Today's Topics:
1. luta fob: Students and Aparecida de Goiânia stand up By
AUTONOMEOS FEDERATION OF WORKERS - FAT (it)
[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. [France] Do not leave the street to the fascists! Let's hunt
them down in our demonstrations! By ANA (pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. af london: Event: Gilets Jaunes - an anarchist perspective
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. [Greece] Action at the Russian Consulate in Athens in
solidarity with the Russian anarchists and antifascists By ANA
(pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. anarkismo.net: Imperialism and Capitalism: As American as
Apple Pie? by James Parisot (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. yeryuzu postasi: France, 50 thousand people went out on the
street in the 15th week of the Yellow Vests' actions [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Canada, ucl-saguenay: The Anarchist Collective Emma Goldman
turns 10 (fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. southern africa, anarkismo/zabalaza net: A Workers' Party
and Elections or Class Struggle? The Question of State Power and
the Anarchists' Answer by Warren McGregor (ZACF)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
9. amsterdam, vrije bond: The Action Fund organizess: the third
edition of AKSIE-café! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Yesterday (February 18), in the IFG of Aparecida, students organized a large assembly to
discuss and deliberate mobilizations in defense of quality public education in the state.
---- The assembly was attended by several students from state schools in the region. ----
From yesterday to today, these same students articulated among themselves, paralyzed
their colleges and now, in a great act in Aparecida de Goiânia. ---- In addition to
supporting teachers, who often do not position themselves for fear of persecution in their
workplace (or because they are not effective, like most contract teachers), students also
strive to: ---- - improvements in their schools (which are totally scrapped, some without
teachers other than even sitting chairs), ---- - against the closure of schools (which
causes pupils to migrate to schools far from their homes, having to fork out rivers of
money to move great distances)
- by maintaining the general and unrestricted free pass (now, with the announcement of the
pass cuts, are threatened even if they can not move to their classes).
These same students call for a great demonstration tomorrow, 20, at 1:00 p.m. in Matriz
Square, in Aparecida de Goiânia.
Today was great, tomorrow will be huge. The students have already sent the message. If the
situation does not change, THE WHOLE STATE WILL STOP.
https://lutafob.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/fat-estudantes-e-aparecida-de-goiania-se-levantam/
------------------------------
Message: 2
Repudiation note to remind that the presence of the extreme right in the manifestations of
the Yellow Vests is neither acceptable nor justifiable. And that "all and sundry" is not
an argument that should be used in debates on this issue. ---- Let's not leave the street
to the fascists! ---- Not! Manifesting yourself to the far right side is not tolerable!
---- Let's hunt them down in our demonstrations! ---- Since the beginning of the Yellow
Jackets movement, since the beginning of the demonstrations, extreme right-wing groups
have been increasingly present, usually armed, using violence to intimidate and assault.
---- Since the beginning of the movement, there have been many debates and discussions,
especially in the general assemblies, to see if the presence of these fascist groups is
"acceptable" within our manifestations, and whether or not we should tolerate them.
These debates place on the one hand those who firmly refuse to allow the neo-Nazis to
infiltrate our marches and, on the other hand, those who tolerate the involvement and
presence of these groups in the name of "living together", that it is " and that "we are
apolitical".
NOT!
Manifesting yourself to these individuals who promote hatred and violence is not tolerable
and NOTHING can justify their presence!
The fascist groups defend racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic values. They promote
and defend hatred of others, foreigners, people of different origins, homosexuals or the
different. His visions and relationships with women are macho, patriarchal, and
anti-feminist. They claim an unjust and unequal society.
Fascist groups permanently threaten, intimidate, attack, kill, mutilate, and defile in
defense and propaganda of their disgusting ideas.
The examples are numerous: the death of Clément Méric, in 2013, by a far-right activist;
murder of Mireille Knoll, burned in her own house in 2018 because she was Jewish; multiple
attacks against antifascist libraries and places, aggressions by militants, people of
different origins, homosexuals, etc.
And in 2018, there were a number of assaults that are not limited to this list:
* a dozen assaults within the universities of Montpellier, Paris, Lille, Strasbourg,
Tours, etc. hooded and armed extreme-right groups;
* aggressions by homosexual activists in Angers;
* 8 Social Bastion militants arrested for assaulting a police officer;
* racially motivated murder of a person of North African origin in the Landes;
* violence practiced with racist motivations in Aix-en-Provence by a Social Bastionist who
was sentenced to imprisonment.
* arrests of 10 extreme right-wing militants for terrorist practices.
For more information, see the site: debunkersdehoax.org
In Lyon, during the movement of the Yellow Vests:
* January 12: Attempts to attack the town hall by extremist right-wing militants;
* January 19: violent attack by thirty activists from Bastion Social and Action Française³
on the fishing pier. The confrontation resulted in several injured;
* January 26: Leaving Bellecour Square, forty far-right activists took over the
demonstration. On Cours Gambetta, they attacked other demonstrators.
* February 2: in Cordeliers, right-wing extremists attack a group of protestors, notably
union students from the Solidaires.
* February 9 - extremely violent attack by forty fascists at the end of the march;
For more information, see rue89lyon.fr
It does not have to be politicized to reject these filthy values and combat these unjust
and deeply violent ideas. The argument that the Yellow Vests movement is "apolitical" and
does not belong to any organization is not admissible.
Rejecting racism and hatred of others is not only an action of political value. It comes
from a human characteristic of solidarity, the fundamental basis of any just and
egalitarian society.
The Yellow Vests protest for more social justice, for more freedom and equality.
How could we imagine defending these claims alongside those who, quite the opposite,
struggle for a society in which the rights and possibilities of each would not be the same
according to our gender, our origins, our cultural or religious aspirations, our multiple
and varied differences.
Fascists aspire to an unequal society, in which there would be the relationship of
domination of one group over another, relations based on essentially racist criteria: "we
are superior to others" and sexist: "women are at the service of men."
They consider that people of different backgrounds, women, non-heteronormative
sexualities, etc., are inferior and therefore must be dominated, excluded, oppressed, and
they do not hesitate to use violence in all its forms to achieve these ends.
If you, Yellow Vest, do not recognize these values.
If you, as a Woman, refuse macho and patriarchal domination.
If you wish your children, your neighbors, others a better future, a different life, where
solidarity, equality and social justice take precedence over domination, hatred and denial
of difference.
So you have no argument to accept, to tolerate the presence of the far right within our
manifestations.
And, for those and those who continue to defend "all and sundry":
DO NOT manifest with a racist, for it would tolerate these ideas;
DO NOT manifest with a sexist, as it would support male domination;
DO NOT manifest alongside a homophobic, as it would deny the sexual differences.
Thanks for reading. I thank the Yellow Vests for this spontaneous and popular revolt.
I thank those who are still here and will not give up the fight.
Only the fight transforms!
An unorganized, unorganized, but deeply anti-fascist Yellow Vest .
Source: https://rebellyon.info/NE-LAISSONS-PAS-LA-RUE-AUX-FACHOS-20204
Translation> POAEF
> Notes
[1]Social Bastion is a neo-fascist French political movement founded in 2017, based in
Lyon, by former members of the extreme right-wing student association 'Groupe Union Défense'.
[2] In France, they use the term 'ratonnade' to describe physical violence against an
ethnic minority or social group, usually North Africans. The first use was in 1937 and its
etymology comes from the noun 'mouse' (rat) - extremely derogatory and racist designation
of people of North African origin.
[3] 'Action Française' is a counterrevolutionary monarchist movement and French Orléanist
founded in 1898 by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois, whose main ideologist was Charles Maurras.
Related Content:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2018/12/10/franca-video-em-paris-antifascistas-identificam-extrema-right-group-of-colletes-amarelos-e/
anarchist-ana news agency
------------------------------
Message: 3
On 22nd March at 7pm (venue TBC) we will be hosting a talk by a member of Les Éditions de
Monde Libertaire, the publishing group of the Fédération Anarchiste (France) who is active
in the Gilets Jaunes movement. She will discuss the pros and cons of the movement in
France as well as the problem of the involvement of the far right. ---- Monica Jornet will
present ‘Les Gilets Jaunes: Points de vue anarchistes' and copies (in French) will be
available on the night. Donations to help fund her travel costs are welcome. ---- This
talk is part of a series of events in the run up to the mobilisation against the far right
‘Yellow Vest' march in London, 30th March. Please also see our reading group on the far
right taking place on Tuesday 19th March at Freedom Bookshop ----
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/reading-group-10-far-right/)
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/event-gillet-jaune-an-anarchist-perspective
------------------------------
Message: 4
On Tuesday, February 19, 2019, about 30 companions and companions met outside the Russian
Consulate in Athens. Demonstrators erected banners, spread leaflets, shouted slogans and
slogans against torture and persecution of the Russian state against anarchists and
anti-fascists. More photos: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1595818/
Related Items:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/02/20/russia-anarquista-azat-miftakhov-e-solto-e-detido-novamente/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/02/07/russia-sinais-de-tortura-vistos-en-anarquista-preso-diz-grupo-de-direitos-de-moscou/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/02/06/russia-outra-onda-de-prisoes-e-tortura-contra-anarquistas-russos/
anarchist-ana news agency
------------------------------
Message: 5
In the midst of the U.S. Civil War (1861 - 1865), as somewhere between half a million to
three quarters of a million bodies lay dead from bullets and disease, Emanuel Leutze
completed a painting titled Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way for the U.S.
Capitol. The painting celebrated empire as central to American history. Included in the
final draft of the painting was a free black man, subordinate to the leadership of the
white men forging the path of empire across the continent; supposedly saved from slavery
with their leadership.1 Of course, as W.E.B. Du Bois famously discussed, central to the
Civil War was the "general strike of the slaves"; their resistance was key to abolition.
Regardless, Leutze's painting was one representative of the broader trend, going back to
the initial creation of an independent American government, in which so-called democracy
and freedom were felt through the vision of empire.
White settler colonialism, though, always had a complicated relationship with capitalism.
While most Americans today embrace capitalism as normal, this was not always the case. It
was to an extent in the South. In the beginnings of empire in the 1600s here, the Virginia
Company's investment capital led to the production of tobacco on a large scale for profit
produced initially by white indentured servants and then black slaves. This led to a
trajectory of racialized capitalist empire as state regulations were created to divided
white from black, as, for instance, laws banning interracial marriage were put in place to
organize social relations along racial lines so that the colony elite could build consent
for their power among poorer whites who could insist, for all their troubles, ‘at least I
am not black'.
But in the north, circumstances were different. Rather than elite gentlemen-capitalists,
poor white servants, and slaves, middling families moved across the ocean, escaping
pressures of land dispossession in England. The type of society that formed in the north
meant that, as one historian put it, "the equality of the society was nothing less than
the equality of economic interests which lies at the heart, not of modern pluralistic
democracy, but of Marxist Leninist democracy."2 White settlers organized their communities
around a communal orientation in which religious obedience triumphed over the power of
capitalism. Production was not primarily oriented toward profit, but sustaining the
colony. While some merchant activity did occur, it was done within the confines of what
was acceptable to the religiously oriented social hierarchy. For instance, the prominent
merchant Robert Keayne was repeatedly in trouble with colonial society, accused of
overcharging for goods and he wrote his last will and testament defending himself against
these charges.3 In general, land, housing, trade, and the movement of peoples were all
regulated according to the moral economy of colonial society rather than the power of
capitalism.
White Settler Empire
Through the colonial era and beyond, the white settler empire was consolidated and
celebrated through the ethnic cleansing of native peoples. As one commentator put it in
the 1830s:
"whatever colour poetry may lend to the removal of the Indians, it is, nevertheless, but
the removal of a sick bed from a place where death is certain, to one from which it is
more remote. Neither is it the death of youth or of manhood, but that of old age and
decrepitude, which the Indian is doomed to die; and in his mouldering ashes germinates the
seed of empires, destined to change the world."4
Empire was built through the elimination of native peoples as even the Christianized and
relatively assimilated Delaware community in Gnadenhutten, Ohio were massacred in a
bloodbath of nearly 100 people in 1782.
The battle over empire also played a role in causing the American Revolution in the first
place. Following Pontiac's Rebellion, as, over time, native peoples grouped together to
challenge the path of empire, the British enacted the Proclamation Line of 1763. This
limited the extent to which settlers could legally expand west, upsetting many British
subjects. Thus from the start, as the so-called founding fathers organized their
‘democratic' Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 by locking all the doors
and putting guards at the building, the idea of the United States was created as an
imperial idea. The ideology of ‘Manifest Destiny', born in the 1840s, was simply the
result of the basic organization and goal of the American state: to conquer western space,
eliminate native peoples, and spread whiteness across the territory.
Imperialism was also a gendered process. White men travelled to the frontier as a
performance of their manhood. They conquered the ‘virgin' territory, forcing their wives,
children, and slaves to follow, leaving all their social connections behind. Whiteness and
masculinity were continually reproduced on the edge of empire.
The relationship between empire and capitalism was always a complex one, though. In the
north, while speculators (such as President George Washington) saw the west as a vast open
space to generate profit from through land speculation, for the small farmer patriarch,
his goal was to build what was called, at the time, ‘competency'. This meant to own a
farm, and produce primarily for the household, with only small amounts of market
production if necessary for goods that could not be made at home. Rural communities would
organize their labour on a patriarchal household basis with a gendered division of labour
as men tended to farm, hunt, and so on, while women and children took care of more
domestic tasks including cooking and cleaning. But when it came time to build a farm or
shuck corn, among other activities, all the neighbours came out in a festival of work, in
which the household organizing the event would supply food and, most importantly, whisky.
Racism and Sexism
Meanwhile, while some northerners had the idealistic idea that somehow slavery would die
out as it expanded across the southern half of the west and became more diffuse, rather,
the opposite happened. As the cotton boom took off in the 1820s and 1830s, so slavery was
intensified and invigorated, pushing the empire of slavery as far as the Texas frontier.
The revolution of white settlers in Texas against Mexico, for instance, was in part pushed
by the fact that Mexico wanted to regulate and even abolish slavery: white slaveowners in
Texas, of course, did not.
Plantation slavery pushed expansion across the south. This was driven by a ruthless form
of capitalism organized along racial lines in which not simply the working time of the
labourer was purchased, but the total body of the labourer themselves. That being said,
not all of the south was large plantations. Scattered throughout the south in the ‘pine
barrens' and less fertile - and therefore less profitable - areas, small farm households,
similar to those in the north, but in some cases with a slave or two, existed. And holding
the entire social structure together was racism and the idea of black and native American
inferiority.
Over many decades, though, what aspects of non-capitalist (but still patriarchal and
racist) life in North and South existed were gradually destroyed. The remaking of the
state before, during, and after the Civil War also played a key role in creating the
political conditions for capitalism. The Republican Party formed in the North as a messy
alliance between different groups all with an interest in limiting the expansion of
slavery, and through the 1850s ‘free labour' ideology gradually took off, as the idea of
American ‘freedom' shifted from independence from market dependence and control over one's
labour to being a wage labourer. And Democratic Party ideology shifted toward ‘acceptance
of the results of the war',5 as the post-war southern black population was resubordinated
to white power through the rise of sharecropping and as northern capital moved south in
what was now a more accessible zone of investment.
By the time settlers pushed to the midwest and southwest, through Montana and Colorado,
and on to California, the forces driving empire were decreasingly those of small
patriarchal farm families. Rather, agribusiness took control of the midwest as Chicago
became the central transportation network of the region. In places like Montana and
Colorado the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers surveyed the resources, mapping an
advanced path for capital to take control of and exploit through mining and resource
extraction. And by the time empire reached the Pacific Coast, capitalism in California
took off (fueled by the famous Gold Rush), organized around a complex amalgam of Chinese,
Latin American, black, white, and immigrant workers.
Even by the 1870s and 1880s, though, some pockets of small farms remained. Just as today,
capitalism is never entirely ‘pure'; non-capitalist relations exist scattered throughout
the world. Most significantly, northern politicians were able to use the Civil War to pass
the Homestead Act in 1862 which distributed land to small farmers moving west. But the
amounts of land which went to these farmers dwarfed in comparison to the giant land grants
given to railroad companies and capitalist interests who remade ‘the west' in the image of
capital.
Through this history, then, empire became capitalist. From here, the domestic basis was
created for the global expansion of American Empire: an international process with no end
in sight. *
Endnotes
James Parisot, How America Became Capitalist: Imperial Expansion and the Conquest of the
West, London: Pluto Press (2019), 1.
Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts,
1636-1736, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (1970). Cited in How America Became Capitalist, 52.
How America Became Capitalist, 35.
Francis J. Grund, The Americans in their Moral, Social, and Political Relations Volume II,
London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman (1837). Cited in How America Became
Capitalist, 7.
How America Became Capitalist, 187.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31304
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Message: 6
In France, the activities of the Yellow Vests entered the 15th week, while Paris, mainly
in the country-wide actions were announced about 50 thousand people. ---- In the action
taking place in Paris yesterday (23 February), activists gathered at the Champs-Elysees
Street, which was among the symbols of the city, as in previous weeks. Activists marching
to the Trocadero Square next to the Eiffel Tower threw anti-government slogans. ---- When
he arrives at Tracadero Square, try to move forward with the insistence of walking from
here. 44 of the protesters who resisted police attack were taken into custody. ---- In
Paris, as well as in the central cities such as Touluse and Bordeaux, there have been
actions in many cities. In the city of Clermont-Ferrand with the participation of 2
thousand 500 people in the demonstration of tension between the demonstrators and the
police took place. 15 people were detained in the demonstration that the garbage bins were
set on fire. 15 people were detained in the incidents in Rennes and six were injured.
On the other hand, the activists closed the entrance and exits of the Amazon's
headquarters in Toulouse for a few hours. Demonstrators reacted not to pay taxes to giant
companies such as Amazon.
http://www.yeryuzupostasi.org/2019/02/24/sari-yeleklilerin-eylemlerinin-15-haftasinda-50-bin-kisi-sokaga-cikti/
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Message: 7
Infographic presented in the new leaflet of the Collective It was last November that the
Anarchist Collective Emma Goldman celebrated its 10th anniversary. The event is certainly
not trivial in the history of the anarchist movement in Quebec; a geographically isolated
group has gone through a decade! Year after year, it is a succession of fights, agitation,
pains and hopes indestructible defending the anarchist ideas in Saguenay, on the
Nitassinan. On the outskirts forcing him, a large number of ex-comrades have now left all
over the province and on different continents. The Collective continues nevertheless the
struggle in Saguenay. Greetings and warm thanks to all the comrades who have committed
themselves to us, to the companions of struggle, to the friends, to those who remain in
our hearts and to those who have supported us during these years. it's just a beginning,
let's keep fighting!
Collectif Emma Goldman
http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2019/02/le-collectif-anarchiste-emma-goldman.html
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Message: 8
The question of state government elections and running a Workers or Socialist political
party continues to be raised in the working class movement and the Left globally. As we
may know, there was excitement about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party in
Britain, left political parties in certain parts of Europe and Latin America and, more
recently, certain shifts to more centrist positions in the United States amongst a section
of the Democratic Party calling themselves "Democratic Socialists". In South Africa, many
workers and some activists seem cautiously optimistic by NUMSA's[1]formation of the
Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that will seek to participate in the 2019 general
elections.
With this in mind, we need to look at issues of social transformation within the framework
of what we want to achieve and the relationship between the means and ends of struggle in
pursuit of these aims. The historic and ultimate socialist end is a society characterised
by collective democratic control of the political and economic systems and one without
class divisions and oppression of all types - in real terms, a society without the state
and capitalism in particular. If this is so, is this revolutionary transformation possible
through the means of state power and political parties that aim to capture this form of
power? The question is not only one of ideological orientation, but also the strategic and
tactical implications imposed by ideological adherence.
Before we get into it, I want to stress that we are participating in and waging a battle
of ideas. This is not just between an embattled working class - broadly understood as
workers, the unemployed and their families - and the opposing ruling class. It is also a
battle of competing tendencies, or ideologies within the working class itself, e.g.
nationalism, populism, various Marxist-Leninist tendencies, anarchism/syndicalism, etc. As
such, anarchism argues for a political organisation specific to the goals of developing
and promoting anarchist ideology, strategy and tactics within the working class and
society broadly. The aim is to win the popular classes to its ideas and methods of
struggle, resistance and social reconstruction. It is not an anti-organisational approach,
but one that argues for an organised, collective and directly-democratic response to the
issues posed by the battle of ideas. Anarchism and its trade union strategy, syndicalism,
does, however, vehemently oppose the participation of these political organisations in the
mechanisms of state rule, including state government elections.
The question of elections and political parties has to be interrogated within the dual
contexts of this battle of ideas (inter and intra class) and the relative weakness of
union movements in relation to the forces of the ruling class - the state and the
corporation. Whereas corporations and their capitalist philosophies have become ubiquitous
throughout the world, the influence of unions and the ideas of collective organisation as
combative and transformative forces are relatively quite weak. There may be large numbers
of workers unionised, but this does not necessarily translate into socio-economic
transformative action through the unions. This general weakness is not only characteristic
of unions - many other working class social and Left movements are unable to continue
struggles against the oppressive nature of modern day capitalism beyond protests and
petitions. As such, much action is defensive in nature (e.g. for wage increases above
inflation, for access to affordable energy in poor townships, etc.), and rarely are there
attempts at changing the relations of ownership and expanding working class control and
power into the economy and society.
It is therefore understandable, in a conjuncture of generally weak workers' and Left
formations, that the idea of a Workers Party is appealing for many people and sections of
the Left. However, the need to capture state power is also a long-standing idea held and
developed by the statist Left ideologies guiding these people. The claim of the need for
such a party asserts a new locus for struggle, the voice for socialist ideas and an entity
that can bring together working and popular class movements across a range of sectors. Its
claim rests on the idea that unions can only ever be economic organisations that aim at
day-to-day improvements in the lives of members and workers. An ahistorical claim, if ever
there was one! Accordingly, the socio-political realm can only therefore be engaged by a
political party that best represents the wishes of the working class as a whole. This they
call the vanguard. Another bold claim indeed!
Clearly many people on the Left think the real goal is to achieve state power to realise
the promises of the future. In reality this means building a political party and pouring a
substantial amount of resources - human and financial - into its development. Many also
believe that a Left party, however problematic, would be better than the existing parties,
particularly those of the radical right and populists promoting race essentialism and
xenophobia, who foment fear of and between different social groupings. History is not too
kind, however, to the belief that political parties are vehicles of radical, progressive,
socialist transformation.
The idea of state power is wholly under-scrutinised from a critical perspective. Few
discussions, if any, exist within working class organisational circles as to the nature
and impact of state power on political organisations and mass formations linked to parties
in power. Hardly any debates take place regarding the state's role as an institution of
ruling class power and whether or not the state, with its hierarchical structures of
centralised, individual control, can ever be accountable to a mass working class base.
Also missing in the discussions about elections, parties and the labour movement, is a
serious evaluation of the track record of parties - whether in power or in opposition. In
this conceptual vaccum, many continue to argue that the problem is existing parties have
failed because they have had bad leaders. This may account for the excitement about
Corbyn's influence in the UK's Labour Party, Cyril Ramaphosa ascending the ANC throne in
South Africa, or Bernie Sanders' popularity in the USA. For others, the problem is bad
ideas, with the solution being a better manifesto thereof. However, little attention is
paid to structural issues - of organisation, decision-making and control. At the extreme,
some of these Left lines of thought propose a better Communist or Socialist Party because
of the failure of the historical incumbent. However, there is little interrogation of what
these failures were, why they occurred (beyond bad leadership and alliances) and whether
or not these failures are inherent to the very idea and hierarchical structure of a
self-anointed "vanguard" party.
When we focus attention on these and other such questions, perhaps we can account for what
happened to the ANC[2]in South Africa particularly in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries. It suggests more than just the impact of key personalities or even programme.
Once in power, the ANC - hierarchically structured and founded on an unprincipled mishmash
of neo-liberal capitalist principles trumpeting faith in free markets on the one hand and
Developmental State leanings on the other - rapidly developed into a party characterised
by state looting, corruption and social repression. There are many similarities shared
with liberation movements that came to power elsewhere in the former colonial world, as
well as with the old Labour, Workers and Socialist parties in other parts. Once they got
into office and despite many promising early initiatives, the new ruling party proved
incapable of fostering substantive, transformative socio-economic development.
There are also shared histories amongst trade union movements that chose similar political
pathways, particularly of alliance to political parties who claimed to speak on behalf of
the working class, or, as in many cases in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the "oppressed
nation". In the South African case, an official alliance between the ANC and COSATU[3]has,
for various reasons, had a devastating impact on the union movement. Amongst a host of
other issues, it has caused the fragmentation of the workers' movement and its
organisations, a decline of union democracy, individual jockeying for union position to
access wealth and future political power via the ANC (leading to assassinations in many
cases), and the spread of corruption. Many of these issues stem from the alliance, with
union position seen as a ladder for personal political and economic gain.
We need to look at the trajectory of rot, failure and perhaps even betrayal here in South
Africa to understand the similarities between events in post-colonial Africa and
elsewhere. This can be a basis for a more informed discussion about ideas for the way
forward for the working class - away from mere rhetorical flourishes, sloganeering and
rehashing of old ideas that have failed our class again and again.
The reality is that a project of building political parties to capture state power to free
the popular classes - through elections or force - has been a colossal failure in relation
to its initial socialist aims. Once elected, political parties are incorporated into the
institutional life of the state machine. However, not only is the state always an
institution of ruling class power, run by and for exploitative economic and political
elites, one of its primary goals is to secure its power as an institution over society and
its politics. This self-sustaining approach is the very design and function of the state.
It exists primarily to secure its control over the means of coercion and administration.
It is this key form of control that positions top state managers as key members of the
ruling class alongside owners of means of production (as an aside, all states also control
substantial productive economic means, such as land, property and corporations like Eskom,
Petrobras, the Emirates airline, etc.).
All states are structured as hierarchies of control and privilege - structures that
centralise more and more power in fewer and fewer individuals as you go up the chain of
command. This very structure is contradictory and opposed, in form and content, to a
democratic, emancipatory working class project. Once a party is involved in the
self-sustaining state machinery, its leaders are drawn into the day-to-day necessities of
the interests of competing parties and politicians. The party and individual
representative's mandate must then change from one that may have sought to serve broad
social interests, to a primary focus on remaining in political power. Thus, the state,
party and politician serve the primary purpose of maintaining their social, economic and
political positions of power - control and privilege. The party and its servants are
warped to serve this elitist interest, and its leaders, now working and residing in the
halls, offices and residences of ruling class political power, become the very problem
they may have sought to rid society of. They now have become part of the ruling class.
Power over daily life, the neighbourhood, policing, education (let's call it the means of
administration and coercion) when rested in the hands of the state and its institutions
does not and cannot trickle down to the masses; it merely shifts between sections of the
ruling class. Let us be clear: the state is a fundamentally undemocratic institution that
we have vested with social, political and economic power. Although you may vote for
certain representatives in government, government is but ONE arm of the state machine. You
do not and cannot, by law, vote to elect leaders of the other arms of the state: the
judiciary, the police, the army and state-owned enterprises. Not very democratic, it seems!
If the ANC under Nelson Mandela, the Bolsheviks under Lenin, the SACP under Joe Slovo
could not break the pattern - and in many ways reinforced the authoritarian power of the
new state institutions they came to control - no way is it going to be different the next
time one chooses to vote, no matter the personalities and programmes involved. The desire
for state power, and to hold onto it, supersedes all others. There is no basis at all for
the faith that new or reformed Left or national liberation political parties will somehow
succeed in creating the kind of order that serves the interests (individual and
collective) of the working class. This seems a faith based more on ideological dogma, a
selective reading of the past, an unscientific analysis, or even just a belief in pursuing
a "lesser evil" hoping life would be more tolerable under different rulers. This hope is
fair and not to be sneered at, but is not aligned to a vision for a socialist future.
The very act of voting in state government elections is, in and of itself, a dereliction
of one's personal political obligation. The act places your power of decision-making in
the hands of representatives, and thus is referred to as representative democracy. This is
the power to make decisions on your behalf and, usually, without you. Voting in government
elections is not done by citizens informed by any knowledge of the outcome of their vote,
but in the hope that those they elect would actually meet their election promises. This
particular form of voting, therefore, reduces society to atomised individual actors alone
in the vast political world, reinforces the misplaced idea that it is a meaningful
political act, and further undermines the transformative collective political action of
the working class and poor. Over time and years of ruling class propaganda, we place more
faith in this handover of political power than the potential capabilities of our
organisations - the trade union and community-based social movement, the realms of
economic and political life where working class people can exercise actual control.
An uncritical approach to discussing the state, parties, unions, organisational structure
and the role of voting, prevents the development of an adequate ideological and strategic
set of conclusions about what has gone wrong in the past. It also may blind one to what
has and continues to achieve real victories. We need to focus less on the overall
ideological and strategic orientations of parties and the tactical choices that follow. As
I have argued, parties and state power are incapable of creating substantive socialist
socio-economic transformation. We should focus more on the process that wins real change -
working class struggle by itself, for itself. Even to achieve reforms, we need mass-based
struggle from below - at the workplace and in communities. For deeper systemic change, a
revolutionary change, we need particular struggles from below - workplace and community
struggles for reform that aim at constantly broadening working class organisational
control over the immediate means of production, coercion and administration, i.e. everyday
life. Both forms of struggle, for reforms and revolution, are indelibly linked. These
require building working class counter-power - organisations, especially unions, fomenting
a revolutionary front of the oppressed classes. These organisations must also be informed
by a new worldview that is socialist/anti-capitalist, anti-statist and non-hierarchical,
in other words, anarchist/syndicalist. This we can call a counter-hegemonic view, or more
precisely a revolutionary counter-culture; the leadership of a revolutionary mind-set won
in the day-to-day battle of ideas inside this movement by the political organisation
promoting these ideas. This movement of working class organisations, therefore, is to be
built on the twin tracks of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture, focused
outside and against the state, and is forged in struggle. The anti-statist position is not
one that ignores the state, but realises it as an organ of ruling class power that we are
unable to reform in our favour. Our aim is a self-managed, egalitarian form of
reconstruction - of our organisations and world - and a future society based on these
principles.
This is a call for a prefigurative politics grounded and shaped in working class realities
- a politics that marries means of struggle to the social, political and economic ends
collectively agreed to. This means revisiting anarchism and syndicalism, and the
libertarian left, and leaving the party-state project behind. This means drawing from the
deep well of working class history, organisation, theory and practice, moving from a
politics of recycling failed statist projects to one that develops confidence in our own
initiatives, one that valorises working class unity, ingenuity and independence.
Notes:
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.
African National Congress, the ruling party since 1994.
Congress of South African Trade Unions.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31312
https://zabalaza.net/2019/02/26/a-workers-party-and-elections-or-class-struggle-the-question-of-state-power-and-the-anarchists-answer
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Message: 9
Do you suffer from neoliberalism? Do you have a climate depression? Does the global
come-back of the extreme right frighten you? Do you want to do something but you don't
know what? Then come to a new edition of the AKSIE-café! An evening to discuss the
problems that we face today and, especially, what we can do about them. ---- We believe it
is time to dust off the old ideals of commitment and activism and to take action for the
things we find important. The AKSIE-café serves as a platform for informing people about
how they can contribute to the struggle for a just world and how they can organise actions
themselves. We invite activists and speakers who represent different action groups and
movements in the Netherlands and we'll talk with them about how you can join in. We'll
have drinks afterwards!
Programme:
Doors open: 19:30-20:00
Speakers: 20:00-21:00
Break
Discussion: how to get involved? 21:15-22:00
Drinks: 22:00 -
Location
Joe's Garage
Pretoriusstraat 43
Amsterdam
Vrije Bond Secretariat
https://www.vrijebond.org/amsterdam-aksie-cafe-3
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