Ted Kaczynski (2001)

I see from Green Anarchy No.6, page 7, that Jesús Sepúlveda says the Zapatistas are resisting modernization. If that’s true, then they had better get rid of Subcomandante Marcos, ¡muy pronto! The good Subcomandante is no o
pponent of modernization. Here are some quotes from a speech that he gave during the Zapatistas’ recent march on Mexico City:

“If we don’t already have enough money for medicine, now they will be taking another bit out of our wages …

“The economic packages … mean nothing to us but more taxes, price increases, salary reductions, more unemployment, fewer work benefits, lower budgets for education, less housing, fewer services, less food, fewer lands, fewer hospitals, fewer doctors, less medicine.

“…[O]n what used to be our land, we put up airports for the new bosses. But we will never travel in a plane. Similarly, we build highways, and we will never have an automobile. We build entertainment centers, and we will never have access to them. We put up shopping centers, and we will never have money to shop in them. We build urban zones with all the services, and we will only see them from afar. We erect modem hotels, and we will never stay in them.

“In short, we are putting up a world which excludes us.

“You made the house, you put in the electricity, the water, the plumbing. You paved the street. You planted the garden. You built the furniture. You painted the walls. You set the tables. You got the food. You prepared the meal.

“And you are left outside. Because someone else came in and occupied the house.

“Someone else is the one whose life is illuminated. Someone else is the one who cleans himself up; the one who goes in the vehicle; the one who uses the furniture; the one who enjoys our work; the one who is fed…

“The one which has the light, prosperity, progress, joy, hope is theirs, those who, being few, have everything.

“The street and the countryside are for us. They call our destitution home.

“You will leave school and you will find there are no jobs, and if there are any, they are poorly paid. Graduating from a public school is good for nothing but third-rate employment”

(From a speech by Subcomandante Marcos at National Polytechnic Institute, Zacotenco, Mexico, March, 200 I, as quoted in English translation in Food & Water Journal, Summer, 2001, pages 24-27.)

It’s clear what Subcomandante Marcos is driving at, and it isn’t an end to modernity. He just wants the poor people to have their fair share of the technological pie. Undoubtedly, poor people do deserve their share of the pie—if you accept that the pie should exist at all. But if you don’t believe that there should be any electricity, plumbing, modern medicine, schools, or jobs, then it makes no sense to say that poor people ought to have a share of these things.

It’s an old, sad, often-repeated story: True and genuine popular rebellion is taken over by sophisticated leftist intellectuals—in this case Subcomandante Marx, I mean Marcos, and his cronies—who manipulate it, betray it, and pervert it to their own ends. The leftists have done this again and again. When will people ever learn? When will you, green anarchists, ever learn?

This text was transcribed by the editorial team of The Wildernist, an anti-industrial conservation magazine.