There is such a thing as “word exhaustion”, the feeling of weariness that comes over a reader when they feel that a piece of text has outstayed its welcome and the author should probably learn at what point the reader is likely to lose interest. I have a two volume version of “The World As Will And Representation” by Schopenhauer on my bookcase, which runs to 1200 pages — I barely made my way through the explanation of what The Will entails before giving up; The Coming Insurrection is ninety pages long, and is sufficient to start a world-changing revolution.

Written in the aftermath of the 2005 Paris riots by a French group calling themselves The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection really only has one aim: to prepare the burgeoning, but clearly disorientated, radical elements of urban society for a period of rapid social change. In the words of the “authors”:

It is no longer a matter of foretelling the collapse or depicting the possibilities of joy. Whether it comes sooner or later, the point is to prepare for it. It’s not a question of providing a schema for what an insurrection should be, but of taking the possibility of an uprising for what it never should have ceased being: a vital impulse of youth as much as a popular wisdom. If one knows how to move, the absence of a schema is not an obstacle but an opportunity. For the insurgents, it is the sole space that can guarantee the essential: keeping the initiative. What remains to be created, to be tended as one tends a fire, is a certain outlook, a certain tactical fever, which once it has emerged, even now, reveals itself as determinant – and a constant source of determination. Already certain questions have been revived that only yesterday may have seemed grotesque or outmoded; they need to be seized upon, not in order to respond to them definitively, but to make them live.

What is remarkable about this statement, from the introduction, is how self-limiting it appears to be: there are no policies, no agendas, there is no call for collective action or organisation; just a set of statements that declare what is and what must be in the barest, most stripped down manner. Yet, within this austere text is an energy and motivation entirely missing from any of the so-called “programs for change” that are published on an almost annual basis by the social and environmental mainstream. There is also a turn of phrase that is utterly poetic but somehow manages to remain far removed from the romantic visions of the French enlightenment.

Social change was never so clearly, and appetisingly stated.

And perhaps that is what prompted Glenn Beck of Fox News to decry the formerly low-key booklet as a “dangerous leftist book” and “a call to arms for violent revolution”. In his panicky opinion piece, Beck quotes a section from The Coming Insurrection thus:

Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary. There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary.

What he does not do is quote the rest of the paragraph, which is taken from a relatively small section near the end of the text concerning the need to defend against the almost inevitable militerisation of any government reaction to potential uprising. Had he done so, he would have had to have quoted as follows:

There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary: it’s a question of doing everything possible to make using them unnecessary. An insurrection is more about taking up arms and maintaining an “armed presence” than it is about armed struggle. We need to distinguish clearly between being armed and the use of arms. Weapons are a constant in revolutionary situations, but their use is infrequent and rarely decisive at key turning points: August 10th 1792, March 18th 1871, October 1917. When power is in the gutter, it’s enough to walk over it.

Because of the distance that separates us from them, weapons have taken on a kind of double character of fascination and disgust that can be overcome only by handling them. An authentic pacifism cannot mean refusing weapons, but only refusing to use them.

In other words: “Accept that weapons may be necessary, but only use them as a last resort.” This is not some mindless rant by gun-toting revolutionaries; it is a beautifully written, carefully thought out digest of a set of pertinent ideas in dire need of communication. French text is sublime at its best, although terrifically difficult to translate while still keeping its original meaning: what I find particularly heartening is the effort that has gone into the English language translation; it still feels French; you can almost smell the damp corners of the squats, and taste the bitter dregs of coffee at the bottom of the cups recently emptied by those people who are likely to have a hand in whatever comes afterwards in their parts of the city.

Of course there are problems, but these are few: uppermost is the bloody-minded determination to remain in the aforementioned squats and abandoned office buildings in order to remove the power base that has turned humanity into an apathetic mass of automata. Those who wish to take up the call in the cities will either be incredibly brave or incredibly foolish; but there are other ways, and this is perhaps the omission that will put many readers off. Those that have to stomach to face the system head-on are to be praised, but not at the expense of those who wish to persue other, less confrontational forms of rebellion.

Less critical, but nevertheless worth mentioning, is the term “Ecology” earlier in the text, which is met with scorn because it is seen to legitimise the separation between nature and humanity. This seems to be no more than a translation issue, for the term “L’Ecologie” in French has been usurped to have the same meaning as the English “Environmentalism”. In this sense the criticism is justified, for the modern environmental movement across the Industrial West has little to do with the ecology that humanity is utterly dependent upon.

Regardless of whether you disagree with the need for fundamental, self-imposed social change or not, The Coming Insurrection needs to be read to be fully understood; it will only take you a short while to read, but like it or not, it will affect you.

To buy the booklet, go to Amazon.com. Alternatively you can read the full text online, or download both the French and English text (in booklet form for printing) from the Support the Tarnac 9 website.

Keith Farnish is author of “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis“