For Marc Tomsin (1950-2021)

by Julius Gavroche
June 12, 2021
https://autonomies.org/2021/06/for-marc-tomsin-1950-2021/

There are those whose lives are testimonies to anarchism. Marc Tomsin’s was one such life. We share below a translation of an entry in the Dictionnaire des anarchistes dedicated to him, a letter of remembrance by Raoul Vaneigem, and links to two interviews with him, in french.

We want to thank the not bored collective for sharing their translations with us.

(Since the original post, the not bored collective passed on to us a translation of an interview with Marc Tomsin, which we have added below).

Marc Émile Tomsin
By Hugues Lenoir(1)

Born on 15 June 1950 in Paris (XXth arrondissement), died on 8 June 2021 in Crete (Greece); coordinator [and web administrator] of the Comité de solidarité avec les peuples du Chiapas en lutte (CSPCL), CGT(2) militant, proofreader.

He lived in Paris (XIXth arrondissement) until 1974, then in Poitiers from the fall of 1974 to the summer of 1976, in Toulouse until the spring of 1977 and in Barcelona until the fall of 1979, when he returned to Paris. He was the son of Jacques Tomsin, born in Paris (20 September 1922 – 9 July 1970), and Claudine Labadie, born on 9 October 1926 in Bayonne. His father was a teacher of classical literature at a secondary school until 1965, when he became a teaching assistant at the University of Poitiers. He participated in a libertarian movement after the war and remained an anarchist at heart, belonging to SNES and then SNESup,(3) and generally voting for PSU(4) candidates. His mother was a nurse at the Public Assistance Hospital in Paris, was on the Left politically and had libertarian sympathies during the demonstrations of May 1968.

From 1993 on, Marc Tomsin lived with Eva Ruschmann, a German national from Saarland, born on 13 September 1963 in Neunkirchen, a translator and later a proofreader, a member of the Proofreaders’ Union since 1993.

Marc pursued his secondary education at the lycée Voltaire in Paris (majoring in philosophy, 1969). In 1974, he enrolled in the Philosophy Department of the University of Paris, from which he was expelled following an active boycott of examinations during the summer of 1976, which took place in the context of a practical questioning of the university and its role in society. After reenrolling at the University of Toulouse in 1976, he finally obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy.

At the lycée Voltaire, in the fall of 1967, he undertook his first political engagements, which were influenced by the Provos (Amsterdam, 1966), the Comité Vietnam national (CVN), and the Comités d’action lycéens (1968). He joined the Jeunesse anarchiste communiste (JAC) in January 1968 and participated actively in the May-June 1968 movement (assemblies, demonstrations, riots), often in the company of Guil Teitler, a companion from Voltaire, and Madeleine Mallet (daughter of Serge Mallet, the founder of the PSU). Raoul Vaneigem’s Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes generations(5) was major influence on Marc.

Between the fall of 1968 and 1971, he participated in the Comité d’action place des Fêtes, coming up with a concept of self-management founded on assemblies and total horizontality (no leaders or administrators). When the short-lived JAC came to an end in 1969, he joined the Informations correspondance ouvrières (ICO) network. He became friends with Christian Lagant (Noir et Rouge), a proofreader whose critical anarchism was also a powerful influence. At the time, Marc worked as a warehouse clerk for the NMPP(6) (1971-1972) and as a delivery driver for Le Monde in 1973, in the company of Germinal Clemente, a courier, with whom he started a conspiratorial friendship that later blossomed in Barcelona in 1977.

The destruction of the Place des Fêtes neighborhood and the end of the ICO (1973) caused Marc to leave for Poitiers, then Toulouse, all the while participating in the production of the Parisian journal La Lanterne noire (1974-1977, during which time he first started using the pseudonym Bélial) and the IRL (revue libertaire lyonnaise). In the fall of 1976 he met Maria Mombiola, who, in Toulouse, was drawing attention to the experiments of the Aragon collectives [of the 1930s]. The paths of Germinal and Maria drew Marc to Barcelona and the Journées libertaires internationales (July 1977), where he forged an unbreakable friendship with Diego Camacho (aka Abel Paz). In Barcelona, along with Quim Sirera and Santi Soler (ex-MIL),(7) he participated in the Etcetera collective and engaged in long discussions with Xavier Garriga Paituvi (also ex-MIL).

Upon his return to Paris in the fall of 1979, he was initiated into proofreading by Georges Rubel and joined the CGT proofreaders’ union. He worked for three years in labor-related print shops, at the Encyclopædia Universalis, and then for the daily press (L’Humanité, 1987-1999, and Le Monde, 1999-2006). He was a member of the Union Committee – the annually elected leadership of the Proofreaders’ Union – for seven years, between 1992 and 2001; he was in charge of international solidarity and [job] placement (he was Secretary of Placement in 2001).

In 1985, along with Angèle Soyaux – whom he knew from the ICO back in 1970 – he founded éditions Ludd, which, until its dissolution in 1998, published texts by Kraus, Panizza, Wedekind, Dagerman and Vaneigem.(8)

Ties to Mexico led Marc to participate in the foundation of the Comité de solidarité avec les peuples du Chiapas en lutte (CSPCL) in January 1995. A constructive agreement and solid friendship developed in the collective between Marc and Mexican members Raúl Ornelas Bernal and Jorge Hernandez. In 1996, Marc participated in the European Meeting for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism, held in Berlin in May, and the Intercontinental Meeting in Chiapas (July). Ten trips to Mexico between 1996 and 2006 consolidated his solidarity with the Zapatista villages in Chiapas. He conducted frequent interventions in France and Belgium concerning the situations in Mexico (Chiapas and Oaxaca). In 2007, in Ménilmontant, he founded éditions Rue des Cascades,(9) whose “Les livres de la jungle” collection was dedicated to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In 1997, Marianne Palmiéri made a 28-minute-long documentary about Marc’s libertarian journey titled Anarchiste (G.H. Films).

Upon moving to Greece, he settled in the Exarchia neighborhood [in Athens] around 2017. He died in Crete on 8 June 2021 following a serious accident.

Works:

Articles for La Lanterne noire: “De la grève sauvage à l’autogestion généralisée,”10 #1, July 1974; “Charles Fourier et les détours de l’utopie,” # 4, December 1975; and “Efficacité et stratégie . . . à la Lanterne!” (letter declaring his break with the group), #8, April 1977.

Spanish and French translations of the interview Die Unbeugsamen von der Spree (Ralf Reinders, Fritz Teufel, Gerald Klöpper and Ronald Fritzsch, all of whom were participants in the June 2d Movement), 11 published simultaneously in Barcelona by Ajo blanco and in Paris by Les Temps modernes, # 396-397, July-August 1979.

Articles for Cantonade (the bulletin of the CGT Union of Proofreaders): “Stig Dagerman, un escritor anarquista,” published in 1997 by Etcetera, in Barcelona, as an appendix to “Nuestra necesidad de consuelo es insaciable” (reprinted in 2007 by Pepitas de calabaza, in Logroño, Spain).

Response to an inquiry by Chiapas, “¿Cómo ve Europa a los zapatistas?” Chiapas # 4, June 1997, UNAM,12 Mexico; in French in Les Temps maudits, # 1, June 1997, Paris.

Articles in Le Monde libertaire: “L’expérience zapatiste du soulèvement des montagnes,” and “Par les sentiers de la création et de la rébellion,” hors-série # 21, JulyAugust 2002 ; “Les barricades ferment les rues et ouvrent le chemin,” hors-série # 31, December 2006 – January 2007; and “Le début d’un combat pour l’autonomie individuelle et collective,” hors-série # 34, May-June 2008.

1 From the Dictionnaire des anarchistes. First posted: 13 April 2014; most recent update: 10 June 2021. https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article155092. Translated by NOT BORED! 12 June 2021. All footnotes and [bracketed remarks] by the translator.

2 The Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor).

3 The Syndicat national des enseignement de second degré (National Union of Secondary Education) and the Syndicat national de l’enseignement superior (National Union of Higher Education), respectively.

4 The Parti Socialiste Unifié (Unified Socialist Party).

5 For Vaneigem’s statement about Tomsin’s death: http://www.notbored.org/RV-tomsin.pdf

6 The Nouvelles Messageries de la press parisienne (New Distribution Company of the Parisian Press).

7 The Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (Iberian Liberation Movement), a Catalan separatist group active between 1971 and 1973, based in Barcelona, Spain, and Toulouse, France.

8 Karl Kraus, Oskar Panizza, Frank Wedekind, Stig Dagerman and Raoul Vaneigem.

9 Website: https://www.rue-des livres.com/editeurs/633/rue_des_cascades.html/

10 Title of a work by Raoul Vaneigem that was published in 1974.

11 A violent far-left organization active in West Berlin between 1972 and 1980.

12 The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Autonomous National Univeristy of Mexico).

(translation by the not bored collective)

___

On the death of Marc Tomsin
By Raoul Vaneigem(1)

Three days ago Marc sent me an enthusiastic message that announced that Cretan insurgents had retaken Rosa nera,(2) the legendary squat from which they had been evicted.(3) The next day, in a very boozy state of euphoria, he took a bad fall down some stairs and was killed immediately. (4) He was taken to the emergency room, where the doctors on hand could only confirm that he died suddenly. His departure was astonishing; despite himself, he left us filled with grief and abandoned to the resolution to put an end to this shitty world.

Dear Marc,

You never were, you never will be, one of the living dead who prolong the extended death throes of the old world. This is why I address myself to you in the name of the intense liveliness that never left you and that will continue to be present among us. Beneficiaries of the insurgents of the past, we lay down the foundations for a veritable international of the human being. Choosing the commitment to life is henceforth the only recourse to take against those who spread death over the entire world. That was the battle you chose to wage, and your radiant friendship was often much more effective than diatribes. Your erudition and vigilance as a publisher gave us rare and striking writings. The indefatigable person in charge of la Voie du Jaguar(5) prepared for the imminent arrival of the Zapatistas, who, carriers of a new world, will disembark in an old Europe that is committed to reducing them to slavery. Over all the festivities to come, the shadow of this absent person will fall.

Above all else, you were a friend, Marc. The intimate magic of elective affinities brought us together. Although I know that death picked you out in the midst of the elation of a once again-free Rosa Nera, I remain convinced nonetheless that no death is a happy one.

And yet we were having a conversation, so to speak, when that spark of enthusiasm touched you. I wish to see in this flash of lightning – which was funereal for us and joyous for you – an appeal to never despair of one’s own existence or of that of the world, no matter how run down they may seem.

You always had the art of being able to persuade without giving lessons.

Thank you, Marc.

1 Unpublished manuscript dated and distributed privately on 9 June 2021. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! on 10 June 2021. All footnotes by the translator.

2 “Black Rose” in Italian. In the words of an unsigned communiqué dated 15 September 2020, “Rosa Nera is an autonomous, anti-authoritarian political collective and since 2004, has squatted and given its name to the historical building that was formerly known as the ‘5th Army Division’, declaring it, for the first time in its history, a liberated space”: https://en.squat.net/2020/09/15/chania-rosa-nera-evicted-the-struggle-is....

3 On 5 September 2020.

4 He was 71 years old.

5 Website: https://lavoiedujaguar.net. A search of the site brings up 58 articles that were either written by Vaneigem or that discuss his work.

(translation by the not bored collective)

___

“To compose, typeset, print and publish marvelous books” – An interview with Marc Tomsin(1)

How did your editorial adventures begin? When did you get the idea to publish books?

My first attempt goes back to the 1970s. At the time I was living in Barcelona, where two former members of the MIL(2) had set up a print shop in the working class neighborhood of Gracia with one of my friends, who’d had training in letterpress printing. Encouraged by these friendships, I first published a small book in 1978. It was a short hard-to-find text by Raoul Vaneigem called Isidore Ducasse et le comte de Lautréamont dans les Poésies.(3) Since there were less than a thousand copies printed, I was easily able to distribute it myself, thanks to the name of the author and the theme of the essay. Seven years later, I started again, this time in Paris, where I’d become a proofreader at a print shop. Taking advantage of a period of unemployment, I filed the forms to incorporate a publishing house with a friend, Angèle Soyaux. It was called Ludd, a reference to the hero of the English machine-breakers (the Luddites). That was in 1985, and it lasted until 1998. In total, we published around 30 books, a good number of them by Germanspeaking authors, such as Karl Kraus, Oskar Panizza, Franz Jung, Frank Wedekind and Christian Dietrich Grabbe. Pierre Gallissaires, who worked with éditions Nautilus in Hamburg, did a lot of the translating. All of those books, like the first one, had the particularities of being made in letterpress, composed in linotype and printed in lead, most of them in a Parisian suburb, at the SAIG, which still exists at L’Haÿ-les-Roses. For the two of us, this was craftsmanship: small print runs (a thousand copies on average), few titles (exactly 28 in 12 years), and we did this in addition to our normal salaried work. It was a parallel activity.

In 1993, I dropped out of this project and, five years later, Angèle had to stop: there were successive bankruptcies among the distributors, all kinds of difficulties, the task was becoming too onerous. And so éditions Ludd shut down. I stopped publishing books for about 10 years. In 2007, I found myself at the age for early retirement, and I started up a new nonprofit project under the name Rue des Cascades, this time working by myself when it came to the editorial choices but Angèle created all the book covers. I chose a small-book format and the works are now printed by offset lithography at Lussaud in Vendée, but they always have stitched-and-glued bindings and inside covers.

Rue des Cascades began in a very different way than did the Ludd adventure (which remained limited to the literary domain) because the first published texts were tied to the struggles and histories of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. At that time, I was involved in an international solidarity network that formed back in 1994 and was centered around the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas.(4 )And so the first books we published dealt with that particular subject: an analysis of the rebellion (L’Autonomie, axe de la résistance zapatiste) written by a Mexican friend, Raúl Ornelas Bernal, and a book by Sub-commandant Marcos (Mexique, calendrier de la résistance), which is a kind of inventory and description of the social movements that traversed Mexico between 2001 and 2003. That was the beginning of a series I called Les livres de la jungle,(5) which refers to Chiapas and the jungle – selva in Spanish – Lacandon. There was also La Commune d’Oaxaca, a book that focused on the uprising of the people of the Oaxaca region in 2006. It was the testimony of an author and friend, Georges Lapierre, who’d been a close observer of the development of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. His book was both a chronicle and an analysis of what took place in 2006 and the perspectives opened up in 2007 by the creation of the Voix d’Oaxaca construisant l’autonomie et la liberté (Vocal), a network animated by young libertarians.

How did work on Marcos’ book go? Why did you choose that particular text? Did Marcos know about it?

Marcos had received a letter that I’d written him and that was delivered to him personally to tell him that his text was going to appear in French. Obviously there was no response from him, but we knew that he is a partisan of piracy and that he didn’t seek to obtain copyrights for his works. This letter made it clear that the profits from the sales of the book would be sent to the autonomous Zapatista villages. Concerning the choice of texts, I think that, in Calendrier de la résistance, Marcos – who at the time was writing many communiqués with ease – was attempting to create an authentic book. I also chose that text in particular for its third part, which explains the constitution of the caracoles (“snails” in Spanish, which evoke the symbolism of the spiral) and the Councils of Good Government, that is to say, the coordination and articulation of autonomous villages amongst themselves, forming five regions in the Zapatista zone of influence in Chiapas. That took place in August 2003; it was the response of the indigenous Zapatista peoples and villages to the accords of February 1996 concerning indigenous autonomy and culture. After months of dialogue between indigenous movements from all over of Mexico and civil society, these accords were signed by delegates from the EZLN and representatives from the Mexican federal government, but the latter has never implemented them, unlike the EZLN, which put them into practice through the creation of the caracoles and Councils of Good Government. I think that the explanations provided in this book are truly the clearest and that they allow the reader to understand the means and goals of the Zapatista movement – much better, in any case, than the spectacular aspects presented by the media and often favored by Marcos himself. This practice of autonomy through direct democracy inspires all the indigenous movements, which is highlighted in Joani Hocquenghem’s book(6) about the meeting of indigenous delegations from all over America that took place in Vicam, located in Northern Mexico, in October 2007.

You have also published books on other subjects.

Yes, of course, because I have not lost sight of texts directly concerning anarchism. At the end of 2007, I reprinted a passionate book about Jules Bonnot, En Exil chez les hommes, by the British writer Malcolm Menzies. Based on years of research, it very intelligently describes and retraces the individualist anarchist milieu at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War. After that, the libertarian theme returns with the writings of a Spanish comrade, Tomas Ibáñez: Fragments épars pour un anarchisme sans dogmes. I have also translated and published (under the title Têtes d’orage) the Essais sur l’ingouvernable by a must-read Argentinean anarchist, Christian Ferrer. Alongside these two editorial axis, there are books that I particularly hold dear, like Les Jeux de l’amour et du langage, by Jérôme Peignot, the Écrits of the Surrealist Adrien Dax and, more recently, La Geste des irréguliers, by Métie Navajo, which relates the march of a hundred undocumented immigrants through France in May 2010. Without forgetting a short text by Raoul Vaneigem, L’État n’est plus rien, soyons tout, written in September 2010 for the international meeting at Thessalonica, in Greece.

Where does the name of your publishing house come from?

I live on the rue des Cascades, in Ménilmontant, which is also where I lived as a child. On this street, nearby each other, there’s both Lucio Urtubia’s Espace Louise-Michel, which evokes the Paris Commune as well as the libertarian revolution in Spain, and the Mexican artist Raoul Velasco’s Atelier pour l’estampe et l’art populaire, which every year, at the beginning of November, on the occasion of the Mexican Day of the Dead, displays laughing skeletons – calaveras [in Spanish] – on its walls. Belleville and Ménilmontant were the headquarters of the “apaches” (7) a century ago and the rue des Cascades served as the location for the outdoor scenes in the film Casque d’or. Zoubir’s tiny little bar, in the middle of the street, still welcomes a nocturnal, bohemian and proletarian clientele. More recently, Caroline and Wael took over the Les Cascades bar and it has become a meeting place for the more likeable figures of the neighborhood. Caroline runs writing workshops there and books have their place. I didn’t like the idea of naming the publishing house after its editor in chief. I preferred a somewhat enigmatic name, one that inspired efforts to learn the history or histories that hid behind it.

From the economic or, rather, the counter-economic point of view, how does it work when it comes to paying the potential authors and translators, creating the books, their printing and distribution?

It is extremely precarious, but for the moment, for the last five years, I’ve managed to put out two or three books a year. The authors published by Rue des Cascades, in solidarity and even complicity with this fragile editorial experiment, haven’t asserted their copyrights. The translators are paid according to the currently used criteria. Idem(8) for the printers. I don’t have any office spaces, so the principle costs are the costs of manufacturing and translation, when applicable. There have only been two books – those by Raoul Vaneigem and Georges Lapierre – that have surpassed one thousand copies distributed and allow us to continue. The sales of the others don’t always cover the production costs.

Who takes care of the distribution?

Court-Circuit, which is a small company that started six or seven years ago and distributes the works of approximately 30 publishers, most of them libertarian in inspiration. On occasion, I have also proposed to various bookstores that they host an appearance by an author or a discussion of one of his or her books. The life of books essentially depends on contacts with bookstores, but I won’t go to them personally to present novelties and generate orders. I did that for several years when Ludd was in operation, but it has been the existence of Court-Circuit that has allowed me to get back into publishing without having to occupy myself with distribution.

And what about promotion? Do you get any feedback from the press, etc.?

The media response is practically nonexistent, except for occasional notices in the libertarian press, especially in the bibliographical bulletin À contretemps, which has listed the majority of the books published by Rue des Cascades. When we started, I sent out several press releases. But faced with the virtual absence of results, I stopped doing that. There are exceptions, like when someone requests one or for newspapers such as CQFD.(9) What’s important to me is the presence of small independent and libertarian publishers at the many events that concern books, such as the various anarchist book fairs. This allows for the establishment of direct contact with the readers. That’s truly important for a small company. For example, at the end of 2011, there will be a temporary bookstore set up for three weeks in Paris, at the Halle Saint-Pierre, where the works of 50 small publishers will be exhibited.

Why publish?

I am a book worker. I worked at a printing house at first. The first thing that prompted me to publish was the desire to establish a link between texts and the production of books. The first two books – the one from 1978 and the first one published by éditions Ludd in 1985 – didn’t exist as books or even projected books. In both cases, I wanted to give form to those writings, through typography, composition, and layout, hand-made construction. I have always had in mind the works of Guy Levis Mano, the typographer, poet and translator who, for a half-century, composed, laid out, printed and published marvelous little books in his Parisian workshop. Of course, also playing a role was the desire to explore little-known domains, such as the German one, tying literature to the social movement and the emancipation of mores, of amorous life, which we tried to make better known with éditions Ludd. All this remains little known, even among the libertarians; it truly interests me to explore that domain, which two world wars have almost completely effaced. For that matter, it is this same perspective that prompted me to publish essays about the indigenous peoples of America: books that allow us to understand those movements today, their manner of organizing themselves, their vision of the world and what they seek to achieve are very rare, apart from Marcos’ communiqués and university research. I have sought to publish texts from authors who are both witnesses to and actors who are truly involved in those movements. You can find a book here and there, but there hasn’t been an attempt to create an ensemble of works for an understanding of contemporary indigenous movements. That’s what I am trying to do with the “Les livres de la jungle” collection.

What is your relationship with books and writing in general?

Paradoxically, I feel close to oral transmission, I myself write very little, but I love the idea of taking the book out of its “official” locations, especially the university. I grew up surrounded by books, in my father’s library. Also, anarchism was born in the print shops, among the typographical workers. Libertarian bookstores and publishing houses have always been the best tools for this movement. Today, libraries are emerging alongside many small editorial companies, some of them nomadic (bookmobiles), reviving “public discussions” [causeries populaires] in the manner of the libertarian athenaeums in Spain [in the 1930s]. Books can open wider horizons than those opened by activist or organizational activities. I seek texts that combine form and content, imagination, poetry and social critique.

Germany-Mexico, Mexico-Germany, social movements and literature – you must publish B. Traven!(10)

Yes, Traven provides a junction between Germany and the indigenous peoples of Chiapas. It is true that Traven is a real bridge between these two universes. But I still have not managed to obtain the translation rights.

What links do you establish between libertarian political commitments and editorial activity?

The libertarian milieu allows for a multiplicity and diversity of initiatives. It is resistant to uniformity. I am an anarchist who publishes books but I do not define Rue des Cascades as a libertarian publishing house. On the other hand, I address myself first of all to the readers who recognize themselves in that current of thought and in its history. During the two years I spent in Barcelona, I was encouraged to do this by my old friend Diego Camacho (Abel Paz), for whom the writing, publication and distribution of books is essential to the survival of the movement.

What projects are in the works? What’s the future for Rue des Cascades?

To reach and go beyond the five-year mark. The first book that will appear in 2012 will be Femmes de maïs, a collection of interviews with Zapatista women, as part of the “Livres de la jungle” series. But I also foresee publishing the first story by Georg Glaser, the German author of Secret et violence (Agone, 2005), who was close to the libertarians, a friend of André Prudhommeaux, and a copper craftsman who lived in Paris. His book is a account, written when he was very young, inspired by the vagabond life that he led in his adolescence. It appeared in Germany in 1930 – when Glaser was just 20 years old – and has never been translated into French. Finally, I also envision reprinting a brief and intense philosophical reflection on love by Georges Bataille, which will accompany an essay by Jérôme Peignot. And, in the name of a long friendship, of a conversation conducted in both Barcelona and Paris over the course of three decades, one that brought me so much, I would like to start the translation of the three volumes of Abel Paz’s Mémoires, which are still not yet published in French. This will keep Rue des Cascades busy for several years.

1. Guillaume Goutte, “Composer, mettre en page, imprimer et éditer de merveilleux livres,” Le Monde libertaire, hors-série #43 22 December 2011-22 February 2012: https://blogs.mediapart.fr/guillaume-goutte/blog/080621/m-tomsin-compose.... Translated by NOT BORED! 18 June 2021. All footnotes and [comments within brackets] by the translator.

2. The Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (Iberian Liberation Movement), a Catalan separatist group active between 1971 and 1973, based in Barcelona, Spain, and Toulouse, France.

3. Originally published in Synthèses, #151, Brussels, December 1958. Translated into English: http://www.notbored.org/ducasse.pdf.

4. The Comité de solidarité avec les peuples du Chiapas en lutte (CSPCL).

5. “Books from the Jungle” or perhaps “Jungle Books.”

6. Le Rendez-Vous de Vicam (Les livres de la jungle/Rue des Cascades, 2008).

7. Criminal gangs. Cf. Luc Sante, The Other Paris (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015).

8. Latin for “the same.”

9. Ce qu’il faut dire, détruire, développer, monthly publication devoted to social critique, founded in 2003.

10. Pseudonym of Otto Feige (1882-1969), German libertarian writer.

___

Two interviews, in French, with Marc Tomsin can be read at Le monde libertaire and Mediapart.

There are 10 Comments

Unlike what is said by Not Bored in a footnote to the interview, the MIL was not a "Catalan Separatist group " but an anarcho-anti-capitalist formation.

contact them about your correction

Not Bored will not give two shits about your correction. He's a stubborn and arrogant prick, and has no patience for pipsqueak anarchists taking him to task (for anything). Give it a try, though.

No your wrong I pointed out mistake and they corrected it right away

i just checked his website and it's still there, not changed. what source are you using?

also, learn the difference between you're and your. thanks

i'm sorry i owe you an apology. i checked the wrong website. i thought autonomies was his website but it isn't, it is only a site that copied and pasted the original from Not Bored which has in fact been changed.

i appreciate you looking into this and noticing the relevant differences. apology accepted, but it wasn't necessary -- all you had to do was what you did :-)

The entry on MIL on Wikipedia is accurate. They didn't reproduce texts by Pannekoek and the S.I. because they wanted the Catalan exploiter class to have their own state, cops and prisons. Puig Antich was not a Catalan nationalist.

I am not understand, this is about Marc Tomsin not MIL but every post is about that not him

Do you mean in proper English ---"I do not understand how a bereavement notice about Marc Tomsin deteriorates into an investigation into the actions of the MIL?"
The answer being ---"Because anarchists are obsessessed about the nature and politics of groups who declare themselves to be anarchist in their motives but have shown mostly syndicalist tendencies."

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