Today's Topics:
1. Russia, avtonom: "Society without money": lecture and
discussion in St. Petersburg on August 18 [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Manifesto of the Union Communist Libertaire UCL - A
strategy based on social (fr, it, pt)[machine
translation]struggles and self-organization (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Kate Sharpley Library update August 2019 (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. anarchist communist group ACG: Is voting Labour the
solution? (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. anarchist communist group ACG: System Change NOT Climate
Change! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
What will happen to society if there is no money? ---- Probably, this question more than
all other questions that opponents ask anarchists, confuses us. We can say that many other
objects of criticism of the anarchs - be it the army, bureaucracy, hierarchy,
discrimination - are perceived by the so-called "majority" as a necessary or unpleasant,
but inevitable evil. But money is perceived as a blessing. Let this benefit be connected
with considerable troubles. The state is being eliminated from fulfilling its obligations
(for example, "putting out a forest is not profitable"), and the people, therefore, rarely
expect something from the state, especially good things ("it's far from the tsar, high
from God") For many Russians, not only contacting the police, but also turning to doctors,
often resembles bureaucratic red tape rather than help. However, left without money, any
of us will feel at least awkward. Money seems to us such an important tool of social
relations, that it is difficult to imagine abandoning it in the short term. But economic
crises always lead to the depreciation of money. Can we develop better mechanisms than
money to interact with each other to encourage the creation of public goods, take into
account merit and stimulate the creation of values?
On August 18, we'll talk about what kind of functions money performs for society, what
danger they carry to divide society into rich and poor, what exchange / donation practices
are used by people in the so-called "primitive" societies in the absence of a state
monetary system, and what practices people use it in case of depreciation of money at
extreme moments of the crisis or in the case of conscious refusal of fiat money.
At the event, it will also be possible to sign postcards in support of political
prisoners, to purchase a charity merch. Invite your friends, spread the word, show solidarity!
Location: Open Space on the street. Dostoevsky 34.
Time: 19.00 Moscow time.
https://avtonom.org/news/obshchestva-bez-deneg-lekciya-i-diskussiya-v-peterburge-18-avgusta
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Message: 2
Only the direct struggles at the grassroots can impose real transformations contrary to
capitalist interests. We oppose a strategy of social struggles driving changes to the
social-democratic strategy of transformations effected from state institutions by
political parties. ---- General Assembly in Jussieu during the movement against the first
job contract (CPE), in 2006. ---- cc Thibautcho ---- The actors and actresses, the
decision-makers and decision-makers of these transformations are not therefore the
political leaders or the militant minorities, but the workers, the students and the high
school students, the population, enrolling in mass movements without elitism. ---- The
self-management of struggles, the power of the general assemblies, their democratic
co-ordination, are the necessary condition for all to be able to fulfill this role of
collective decision-maker. Multiple experiences have demonstrated the validity of direct
democracy through self-management.
A self-management animation of the struggles
Activists can provide decisive assistance in triggering and leading mass struggles. We
promote a self-management concept of the role of animator and animator of the struggles.
Often placed in an active situation - organizers, spokespersons, coordinators, mandated -
the self-management intervention is necessarily contradictory since it tends, at the same
time, to the self-direction of movements by those who struggle, to speak out by all, and
to collective empowerment. This living dialectic is necessary. It can make it possible to
avoid two pitfalls: that of dirigisme and that of spontaneism.
Workers' autonomy, and more broadly that of all social movements, is necessary for this
affirmation of the social base as a subject controlling its struggles. Autonomy with
respect to state institutions and employers' powers. Autonomy compared to any form of
external direction. But also creative autonomy: in the struggles of today, we prepare the
society of tomorrow !
Social struggles are not limited to those that workers lead in business. The overall
questioning of the system also involves other self-managed mass mobilizations: those on
our places of study, unemployed, unemployed and precarious, the struggles on the habitat,
the environment, the ecological fight, the women's rights, the fight against racism ...
Against the avant-garde temptations
In such a conception of social struggles, we give priority, not to ideological radicalism,
but to the possibility of mobilizing, making act, collectively debate important fringes of
the dominated classes.
A self-management revolution can not be built without the affirmation of a massive will of
society for it. The impact of our struggles today on the collective consciousness will of
course depend on our ability to develop self-management practices and alternatives to a
mass level.
With this in mind, we will fight all avant-garde temptations, with minorities calling
themselves grassroots representatives and despising or instrumentalizing collective
frameworks. It is initially a question of building massive movements, while proposing to
overcome their own limits (isolation, corporatism ...) and supporting self-management
orientations.
This does not mean the condemnation of any minority action, but it means that any minority
action must be part of an enlargement perspective at a mass level.
Awareness through experience
The capitalist system has an immense capacity to recover, then to question at a later date
all that power relations can impose on it. In spite of this, we affirm that the struggles
of demands - whose objectives are not, by definition, revolutionary - can lead to the
massive mobilization of the exploited and allow for the awareness and the concrete
experiments of self-organization carrying ruptures anticapitalist .
In the same way alternative realizations, cooperatives and self-managed associative
activities can bring about a global questioning of the society, if they know how to keep
in touch with the workers, the population, the class struggle.
Our strategy includes short and long term demands, our objective is to improve the
material conditions of existence of all and all by aiming at the advent of libertarian
communism.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Une-strategie-fondee-sur-les-luttes-sociales-et-l-auto-organisation
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Message: 3
The latest Kate Sharpley Library bulletin is up on our website ---- The latest issue of
KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library is out ---- KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley
Library No. 99, July 2019 has just been posted on our site. The PDF is up at:
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/00013n ---- Contents list is at:
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/pnvzr7 ---- Stuart and Brenda Christie, Paris, 1974:
photo by Antonio Téllez (who also cooked the delicious rabbit á la Basque). With thanks to
Stuart Christie. ---- Contents ---- The First of May. ---- "This coming May 1st, the
Toilers of the entire world will take to the streets: to do what? Why will they do so? To
demand what? A palliative that is not going to be able to bring about any improvement in
our lot."
The Sons of Night by Antoine Gimenez and the Giménologues[Book review]
"This is a great work of history from below, full of untold stories and unheard voices.
There's Hans ‘Jack' Vesper who dragged himself back through no-man's land and ended up in
such a state that he thought he was a bear."
Factionalism & Individualism by Albert Meltzer
"Declension: "I assert individuality"; "You introduce factionalism"; "They are schismatics""
Anarchist history roundup July 2019 part 1.
Peter the Painter, Wobblies, Emma Goldman and Special Branch files on British anarchists
(1945-52)
Brenda Christie (1949-2019): a tribute
"she turned her back on the ‘dolce vita' of sixties Milan because it ‘failed to satisfy
her sense of moral integrity.' Instead, she lived a life full and committed."
The Russian anarchist movement in North America by Lazar Lipotkin[review]
"Lipotkin provides an extremely valuable account of the activities of the Russian
anarchist movement in America, which was affected but not destroyed by repression in both
America and Russia."
From other archives
The 'Anarchist history roundup' mentions material we've just posted from the UK National
Archives (HO 45/25554) which includes:
Cover of Special Branch file on the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (1949).
Freedom Defence Committee brochure.
The Freedom Press Anarchists and H.M. Forces.
Special Branch biography of Ethel Mannin (1945).
Special Branch biography of George Orwell (1942?).
Special Branch biography of George Woodcock (1945).
Special Branch biography of Herbert Read (1945).
Special Branch biography of Ingebord Hedwig Elisabeth Roskelly (1945).
Special Branch biography of Simon Watson Taylor (1945).
Special Branch report on Industrial Workers of the World in Britain (1947).
Special Branch report on meeting held by Freedom Defence Committee (1945).
Special Branch report on protest meeting against Barcelona executions (1952).
Special Branch report on the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (1950).
See https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/bk3knf
Happy reading! - Kate Sharpley Library
Copyright © 2019 Kate Sharpley Library, All rights reserved.
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Message: 4
The General Election of 2017 saw Labour's vote go up to 40 per cent, in what was seen as a
victory for Corbyn's policies and his campaigning methods. We saw a Conservative
government unable to hold on to power except with the backing of the 10 Democratic
Unionist MPS in Northern Ireland. ---- This should have been an extremely favourable
situation for Labour. The increase in the vote was backed up by the entry of hundreds of
thousands into the Labour Party, making it the biggest political party in Europe. ---- But
instead we had acceptance by Corbyn of the Trident nuclear missiles system. A Labour Party
spokesman went on record as saying: "Jeremy and the Labour Party have long been committed
to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which aims to achieve nuclear disarmament.
Trident renewal is Labour policy, as set out in our manifesto."
We had Corbyn allowing a free vote on military intervention in Syria. We had Corbyn
agreeing to membership of NATO. When the Labour youth organisation voted for withdrawal
from NATO, a Labour Party spokesman replied: "Jeremy and Labour are committed to NATO, as
laid out in our manifesto."
Corbyn has remained silent on a large number of Labour councils imposing cuts as ordered
by the Conservative government. His henchman the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has made
overture after overture to business in the so-called Tea Offensive. As one Times
commentator wrote: "A couple of years ago few business people could conceive of Labour as
a government-in-waiting. These days many industry leaders declare that they are rather
impressed with McDonnell and his team. Some business lobby groups consider their
relationship with Labour to be as good as, if not better than, their one with the
Conservatives."
Corbyn did much of this with the idea of preserving the unity of the Labour Party.
Rather than breaking completely with the suppporters of Blair and Brown, he has made
compromise after compromise. He took the side of union leaders to oppose mandatory
reselection of Labour MPs.
Recently Jeremy Corbyn responded to Theresa May's request for talks about a possible
alternative Brexit deal by dropping his demands for a general election. May started the
overture with an appeal for "national unity to deliver the national interest."
Instead of talking about working class unity Corbyn responded to this with the statement
that he would agree to talks and recognised his "responsibility to represent the people
that supported Labour in the last election and the people who didn't support Labour."
Instead of pressing ahead with a no confidence motion in the government, he now commits
himself to "national unity".
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2019/08/10/is-voting-labour-the-solution/
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Message: 5
We are much enthused by the rising wave of actions against climate change. This has
involved large numbers of people, including those never before involved in any sort of
political actions, and especially among young people. It is a developing movement not just
in Britain but around the world. ---- Capitalism is the root cause of climate change and
environmental destruction. This is a result of capitalism's need to increase profit, which
means, for example, the destruction of rain forests and the unrestrained fossil fuel
economy. So while the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, claims that
"capitalism is part of the solution" when interviewed on Channel 4 News, he is clearly
talking out of his posterior.
Indeed, many false solutions have been advanced to get us out of this mess, like carbon
trading, carbon capture, national carbon budgets and the idea that somehow governments and
the market will act to control pollution and environmental damage. We've also had the idea
of a Green New Deal, which would supposedly limit greenhouse gases. But ultimately,
capitalism is founded on the drive for profit, for the unlimited need to produce and so to
accumulate profit. It is blind to the dangers of global warming, instead fixating on the
search for more and more profit. Capitalism cannot reform itself as some think. It is a
juggernaut advancing to the extinction of life on this planet.
Unfortunately, the idea that the market will see sense and come to the planet's rescue
still has a grip on many in the environmental movements. For example Extinction Rebellion
has asked governments to "tell the truth" on environmental devastation. Good luck with
that. This is a very tall order, and not one that looks like getting fulfilled anytime
soon. We also have demands put forward by Earth Strike who say "Until the world's
governments and businesses are held accountable to the people, we are refusing to
participate in the system that fills their pockets". All of this implies that somehow the
State and capitalism can change, can be reformed.
We know from our own experiences, from talking to the grassroots supporters of both
Earth Strike and Extinction Rebellion, that there is a growing realisation that climate
change can only be halted by the removal of capitalism. This is not reflected in the
leaderships of these movements, which continue to push these demands that we see as
unrealistic.
It is the working class and the poor who are at the sharp end of climate change. The
destruction of capitalism is seen as utopian. But it is precisely this that is needed to
end climate change. Any belief that capitalism can be transformed into something green and
ethical, that the system can of its own will transform itself into something accountable
and involving mass participation is the real utopianism.
General Strike for Climate
mentioned above, this has been called for 20th September. The idea is that major economic
disruption and a major display of working class solidarity in the face of climate change
will scare the State into making concessions for the environment.
The Earth Strike group originally pushed the idea of a strike, although since then, the
idea has spread with the UK Student Climate Network and Extinction Rebellion planning
actions on the same date. More info from:
earth-strike.com and
globalclimatestrike.net
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2019/08/10/system-change-not-climate-change/
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