

Willful Disobedience: Analysis and Theory, volume 2, #10-12, $2
Still more selections from WD.

Willful Disobedience, Volume 1, $3
Essays from the earlier incarnation of Willful Disobedience.

Willful Disobedience: Analysis and Theory, volume 3, $3

A Balanced Account of the World: A critical look at the scientific worldview by Wolfi Landstreicher, $1
This essay, which originally appeared in Killing King Abacus #2, examines how the modern scientific worldview was born, developed and changed with the developments of the capitalist system, remaining its faithful ideological servant.

At the Center of the Volcano by Dominique Misein, $1
Translated from the anarchist journal Diavolo In Corpo, this writing critically examines the concepts of revolution of the 19th and 20th century in light of the reality of riot and insurrection that never follows the blueprints of the rational architects of revolution. “Now revolt has no more reasons to put forward, it is without precise and explicit objectives and rarely proposes anything pro-positive. The point of departure is a general negation in which economic, political, social and daily life aspects are blended."

Barbaric Thoughts: On a Revolutionary Critique of Civilization, $2
An examination of what a revolutionary critique of civilization might look like with a critical examination of elements within the current anti-civilization anarchist milieu that hinder the development of such a critique. An attempt to discover where a critique of civilization meets the reality of a social struggle. The beginning of a discussion.

From Politics to Life: Ridding anarchy of the leftist millstone by Wolfi Landstreicher, $1
A call to anarchists to rid themselves of the political baggage that holds us back from challenging the totality of our current existence, including the fetishism of the organization, democracy, the making of demands, faith in progress, identity politics, collectivism and ideology.

Barbarians: Disordered Insurgence by Crisso and Odoteo, $3
Some Italian anarchists take the barbarian sword of critique and fiercely slice through the obscure and confusing post-modern academic language of Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, revealing the recuperative filth that lies within.

The Network of Domination by Wolfi Landstreicher, $3
A series of brief essays from Willful Disobedience examining the institutions, structures, systems and social relationships through which this civilization of domination is maintained and reproduced.

The Current Faces of Misery: a proposal for discussion, $1
This pamphlet is intended to provoke discussion about the world we live in and how to confront it. It includes brief descriptions of specific aspects of the current realities and proposals for ways to begin to confront them.

A Project of Liberation by the Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territory, $2
The theoretical and analytical writing from these Canadian comrades offers ideas for discussion among anarchists seeking to create an insurgent practice in the world in a simple and intelligent way. A good introduction to the ideas of some contemporary North American insurrectionary anarchists.

Contemporary Class Analysis

A Manuscript Found in Vitoria addressed to all Spanish Internationalists and to all the Proletariat by the Uncontrollables, $2
This anonymous text first appeared in English in the book Wildcat Spain Encounters Democracy 1976-1978. It is an analysis of the wildcat workers struggles that broke out at the time Franco died and the democratic state was being established in Spain, made by anonymous participants in that uprising. It is a useful text in clarifying the ways in which insurgent people tend to organize their own struggles and the ways in which the organizations that claim to represent workers (unions, parties, etc.) in fact act to undermine the self-organization of the exploited and to recuperate their struggles. This is a revision of that translation, which appeared on the Not Bored web site.

The Undesirables, $1
A series of short essays translated from the Italian, analyzing current changes going on in class relationships and exploitation from an anarchist perspective.

To the Wanderers, $1
An analysis by some Italian comrades of the universal uprooting imposed by capital and its specific expression in large-scale immigration and the detention centers for undocumented aliens. “Why have we talked so much about immigration and racism…since at the moment, we are not directly touched by the problems of wandering and expulsion? The same capitalism increasingly brings our live together under the standard of precariousness and the impossibility of determining our present and our future…”

On Behalf of the Barbarians by Bleu Marin, $1
An analysis of the current social struggle that indicates how the crisis of meaning imposed by the civilized “progress” as it undermines every aspect of life – social, physical, intellectual, emotional and natural – has brought us to the point where the struggle of the exploited and excluded classes can only realize itself precisely as a struggle for de-civilization. The exploited and dispossessed no longer have anything to say to the rulers and masters of this world. Demands mean nothing. The time has come for destruction and the consequent reopening of the possibility of dreaming – a new world will be a world absolutely other.

War and State Terror in their Current Forms

A War Nearby by Lope Vargas, $2
An analysis of the events of the last several years in the former Yugoslavia and Albania, exposing the workings of the state and powerful economic interests. An interesting anarchist analysis of events that expose the horrors of the social order very clearly.

Neither Their War Nor Their Peace, $3
A collection of articles expressing an explicitly anarchist anti-militarist perspective, dealing with the “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia and the current “war on terrorism”.

Fawda by the Friends of Al Halladj, $1
An analysis of the Palestinian situation from an anarchist perspective. “…it is not a question of supporting a Palestinian state. We do not want to find ourselves one day united with old victims who have become butchers… Thus it is not about forcing the Israeli state to respect the rights of Palestinians, nor supporting the formation of a new Palestinian state. Rather it is a question of starting to practice desertion, refusal, sabotage, attack, destruction against every constituted authority, all power, every state.”

Endless War, $3
More writings examining the current face of warfare, particularly the “war on terrorism” including the second Gulf war, from an anarchist perspective.

The Practice of Struggle

Against the Logic of Submission, $2
This series of articles from Willful Disobedience examine the necessity of the subversive transformation of ourselves and our relationships, and practices, as well as ideologies and methodologies that hinder this. The project of revolt is a project of attack, yes, but also of the subversion of social relationships and the transformation of existence. It is not a cause to which we give ourselves, but the reappropriation of our lives.

Against the Legalization of Occupied Spaces by El Paso Occupato and Barocchio Occupato, $2
This text by people from two anarchist occupied spaces in Italy explains their projects in terms of social subversion and the transformation of existence. Significant for its understanding of revolution as a way of encountering life.

On Sabotage as One of the Fine Arts: a contribution to the topic of the theory of the practice of Sabotage, $1
An analysis of the practice of sabotage as an essential aspect of class struggle and the subversion of the existent.

N’Drea: One Woman’s Fight to Die Her Own Way by Andrea Dorea, $5
Andrea was involved in Os Cangaceiros, a group of social rebels in France who fiercely attacked the prison system and the social order of capital in the 1980’s and 90’s. In 1985, she found out she had cancer and, after experiencing treatment, made the choice to grasp her death as she had grasped her life, with intensity and passion, in revolt against the ruling order. This work is at the same time a strong condemnation of the medical industry, a passionate theoretical analysis of the society of the commodity and its destruction of the human individual on all levels, and the personal expression of one woman’s decision to live her life fully and to die on her own terms among those she loved, in defiance of a society that steals both our lives and deaths away.

On the Question of Organization, $1
The texts that make up this brief pamphlet first appeared in English in the journal Insurrection. They come out of the analyses made by Italian insurrectional anarchists of their experiences in the social struggles that became so widespread in Italy in the 1970’s. They combine a commitment to anarchist and revolutionary principles with a desire to find ways to act against the social order here and now that lead neither to reformism nor to self-ghettoization, but rather to an ongoing practice of social revolt.

Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon (Expanded), $2
Some tools for use in debates, discussions, meetings, study groups and in developing an incisive anarchist theory and practice. This includes an excerpt from The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner about critical thought, some specific tools for analyzing arguments, a brief listing of fallacious methods of argumentation, a brief piece on critical thinking as an anarchist methodology and an essay on critical theory.

How Anarchist Is the Platform? by Dielo Trouda, Errico Malatesta and Nestor Makhno, $2
In 1926, a small group of expatriate Russian anarchists sought to examine the failures of anarchists in the Russian revolution. They presented their conclusions as an organizational proposal, the “Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Project)”. Most anarchists rejected the proposal as in contradiction with basic anarchist principles. Malatesta was perhaps the one to express this rejection most clearly. Since for some reason, nearly 80 years later, under circumstances drastically different than those in which the Platform was first proposed, some anarchists are trying to revive it, I have decided to print this pamphlet that includes extensive excerpts from the Platform itself, and a critical interchange between Makhno and Malatesta about it. I still consider Malatesta’s strong yet comradely critique to be the best argument against the Platform I have seen. My introduction seeks to look at the problem of anarchist organization and why the Platform is no solution.

Caught in the Web of Deception: Anarchists and the media, $1
An examination of the mass media first from a theoretical level in the essay “Caught in the Web of Deception”, reprinted from Killing King Abacus, and then from the practical experience of some Italian comrades dealing with the invasion of the funeral of their friend by necrophilic journalists.

Autonomous Self-Organization and Anarchist Intervention: A Tension in Practice, $2
A revolution capable of destroying all domination and exploitation would have to be based on the self-organized struggle of those who suffer domination and exploitation. We are among these exploited and dispossessed individuals, but as anarchists we come to the struggle with more than the need for an immediate improvement of conditions. We also have specific ideas about how the present world functions, and desires and dreams of a fundamentally different world. Thus our participation is an intervention aimed toward the revolutionary destruction of this social order and the creation of a new world based precisely on principles of self-organization. This pamphlet is an exploration of the tension this produces in our practice, using both theoretical reflection and the examination of specific situations of self-organized struggle and anarchist intervention.

The Repressive Apparatus and the Struggle Against It

Policing on the Global Scale, $2
An examination of the relationship between current military operations, crowd control techniques, technologies of surveillance and control and their intrusion into our lives.

Non-Lethal Disabling Weapons: New Military Technologies, $1
As military activity takes on the task of global policing (and police activity begins to use military tactics), technologies fitting for this new role develop, increasing the capacity of the state to practice war/policing/repression in an apparently “humanitarian” manner. This pamphlet analyzes this technology.

Towards an Alliance of Flames in Each Indignant Heart by the Claustrophobia collective, $2
A discussion of anarchist anti-prison and prisoner solidarity projects calling for passionate solidarity with all acts of rebellion against domination.

The Marini Trial, $3
An overview of a fierce repressive attack by the Italian state against anarchists there. There are many lessons to be learned about the repressive strategies of the state and about revolutionary solidarity and the strains it undergoes under harsh conditions of repression. The pamphlet includes a brief overview of the events surrounding the Marini investigation and trial as well as extensive documentation (flyer and poster texts, articles from anarchist papers, public letters, etc..) relating to the event. This is intended as a tool to be learned as well as a call to solidarity with the Italian comrades whose trial has not ended and who are facing numerous other attacks from the state.

Rants, Poetry and Literature

Toward the Creative Nothing and other writings by Renzo Novatore, $3
“It is difficult to find anarchist works in English that are at the same time ‘individualist’ and explicitly revolutionary, that emphasize the centrality of the aim of individual self-determination to a revolution that will ‘communalize material wealth’ as it will ‘individualize spiritual wealth’. For this and other reasons I have translated Toward the Creative Nothing by Renzo Novatore.”—from the introduction.

The Rebel’s Dark Laughter, writings of Bruno Filippi, $3
This young Italian anarchist (he died at the age of 19 in a failed attack against the ruling class of Milan) offers something rare in anarchist writing—beautiful literature. His dark, often cynical essays, stories and prose poems show no mercy for domination or servitude, but in the midst of the cynicism and contempt there is also humor, joy and love of life.

Reasons of Flame by Wolfi Landstreicher, $3
This is unabashed self-indulgence: rants and surrealist “poetry” reflecting my own wrestlings with this world.

Consuming Fire by Wolfi Landstreicher, $2
More self-indulgence consisting of journal entries and examinations of my own life and relationships in terms of the project of revolt and subversion that I am trying to create.

The Harmfulness of Industrial/Capitalist Civilization

Against the Engineering of Life by Rene Riesel, $3
Texts by Rene Riesel – known for his involvement in the ‘60’s with the Enrages and the Situationists – and the Association Against Scientistic Obscurantism and Industrial Despotism, concerning the complete subjugation of life in its most basic biological aspect to capital and the resistance against this process.