Customer Reviews

Durruti: The People Armed (Black Rose Books ; No. F. 28)

5 star:		(2)
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The star system's clearly flawed,not being open ended.This is one of the most important books ever.Durutti was a metal worker who aspired to be an anarchist bookshop proprietor.He became a revolutionary,one of the greatest that ever lived and inspired millions with his words,deeds and fateful sacrifice at the peak of the spanish civil war.How much differance one persons life can make shines through in durruti's own words that quoted regularly through the text.While abels own prose may seem a little different to english lit.crits.being translated from spanish.Durruti speaks directly and forcefully to the reader,its impossible not to be affected as the extraordinary cinematic episodes of his life and words as they unfold.There are also periods of repression and pain that his wife and comrades such as ascaso and 'los solidarios' and 'the wanderers'help our herculean,selfless promeathean protaganist through.If you liked papillon and homage to catalonia and know of Makhno,you should love and return to this book for inspiration as much as I do.

I agree with the previous reviewer 100%. This book, which I read about 20 years ago, is one of the most inspiring works I have ever read, one that appears to borrow its style somewhat from Duetcher's biography of Trotsky. It puts the lie to the assertion that people need to subordinate themselves to professional political hacks and bureaucrats in order to be led through social change and revolution. Durrutti was the leader of a trade union, the CNT, similar to the IWW, but comparatively several times larger than the AFL-CIO today, with approximately half the Spanish working class organized.

Durruti, a metalworker who had previously been active in building solidarity with Sacco&Vanzetti and who had been acquainted with exiled Ukrainian insurgent leader Nestro Makhno when he was in France, became a military leader of the Anarchist armed affinity groups that defeated the Fascist regular army in Barcelona in 1936. He was later killed in combat. "This civil war is a class war" he commented to the press at the time. Half a million people attended the funeral of "the great apostle of the liberties of the people" in Barcelona.