What is the purpose of these books?
If these books are written with a purpose—if they are
intended to influence society, if they are meant to induce a change
of perspective in the reader, to assist in the organization of
resistance, to provide direction to a movement; in short, if they
are intended to have an effect in the world—then what reason
could there be to restrict their copying? Do such restrictions
serve the purpose of writing or will they only hinder it?
Profit!
How easily the most well-meaning radical is enticed by the lure of
the ethical profession, of the ‘good life within the
bad’—that dream of somehow ‘making a
living’ in the capitalist economy, by opposing it. A servant
can serve only one master: once introduced, the requisition of
profit permeates totally any endeavor. Revolutionary writing would
eschew all the legal and economic demands of originality,
entertainment value, marketability. The book with a purpose is a
collage: it borrows without scruples and attributes only when
attribution serves a communicative function; it targets its
audience not as a market to appease, seeking mass appeal, but
rather seeks that minority, however small, of truly receptive
listeners—as actors to incite. Every decision of the
author—the topic, the structure, the conventions of
scholarship and style, the mode of address, the relation of the
author to the reader, the decision, even, of whether to
write—every written word is infused with this question of
purpose. Profit cannot be reconciled with revolution.
Anything worth reading is worth copying.
Every book is a life form whose progeny spreads—or
perishes—as information diffuses into society. We do not need
fresh distractions, books to make us feel important, as if our
opinion mattered, to make us feel superior to the ignorant, to tell
us what we already know. We do not need another thing to shop for.
We do not need publishers to tell us what to read, to decide on the
basis of their own profit who will write the words that become who
we are.
Make your own books. Spread the seeds of a new society.
Samizdat
email: samizdat@lists.riseup.net
web: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/samizdat