Quotations

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On moles and their habitats: Learn how Marx and later thinkers used moles as a powerful symbol

But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through purgatory. It does its work methodically...And when it has accomplished this... Europe will leap from its seat and exult: Well burrowed, old mole!

- Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire

Marx tried to understand the cycle of working class struggles that were emerging in nineteenth century Europe in terms of a mole and its subterranean tunnels. The mole would surface from below in joyous revolutionary moments which developed from the ground up (1830, 1848...). Between these joyous moments, the mole moves underground, not to hide passively, but to dig out new paths, finding new possibilities for subversion.

One or several moles?

We can try and understand the new global cycle of struggles against twentieth century capitalism in terms of a 'tribe of moles.' The moles burrow out a series of North West passages to a multiplicity of new worlds and new ways of living - from Argentinian factory occupations to the Indymedia network, to Reclaim the Streets, to social centres like this one around the globe. Alternatives built from the ground up by ordinairy people, digging out a space for themselves to live despite the pressures of work and money.

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Contributed by Gavin