Today's Topics:
1. zabalaza.net: Worker-Student Alliances: Anarchist Approach
Needed by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - history, International
Brigades: ras-le-bol of the Golden Legend (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Czech, afed.cz: Footsteps Adamit --- Another pocket booklet
published by AF brings the narrative Roman Laube specific group
of men and women from the beginning of the Hussite movement.
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, glasgow anarchists: Glasgow Events ~~Glasgow
Autonomy Update~~ 29.10.2016 (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Recent worker-student alliances and activities are lacking in an anarchist/syndicalist
approach which focuses on ‘people's power' and ‘worker control'. Such an approach is
important for radical transformation, writes Leroy Maisiri. ---- After 20 years of
neo-liberal democracy, South Africa has not truly begun the much-needed purge of race and
class structural inequalities and constraints inherited from apartheid South Africa. Many
university campuses across the country, since 2015, have been set alight by the actions of
a non-compromising body of students. This political wildfire has moved from campus to
campus, for a range of reasons: one thing remains central, that tomorrow's future is
shaped by today's youth, restlessly tackling the structures and impediments that stand in
their way.
But what is missing however is a working-class focus and an anarchist/ syndicalist
approach, a lesson well-taught by the "people's power" and "workers' control" initiatives
in radical sector of the 1980s anti-apartheid movement.
Bursaries and "decolonisation"
Earlier in 2015, before and during academic registrations, the Tshwane University of
Technology and Walter Sisulu University faced protests around student funding (Makoni,
2015), as did the University of the Witwatersrand, around problems in the National Student
Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) (Bolowana & Pillay, 2015). At the University of Cape Town
(UCT), by contrast, demands centred on racial justice, framed as "decolonisation," with
controversy around a Cecil John Rhodes statue tied to bigger transformation issues
(News24, 2015). These struggles sparked protests and a weeks-long occupation of
administration buildings at Rhodes University (Maisiri, 2015). Followed by the "open
Stellenbosch" protests raised racism and language issues (Petersen, 2015). And most
recently the rape protests.
Learning from 1976, 1984
But, as shown in the 1976 revolts, where black students led a fight against racism and
exclusion, and the narrow opportunities to those from black working class homes
(Maponyane, 2014), students have limited power. The 1976 revolt, and the big battles of
the 1980s, showed the need to move from separate struggles, into involving the organised
working class, to fight against all forms of oppression and a radical transformation of
the whole society (The Worker-Tenant, 1984: 29). By "working class", I mean the term as
defined by anarchists: those who, not owning or controlling means of administration,
coercion or production, work for those who control such means. This includes workers plus
their families including the unemployed.
Neo-liberalism
It also requires locating struggles against racial injustice in fights against
neo-liberalism, Universities are increasingly turned into another arm of capitalistic
accumulation, designed to exploit to take more than they give. Ever-rising fees make
lecture theatres fortresses of privatised knowledge, entry being completely dependent on
the class into which you are born, the education you can afford. Facilities are staffed by
armies of precarious, contract and outsourced workers, struggling to survive and excluded
from university education.
The major victim of the neo-liberal restructuring of the university is the black working
class, both working class students and campus workers. There is a direct capitalist and
state attack on the working class, not clearly captured by "decolonisation" discourse. In
"Class Rule Must Fall! More Statues, More Working Class" (Maisiri, 2015), I point out that
universities play a leading role in the continued existence of class system, producing and
reproducing privileged classes.
Class struggle and classrooms
Therefore, the campus space is an arena where the class system and class question must be
confronted. The question then becomes: how?
First, student protests must develop a strategy linked to the working class. But this, as
in 1976 and 1983, must involve a much more accurate critique of the enemy. In the 1980s,
this meant locating the fight against racist education in a fight against the apartheid
state and racial-capitalism, including the peripheral Fordist system. This also means
understanding the problems cannot be solved by symbolic changes, or changing the
composition of elite classes - it requires removing the class system, and a new,
libertarian, self-managed socialist order.
This analysis must be carried over to the black-led state of the African National Congress
(ANC), whose neo-liberal policies, capitalism and elite enrichment. In "Who Rules South
Africa" (2013:4),[Lucien]van der Walt argues that the current state is in fact "an
obstacle to the full[national and class]emancipation of the working class." This state is
protected by nationalist ideology, which denies the class question and which cannot - as
clearly shown in twenty years - solve the social problems. This is quite evident in the
way the ruling party pushed back the responsibility of free education back to the
universities washing its hands clean of a problem, a problem that is structurally rooted
in Neo Liberal policies.
Working class names, symbols
Renaming universities after nationalists is problematic, as nationalism has helped take us
into the current crisis, and as nationalists have a "pro-capitalist, pro-statist political
agenda", (Maisiri, 2015). Rather this paper argues for a left/working class iconography:
in placing the working class at the forefront to forge a new path, and moving off the
nationalist dead-end, let us make working class symbols and ideas and struggles central to
transformation.
Conclusion
Agitate for a "workers' and peoples' scientific university," not a capitalist or
nationalist one. It is not enough to protest about fees and statues and curricula unless
we fight the framework defended by a state that sends black working class police men to
kill black miners. We must take from the play book of the 1980's and organise for a worker
student alliance. The universities seem to be taking their ques from old regimes relying
on police and interdicts. We must then push back against all forms of oppression, a worker
student alliance against outsourcing, privatisation of education and against the
bureaucratic hand that stretches all the way back to the shoulders of the state.
_________________________________________________
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolowana, A & Pillay, G. (21 Jan, 2015). "Wits Students Threaten Protest Action over
NFSAS Funds". SABC News.
Maisiri, L. (2015). "Class Rule Must Fall! More Statues, More Working Class". Zabalaza: A
Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, number 14.
Makoni, M. (12 February 2015). "Students Run Riot at Campuses over Funding". University
World News.
Maponyane, B. (2014). "The 1976 Struggle and the Emancipation of the Future". Tokologo:
Newsletter of the Tokologo African Anarchist Collective", number 4.
News24. (19 March 2015). "UCT Students to Protest Over Racial Transformation".
Petersen, T. (27 July 2015). "Students Protest in Stellenbosch over Language". News24.
Worker-Tenant, The. (1984). "Student Struggle in Perspective". Number 3.
Van der Walt, L. (2013). "Who Rules South Africa? An Anarchist/Syndicalist Analysis of the
ANC, the Post-Apartheid Elite Pact and the Political Implications". Zabalaza: A Journal of
Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, number 13.
by Leroy Maisiri, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
First published in "South African Labour Bulletin", volume 40, number 4, pp. 39-40
https://zabalaza.net/2016/10/29/worker-student-alliances-anarchist-approach-needed/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Owl, a documentary about the Spanish war! Oh no, heck it's even adulterated merchandise
... 80 years later, it is time to publicize the sordid role that Moscow was playing
Brigades enlisted in Republican Spain from 1936 to 1938. ---- October 25, Arte aired a
documentary by Patrick Rotman on the International Brigades, who will remain accessible on
Arte.tv until November 1. ---- Certainly the exhumed footage is remarkable and extremely
rare. That's the only positive thing to find. Because finally, how is it possible, with
all the research done for years to produce a documentary about two hours, which
accumulates as many clichés and approximations? ---- There is no question of calling into
question the sincerity of combatants and veterans of the International Brigades. Many were
convinced revolutionaries. But the romantic myth of the Brigades should not overshadow
their share of Stalinist shadow, André Marty (the "butcher of Albacete"), the Genrikh
Yagoda (head of NKVD).
This is precisely what the documentary by Patrick Rotman.
Brigades of instruction in Albacete
snide and patronizing thoughts
To start, the tone of the narrator, the text read, gives the impression (is this
intentional?) That only the Communists did something useful in Spain between 1936 and
1939, only the Communists fought with courage that only the communists sought to win the war.
Between snide and patronizing thoughts on the anarchists ' utopia full " CNT " unorganized
" POUM " divided ", the general impression that emerges is that the revolution and the
social war in Spain were that a good time of fun for anarchists, Trotskyists and
anti-authoritarian and that only the communists took the measure of what was happening.
That was the general mood of the film. Regarding the content, including the International
Brigades, one quickly borders on ridiculous.
If one relies on the scenario, the first and largest foreign volunteers arrive with the
Brigades in September 1936. They forget the hundreds of fighters and foreign fighters who
are fighting in July and August 1936, not in a separate body created by the Comintern, but
within the POUM, UGT and CNT, including the International Group of the Durruti column.
In the rest of the documentary, the abuses of political commissioners, put in jail,
summary executions committed by the Stalinists, are quickly addressed, so "tragic
necessity" of the time. All this without unveil the instrumentalisation of International
Brigades in the process of normalization of the popular militia, against-revolution of
Stalinization of fascist Spain.
Valentin Frémonti (LA Toulouse)
For further:
Sygmunt Stein, My Spanish War. International Brigades: the end of a myth , Seuil, 2012,
272 pages, 19 euros.
Antoine Gimenez and giménologues, Sons of the night. Memories of the war with Spain ,
Libertalia, 2016, 1000 pages, 22 euros.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Brigades-internationales-ras-le
------------------------------
Message: 3
Adamité were one of the most interesting and also one of the most mysterious heretical
groups in the history of Czech heretical movements. They existed at all? There are reports
of "orgies" just rumors and trying to justify their disposal in the eyes of the society?
These questions seek to answer modern historiography for decades. The authors of the
Stalinist period, eg. Their ritual nudity totally denied as contemporary propaganda
designed to discredit them (predecessor of the communist movement to do something like
this could commit) and authors from across the political spectrum, this aspect conversely
used to argue how far can the various social experiments, disruption of traditional values
and keep order. Only work the last twenty or thirty years, especially Peter and Francis
Cornej Šmahel, tried to bring up this issue more objective view. However, sometimes
contradictory conclusions and interpretations of individual authors, relying for decades
on is still the same sources, may not be far from exhausted, and their new interpretation
may not even be so far from reality as it might seem at first glance. Maybe it just wants
to leave the "campus" gloom and study rooms and go to places where tens or hundreds of
people wanted to create his "Paradise" now, here on earth, and let it work for yourself.
We find that Adamité from sharing a common meal and each other have pointed to deepen
complete and full unity of their community. They reached a state that can be called moral
freedom, for them there is no external moral standards, which would be obliged to comply.
Their wishes, dreams and desires are important and only sin was to renounce one's own
concept of freedom. Of their lives they could remove all ideological trash that is,
whether secular or ecclesiastical lords held in servitude. They did not believe in
purgatory and heaven and hell understood as a state of mind. Their heaven was here, here
and now, on the banks Nežárka.
AF publishers . 46 pages A6, suggested contribution of CZK 27.
https://www.afed.cz/text/6550/po-stopach-adamitu
------------------------------
Message: 4
Hi everyone,
Brief update this week.
Special attention to Demo in Paisley against ‘new Dungavel' on Tuesday 8th of November
from 2. GET DOWN THERE!!! Lets get show them there's to be no more detention in Scotland,
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!
Love to you all,
Glasgow A-Fed Autonomy Updaters
https://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/glasgow-events-glasgow-autonomy-update-29-10-2016/
------------------------------
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten