Today's Topics:
1. London Anarchist Federation: Open Meeting, June 30th
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Russia, avtonom: Anarchists oppose repression and drug
phobia at a rally on June 23 [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. southern africa, zabalaza.net - After the election dust
settles: Class struggle, the Left and power by Jonathan Payn -
ZACF (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Due to other commitments, we have had to move our planned open meeting from 2pm on
Saturday, the 29th of June to 2pm on Sunday, the 30th June. This meeting will be held in
Decentre above Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX.
We hope people can still make it. We will be giving a summary of what we have been doing
to and what we plan to do in the future, and it's a great opportunity for people
interested in joining or just curious about what we do to come and talk to us.
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/06/24/open-meeting-june-30th/
------------------------------
Message: 2
On Sunday, June 23, actions against political persecution, falsification of criminal cases
and repressive drug policies took place in Moscow and other cities . Moscow anarchists
came to the rally with the slogan " Against repression and drug phobia ." During the march
along Sakharov Avenue from the point of entry to the rally to the stage of the rally and
(after the end of the rally) the anarchic block reunited with the Left Socialist Action,
the Left Resistance and the Narcissue Sight. The column scanned the requirements: "No
228", "Shees are not a garbage dump", "Freedom to political prisoners", "Freedom to
prisoners of conscience", "Repressions - fighting, homophobia - down", etc., as well as
the traditional anarchist "Above, higher black flag, the state is the main enemy! "," Kill
the state in yourself! "
During the rally, the recently published 38th issue of the magazine Avtonom was on sale .
The organizers of the Moscow rally, which was attended by about 4 thousand people,
distributed posters with portraits of political prisoners, including those involved in the
case of Seti and Azat Miftakhov. The participants of the Moscow State University
Initiative Group came out with a banner in support of Miftakhov, and the participants of
the initiative "against torture and discrimination" - with banners in support of the
defendants in the cases of the Network and New Greatness. Among the speakers was the
mother of Dmitry Pchelintsev Svetlana.
During the rally, 6 people were detained, whom the police accused of (allegedly) violating
the rules for holding events.
Photo album anarhobloka
https://avtonom.org/news/anarhisty-vystupili-protiv-repressiy-i-narkofobii-na-mitinge-23-iyunya
------------------------------
Message: 3
Twenty-five years into democracy the black working class majority in South Africa has not
experienced any meaningful improvements in its conditions. The apartheid legacy of unequal
education, healthcare and housing and the super-exploitation of black workers continues
under the ANC and is perpetuated by the neoliberal policies it has imposed. ---- The only
force capable of changing this situation is the working class locally and internationally.
Yet to do so, struggles need to come together, new forms of organisation appropriate to
the context are needed; and they need both to be infused with a revolutionary progressive
politics and to learn from the mistakes of the past. ---- Outside the ANC alliance, there
have indeed been many efforts to unite struggles - but these have largely failed to
resonate with the working class in struggle and form the basis of a new movement. Nowhere
is this more evident than with the newly-formed Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party
(SRWP) - which got less than 25 000 votes in the national elections, despite the fact that
the union that conceived it, Numsa, claims nearly 400 000 members.
After the election dust settles: Class struggle, the Left and power
Jonathan Payn (ZACF)
Twenty-five years into democracy the black working class majority in South Africa has not
experienced any meaningful improvements in its conditions. The apartheid legacy of unequal
education, healthcare and housing and the super-exploitation of black workers continues
under the ANC and is perpetuated by the neoliberal policies it has imposed.
These troubles are part of the world's troubles; this neoliberalism is part of global
neoliberalism. As the global economic crisis deepens, the global ruling class is making
the working class pay, transferring the costs to workers and the poor, leading to
increased poverty, unemployment, inequality and insecurity. And so in South Africa
neoliberal oppression is piled on top of national oppression.
The only force capable of changing this situation is the working class locally and
internationally. Yet to do so, struggles need to come together, new forms of organisation
appropriate to the context are needed; and they need both to be infused with a
revolutionary progressive politics and to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Some such struggles have occurred over recent years, including the historic platinum
mineworkers' strike and farmworkers' strike in 2012; but the many struggles have not yet
pulled together into a new movement.
Outside the ANC alliance, there have indeed been many efforts to unite struggles - but
these have largely failed to resonate with the working class in struggle and form the
basis of a new movement.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the newly-formed Socialist Revolutionary Workers
Party (SRWP) - which got less than 25 000 votes in the national elections, despite the
fact that the union that conceived it, Numsa, claims nearly 400 000 members.
NUMSA'S NON-MOMENT
When the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) announced its resolutions,
following its historic 2013 Special National Congress, to break with the ANC and SACP and
to form a "United Front against neoliberalism", many on the left were hopeful that this
would give working class movements the new ideological and organisational direction they need.
The United Front, Numsa said, was not about building a new organisation, party or labour
federation but "a way to join other organisations in action, in the trenches", gaining
community support for Numsa campaigns and building "concrete support for other struggles
of the working class and the poor wherever and whenever they take place".
It looked as if there hopes were not misplaced when, for example, unemployed youth and
community activists across the country responded positively to Numsa's call by supporting
the 19 March 2014 actions against the Youth Wage Subsidy. Branches were set up and,
despite initial scepticism, community activists joined.
By August 2017, however, the Johannesburg branch of the United Front had declared that,
"After the initial enthusiasm, there is now a feeling the UF has largely collapsed, with
only a couple of local structures still active." Numsa had shifted its focus and resources
to establishing a "Movement for Socialism" because "the working-class needs a political
organisation committed in its policies and actions to the establishment of a socialist
South Africa".
Having gained some community support for its campaigns, including the United Front itself,
the success of the United Front in building working class unity going forward depended on
whether Numsa would reciprocate by putting its resources and capacity at the service of
building "concrete support for other struggles of the working class and the poor wherever
and whenever they take place".
Instead, Numsa energies were shifted into calling for a new workers' party, while
presenting itself as the vanguard of the whole working class, and in so doing missed its
moment.
THE SRWP WON'T SET YOU FREE
Numsa undertook to "conduct a thoroughgoing discussion on previous attempts to build
socialism as well as current experiments to build socialism" and "commission an
international study on the historical formation of working-class parties, including
exploring different type of parties - from mass workers' parties to vanguard parties". But
it already knew what it was aiming for. It had said that a new political party was on the
cards - to replace the SACP, which had become corrupted by the neoliberal state, as the
political vanguard of the working class.
The potential of the United Front approach for building working class unity is precisely
because it accommodates ideological differences in order to build the unity of working
class formations in struggle. But Numsa still looks to the legacy of Communist Parties.
And these parties have historically used united fronts to create unity in action in
struggles against capitalist attacks, but also with the aim of winning over the majority
in these struggles to their programme - in this case the formation of a new party, that
they would lead - under their Party leadership and no one else's.
While Numsa has broken with Cosatu and the SACP organisationally, it has not broken with
them ideologically. The belief by a section of full-time Numsa leaders that they are the
vanguard of the working class and their insistence on building a party to contest state
power are founded on the same ideological certainties and theoretical understandings of
class, power and the nature of the state as the SACP - with the same strategic
implications that, invariably, will have the same disappointing outcomes.
If we really want to build a movement for socialism, and to avoid merely replacing one set
of rulers for another, the state-centric left needs to rethink its understandings class,
power and the nature of the state in light of the imperial evidence and learn from the
mistakes of the past, instead of repeating them and expecting a different outcome.
https://zabalaza.net/2019/06/25/after-the-election-dust-settles-class-struggle-the-left-and-power/
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31469
------------------------------
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten