Anarchic update news all over the world - 20.04.2019

Today's Topics:

   
1.  [Spain] May Day: Now more than ever! More organization and
      more street fighting By ANA (pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  Holland, vrije bond: [Amsterdam] Action festival: support
      the noise! (nl) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #293 - Read: Goutte, "Long
      live the union ! " (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  London Anarchist Federation: Afed working group on Gender &
      Sexuality - 17 April (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  US, WSA, ideas and action: Ecology, A "Green New Deal"?: The
      Eco-syndicalist Alternative By Tom Wetzel (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  Greece, anarchist collectivity vogliamo tutto: We want
      everything and everyone [machine translation] 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






Undoubtedly, the achievement of the 8-hour daily workday is the most important milestone 
of the labor movement in Spain. An achievement that was preceded by a strike that lasted 
44 days and that began in the company Irrigation and Forces of the Ebro of Barcelona, 
popularly known like "Canadian", being its major shareholder the Canadian Bank of Comerce 
of Toronto. ---- The reason for the strike was the dismissal of 8 workers who refused to 
accept a reduction in salary. Immediately the workers of the textile companies joined the 
strike, and shortly thereafter, all employees of the electricity, water and gas sectors 
joined them. The shutdown of public services was total: 70% of the factories were stopped 
as a result of the strike or the lack of electricity supply, even declaring themselves to 
be in a state of war.

However, the labor movement led by the CNT anarcho-syndicalists did not give up, in such a 
way that the 8-hour working day and the payment of half the wages of the time that lasted 
the strike were reached. The government also pledged to release those arrested on social 
grounds, to lift the state of war and to readmit all strikers without reprisals. All this 
happened between February and March 1919. One hundred years of this important social 
achievement has now been fulfilled.

One hundred years ago, a strike that started in a factory with solidarity with 8 workers 
changed forever the life of the whole working class, so much so that the ILO, founded in 
the same year of 1919, was inspired by this situation for the elaboration of its the first 
agreement by which he makes the eight-hour working day universal.

Times have not changed much. The exploitation of the work suffered by working people a 
century ago is still valid now, under other forms of precariousness and abuse on the part 
of employers. Public freedoms are threatened by the emergence of totalitarian ideologies 
and the regressive laws of past governments. Half the population remains marginalized and 
suffers the intolerable scourge of male-dominated violence. The existence of climate 
change is denied and markets overexploit the planet. No, times have not changed much.

For this reason, it is now as necessary, as it were, for the working class to organize and 
take to the streets in defense of their rights, their freedoms, real equality between men 
and women, and for the defense of the planet and a decent life.

The Canadian strike and subsequent mobilizations were made possible by the fact that the 
working class of the time organized around the anarcho-syndicalist movement, demonstrating 
that it is the best form of organization of our class. Demonstrating also, that the 
strike, that street fighting, serves to turn things around.

Long live the CGT!

Long live the struggle of the working class!

Live on May 1st!

cgt.org.es

Translation> Liberto

anarchist-ana news agency

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Message: 2






What do climate change, economic inequality, discrimination and exclusion have in common? 
They are caused and maintained by a mindset that disregards the environment and the lives 
of people and animals. It is a mindset that legitimises nationalism and the exclusion of 
those who do not belong to "the authentic people". It ignores inequality, excuses 
exploitation and instigates fear and anxiety. This is the mindset of the extreme right and 
it must be fought. It is time to raise our voices in protest! ---- With talks, workshops, 
discussions, a documentary screening and much more we will ask questions and provide 
answers about organising protest. Everywhere in the world, including in the Netherlands, 
there are social movements and activists who resist the structures of oppression that 
threaten us all. They are crucial, for the struggle against injustice must go on. 
Especially today. Especially today we must find ways to work together and stop the rise of 
the extreme right.

Do you want to take action but you don't know how? Do you want to do something but you 
don't know what? Do you want to support social movements? Then come to Het Actiefestival!

Het Actiefonds has been supporting social movements and activists worldwide for over 50 
years. This way we contribute to the global movement for change. Het Actiefestival is the 
beginning of a campaign to strengthen this movement.

 From 20:00 til 23:00 there will be two amazing speakers (Naomie Pieter and TBA) with 
inspiring talks, there will be a workshop by The Black Archives and a documentary 
screening, and lastly there will be a political cafe, with three action groups discussing 
strategy and politics!

Location: Lab 111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam

Festival, het actiefonds, x-y

Vrije Bond Secretariaat

https://www.vrijebond.org/amsterdam-actiefestival-steun-het-tegengeluid/

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Message: 3






The last book of this revolutionary syndicalist comrade defends good principles, but also 
includes some blind spots. ---- Books seeking to think about trade union action are rare 
today. Enough to welcome the publication of Guillaume Goutte's latest book. ---- The 
author is a press corrector, CGT militant, resigned from the anarchist group 
Salvador-Segui of the anarchist Federation and now member of the revolutionary syndicalist 
committees (CSR). ---- We can only share the main analysis of this small text: the need to 
give back to solidarity and class sociability, particularly through the local unions and 
departmental interprofessional ; the importance of the strike as a moment of rupture with 
the capitalist order and as the axis of the balance of power ; the need to overcome the 
proxy strike and to reflect instead on the conditions of its generalization ; the desire 
for autonomy of trade unionism, a guarantee of its political capacity.

Unfair criticism
Structured in two parts, the book returns first on the fight against Labor laws before 
returning to the revolutionary syndicalist strategy. While conceding that it is necessary 
to renew the terms of street appearances, he pinpoints the limits of the head procession 
as initiatives of the type Standing Night by insisting on their disconnect from the 
struggles in companies.

If he severely criticizes the collective Front social, especially for his obsession with 
criticism of " union leadership " , it is surprising that he does not mention for a moment 
the call and the collective. actively involved. This echoes an important lack: there are 
no or very few questions about the inter-union framework. The entire book and talk focus 
on the CGT as the one and only space for the " unique front " of the exploited.

A passage is devoted to the libertarian movement, described as " delusion and inaudible " 
. Guillaume Goutte affirms that " most libertarian organizations have turned their backs 
on the autonomy of the working class in favor of a party dynamic " and pose as competitors 
of trade unions. Although it should be noted that the author positively discusses the 
process of rapprochement-surpassing AL and the CGA, this does not diminish a major 
disagreement: contrary to what he argues, libertarian activists are precisely among the 
most attached to the autonomy of the social movement !

Let us finally mention a blind spot of the book: that of self-organization. There is, 
however, much to be said today about the role of general strike assemblies, their 
coordination ... and this is a key issue for trade unionists fighting.

Theo Rival (AL Orleans)

Guillaume Goutte, Long live the union ! For a unique front of the exploited, Nada, 2018, 
88 pages, 8 euros.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?A-propos-de-Vive-la-syndicale

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Message: 4





This will be the founding meeting of the Anarchist Federation gender and sexuality working 
group. This will be a space to discuss these topics from an anarchist perspective, plan 
specific events and actions around gender and sexuality, and discuss how anarchists should 
interact with the wider movement.
So, if you want to discuss or get involved in developing anarchist theory around gender 
and sexuality, come along! All genders welcome!
Wednesday 17th April, 7pm, Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX

https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/afed-working-group-on-gender-sexuality-17-april/

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Message: 5






Capitalist dynamics are at the very heart of the current crisis that humanity faces over 
global warming. ---- When we talk of "global warming," we're talking about the rapid - and 
on-going - rise in the average world-wide surface and ocean temperature. Thus far a rise 
of 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. According to an ongoing 
temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space 
Studies, two-thirds of this temperature increase has occurred since 1975. A one-degree 
rise in temperature might seem like no big deal. As the NASA scientists point out, 
however, "A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat 
to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much."

We know that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is at the heart of 
the problem. For many centuries the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ranged 
between 200 and 300 parts per million. By the 1950s the growth of industrial capitalism 
since the 1800s had pushed this to the top of this range - 310 parts per million. Since 
then the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen very rapidly - to 
more than 410 parts per million by 2018. This is the result of the vast rise in the 
burning of fossil fuels in the era since World War 2 - coal, petroleum, natural gas.

The problem is rooted in the very structure of capitalism itself. Cost-shifting is an 
essential feature of the capitalist mode of production. An electric power company burns 
coal to generate electricity because the price per kilowatt hour from coal-fired 
electricity has long been cheaper than alternatives. But the emissions from burning coal 
travel downwind and cause damage to the respiratory systems of thousands of people - 
including preventable deaths to people with respiratory ailments. This is in addition to 
the powerful contribution to global warming from the carbon dioxide emissions. But the 
power firm doesn't have to pay money for these human costs. If the firm had to pay fees 
that would be equivalent to the human cost in death, respiratory damage and contribution 
to global warming and its effects, burning coal would not be profitable for the power company.

Firms also externalize costs onto workers, such as the health effects of stress or 
chemical exposures. The "free market" pundit or hack economist might deny that companies 
externalize costs onto workers. They might say that wages and benefits paid to workers for 
each hour of work measure the cost of labor. But the human cost of work can be increased 
without an increase in the compensation paid to workers. If a company speeds up the pace 
of work, if people are working harder, if they are more tightly controlled by supervisors, 
paced by machines or software, this increases the cost in human terms.

Toxic chemicals used in manufacturing, in agriculture and other industries pose a threat 
to both the workers and to people who live in nearby areas. Usually working class people 
live in neighborhoods near polluting industries, and often these are communities of color. 
This is another form of capitalist cost-shifting.

State regulation of pesticides or air pollution often ends up acting as a "cover" for the 
profit-making firms. Despite the existence of pollutants generated by leaky oil refineries 
and pollutants emitted by other industries in industrial areas in California - such as the 
"cancer alley" of oil refineries in the Contra Costa County area  or the similar refinery 
zone in Wilmington - the government agencies set up to deal with air pollution in the Bay 
Area and Los Angeles County protected polluters for years by focusing almost exclusively 
on pollution generated  by vehicle exhaust. In this way the South Coast Air Quality 
Management District and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District have been an example 
of "regulatory capture" by corporate capital.

Power firms that generate vast amounts of carbon dioxide emissions - and firms that make 
profits from building fossil-fuel burning cars and trucks or from the sale of gasoline and 
diesel and jet fuel - have not had to pay any fees or penalties for the growing build up 
of the carbon dioxide layer in the atmosphere. The global warming crisis thus has its 
explanation in cost shifting and the search for short-term profits and ever growing 
markets - features that are at the heart of the capitalist system.

If global capitalism continues with "business as usual", the warming will have major 
impacts - killer heat waves, more ocean heat pumping energy into hurricanes and cyclones, 
rising ocean levels from melting of ice in the polar regions and melting of glaciers, 
destruction of corals in the oceans, and a greater danger to the survival of many species 
of living things.

Previous attempts to get global agreement to cut back burning of fossil fuels have been 
ineffective. The Paris accords merely proposed voluntary targets. NASA scientist James 
Hansen described it as a "fraud": "There is no action, just promises." According to the UN 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the dire situation calls for "rapid and 
far-reaching transitions...unprecedented in terms of scale." The IPCC warns that there 
needs to be a 45 percent world-wide reduction in the production of heat-trapping gases 
(mainly carbon dioxide) by 2030 if humanity is to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Clearly a global change is needed. But how to bring this about?

The concept of a Green New Deal has been proposed by Green Party activists, climate 
justice groups and various radicals for some time. The slogan is based on a comparison 
with the statist planning used by President Roosevelt to respond to the economic crisis of 
the 1930s as well as the vast and rapid transition of American industry to war production 
at the beginning of World War 2. The idea is that the crisis of global warming should be 
treated with equal urgency as the mass unemployment of 1933 or the fascist military threat 
of the early 1940s.

After the election to Congress of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - a member of Democratic 
Socialists of America - the Green New Deal resolution was introduced into the US Congress 
by Ocasio-Cortez  and Senator Ed Markey. This lays out a set of ambitious goals, such as 
100 percent electric power generation in the USA from "clean, renewable, and zero-emission 
energy sources."

Other goals include "removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from 
manufacturing...as much as is technologically feasible" and "overhauling" the transport 
sector "to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions" from transport "through 
investment in zero-emission vehicles, accessible public  transportation and high speed 
rail." Along with this resolution, a letter was sent to the US Congress from 626 
environmental organizations backing the Green New Deal proposal. These environmental 
groups made it quite clear they oppose any market-based tinkering - reforms that we know 
won't work - such as "cap and trade" (trading in pollution "rights").

Many have proposed "public-private partnerships" and public subsidies to private 
corporations. Robert Pollin, writing in New Left Review, talks about "preferential tax 
treatment for clean-energy investments" and "market arrangements through government 
procurement contracts." All part of a so-called "green industrial policy." A green 
capitalism, in other words.

But workers are often skeptical of these promises. Companies will simply lay people off, 
under-pay them, or engage in speed-up and dangerous work practices - if they can profit by 
doing so. For example, low pay, work intensification and injuries have been a problem at 
the Tesla electric car factory which has received 5 billion dollars in government 
subsidies. Tesla recently laid off 7 percent of its workforce (over three thousand 
workers) in pursuit of profitability.

An alternative approach that looks to statist central planning has been proposed by 
Richard Smith - an eco-socialist who is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America. 
Smith characterizes the proposal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this way:

Ocasio-Cortez...is a bold,  feminist, anti-racist and socialist-inspired successor to 
FDR...She's taking the global warming discussion to a new level...She's not calling for 
cap and trade or carbon taxes or divestment or other "market" solutions. She's issuing a 
full-throated call for de-carbonization - in effect throwing the gauntlet down to 
capitalism and challenging the system...[1]1

Smith believes the goals of the Green New Deal can't be realized through things like 
"incentives" - and he's right about that. He points out that the Green New Deal resolution 
"lacks specifics" about how the goals will be reached. To realize the goal of 
"de-carbonizing" the economy, he proposes a three-part program:

Declare a state of emergency to suppress fossil fuel use. Ban all new extraction. 
Nationalize the fossil fuel industry to phase it out.
Create a federal program in the style of the 1930s Works Progress Administration to shift 
the workforce of the shut-down industries to "useful but low emissions" areas of the 
economy "at equivalent pay and benefits."
Launch a "state-directed" crash program to phase in renewable electric power production, 
electric transport vehicles and other methods of transport not based on burning fossil 
fuels. Develop programs to shift from petro-chemical intensive industrial agriculture to 
organic farming.
Even though "AOC explicitly makes a powerful case for state planning," Smith says, a 
weakness of the Green New Deal resolution, from his perspective, is the failure to "call 
for a National Planning Board to reorganize, reprioritize and restructure the economy." 
When he talks about nationalization, he notes "We do not call for expropriation." He's 
talking about buying out the shareholders at "fair market value." This is essentially a 
proposal for a largely state-directed form of capitalist economy - a form of state capitalism.

Smith's proposal is wildly unrealistic. Are we to believe that the corporate-media 
influenced American electoral scheme can be used to elect politicians - through the 
business-controlled Democratic Party - to enact a multi-trillion dollar program of 
seizures of the fossil fuel industry, auto manufacturers, and chemical firms and set up a 
planning board to direct the economy?

The American working class did make important gains in the Thirties - such as the Fair 
Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, unemployment insurance) and Aid to Families with 
Dependent Children. These concessions were only won due to an uprising of the American 
working class in a context of vast struggles around the world - a working class revolution 
in Spain, plant occupations in France, a communist insurgency in China, the Communists 
holding on in Russia. In that moment capitalism faced a threat to its very existence.

The USA saw a huge working class rebellion between 1933 and 1937 - millions of workers on 
strike, hundreds of thousands of workers creating new unions from scratch,  rising 
influence for revolutionary organizations, a thousand workplace seizures (sit-down 
strikes), challenges to Jim Crow in the south. And in 1936 this angry and militant mood 
also pushed very close to the formation of a national Farmer-Labor Party that would have 
been a major threat to the Democrats. Many formerly intransigent corporations were forced 
to negotiate agreements with unions. The Democrats chose to "move left" in that moment.

It's also a mistake to romanticize the New Deal. People talk of the 1930s WPA as the model 
for "job guarantees" - that is, government as employer of last resort. But there was still 
17 percent unemployment in USA as late as 1940. Workers in the WPA often had beefs such as 
low pay. Communists, socialists and syndicalists organized unions and strikes among WPA 
workers. The gains that working class people were able to win in the Thirties did not 
simply come about through electoral politics. Nor were the conservative, bureaucratic 
"international unions" of the American Federal of Labor the vehicle either. They were more 
of a road block - exactly why several hundred thousand workers had created new grassroots 
unions from scratch by late 1934.

Smith is not alone in pushing statist central planning as a solution. This concept is 
being talked up lately by various state socialists, including people associated with 
Jacobin magazine and DSA. These advocates often assume the state is simply a class-neutral 
institution that could be taken hold of by the working class and wielded for its purposes.

In reality the state is not class-neutral but has class oppression built into its very 
structure. For example, public sector workers are subordinate to managerialist 
bureaucracies just as workers are in the private corporations. The day-to-day workings of 
state institutions are controlled by the cadres of the bureaucratic control class - state 
managers, high end professionals employed as experts, prosecutors and judges, military and 
police brass. This is in addition to the "professionals of representation" - the 
politicians - who are typically drawn from either the business or bureaucratic control 
classes, that is, classes to which working class people are subordinate.

As a top-down approach to planning, statist central planning has no way to gain accurate 
information about either public preferences for public goods and services or individual 
consumer preferences. Statist central planning is also inherently authoritarian. This is 
because it is based on a denial of self-management to people who would be primarily 
affected by its decisions - consumers and residents of communities, on the one hand, and 
workers in the various industries who would continue to be subject to managerialist autocracy.

Self-management means that people who are affected by decisions have control over those 
decisions to the extent they are affected. There are many decisions in the running of 
workplaces where the group who are primarily affected are the workers whose activity makes 
up the production process. Taking self-management seriously would require a form of 
distributed control in planning, where groups who are primarily affected over certain 
decisions - such as residents of local communities or workers in industries- have an 
independent sphere of decision-making control. This is the basis of the syndicalist 
alternative of distributed planning, discussed below.

State socialists will sometimes make noises about "worker control" as an element of 
central planning, but real collective power of workers over the production process is 
inconsistent with the concept of central planning. If planning is to be the activity of an 
elite group at a center, they will want to have their own managers on site in workplaces 
to make sure their plans are carried out.  Any talk of "worker control" always loses out 
to this logic.

Statist central planning can't overcome either the exploitative or cost-shifting logic of 
capitalism, which lies at the heart of the ecological crisis. Various populations are 
directly impacted by pollution in various forms - such as the impact of pesticide 
pollution on farm workers and rural communities or the impact on air and water in local 
communities. The only way to overcome the cost-shifting logic is for the affected 
populations - workers and communities - to gain direct power to prevent being polluted on. 
For global warming, this means the population in general needs a direct form of popular 
power that would enable the people to directly control the allowable emissions into the 
atmosphere.

As difficult as it may be, we need a transition to a self-managed, worker-controlled 
socialist political economy if we're going to have a solution to the ecological crisis of 
the present era. But this transition can only really come out of the building up of a 
powerful, participatory movement of the oppressed majority in the course of struggles 
against the present regime.

The Syndicalist Alternative for an Eco-socialist Future
The problem is not that people struggle for immediate changes that are within our power to 
currently push for. Rather, the issue is how we pursue change. Changes can be fought for 
in different ways.

The basic problem with the electoral socialist ("democratic socialist") strategy is its 
reliance on methods that ask working class people to look to "professionals of 
representation" to do things for us. This approach tends to build up - and crucially rely 
upon - bureaucratic layers that are apart from - and not effectively controllable by - 
rank-and-file working class people. These are approaches that build up layers of 
professional politicians in office, paid political party machines, lobbyists, or 
negotiations on our behalf by the paid apparatus of the unions - paid officials and staff, 
or the paid staff in the big non-profits.

Syndicalists refer to these as reformist methods (for lack of a better term). Not because 
we're opposed to the fight for reforms. Any fight for a less-than-total change (such as 
more money for schools or more nurse staffing) is a "reform." The methods favored by the 
electoral socialists are "reformist" because they undermine the building of a movement for 
more far-reaching change. The history of the past century shows that these bureaucratic 
layers end up as a barrier to building the struggle for a transition to a 
worker-controlled socialist mode of production.

We can say that an approach to action and organization for change is non-reformist to the 
extent that it builds rank-and-file controlled mass organizations, relies on and builds 
participation in militant collective actions such as strikes, and builds self-confidence, 
self-reliance, organizing skills, wider active participation, and wider solidarity between 
different groups among the oppressed and exploited majority.

Syndicalism is a strategy for change based on non-reformist forms of action and 
organization. Non-reformist forms of organization of struggle are based on control by the 
members through participatory democracy and elected delegates, such as elected shop 
delegates and elected negotiating committees in workplaces.  And the use of similar 
grassroots democracy in other organizations that working class people can build such as 
tenant unions. Non-reformist forms of action are disruptive of "business as usual" and are 
built on collective participation, such as strikes, occupations, and militant marches.

A key way the electoral socialist and syndicalist approaches differ is their effect on the 
process that Marxists sometimes call class formation. This is the more or less protracted 
process through which the working class overcomes fatalism and internal divisions (as on 
lines of race or gender), acquires knowledge about the system, and builds the confidence, 
organizational capacity and the aspiration for social change. Through this process the 
working class "forms" itself into a force that can effectively challenge the dominating 
classes for control of society.

If people see effective collective action spreading in the society around them, this may 
change the way people see their situation. Once they perceive that this kind of collective 
power is available to them as a real solution for their own issues, this can change their 
perception of the kinds of change that is possible. The actual experience of collective 
power can suggest a much deeper possibility of change.

When rank-and-file working class people participate directly in building worker unions, 
participating in carrying out a strike with co-workers, or in building a tenant union and 
organizing direct struggle against rent hikes or poor building conditions, rank-and-file 
people are directly engaged - and this helps people to learn how to organize, builds more 
of a sense that "We can make change," and people also learn directly about the system. 
More people are likely to come to the conclusion "We have the power to change the society" 
if they see actual power of people like themselves being used effectively in strikes, 
building takeovers, and other kinds of mass actions. In other words, a movement of direct 
participation and grassroots democracy builds in more people this sense of the possibility 
of change from below.

On the other hand, concentrating the decision-making power in the fight for social change 
into bureaucratic layers of professional politicians and an entrenched union bureaucracy 
tends to undermine this process because it doesn't build confidence and organizing skills 
among working class people. It fails to build the sense that "We have the power in our 
hands to change things." Thus a basic problem with electoral socialism ("democratic 
socialism") is that it undermines the process of class formation.

The electoral venue is also not favorable terrain for the working class struggle for 
changes because the voting population tends to be skewed to the more affluent part of the 
population. A large part of the working class do not see why they should vote. They don't 
see the politicians as looking out for their interests. The non-voting population tends to 
be poorer - more working class - than the voting population. This means the working class 
can't bring the full force of its numbers to bear.

A strategy for change focused on elections and political parties tends to lead to a focus 
on electing leaders to gain power in the state, to make changes for us. This type of focus 
leads us away from a more independent form of working class politics that is rooted in 
forms of collective action that ordinary people can build directly and directly 
participate in - such as strikes, building direct solidarity between different working 
class groups in the population, mass protest campaigns around issues that we select, and 
the like.

To be clear, I'm not here arguing that people shouldn't vote, or that it makes no 
difference to us who is elected. Often in fact it does, and independent worker and 
community organizations can also direct their pressure on what politicians do. But here 
I'm talking about our strategy for change. I'm arguing against a strategy for change that 
relies upon - focuses on - the role of elected officials, a political party, or the 
full-time paid union apparatus.

An electoralist strategy leads to the development of political machines in which mass 
organizations look to professional politicians and party operatives. This type of practice 
tends to create a bureaucratic layer of professional politicians, media, think-tanks and 
party operatives that develops its own interests.

When the strategy is focused on electing people to office in the state, college-educated 
professionals and people with "executive experience" will tend to be favored as candidates 
to "look good" in the media.  And this means people of the professional and administrative 
layers will tend to gain leadership positions in an electorally oriented party. This will 
tend to diminish the ability of rank and file working class people to control the party's 
direction. This is part of the process of the development of the party as a separate 
bureaucratic layer with its own interests. Because they are concerned with winning 
elections and keeping their hold on positions in the state, this can lead them to oppose 
disruptive direct action by workers such as strikes or workplace takeovers. There is a 
long history of electoral socialist leaders taking this kind of stance.

To the extent electoral socialist politics comes to dominate in the labor movement - as it 
did in Europe  after World War 2 - declining militancy and struggle also undermined the 
commitment to socialism. The electoral socialist parties in Europe competed in elections 
through the advocacy of various immediate reforms. This became the focus of the parties. 
Sometimes they won elections. At the head of a national government they found that they 
had to "manage" capitalism - keep the capitalist regime running. If they moved in too 
radical a direction they found they would lose middle class votes - or the investor elite 
might panic and start moving their capital to safe havens abroad.In some cases elements of 
the "deep state" - such as the military and police forces - moved to overthrow them. Most 
of these parties eventually changed their concept of what their purpose was. They gave up 
on the goal of replacing capitalism with socialism.

Eco-syndicalism
Eco-syndicalism is based on the recognition that workers - and direct worker and community 
alliances - can be a force against the environmentally destructive actions of capitalist 
firms. Toxic substances are transported by workers, ground-water-destroying solvents are 
used in electronics assembly and damage the health of workers, and pesticides poison farm 
workers. Industrial poisons affect workers on the job first and pollute nearby working 
class neighborhoods. Nurses have to deal with the effects of pollution on people's bodies. 
Various explosive derailments have shown how oil trains can be a danger to both railroad 
workers and communities. The struggle of railroad workers for adequate staffing on trains 
is part of the struggle against this danger.

Workers are a potential force for resistance to decisions of employers that pollute or 
contribute to global warming. Workers can also be a force for support of alternatives on 
global warming, such as expanded public transit. An example of working class resistance to 
environmental pollution were the various "green bans" enacted by the Australian Building 
Laborer's Federation back in the ‘70s - such as a ban on transport or handling of uranium.

A recognition of this relationship led to the development of an environmentalist tendency 
among syndicalists in the ‘80s and ‘90s - eco-syndicalism (also called "green 
syndicalism"). An example in the ‘80s was the organizing work of Judi Bari - a member of 
the IWW and Earth First!. Working in the forested region of northwest California, she 
attempted to develop an alliance of workers in the wood products industry (and their 
unions) with environmentalists who were trying to protect old growth forests against 
clear-cutting.

Worker and community organizations can be a direct force against fiossil fuel capitalism 
in a variety of ways - such as the various actions against coal or oil terminals on the 
Pacific Coast, or labor and community support for struggles of indigenous people and other 
rural communities against polluting fossil fuel projects, such as happened with the 
Standing Rock blockade in the Dakotas. Unions can also be organized in workplaces of the 
"green" capitalist firms to fight against low pay and other conditions I described earlier.

The different strategies of syndicalists and electoral socialists tends to lead to 
different conceptions of what "socialism" and "democracy" mean. Because politicians tend 
to compete on the basis of what policies they will pursue through the state, this 
encourages a state socialist view that socialism is a set of reforms enacted top down 
through the managerialist bureaucracies of the state. Certainly state socialists are an 
influential element in Democratic Socialists of America.

I think a top down form of power, controlled by the bureaucratic control class in state 
management, is not going to work as a solution for the ecological challenges of the 
present. The history of the "communist camp" countries of the mid-20th century showed that 
they were also quite capable of pollution and ecological destruction rooted in 
cost-shifting behavior.

On the other hand, the syndicalist vision of self-managed socialism provides a plausible 
basis for a solution for the environmental crisis because a federative, distributed form 
of democratic planning places power in local communities and workers in industries, and 
thus they have power to prevent ecologically destructive decisions. For syndicalists, 
socialism is about human liberation - and a central part is the liberation of the working 
class from subordination and exploitation in a regime where there are dominating classes 
on top. Thus for syndicalism the transition to socialism means workers taking over and 
collectively managing all the industries - including the public services. This is 
socialism created from  below - created by the working class itself.

Syndicalist movements historically advocated a planned economy based on a distributed 
model of democratic planning, rooted in assemblies in neighborhoods and workplaces. With 
both residents of communities and worker production organizations each having the power to 
make decisions in developing plans for its own area, a distributed, federative system of 
grassroots planning uses delegate congresses or councils and systems of negotiation to 
"adjust" the proposals and aims of the various groups to each other. Examples of 
libertarian socialist distributed planning models include the negotiated coordination 
proposals of the World War 1 era guild socialists, the 1930s Spanish anarcho-syndicalist 
program of neighborhood assemblies ("free municipalities") and worker congresses, and the 
more recent participatory planning model of Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert.

A 21st century form of self-managed socialism would be a horizontally federated system of 
production that can implement planning and coordination throughout industries and over a 
wide region. This would enable workers to:

Gain control over technological development,
Re-organize jobs and education to eliminate the bureaucratic concentration of power in the 
hands of managers and high-end professionals, develop worker skills, and work to integrate 
decision-making and conceptualization with the doing of the physical work,
Reduce the workweek and share work responsibilities among all who can work, and
Create a new logic of development for technology that is friendly to workers and the 
environment.
A purely localistic focus and purely fragmented control of separate workplaces (such as 
worker cooperatives in a market economy) is not enough. Overall coordination is needed to 
move social production away from subordination to market pressures and the "grow or die" 
imperative of capitalism and build solidarity between regions. There also needs to be 
direct, communal accountability for what is produced and for effects on the community and 
environment.

The protection of the ecological commons requires a directly communal form of social 
governance and control over the aims of production. This means direct empowerment of the 
masses who would be directly polluted on or directly affected by environmental 
degradation. This is necessary to end the ecologically destructive cost-shifting behavior 
that is a structural feature of both capitalism and bureaucratic statism. Direct communal 
democracy and direct worker management of industry provide the two essential elements for 
a libertarian eco-socialist program.

"An Ecosocialist Path  to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°C" 
(https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/ecosocialist-path-limiting-global-temperature-rise-15%C2%B0c) 


http://ideasandaction.info/2019/04/green-deal-eco-syndicalist-alternative/

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Message: 6





Interventions in Petralona, Neos Kosmos, Nea Smyrna against nationalism, militarism and 
fascism ahead of course on Saturday, April 20, Monastiraki, 12pm ---- In view of the 
course against nationalism, militarism, fascism, war and the peace of the sovereigns 
(Saturday, April 20th in Monastiraki, 12pm) on Friday 12th April and Saturday 13th of 
April, we performed interventions at the Petralona ISAP and the New World Metro with text 
sharing. Along with the posters and copies we make, we placed banners in the central parts 
of our regions, which they call along the way. On the path we co-organize together with 
other anarchist collectives, hangouts, squats, comrades and comrades. ---- No nation 
unites us, no name separates us ---- Conflict with state, bosses, fascists ---- Solidarity 
is our weapon ---- Struggle for Social Revolution, Social Liberation

Path Saturday 20 April, Monastiraki, 12pm

Here is the text that calls on the course and was shared in the interventions:

Against nationalism, militarism, fascism

Against the war and the peace of the sovereigns

Few months have passed from sad blue-white carnival to "famous Macedonia" and national 
frenzy.A patchwork of right-spirited, Greek-spirited, paradise, Nazis, (par) military and 
left-wing patriots who fired tons of nationalistic-racist-sexist venom tried to sow the 
darkness of the "patris-family-religion" and paved the way to every Fascist and Nazi 
groups to come back to the public space and with the backs of the police forces to attack 
occupied spaces, immigrant women and militants. The "graphic" macedonian "danced" from the 
whole spectrum of the regime (parties, media, etc.). They were fueled by the diffused 
public discourse of nationalism, racism, militarism; from the cravings for the 
"hydrocarbons battles" in the Aegean, from the patriotism premium as a "healthy ideology" 
by the ruling left, from the constant rhetoric of "national unity and development ",

Regarding the so-called Prespa agreement, this was in fact a confirmation of the "new" 
national strategy to strengthen Greece's position in the context of state competition and 
fund raising in the wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans.The 
overproduction of patriotic reasons for "national unity" and "national development" is the 
basis of an aggressive strategy that has been put in place for years: further increase in 
the inflated budget of the armed forces (EUR 3.32 billion for 2019); regional alliances 
and joint military exercises with the militant states of Israel and Egypt, costly upgrades 
of the F-16 and orders for new naval frigates, more intensive militarization for EEZ in 
Cyprus and the Aegean, trade agreements with energy giants (TOTAL, MOBIL etc.). At the 
same time, the role of the Greek state in the NATO Mechanism (NATO's drones in Larissa, 
the nuclear facility at Araxos, fighter jets and helicopters in Aktio and Stefanovikio,

The dipole of "pure" patriotism and "extreme" nationalism is falsified as both are used by 
the dominant narrative to reinforce national consciousness in order to conceal class, 
racist and gendered segregations and hierarchies.From school and church, to the media and 
the army, our first steps attempt to impregnate us with the nationalist poison. Each state 
seeks to create in the imagination of its citizens a "common interest national community" 
which we ought to defend. Why is it necessary to silence the forms of oppression and 
exploitation and to assimilate the radical movements. And because without a national (and 
therefore orderly) consciousness it would not be possible to form political foundations in 
national states, nor to legitimize and consolidate the new totalitarianisms by extending 
the emergency regime and the militarization of societies in a way that goes hand in hand 
with the needs of capitalism.

Left management strengthens national narrative. Already by 2015, SYRIZA proposes the 
identification of national and class interests with the nationalist frontier of "left-wing 
patriotism". The notorious negotiations with the lenders and the July 2015 referendum 
constituted a key mechanism of nationalization of consciences, a confirmation of the 
assignment to state administrators, and the transformation of movements into state policy 
fellow citizens in the name of "fighting against foreign lenders to save the national 
economy and restoring national pride and dignity. "

"Left patriotism" and "right nationalism" are aspects of the dominant narrative that has 
been imposed: the nation-state as the only possibility of social formation.The 
nation-state, in its great embrace, will have all those competitive relations, the 
conflicts between the oppressors and the oppressed, the exploiters and the exploited, so 
that the "regularity" can ever triumph. Border murders, concentration camps, 
intensification of wage slavery and unemployment terrorism, exclusion / punishment of any 
other identity that "shames" the masculinity of the nation, control and suppress all what 
will be called unnecessary (immigrants, drug addicts / homeless, etc.), suppressing all 
those who stand against this "regularity" of class and social peace, who will not eat the 
little bit of "social and national contracts". Whether left or right, patriotism raises 
the ground and contributes to the promotion of socialism and bloody national unity. 
Examples of schools occupied with occupations with nationalist content, fascist pogroms in 
Konitsa and Villias, refusal of parents to send their children to a school in Samos where 
immigrant children were attending classes are characteristic phenomena of the period.

The outbreak of the global capitalist crisis and its utterly material outcomes for Western 
societies have contributed to the giganticisation of nationalism, which is a proven tool 
for managing such crises, and at the same time a counterbalance to a possible total 
controversy of the state-capitalist edifice.It is a key part of the world puzzle, which 
consists of military interventions, economic investments, alliances and antagonisms 
between states and power blocks. The re-emergence of the army in Western metropolises and 
the militarization of the police, militarism as a social form of organization, the 
thousands of dead, displaced and incapacitated immigrants and migrant women remind us that 
the "peace" of the sovereigns is the continuation of their war with other means. The 
appearance of "external enemies" and the threat of a war are used to terrorize society and 
to cluster and compose it around the state. It is a technique of social control, usually 
when servicing the sovereign, political and economic interests, causes or will cause 
intense unrest within a state.

And, yes, the "war" differs in the materiality of the military conflict and the victims 
from "peace", but it is in this "peace" that relations of hierarchy, discipline, 
inequality, exploitation, oppression and enforcement of segregation. Relationships that 
make the boundaries between peace and war unimaginable so that the hierarchy, the 
imposition, the privileges and the increase in the wealth of the sovereigns and the 
constant misery and devaluation of their lives continue to perpetuate "under".

For oppressed people and exploiters of this world, national reconciliation is not a 
solution, nor is it the choice of an aspiring "right" or left-wing "ethnic". It is not a 
solution to assign, vote, and participate in electoral processes and pseudo-dilemmas. 
Against hostility, interdependence, competition among the oppressed, the only way out is 
the struggle for the total destruction of the world of power, exploitation and submission. 
Staying side by side, organizing ourselves through horizontal, anti-authoritarian, 
self-organized processes and struggling for the destruction of the state, capitalism, 
patriarchy.

No nation unites us, no name separates us

Conflict with state, bosses, fascists

Solidarity is our weapon

Struggle for Social Revolution, Social Liberation

Path Saturday 20 April, Monastiraki, 12pm

Anarchist collectives, hangouts, squats, comrades, companions

https://vogliamotutto.espivblogs.net/2019/04/15/paremvaseis-se-petralona-neo-kosmo-nea-smyrni-enantia-ston-ethnikismo-ton-militarismo-kai-ton-fasismo-enopsei-tis-poreia-stis-20-aprilioy-monastiraki-12mm/#more-2189

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