Anarchic update news all over the world - 28.08.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Canada, 13TH ANNUAL VICTORIA ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR CALL FOR
      PARTICIPATION (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  Surrey Anarchist Communists ACG: Stickers (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  London Anarchist Federation: Reading group #5
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Britain, Class WarNANNY CROOK - JOIN THE UVW
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Bangladesh Anarcho Syndicalist Federation: Work. Community.
      Politics. War. - prole.info by: akmshihab [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  freedomnews: Interview with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs
      of the CNT (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1




It happens on  September 22 and 23 , at the Fernwood NRG, Victoria, BC, Lekwungen 
Territory. ---- We are pleased to announce the thirteenth annual Victoria Anarchist 
Bookfair, located on unceded Coast Salish Territory in Victoria, British Columbia. ---- 
The Bookfair is for anarchists and non-anarchists, with participants from all over North 
America and beyond. Events include book and information tables, workshops, readings, 
films, presentations, and much more! Get involved! Please get in touch with proposals for 
workshops and tables by August 25th, 2018. Late proposals will be considered but may not 
be included promotional material. ---- 1. Bookfair Dates & Contacts ---- 2. How to Request 
a Table ---- 3. Call for Workshops & Presentations Proposals ---- 4. Volunteers needed! 
---- 1. Victoria Anarchist Bookfair Dates & Contacts ---- September 22nd and 23rd ---- 
Fernwood NRG, Victoria, BC, Lekwungen Territory

We are pleased to announce the thirteenth annual Victoria Anarchist Bookfair, located on 
unceded Lekwungen Territory in Victoria, British Columbia. The Bookfair is for anarchists 
and non-anarchists, with participants from all over North America and beyond. The Bookfair 
always includes workshops on a wide range of topics. We seek to challenge colonial 
attitudes, introduce anarchism to the public, foster dialogue between various political 
traditions, and create radical, inclusive, anti-oppressive spaces.

Participants with different visions, practices, and traditions are welcome. Events include 
book and information tables, workshops, readings,films, presentations, and much more!

Please consult our Statement of Principles before sending your proposal. It can be found 
on our website:http://victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
******************************
Contacts:
TABLES:tables@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
WORKSHOPS:workshops@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
VOLUNTEER:volunteer@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
GENERAL INQUIRIES:info@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
******************************
2. How to Request a Table for September 22nd and 23rd

The heart of the Bookfair is the main room including booksellers, distributors, 
independent presses and activist groups from all over BC, North America, and abroad. If 
you'd like to table this year, please provide a short description of your group and the 
materials you intend to distribute at the Bookfair.

There is no fee for tabling at the Bookfair, but we suggest 10% of sales after expenses in 
order to help us cover costs.

EMAIL:tables@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
******************************
3. Workshop & Presentation Proposals

The Bookfair organizing collective is currently seeking workshop and presentation proposals.

As stated above this Bookfair we are looking to convene in order to challenge the ongoing 
colonization of our communities and our minds. We are looking for workshops that discuss 
Indigenous perspectives, de-colonialisation, social struggles, and environmental issues. 
We also aim to foster a growing movement in resistance to colonialism through the sharing 
of practical skills. Together we can acknowledge our past and move forward with meaningful 
solidarity.

Workshops may be aimed at people who are curious about, or new to, anarchist ideas and 
radical practices; alternatively they might address a topic in depth for people who are 
already familiar with the subject.

Standard Bookfair workshops last for 50 minutes with a 10-minute break in between. While 
we are open to a variety of workshop formats, we recommend that facilitators leave at 
least 20 minutes for discussion at the end of their presentations. Each year we get a lot 
of submissions, but if we don't have space at the Bookfair, we still want to help make 
your workshop happen!
Please provide a title and short description of the workshop's content in your submission. 
If your workshop is accepted, this information will be reprinted in the program zine.

EMAIL:workshops@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca
********
4. Volunteers
We need your help! The Victoria Anarchist Bookfair & Festival of Anarchy Collectives are 
always looking for new people to assist behind the scenes. We're looking for help in all 
kinds of areas such as postering, welcoming & information tabling, room set-up, kids 
activities, counselling and safe-space support, cleanup and more. The Bookfair is entirely 
volunteer-run and helping out is a great way to get involved and meet new people. If 
you're interested, please read the volunteer descriptions, our collective principles and 
accessibility statements on our website, and let us know how you'd like to help out!

EMAIL:volunteer@victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca

http://victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca/index.php/2018/07/03/13th-annual-victoria-anarchist-bookfair-call-for-participation/

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Message: 2





The Anarchist Communist Group has produced a set of three sticker designs:
"Slum Landlords"
"Universal Credit. Stop It! Scrap It!"
"Migrants Don't Push Down Wages - Bosses Do!"
Get a set of each design and stick them up around town.
Available from the ACG:
Contact: https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/contact/

https://surreyanarchistcommunistgroup.blogspot.com/2018/08/acg-stickers.html

------------------------------

Message: 3





This month we've decided to take a break from the reading (those Situationists were 
hard..) and instead we will watch No Gods No Masters: A History of Anarchism which is 
available on youtube in three parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ-utvfgK8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77GKgbUGJK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6pysEKlg0Q
Watch the film in your own time and then come to the reading group at Freedom Bookshop, 
7pm 18th September to discuss!

https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/reading-group-5/

------------------------------

Message: 4






FAOR 50 YEARS REES-MOGG'S NANNY HAS BEEN ENSLAVED BY HER FEUDAL EMPLOYER.
BUT NO MORE FREE NANNY CROOK
PICKET REES-MOGG'S NEW HOUSE IN COWLEY STREET WESTMINSTER
6-7 pm Tuesday Sept. 11th

------------------------------

Message: 5





US libertarian communist website prole.info's illustrated call to arms to the workers of 
the world. In text and PDF format. ---- WCPW comic in PDF Format (11Mb) 
http://libcom.org/files/wcpw.pdf ---- "Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail 
in order to prevent them from having one about the totality." ---- --Raoul Vaneigem ---- 
We look around us and see a world beyond our control. ---- Our daily struggle to survive 
takes place against an immense and constantly shifting backdrop... ---- ...moving from 
natural disaster to terrorist attack... from new diet to new famine... from celebrity sex 
scandal to political corruption scandal... from religious war to economic miracle... from 
tantalizing new advertisement to clichés on tv complaining about the government... from 
suggestions on how to be the ideal lover to suggestions on how to keep sports fans from 
rioting... from new police shootings to new health problems...

The same processes are at work everywhere...

...in democratic and in totalitarian governments... in corporations and in mom n' pop 
businesses... in cheeseburgers and in tofu... in opera, in country music and in hip hop... 
in every country and in every language... in prisons, in schools, in hospitals, in 
factories, in office towers, in war zones and in grocery stores...

Something is feeding off our lives and spitting back images of them in our faces.

That something is the product of our own activity... our everyday working lives sold hour 
after hour, week after week, generation after generation.

We don't have property or a business we can make money from, so we are forced to sell our 
time and energy to someone else. We are the modern day working class-the proles.

WORK

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour,and lives 
the more, the more labour it sucks."
-Karl Marx

We don't work because we want to. We work because we have no other way to make money. We 
sell our time and energy to a boss in order to buy the things we need to survive.

We are brought together with other workers and assigned different tasks. We specialize in 
different aspects of the work and repeat these tasks over and over again. Our time at work 
is not really part of our lives. It is dead time controlled by our bosses and managers. 
During our time at work we make things that our bosses can sell. These things are objects 
like cotton shirts, computers and skyscrapers or qualities like clean floors and healthy 
patients or services like having a bus take you where you want to go, having a waiter take 
your order or having someone call you at home to try to get you to buy things you don't 
need. The work is not done because of what it produces. We do it to get paid, and the boss 
pays us for it to make a profit.

At the end of the day the bosses re-invest the money we make them, and enlarge their 
businesses. Our work is stored up in the things our bosses own and sell-capital. They are 
always looking for new ways to store up our activity in things, new markets to sell them 
to, and new people with nothing to sell but their time and energy to work for them. What 
we get from work is enough money to pay for rent, food, clothes and beer-enough to keep us 
coming back to work.

When we're not at work, we spend time traveling to or from work, preparing for work, 
resting up because we're exhausted from work or getting drunk to forget about work. The 
only thing worse than work, is not having it. Then we waste our weeks away looking for 
work, without getting paid for it. If welfare is available, it is a pain-in-the-ass to get 
and is never as much as working. The constant threat of unemployment is what keeps us 
going to work everyday. And our work is the basis of this society. The power our bosses 
get from it expands every time we work. It is the dominant force in every country in the 
world.

At work we are under the control of our bosses, and of the markets they sell to. But an 
invisible hand imposes a work-like discipline and pointlessness on the rest of our lives 
as well. Life seems like a kind of show we watch from the outside, but have no control 
over. All sort of other activities tend to become as alienating, boring and stressful as 
work: housework, schoolwork, leisure. That's capitalism.

ANTI-WORK

"Of course, the capitalists are very much satisfied with the capitalist system. Why 
shouldn't they be? They get rich by it."
--Alexander Berkman

Work is experienced very differently depending on which side of it you're on. For our 
bosses, work is the way that they get their money to make more money. For us, work is a 
miserable way to survive. The less they pay us, the less we make. The faster they can get 
us to work, the harder we have to work. Our interests are opposed, and there is a constant 
struggle between bosses and workers at work-and in the rest of the society based on work. 
The more we pay in rent or bus fare, the more we have to work to pay our rent or bus fare.

The current state of wages, benefits, hours and working conditions as well as politics, 
art and technology is a result of the current state of this class struggle. Simply 
standing up for our own interests in this struggle, is the starting point of undermining 
capitalism.

COMMUNITY

"Well, it is about time that every rebel wakes up to the fact that "the people" and the 
working class have nothing in common."
--Joe Hill

Civilization is deeply divided. Most of us spend most of our time working and are mostly 
poor, while the owners, who are mostly rich, manage and profit off our work. All the 
communities and institutions of society are built up around this basic division. There are 
racial, cultural and language divisions and communities. There is division and community 
around sex and age. There is the community of the nation and citizenship, as well as the 
division between nations and those with and without citizenship. We are divided and united 
around religion and ideology. We are brought together to buy and sell on the market. Some 
of these identities have been around for millennia. Some are a direct result of the way we 
work today. But they are all now organized around capital. They are all used to help our 
bosses accumulate more of our dead time stored up in things, and to keep the basic 
division of this society from tearing it apart. Poor people from one country can be made 
to identify with their bosses from the same country and can be made to fight poor people 
from other countries. Workers have a harder time organizing a strike with workers who look 
different and speak a different language, especially if one group thinks it's better than 
the other. These divisions and communities are reflected in and reflect the division of 
labor at work.

While these divisions and exclusive communities are being pushed on us from one side, an 
all-inclusive human community is sold to us from the other. This community is just as 
imaginary and false. It denies the basic division of society. Business owners run the 
government and the media, the schools and prisons, the welfare offices and the police. We 
have our lives run by them. The newspapers and television put forward their view of the 
world. Schools teach about the great (or unfortunate) history of their society and produce 
a spectrum of graduates and dropouts fit for different kinds of work. The government 
provides services to keep their society running smoothly. And when all else fails, they 
have the police, the prisons and the army.

This is not our community.

ANTI-COMMUNITY

"Such power as the bourgeoisie still possesses in this period resides in the proletariat's 
lack of autonomy and independence of spirit."
--Anton Pannekoek

They organize us against each other, but we can organize ourselves against them.

The whole point of talking about class and "the proles" is to insist on the very basic way 
in which people from different "communities" have essentially similar experiences, and to 
show that people from the same "communities" should in fact hate each other. This is the 
starting point to fighting the existing communities. When we begin to fight for our own 
interests we see that others are doing the same thing. Prejudices fall away, and our anger 
is directed where it belongs. We are not weak because we are divided. We are divided 
because we are weak.

The existing communities become irrelevant as they are attacked, and they are attacked by 
becoming irrelevant. Racism and sexism are unappealing, when working men and women of 
different races are fighting their class enemies side by side. And that fight becomes more 
effective by involving people from different "communities". There will be no need for a 
stand-in for everything that can be bought and sold-money--when there is no need to 
measure work time stored in those things. This could only happen when we make and do 
things because there is a need for them and not in order to exchange them. There will be 
no need for a government to manage society, when society is not divided between management 
and workforce-when people can run their lives themselves. There will be no need for 
national or racial communities-and there could be a human community-when society is not 
divided into rich and poor. The way to create these conditions is to fight the existing 
conditions.

This tendency to create community by fighting against the conditions of our lives-and 
therefore against work, money, exchange, borders, nations, governments, police, religion, 
and race-has at times been called "communism".

POLITICS

"The more we are governed, the less we are free."
--The Alarm (anarchist newspaper from Chicago in the 1880s)

The government is the model for political activity. Politicians representing different 
countries, regions, or "communities" battle with each other. We are encouraged to support 
the leaders we disagree with least, and we're never really surprised when they screw us 
over. All a politician's working class background or radical ideals are worthless once 
they begin to govern. No matter who is in government, government has its own logic. The 
fact that this society is divided into classes with opposing interests means that it is 
always at risk of tearing itself apart. The government is there to make sure that doesn't 
happen. Whether the government is a dictatorship or a democracy, it holds all the guns and 
will use them against its own population to make sure that we keep going to work.

Not that long ago, an extremely unstable situation in a particular country could be 
diffused by nationalizing all of a country's industries, creating a police state, and 
calling it "communism". This kind of capitalism proved to be less efficient and less 
flexible than good old-fashioned free market capitalism. With the fall of the Soviet 
Union, there is no longer a Red Army to march in and stabilize countries in this way, and 
Communist parties around the world are becoming simple social democrats.

A working class political party is a contradiction in terms-not because the membership of 
a particular party can't be largely working class, but because the most it can do is give 
the working class a voice in politics. It lets our representatives put forward ideas on 
how our bosses should run this society--how they can make money and keep us under control. 
Whether they are advocating nationalization or privatization, more welfare or more police 
(or both), the programs of political parties are different strategies for managing capitalism.

Unfortunately, politics also exists outside of government. Community leaders, professional 
activists and unions want to place themselves between workers and bosses and be the 
mediators, the negotiators, the means of communication, the representatives, and 
ultimately the peacemakers. They fight to keep this position. In order to do that, they 
need to mobilize the working class in controlled ways to put pressure on more 
business-oriented politicians, at the same time offering business a workforce that is 
ready to work. This means that they have to disperse us when we start to fight back. 
Sometimes they do this by negotiating concessions, other times by selling us out. 
Politicians always call on us to vote, to sit back and let the organizer negotiate, to 
fall in line behind the leaders and the specialists in a kind of passive participation. 
These non-governmental politicians offer the government a way to maintain the status quo 
peacefully, and in return they get jobs managing our misery.

Political groups are bureaucratic. They tend to mirror the structures of work where 
activity is controlled from the outside. They create specialists in politics. They are 
built on a division between leaders and led, between representatives and represented, 
between organizers and organized. This is not a bad choice of how to set up organizations, 
to be remedied with a large dose of participatory democracy. It is a direct result of what 
political groups and activities are trying to do--to manage a part of capitalism.

The only thing that interests us about politics is its destruction.

ANTI-POLITICS

"Anarchism is not a beautiful utopia, nor an abstract philosophical idea, it is a social 
movement of the labouring masses"
---Dyelo Truda Group

When we start to fight against the conditions of our lives, a completely different kind of 
activity appears. We do not look for a politician to come change things for us. We do it 
ourselves, with other working class people.

Whenever this kind of working class resistance breaks out, politicians try to extinguish 
it in a flood of petitions, lobbying and election campaigns. But when we are fighting for 
ourselves, our activity looks completely different from theirs. We take property away from 
landlords and use it for ourselves. We use militant tactics against our bosses and end up 
fighting with the police. We form groups where everyone takes part in the activity, and 
there is no division between leaders and followers. We do not fight for our leaders, for 
our bosses or for our country. We fight for ourselves. This is not the ultimate form of 
democracy. We are imposing our needs on society without debate-needs that are directly 
contrary to the interests and wishes of rich people everywhere. There is no way for us to 
speak on equal terms with this society. This tendency of working class struggles to go 
outside and against the government and politics, and to create new forms of organization 
that do not put our faith in anything other than our own ability, has at times been called 
"anarchism".

WAR

"Let us devastate the avenues where the wealthy live."
--Lucy Parsons

So we're in a war-a class war.

There is no set of ideas, proposals, and organizational strategies that can bring victory. 
There is no solution outside of winning the war.

So long as they have the initiative, we are separated, and passive. Our response to the 
conditions of our lives is individual: quitting our jobs, moving to neighborhoods with 
cheaper rent, joining subcultures and gangs, suicide, buying lottery tickets, drug abuse 
and alcoholism, going to church. Their world looks like the only possibility. Any hope for 
change is lived on an imaginary level-separated from our everyday lives. It's business as 
usual, with all the crisis and destruction that this implies.

When we go on the offensive we begin to recognize each other and to fight collectively. We 
use the ways that society depends on us to disrupt it. We strike, sabotage, riot, desert, 
mutiny and take over property. We create organizations in order to amplify and coordinate 
our activities. All kinds of new possibilities open up. We grow more daring and more 
aggressive in pursuing our own class interests. These do not lie in forming a new 
government, or becoming the new boss. Our interests lie in ending our own way of life-and 
therefore the society that is based on that way of life.

We are the working class who want to abolish work and class. We are the community of 
people who want to tear the existing community apart. Our political program is to destroy 
politics. In order to do that, we have to push the subversive tendencies that exist today 
until we have completely remade society everywhere. This has at times been called 
"revolution".

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Message: 6





On the occasion of the Founding Congress of the New International, a member of 
anarcho-syndicalist union CNT interviewed its foreign secretary Miguel Pérez, on the ins 
and outs of the event. As a note, Freedom does not have a position re: the split with the 
IWA which produced the new international, and readers are encouraged to check out comments 
from both groups. ---- Can you describe the process that has led to this founding 
congress? ---- Well, the process as such starts at the XI Congress of CNT, in Zaragoza, in 
December 2015. There it was decided to immediately launch a process of founding a new 
international. So we could not know, but it seems that we were touching a sensitive fiber 
of anarcho-syndicalism worldwide, given the immense interest that has been generated and 
the perceived need for an operational international.

Be that as it may, several sister organisations, such as FAU of Germany, USI of Italy and 
the historic FORA of Argentina joined the project. Immediately we realised that the 
process was going to be long and that it was better to walk slowly, always seeking 
consensus, to have an International that would avoid falling into the mistakes of the past 
and that responded to the current needs of anarcho-syndicalism on a global level. From 
there, we convened the Barakaldo International Conference in November 2016, to which we 
invited a series of related unions to present our proposal. From that moment, the 
organisations that had decided to join the process, we began to work in the organisation 
of this founding congress, which we reached more than two years after the beginning of the 
journey.

The process has been difficult at times because all the member organisations are 
horizontal (as it can not be otherwise), with decision-making processes from the bottom 
up, and we have often had to extend the calendar to ensure that the deadlines and internal 
processes of each were respected. For example, in CNT we have held three confederal 
plenums in which the theme of the International has been discussed. In fact, in successive 
stages, the agreements taken in these plenary sessions have constituted the main columns 
of the project. The most obvious example is the founding congress itself, whose central 
papers are from the unions of Compostela and Valladolid.

Personally, I want to say that I have always been impressed by the maturity of the 
organisation in these debates and the opportunity and relevance of the agreements made. 
Nothing speaks better than the consensus that they have generated among all the other 
sections of the International.

What motivates you the most in the creation of the New International?

In the first place, I believe that the capacity of our organisations to bring such a long 
and complicated process to a successful conclusion speaks volumes about the maturity that 
anarcho-syndicalist organisations have achieved in recent years, globally. This holds 
great potential, which I hope the new International will help develop.

Afterwards, it seems to me that to a large extent the ideas of internationalism, in the 
libertarian and unionist sphere in general, but also beyond, was very distorted. For a 
long time it seemed that it was enough to be included in a formal international and hold 
meetings regularly to be an internationalist, although often that project lacked content 
beyond the occasional collaboration or symbolic support. This has given rise to 
international structures that are empty shells, without much content inside, but with all 
the paraphernalia of large global projects. In fact, it is not necessary to go to the 
international arena to understand why this happens. Anyone can see that in a co-ordination 
of any size the activity of relatively inactive groups can only be formal and symbolic. 
That is why from this secretariat we have always insisted that internationalism can only 
emerge as an extension of the work of the sections in the local territory. It is not, as 
it was erroneously interpreted, the size of the sections or their number, but whether they 
enthusiastically address a project to build a revolutionary trade union alternative in 
their local area, and that from there they converge with others at the international level 
to help this local project to develop.

In that sense, I believe that we are now in a position to provide tools to build a model 
of internationalism that goes beyond symbolism and is built as a positive complement to 
the local activity of the sections. Undoubtedly, this requires exploring new forms of 
solidarity and joint work among the sections, whose co-ordination should be closer and 
more flexible as well. There is a lot to develop in this sense, but there is also a lot of 
desire and enthusiasm.

It may seem paradoxical that internationalism, understood in this way, starts from the 
local and returns to the territory, but if it is put forward in another way, it does not 
offer relevance for the daily work of its members. I hope that, at last, internationalism 
will no longer be a medal that organisations hang on their chests and becomes a reality 
that provides resources and content to the local reality of the sections. It seems to me 
that this new International is the opportunity to achieve it.

What proposals do you see more positive in the face of the founding Congress of the New 
International?

In my opinion, it is very positive that the proposals presented clearly go in the 
direction of building an International that responds to the model I have explained before. 
On the one hand, it seeks to explore all possible and necessary forms of solidarity and 
joint work, from shared formation and debate, to support in union conflicts, joint 
campaigns, defense against repression, shared resources, etc. The report from Valladolid 
makes an exhaustive list of possibilities in this regard. There is no doubt that some can 
be developed better than others, depending on the needs and possibilities of the sections, 
that over time we will imagine more forms of cooperation, etc. But as a starting point I 
think it marks an ambitious goal and proposes a very wide range of tasks, how it has to 
be. You will not miss work in the new International from the first moment!

On the other hand, the Compostela proposal defines a flexible structure, which seeks, 
precisely, to facilitate this coordination between sections. I know that the presentation 
is made by compañeras and compañeros who have been accompanying the process of the new 
International from the beginning and it is clear that there is a deep reflection on the 
mistakes made in the past. It is evident that the existence of a relationship committee 
seeks to facilitate the flow of information between sections and the development of direct 
proposals for collaboration between them. Precisely, that is what it is about.

The most remarkable thing is the synergy that occurs between both papers, which complement 
each other perfectly. Undoubtedly, there will be much to polish in the months and years to 
come, but this fact constitutes, in my opinion, an irrefutable proof that our reflection 
on internationalism is already framed in a new, much more promising horizon. It also seems 
extremely positive to me that this has been understood by the other sections, which have 
taken both papers as base documents to be discussed at the congress.

In what fields do you think that the New International is more likely to be useful to workers?

It is time for our international organisations to start making positive contributions to 
the development of their local sections. From the moment that anarcho-syndicalism and 
revolutionary syndicalism are no longer just useful, but necessary for workers and workers 
from all over the globe, an International that contributes to their development and 
settlement can only be positive. In this sense, sharing experiences, training and 
resources would be a first step in many cases.

In addition, often working conditions, wages and life in a territory are determined by the 
place occupied in a global chain of production and consumption. An international 
organisation is in a position to provide perspective and analysis to this global structure 
and to provide the framework in which to plan a response. There is no doubt that our 
resources will be very limited in this regard for a long time, but the objective is to 
move forward so that we can tackle the response to large global processes.

Finally, in the sense of the above, international solidarity has to materialise in acts 
that go beyond issuing communiqués or holding solidarity pickets. The concrete form of 
this solidarity will depend, of course, on each particular case, on the needs of the 
sections involved, etc. but the new International should tend to propose joint processes 
and projects that respond to these needs according to their possibilities. These cases 
should be addressed with imagination, creativity and resolution and in that sense, the 
role of the relationship committee can be fundamental in facilitating these processes.

What challenges does this New International face in the short, medium and long term?

Well as the anarchist newspaper says, everything is to be done. The first obvious step is 
to build the scaffolding decided in the congress and organise to put the first projects in 
motion. A few months of very serious work await the new International to get going. Also, 
like anyone who has a new device, you have to learn to manage it. That is to say, it will 
be necessary to see how the operating methods that are decided materialise in practice, 
how to safely overcome the failures that are detected and develop an organisational 
culture and ethics. All this will happen over time, but it is evident that it is the 
immediate objective of the new International.

In the medium term, new forms of collaboration and solidarity should be planned and 
enacted. As we advance in this process, it is expected that we will begin to see more 
instances in which internationalism is incorporated into the daily practice of the 
sections in the local terrain. This will be a gradual process, in which progress will be 
made as the new International proves itself capable of responding to local needs. To a 
certain extent it is a process that has already begun, but we will not know its true 
potential until it begins to be seriously deployed, once the International is set up and 
put into operation. In this sense, it seems to me that the objective should not be so much 
to increase the number of sections that make up the International but to strengthen the 
relationship between its components. Of course, contacts will be expanded with all the 
anarcho-syndicalist groups that are interested, at a global level, but I believe that the 
priority must be to give content to international solidarity and to lay solid foundations 
for joint work. If the new International manages to do this, it will ensure that it has 
the interest of those organisations that seek to raise a real revolutionary trade union 
alternative and not just to put on a label. Any growth, to have a foundation, must be 
given organically, starting from work relationships.

I believe the priority must be to give content to international solidarity and to lay 
solid foundations for joint work. If the new International manages to do this, it will 
ensure that it has the interest of those organisations that seek to raise a real 
revolutionary trade union alternative and not just to put on a label. Any growth, to have 
a foundation, must organic, starting from working relationships.

And in the long term, the planetary social revolution, right?

Finally, can you make any general assessment of the international political and economic 
landscape, from a global point of view?

 From my point of view, and this is a personal opinion, obviously, the main characteristic 
of the current world, at a political and intellectual level, is the absence of a 
revolutionary project of social transformation. For the first time since the emergence of 
modernity, Western culture seems to have exhausted its dialectic of internal opposition. 
If since the 17th century, at least on a purely intellectual level, there has always been 
a tension between different currents within Western societies, this has disappeared, as a 
conscious and articulated form, since the failure of Marxism, the defeat manu militari of 
anarchism and the domestication of the labor movement.

This translates into a series of very obvious symptoms: the inability of the left to 
propose alternatives, even conceptual ones, to the current systems; the repetition of 
mantras or clinging to obsolete models on the part of the recalcitrant sectors, for 
example, launching once again electoral projects that can not lead to anything or clinging 
to international ones that are not operative; the absolute disorientation of oppositional 
mobilisations, the return to nationalism and xenophobia of those who do not recognise 
themselves in a left without a project; the rise of populism based on fear and uncertainty 
etc.

I realise the enormity of this statement. Nor would it be easy to find examples that 
contradict it, something otherwise normal in such a broad approach. I think it would be 
the exceptions that confirm the rule. In any case, the characteristics of the global 
political and economic panorama are symptoms of this fundamental problem. It is urgent, 
therefore, to face the many negative aspects of the situation, to put on the table again a 
revolutionary project of social transformation on a planetary scale. And to do it in a 
practical way, not only in the discourse or in the theoretical level, that also. That is 
to say, the task that we face is nothing less than to articulate a project where all the 
projects have been exhausted and to do it, in addition, so that it affects the current 
social reality and that allows the incorporation of broad layers of the population. I 
sincerely believe that this can only be done in a libertarian key, through 
non-hierarchical organisation from the base and rejecting the siren songs of electoralism, 
betting on self-management and direct action.

In that sense, it seems to me that we are often not aware of the role played by the 
current CNT, as a node in this context. Not the only one, of course, and of course 
improvable in many ways. But it seems to me that our trade union model, the agreements of 
our last congresses, the 10 point program recently approved by Catalan comrades, the 
effective incorporation of a gender perspective into our practice, etc.; all this speaks 
of an important effort to land proposals that are consequently revolutionary and 
transformative, anarcho-syndicalist, in a concrete social, economic and political context. 
No doubt one could do better in an ideal situation, we advance by trial and error, and we 
make mistakes and mistakes many times, but we advance.

Returning to the international arena, attempts are being made to fill this void of broad 
revolutionary projects with very imaginative proposals and equally grounded in concrete 
situations. Almost without hesitation, the most obvious and interesting case is Rojava and 
Democratic Confederalism. But that is not a reason to ignore the role of the CNT and other 
sister organisations in this global sphere. In recent years our international projection 
has skyrocketed and a well-deserved interest in our model and our proposals has been 
awakened. I believe that the new international has a very important role to play in this 
regard, as a projection to the global level of this will to be a revolutionary 
alternative, and I am confident that it will be able to shape this much needed practical 
and theoretical project.

This article is an edited machine translation of an interview conducted for the CNT website

TA

https://freedomnews.org.uk/interview-with-the-secretary-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-cnt/

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