1. Scope
A position statement outlining Anarchist Affinity’s understanding on the state and related issues. This position statement draws significantly from a handful of articles by Mikhail Bakunin. We agree with Bakunin to the extent that we have quoted, but we are far from uncritical defenders of the entirety of Bakunin’s work, writings or political action!
In our opinion Bakunin’s utility lays in the fact that his writings synthesize arguments around authority and the state that anarchists were having with Marxists during the First International. It is these questions and criticisms made by anarchists of the period, rather Bakunin as an individual, that we find useful and worth defending.
This position statement re... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The following are the remarks I had prepared for a panel discussion at the 2013 Melbourne Anarchist Bookfair. What I ended up presenting varied from what follows in a number of ways. I’ve included some additional remarks and further information via footnotes and links[1].
All too often I have listened to a definition of anarchism that goes like this: “the word anarchy comes from the ancient Greek an meaning not or without, and arkos meaning ruler or rulers”.
This formulation is often followed by claims that anarchism traces its origins as far back as ancient Greek philosophy, that it represents some form of innate human desire for freedom, and that it encompasses all philosophical, political or religious traditions that ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Rebel to Win – An Anarchist Perspective
The climate movement is growing rapidly as people are all too aware that we have limited time to deal with the climate emergency. The recent climate strike was one of the largest series of coordinated protests in the history of the world. As the movement grows it’s worth looking at some of the ideas around tactics, analysis and long-term strategies that we’re using. In particular this flier will be looking at the positions held by Extinction Rebellion (XR). This flier wasn’t written to convince anyone not to participate in XR or XR-run actions. The more people participating in a movement to stop the climate emergency the better.There are still some issues that need addressin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1. Purpose and Scope
1.1. This position statement is intended to sketch some initial points of agreement in order to facilitate Anarchist Affinity’s continued involvement in anti-fascist work in 2015. It is neither comprehensive nor complete, and we recognize that this position will have to be re-visited, reviewed and developed on as the situation and our understanding develops.
2. Basics
2.1. The Australian state is inherently racist; both the state and capitalism in Australia are rooted in racist premises and racist practice.
This commenced with invasion, and continued (and in many ways continues) with acts of dispossession and genocide perpetrated against this continent’s first peoples. It continued with the establish... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The current Liberal government’s changes to higher education reflect a neoliberal agenda, in that they are attempting to change the entire way that higher education is thought of and organized in a ‘prosperous’ society like Australia. They are positing a series of radical right-wing reforms that aim to create a market of universities, this will create a class divide, largely excluding the working class.
To put it simplistically, the previous model worked in the way that once a previous student earned enough, they could pay back their loans and pay tax which would pay for the next generation, then that generation would pay for the next through their taxes and then it would be paid back, and so on. While this system still i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Abbott government is busy laying the groundwork for a massive attack on the conditions of the working class in April’s federal budget. In charge of preparing the ground is Abbott’s hand-picked Commission of Audit. In the line of fire: Medicare and your right to access a GP. The plan: Rob $750 million from Australia’s poorest whilst giving $5.9 billion dollars to private health insurers.
The Commission of Audit
The Commission of Audit is an assortment of business lobbyists and Liberal party mates. The Commission is headed by Tony Sheppard, president of the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and (until October) chairman of Transfield services. As head of the BCA he argues for lower taxes, abolition of the fair work ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Guardian has broken the news that the Biennale of Sydney (BOS) has severed ties with detention center operator Transfield Services. Transfield Holdings chairman Luca Belgiorno-Nettis has resigned from his role as chair of the BOS. Belgiorno-Nettis has acknowledged the success of the artists led boycott of the Biennale in forcing him out.
The following article on the links between Transfield and the Sydney art world was written for issue 1 of The Platform. It is interesting to note that whilst Transfield and the BOS have now formally severed ties, Transfield remains a principle sponsor of the Sydney Chamber Orchestra and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis remains its chair.
Transfield Services has hit pay dirt. Indefinite detention is big business ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Dave Kerin is a co-founder of the Earthworker Cooperative in Morwell, Victoria, which is building a network of democratically owned and managed cooperatives throughout Australia to manufacture clean energy technology. Sam spoke with him at Trades Hall.
What is the Earthworker Cooperative?
The Earthworker Cooperative facilitates and enables the establishment of other workers’ cooperatives in Australian, with a focus on manufacturing new green technologies for supply locally. Eureka’s Future is one of the enterprises within that, manufacturing solar products. It started with manufacturing the BOLT-ON solar heat pump, which renters can bolt-on and bolt-off when they leave. It used to be made in China but we won the rights to make... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Aran Mylvaganam is a member of the Tamil Refugee Council. The Tamil Refugee Council was formed in 2011 to give a voice to Tamil refugees seeking asylum in Australia and has since played a key role in organizing protests against mandatory detention and in supporting refugees living in Australia. Anarchist Affinity caught up with Aran to talk about his views on the Australian state’s refugee policy and the contemporary refugee movement.
The Australian government insists it is safe for Tamils in Sri Lanka today. What is real situation facing Tamils in Sri Lanka?
In 2009 thousands of Tamils were killed by the Sri Lankan government and army. According to a recent report by the United Nations up to 70,000 Tamils were killed and it may be ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The First World War is the war the Australian ruling class wants us to remember. They are spending hundreds of millions over the next two years making sure we never forget. It’s the war they would have us believe created Australia. And Australia was created in a war. But it was another war. A war our rulers would rather pretend never occurred.
Australia began with an invasion. In 1788 nearly eight hundred convicted criminals and nearly four hundred military personnel landed in Sydney. They began construction of an advance base of operations, and kicked off a war of conquest that would span 140 years.
When the invasion commenced there were at approximately 750,000 people living in 350 distinct nations on the Australian landmass. By 1... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the past year, the members of Anarchist Affinity have discussed changing our name so that we can adopt a label that better reflects our understanding of anarchist communist politics and vision for social change. To this end, we’ve decided to call ourselves ‘Collective Action.’
Anarchist Affinity emerged, in a very basic form, from a reading group in 2012. Early members of the group came together out of a sense of shared frustration with the limitations of anarchist politics in Melbourne. Anarchists can be inward looking – it’s easy to get caught up in the internal issues and culture of the anarchist scene, and miss out on engaging with broader social movements. We often lack the organization and political... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In December 2013 the Victorian Liberal party introduced new legislation to Parliament with the aim of ‘updating’ the State’s Summary Offenses legislation (in place since 1966). Under the new laws the police and ‘Protective Service Officers’ (PSOs) would have the power not just to ‘move on’ individuals, as they do presently, but entire groups of people. Attorney-General Robert Clarke has made it abundantly clear in a recent press release that these new measures are aimed squarely at limiting the power of unions and activists to organize, stating that “Union friendly restrictions on the use of move-on powers by police at unlawful pickets and blockades, which were introduced by the former Labor g... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Kojo Barbah is a London based activist and a founding member of South London Anti-Fascists. He is also a member of the direct action migrant solidarity organization the Anti-Raids Network.
Maybe we can begin by discussing the origins of South London Anti-Fascists (SLAF). Though London is a city with a long, continuous and quite notorious history of anti-fascist organizing, SLAF only came to my attention last year, in the wake of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on May 22nd. How and when did the group come together? Was the decision to reactivate the group out of mere necessity, in response to far-right attempts to capitalize on Rigby’s death, or were there other factors?
South London Anti-Fascists were originally ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In 2007 a group of activists from Seattle decided they needed to try a new approach to help working people stand up to their bosses and landlords directly and personally. The result was a network called “Seattle Solidarity”; a directly democratic, mutual-aid network of working people. “SeaSol” is an inspiring new strategy of networking that is neither a union or a party; they exist to support individuals to overcome hierarchical barriers, encouraging and backing them up in direct actions against their employes or landlords. The model has been largely successful, winning most campaigns, and inspiring similar networks around the globe.
Antonio became a member of SeaSol who joined after learning about some of their pas... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The party that has rigorously championed the cause of the rich, powerful and ignorantly fearful has won. Most disappointingly, the lack of effective counter arguments from the so-called ‘opposition’ have left a void the Liberal Party has gladly filled. We’re not convinced that the working class are sadomasochistic or stupid, so why has all this come about?
As Anarchists, the idea that our participation in shaping society should begin and end with a ballot box once every while is laughable, even when election time does sometimes come with a sausage sizzle. We have grander visions for a more engaged and directly democratic society that is fundamentally incompatible with capitalist governments. We have a vision for a society... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In 1903 Lizzie Magie patented the ‘Landlords Game’ – originally intended as an anti-capitalist critique of monopolistic corporate greed. “It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” Magie wrote in a political magazine. “It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, ie. the accumulation of wealth.”
The game was popular among left-wing progressives and at university campuses, until some thirty years later when Charles Darrow and his wife played it a dinner party. At ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The very revolutionaries who claim that they are against the state, and for eliminating the state…see as their central task after a revolution to build up a state that is more solid, more centralized and more all-embracing than the old one.” – Ron Taber, 1988 [1].
The remarkably common attitude among revolutionaries of all stripes is that “the means justify the ends”. We’re told it is acceptable to embrace authoritarian organizational practices because these practices are necessary to achieve an anti-capitalist revolution. As Anarchists we argue that the theory and organizational practice of revolutionary groups must be consistent with the principles upon which we want a future society to be ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Transphobia is hate speech.
We do not use the phrase ‘hate speech’ lightly. When we describe something as ‘hate speech’ we are talking about speech qualitatively different from mere bigotry, prejudice or ignorance. Hate speech is a weapon, wielded against the marginalized. Hate speech serves, constructs or reinforces systems of oppression that operate upon its targets. Hate speech is characterized by an attempt to dehumanize and delegitimise the very existence of its target, and in this sense it is ultimately eliminationist. By dehumanizing its targets, hate speech encourages and supports further violence, marginalization and oppression.
At its core, transphobia denies the legitimacy and reality of sex and gender d... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) With both major parties jostling to position themselves as the most fiscally responsible, we must wholeheartedly reject the premise of neo-liberal austerity and dream of a new world.
As the ever-inspiring Arundhati Roy explained, the corona virus pandemic is a portal where a new world awaits us on the other side, one that is only limited by our imagination. As calls are mounting to “return to normality” we must question what was normal and reject the desire of simply reverting to the previous conditions.
Normality was the ongoing colonization of First Nations land. It was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody. It was the ever-growing prisons with more people locked in cages. It was make-shift detention center... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The way in which the dead are remembered is a political act – the commemoration of war is never neutral. Australia has commenced an orgy of official remembrance; the ANZAC commemoration industry is expected to consume the larger part of a billion dollars of public and private money over the next two years [1]. The reformist left is already bemoaning the crass commercialism of it all, and the more critical among them point out that ANZAC and Gallipoli were mere side shows to the “countless white crosses” that in “mute witness stand” in the muddy fields of Belgium and France [2]. But there is no such thing as an apolitical commemoration. The endless white crosses served their imperial masters in the aftermath of ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1. Scope and Purpose
This position statement is intended to sketch some initial points of agreement concerning our understanding of ideas about privilege, oppression and intersectionality. These points are neither complete nor final, and it is our intention to expand on and develop these points as our collective understanding develops.
2. Points of Agreement
2. 1 There are numerous interacting systems of oppression that are experienced in a variety of ways by different actors in our society. These intertwined oppressive systems include (but are not limited to) sexism, racism, queerphobia, anti-trans bigotry and ableism. We think fighting against these forms of oppression is just as important to the creation of an anarchist society as... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Australia is a country with an undeniable history of racism. It is a history of outstanding colonial cruelty. The Australian state is built on genocide and colonialism, and this legacy seeps through into all aspects of our political and social lives. The current issue of 457 visas harkens back to times such in 1878, where Australian sailors unions held strikes to fight the use of Chinese and Pacific Islander labor, claiming they had no right to work in Australia, and were taking what was ‘rightfully’ the white man’s. This is a dangerous repetition of history, as strikes were common in this same era to try and block immigration, and helped start the White Australia policy.
While it is indisputable that racism infects the w... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the last couple of months we have witnessed an unprecedented wave of large demonstrations. Across Australia people have risen in opposition to the current administration’s escalation of attacks on worker’s rights and conditions, erosions of living standards and civil liberties.
Oxford educated arch-bigot Tony Abbott has managed to mobilize and unite angry trade unionists and students, those without work, single mothers, and Indigenous Australians. All are demanding a better future and environment for ourselves and future generations.
Recently up to 10,000 people from across all walks of life demonstrated in Sydney against the federal budget, which is about handing over more wealth and power to Tony Abbott’s friends ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book ‘The Great Leveler’ is a compelling and very well researched piece of ‘grand history’, looking at the history of inequality from hunter-gatherer societies to the present day. Its central argument is that since the development of farming and the state 10,000 odd years ago, inequality slowly rises in times of peace and stability, and only ever falls in bursts of extreme violence and destruction. The ‘four horsemen’ of reductions in inequality or ‘leveling’, are state-collapse, plague, revolution and mass-mobilization warfare. Anyone who sees inequality as a social evil needs to seriously engage with the points made in this book.
Schiedel starts by noting that e... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the past four days we have watched with horror, disgust and anger as Papua New Guinean police, immigration and navy, under the effective direction of the Australian government, have beaten and brutalized refugees detained on Manus Island.
This violent outburst came as the Australian government sought to break a determined and courageous protest by the refugees on Manus. Over a year ago the PNG supreme court ruled that the Australian government’s Manus Island refugee prison was unlawful. Australia has sought to circumvent this decision by simply moving refugees from one prison to another. After four years of imprisonment the 600 men remaining in the Manus Island prison decided to resist, and refused to be moved.
In the words of ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In the lead up to its streaming debut Romper Stomper, a sequel to the 1992 film of the same name, has been heavily promoted and it has been impossible to escape its advertisements both online and on billboards. The show comes at the right time, at a moment when the recrudescence of the far-right in Australia has resulted in attacks on Muslims and a more confident neo-Nazi presence on our streets.
Unfortunately, the show itself is a dreadful, turgid, and poorly written affair that gets much wrong and is a terrible missed opportunity. There is much that anarchists should take away from this.
Romper Stomper sets the conflict between the far right Patriot Blue and the anti-fascist Antifasc against the race to stop an immigration reform bill t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In 2012, a member of the UK Socialist Workers Party (SWP) came forward saying she had been raped and sexually harassed by the former National Secretary of the organization, Martin Smith. The internal ‘investigation’ which followed demonstrated a number of common ways in which sexual violence is ignored and those who experience it are demonized. Some of the members of the Disputes Committee chosen to investigate the claim were close friends of Smith. The woman who had come forward was questioned about her sexual history and alcohol use. She was made to feel that members of the Disputes Committee thought she was “a slut who asked for it”. The Disputes Committee concluded that the accusation that Smith had raped and har... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Andy Fleming is a Melbourne based writer, anarchist and creator of the prominent antifascist blog Slackbastard. We sat down with Andy to talk about nationalism, borders and the political functions of mandatory detention.
I want to discuss mandatory detention, but I want to dig below the usual moral repugnance and discuss a few means and ends. I once had an experience with some University of Sydney Labor Club kids who simply would not believe that it was the ALP in 1992 who built much of the infrastructure of the contemporary border regime. Whilst I found the ignorance quite shocking at the time, I now wonder if it was at least partially informed by their inability to comprehend why Labor would have felt it necessary to introduce mandatory ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Let’s start with the Circle-A.
It’s the symbol associated with anarchism… We see it everywhere from actual anarchist propaganda, to graffiti, to printed on t-shirts at kmart. Most here probably know this, but it’s not an A in a circle, it’s actually an A in an O. It means, ‘Anarchy is Order’, which is one of those wonderful juxtaposing quotes Proudhon used. What he meant is that anarchism will be a highly sophisticated and highly organized social system. A social order based on the maximum of human freedom, federalism, socialism, equality and development, with power flowing from the bottom up, rather than the top down as in capitalism.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person to ever use the l... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In discussing the platform of Collective Action some individuals have expressed confusion at our use of the label “specifism” to describe the tradition of social anarchism we associate with. The following is a short introduction to what we consider to be the most essential concepts within the specifist model. This text is an adaptation of a forthcoming interview with Shift Magazine on anti-capitalist regroupment.
“Specifism” refers to an organisationalist current within the anarchist tradition which, in contemporary terms, is principally elaborated by the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) but has its historical roots in the writings of Bakunin, Malatesta and Makhno (among others). Many ass... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)