The ACF has always argued that the Labor Party is little more than an expression of the interests of a faction of the ruling class. With the launching of New Labor this is now more evident than ever. Various sections of the Left are now re-aligning in attempts to fill the political void — i.e. to claim to speak for the working class and to win our votes. Last Organize! featured analysis of Arthur Scargill’s new baby, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), which is still rooted in the old fashioned belief that socialist trade unionism, with the appropriate political support, can turn things around for the working class. In response, new initiatives by Militant, Workers Revolutionary Party Workers Press and others concentrate on politic... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The ‘centrist turn’ that Labor is now making is being blamed by many traditional Labor Party members and by those outside like the SWP as being down to the actions of one man and his clique-the nasty Tony Blair. If only it were as simple as that.
The accelerated rotting of Laborism has taken place because, like similar parties throughout the world- the French Socialist Party, Greek PASOK, Spanish PSOE,for example- it cannot adapt to the end of Keynesian economic strategy which involved the development of a Welfare State and ‘full employment’. It can no longer even make any promises that it can carry out a reformist program to transform capitalism into something more ‘humane’ (but still exploitative) But ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In October 500,000 students of the lycees (high schools) demonstrated in almost every French town. Claude Allegre, Minister of Education, who has followed a course of confrontation with the teachers, turned himself into a Father Christmas with the students, concerned as he was with the strength of the demonstrations.
The demands of the students were simple-lightening of learning programs and decrease in class sizes-the average class size is between 30 and 40 while the recommended class size is between 20 and 25; the filling of all vacant teachers posts. Allegre played the old game of pretending to listen to the students demands, making vague promises, letting negotiations drag on til the school holidays came along, multiplying the demagogi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Few people, particularly Merseysiders, will have forgotten the events of April 15th 1989, when 96 football fans died at Hillsborough. The survivors and the relatives of the dead certainly haven’t forgotten, however much the state wishes they would. Rather, after nine years of struggling to find the truth about the events of that day, after nine years of facing all the obstacles put before them and after nine years of having to deal with police lying and manipulation, they continue to seek justice. They have no doubt where the responsibility for the Hillsborough events lie- with the South Yorkshire Police.
The Survivors, Relatives and Supporters for Justice Campaign are taking the struggle to the streets but they need your support. Th... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
WHEN HONG KONG reverts into the hands of the Chinese government in 1997, this will not so much be a blow for British colonial interests but a victory for that new superpower — the international capitalist class.
The territory has its colonial origins in the second quarter of the 19th Century, in the Opium Wars. British traders made vast profits by selling opium to the Chinese people, making drug addicts of thousands of them. The Chinese government demanded more control over the trade, and in 1841 the British army seized the trading posts of Hong Kong Island and the surrounding territories. Settlement of the conflict resulted in an agreement to return the land in 1997. Then, one section of the ruling class will honor its pledge to ano... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The new government in power in France led by Chirac and Juppe decided that the time was ripe to institute massive attacks on welfare benefits, the transport system and jobs and conditions. Their precipitate attack after just barely 6 months in power was sparked by their need to prepare for European Monetary Union-single currency — by the end of 1997. There was a massive budget deficit of 63 billion francs, which Juppe wanted to cut by 10%. At the same time he wanted to halve the huge social security debt. This was in the context of a sluggish economy, where the magic phrase “economic recovery” was a nonstarter. The tightness of the time scale in which to accomplish these cuts, plus a gross underestimation of the combativit... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In May 1995, Humberto Pena Taylor was murdered in the campus of the Universidad Nacional (the National University) in Bogota , Colombia.
Humberto was a member of a libertarian collective, which has been engaged in the struggle against the authorities, and particularly against the privatization of education and the establishment of neo-liberalism. He was a staunch advocate of direct action, and put his faith in the ability of ordinary people to liberate themselves. He was known as a forceful speaker and a committed activist who was prepared to stand up to oppression in any way necessary. At the time of his death he was studying law.
In recent years, over 200 students and teachers have been murdered in Colombia for opposing the government a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
On 15 September representatives of eight unionist, loyalist, nationalist and republican political parties gathered at Stormont Castle in Northern Ireland as the faltering ‘peace process’ took another shaky step forward. There was high drama at this first meeting of the multi-party talks since the announcement by the IRA of another ‘total cessation’ of military operations, and was the first major political initiative since the bloody clashes that had once again accompanied the annual ‘marching season’. To make sense of the ‘peace process’ currently underway in Northern Ireland, it’s important to understand the context in which the ‘endgame’ of ‘the Troubles’ is bei... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Try to imagine the hidden holocaust within these statistics: 300,00 prostituted children in Thailand, half of them HIV positive; 20 million bonded laborers, many in debt slavery after the third generation; 750,00 child carpetworkers in South Asia, many considered slaves under international law; 4500 abused overseas domestic workers, kicked, starved and sexually assaulted behind the doors of the rich. Many of these people are exploited because they are culturally or ethnically ‘inferior’ to the dominant class they are subjugated, bought, brutalized by mafia type gangsters, generals and profiteers throughout the world. Capitalism has always had as a main feature the severe exploitation of workers through sweated labor. This form o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
As you read this, the effects of the government’s Asylum and Immigration Bill should be in full swing. Set to be implemented on 8 January with further measures to be introduced in Autumn, it entails an increase in immigration controls, a dubious list of ‘safe’ countries of origin and the cutting of all benefits for the majority of asylum seekers.
Tighter Controls
The government is increasing visa restrictions — many refugees , due to circumstances, have to get on a plane without a visa. The government also wants to extend visa requirements for more countries. The Bill also ends the right to appeal for many. Incidentally, the success rate of appeals has already declined somewhat. 18 months prior to the 1993 Asylum... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
One way or another, the political landscape in Scotland and Britain as a whole is going to change after 2014 and it’s difficult to say what course this will take. Although polls consistently show the SNP-led Scottish Government has a long way to gain majority support for independence, it’s quite possible that they could bring about a swing in opinion. But even were they to fail in achieving full independence it seems inevitable that Scottish institutions will take on more powers and that the process itself will have a lasting impact on Scottish society. As committed internationalists, anarchists oppose nationalism in any form. Rather than simply repeat long-standing principles, however, we need to articulate some kind of an anal... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Postal strike
AFTER MORE THAN 2 years of wildcat strikes throughout the postal service in Britain, the postal workers union, the CWU, was forced to call a ballot for strike action. In 1993 there were 32 major work stoppages-this does not include the many actions that lasted less than a day- and in 1994 there were 65. This number increased in 1995 to 88. Through this guerrilla war, and certainly not due to the resistance of the CWU, Royal Mail’s attempts to increase exploitation through extra workloads, speedups and job cuts have been seriously checked.
The CWU has consistently denounced the unofficial actions. Now it needs to call a series of strikes under the control of the union in order to “let off steam”. In the se... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The ‘Information Revolution’ of computerization and miniaturization during the past twenty years has created an ‘Information Society’- or so it is said. How real has this ‘revolution’ been? Has it fundamentally altered relations between the ruling class and the working-class?
The phenomenon can be seen from two main angles. One concerns the technological development of the microchip. The microchip not only offered enough memory and processing power to make the home computer possible, it has come to pervade all kinds of devices like washing machines and cameras. Similarly, it has underpinned a massive and continuing wave of automation in the workplace. Information in this context is the stream of data req... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The AF recently hosted a meeting of the International of Anarchist Federations. Two comrades, Pauluk and Maryna, from the BAF, an organization applying to join the International, attended the meeting and made a presentation on the situation in their country at the 2005 London Anarchist Bookfair.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in yet another repressive regime taking power, making it extremely difficult for anarchists and others to operate politically. This interview focuses on the history of anarchism in Belarus, as seen through the personal experiences of these two comrades. It provides insights into the situation for anarchists in the ex-Soviet influenced countries and shows how anarchist ideas and practices emerge in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
For two years Mistress Venus was a professional dominatrix in central London. She’s also an anarchist communist. So, we at Organize! thought we’d take the opportunity to ask her a few questions about this.
Organize!: There’s a popularly-held belief, also prevalent among the left and some anarchists, that anyone (particularly female) who works in the sex industry, is in some way a victim and has been forced into that situation. How realistic is this view?
Mistress Venus: I think it’s very important to make distinctions between workers in different areas of ‘the sex industry’. The role played by a girl working the streets is very different from the role (as that’s exactly what it is) played by a pro... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin was a former Black Panther who fled to Cuba in 1969 after an FBI shoot to kill order was issued on him. Later arrested and imprisoned he was released in 1983 after serving 15 years for hijacking the plane he escaped from the USA in. Whilst inside he continued the struggle, acting as a jailhouse lawyer and prison unionist and developing his political philosophy. Author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution, Lorenzo spoke to Organize! during his speaking tour of Britain in May. For reasons of space, this interview has been edited. A full transcript can be obtained by writing to Newcastle ACF(See inside back page for address).
Organize!: On this tour you have stated that the working class has changed and is chan... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
1. Introduction
There’s a lot to be angry about. The massacre of thousands every year in wars around the world. The starvation of yet more thousands every day while food rots in warehouses across the globe. The extinction of species after species as our environment is slowly wrecked. The millions of people abused in sweatshops until their bodies and spirits are broken and they’re thrown on the scrapheap. The countless women subjected to emotional, physical and sexual violence as a result of their gender. The vast numbers facing discrimination and oppression based purely on the color of their skin.
And these are just the shocking headlines. The main story is what happens to each and every one of us day after day. If we work w... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
THIS IS A vital question for revolutionaries: if technology is neutral, then a successful revolution will solve the problems caused by the operation of existing technologies, such as the oppressiveness of workplaces, the danger, pollution and social dislocation of traffic and the environmental destruction of industry and agriculture. Damage to the environment as a result of social and economic development is not new. In pre-Christian times vast forests were reduced to plains by human agriculture, for example. What is new is the global scale of the routine, daily damage to air (pollution), land (poisoning & loss of soil), and water (pollution & drought).
Following the revolution, the working class worldwide, having seized control of... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Abortion isn’t the issue
Abortion arouses many passions and seems an impossible dilemma to resolve beyond doubt. One reason may be that abortion is not, ultimately, an assault on a living being but rather on the very reality people construct to sustain themselves. Many conservatives have an organic view of society in which the foundation of existence is the family and society nothing more than the family writ large. To attack the family through its primary purpose, propagation, is to threaten society and ultimately, their existence.
For the religiously inclined “ Abortion is a symbolic threat to an entire system of thought and meaning[for] it signals that the Christian ideal of selfless charity is despised and rejected&rdquo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The ‘Peace Process’ in the North of Ireland is in serious crisis once again. As Organize! goes to print Sinn Fein are beginning a suspension from the multi-party talks, following Unionist and British government assertions that the IRA has breached the Mitchell Principles of nonviolence. Sinn Fein, for their part, have denied both that they are representatives of the IRA (!) and that the IRA “cessation” has been ended. They talk of returning to the table “on their own terms”. Whilst the Process has never been exactly stable, why does it appear to have gone seriously awry?
The assassination by the Irish National Liberation Army of Loyalist Volunteer Force fuhrer Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright in the M... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Have you ever tried to convince someone of the need to abolish property and replace it with communal goods and being told, ”The right to personal property is established when an individual combines their labor with natural resources imbuing the product with the inherent property in themselves as argued in Locke’s second treatise on government.”? If it’s not very often and you’re more used to “it’s a nice idea but it’ll never work in practice” you may well wonder at the effectiveness of rational arguments for anarchism in the face of the apparent apathetic and apolitical nature of our class.
Obviously in times of increased struggle people are more responsive to our ideas but there has ne... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) was due to start in April ‘96 but the computer system and staff training problems have put that back to October 1996 although some measures will be enacted in April 1996. It is a complete overhaul or the benefit system. One reason for it claims that by simplifying the two-benefit system ( Unemployment Benefit(UB) and Income Support(IS) ) will save a lot of money — i.e. they can make 10,000 workers redundant.. The new rules will also cut the benefit for a large number of people. It has been estimated that 250,000 will lose benefit with 70,000 loosing all benefit.
Money
Income Support and Unemployment Benefit have basically been scraped — there will be Contributory JSA and means — tested... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
SERBIA
As we write the Milosevic regime in Serbia might now have already fallen. The demonstrations, some as large as 250,000 in Belgrade, which threaten the ex-Stalinists of the regime were set off after the municipal and federal elections of November 3rd. The opposition parties did well and the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) refused to accept the results, annulling them through the courts by claiming fraud. The opposition alliance Zajedno has mobilized tens and hundreds of thousands on a daily basis in Belgrade alone. This Alliance has support from students and the wider population.
However, Zajedno is as much implicated in Serb nationalism as Milosevic and the SPS. Vuk Draskovic and his Serbian Renewal Movement has made rapid... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
ACCORDING TO THE millionaire media: “the hard left has been stuffed by Blair”, so much so it seems they’ve left to form their own party. So we have Arthur Scargill’s move to create a Socialist Labor Party, which he obviously hopes would unite the disorientated and demoralized Labor left wingers and other assorted itinerants to formulate a new party based on ‘class understanding, class commitment and socialist policies’ (New Statesman and Society,17/11/95 page 7). Yet even among the ‘hard’ left, such as the Socialist Workers Party, there is very little support for Scargill. The SWP’s calls to vote Labor ‘without’ illusions are becoming even more tired and contradictory as Blai... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Outbreaks of resistance spread rapidly across the north of the Iraq, towards the end of the Gulf War I, and were completely spontaneous, popular insurrections free from, and in spite of, the influence of Kurdish nationalism and leftist splinter-politics. What they would have achieved if they had been joined by returning Iraqi soldiers massacred along the now infamous road to Basra in the south of the country, and if the too short-lived revolt there had lasted long enough to link up the struggle, is another question.
The Northern Uprising
The main centers of the northern revolt were in the regions of Sulaimania, Kirkuk and Hawlia. As Iraqi soldiers deserted the front in their thousands (30,000 in Sulaimania!), thousands more took t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
AS THE POLITICAL parties gear up for an impending election, Labor is energetically seeking to mark itself out as the party that speaks for the “Nation”. To do this, it needs to show that it is the defender of so-called social unity, that it is the inheritor of the social consensus constructed by both the Conservatives and Labor in the immediate postwar years. It has to underline national unity, it has to speak as the voice of reason. It has to show it enthusiastically supports the values of what is portrayed as a Golden Age of Britain before the last 15 years of ruling class attack under the Thatcher and Major regimes. This means it has to show it is able to govern well. It has to impress sections of the boss class, who are show... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Our statement in the last couple of issues of Organize! that Labor would start to attack working class people almost immediately in particular with a full frontal assault on welfare benefits might have surprised some. Now events have shown that indeed Labor has this in mind and is acting very rapidly to carry out its attacks.
Labor is planning to ax maternity benefits. It disguises this attack behind the propaganda that women earning £1 million a year should not get maternity benefits. In reality this is aimed at women in ordinary white collar jobs.
They are also planning to cut disability benefits by forcing the disabled into jobs that would be totally unsuitable. When Harriet Harman became Secretary of State for Social Security sh... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
WHOSE LAND IS IT ANYWAY?
Class struggle anarchists focus their activities on the conflict between the working class and the bosses. The struggle has traditionally been in manufacturing industries but increasingly it is recognized that capitalism has expanded into services such as retailing, banking and leisure. The Marxist analysis, of capitalism replacing feudalism, has been taken on board and the image of the ruling class as industrialists and financiers is one that we have in our heads when we think of the class enemy. They are the source of power, the owners of capital. Though we all hate the Royals and froth at the mouth at the idea of the aristos enjoying their hunts and balls, it is not the land owning aristocracy which are consid... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Dear Organize!
If your periodic ‘analysis’ of syndicalism is not a defining characteristic, then what other purpose does it serve? You know perfectly well that anarcho-syndicalists are as opposed to mere trade unionism as is the even tinier anarcho-communist element yet any casual reader would be hard-pressed to discover this from the pages of your comment paper Organize!. A little defining ‘sectarianism’ probably does no-one harm, however, and we’ve grown use to these ‘attacks’ over the years.
You rightly point to the counter-revolutionary activities of anarcho-syndicalists during the Mexican Revolution. this may have been due to a lack of information as to the reality of the situation in the s... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)