#Worldwide #Information #Blogger #LucSchrijvers: #Update: #anarchist #news and #information from all over the #world - 27.01.2020

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #301 - unionism, The
      first lessons of a historic strike (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  ait russia: KRAS - AIT, Lebanon: protesters storm banks
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  US, black rose fed: Should Anti-Capitalists Contest
      Elections? (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #301 - On campus: The
      student cockade wants to make its hole (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  ait russia: Bulk - not an option - Change the system, not
      puppets! [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  anarkismo.net - Pierre Ramus book: "The Wrong Theory of
      Marxism" by Dmitri (MACG - personal capacity) 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





At the 43 th day of strike, how will evolve the fight ? Will it run out of steam or rebound in an unexpected form ? Whatever the outcome, it
is possible to ask a first series of reflections on a movement that will have lasting consequences. ---- As with every massive and lasting
strike movement, the chroniclers seem to rediscover the class struggle. And those who own the means of production are rediscovering that
their employees are essential for the production of wealth ! Conversely, the too slow and too weak extension of the strike to other sectors
negatively reveals that the employees have only one real power: to stop producing collectively and sustainably. And all of a sudden, all the
tactics of avoiding strikes or actions seeking to replace them revealed their limits: leapfrog days, Saturday demonstrations, street riots,
blockages of flows, are all tools that may be useful, but in no way comparable to a broad and deep "  arms crossed insurrection  ".

A brake: the loss of militant know-how
A lasting and massive strike, a serious strike, it is preparing ... seriously. It is not enough to announce the date well in advance and put
up some posters ! Delegates have to turn and come back, employees have to take over the project and save money. We need a battle plan.
Unfortunately, it is the collapse of political consciousness and know-how that has been exposed in the majority of branches and departments.
The results are so different from one region to another, from one branch to another, that making a general assessment is impossible.
Thousands of delegates, despite specific calls from their national, local and professional organizations, have not gone on strike for a
single day ! And this frightening observation must be our main concern.

But the movement will also have revealed the failure of too many intermediate militant teams, UL, UD, territorial professional unions ...
disconnected, purring, timid or sectarian. So many structures to revitalize, to rebuild, to evolve by aiming at the reconstruction of local
industry unions with a local interprofessional practice. But how can militant teams be freed from these tasks when, in their own company,
union life is dying ? Because you do not become a credible and effective manager if you are not supported on a solid basis. This crudely
repeats, over and over again, the question of the professional orientation of revolutionary activists.

Paris, December 5, 2019.
cc Daniel Maunoury
Tenacity: no truce for confectioners
The strikers held up during the Christmas holidays ! In all public services, certain deeply held taboos are crumbling before the steamroller
of governments which methodically destroy the school, the hospital, transport, Social Security. Strike of exams, strike of care, strike of
departure on vacation respond to the liberal offensive. And despite the difficulties caused in daily life, it is remarkable that a majority
of the population still supports the movement. As if everyone was aware that public services were destroyed to offer the education, care,
transport or social protection markets to private interests.

So, on January 9, the police had instructed to strike even harder in the hope of stopping the movement after returning from vacation. The
success of the collections reinforces this observation: people have understood the issue, and there is just a spark missing so that the
strike becomes generalized. It's annoying but not hopeless !

We have never known such a large and lasting unity on such a clear slogan: withdrawal. The entry of the GSC into the inter-union is in
itself a significant event. By clearly delimiting the boundaries between confederations, it is to be hoped that the built unity, not without
difficulty of course, will be rebuilt in future agendas. It also updates the question of the unification of combative union organizations in
the face of the block of accompanying unionism.

In the departmental unions which have generally served as organizers (for better and for worse ...) of the movement, important bonds of
trust have often been woven, including towards other forces such as the yellow vests. This is precious for future mobilizations. In some
companies, intersyndicals have rediscovered the unity and power of GAs. At RATP, the renewed conflict has already turned the tables.

Read also: "  RATP: The strike that overturns all benchmarks  " , Alternative libertarian, January 2020.

The picket line at the Pleyel bus depot, an obligatory meeting point in Saint-Denis (93).
cc Solidaires-RATP
The real power of GA
An internal CGT circular will have surprised the attentive activist teams: it talked about the appropriation of the strike by the strikers,
regular GAs, the mandate and revocation of strikers to represent their comrades ... In short, the perfect manual for the self-managed union
member !

Like the strike, the GA again revealed its power, in positive as in negative. On the downside when, too lightly attended (this was the case
with the SNCF), they did not allow the momentum towards a coordination of strike committees and the appropriation of the movement by the
strikers. On the positive side, in inter-union city or departmental GAs which have allowed a multiplication of initiatives - despite the
reluctance of union officials who sometimes discouraged more daring actions.

Paris, December 10, 2019.
cc Daniel Maunoury
A word on certain self-proclaimed "  AG interpros  " which have arisen again in a few places, often worn by political activists but all with
their own agenda and too often fueling a demobilizing anti-unionism. However, some have played a positive role in imagining and carrying out
useful actions, but always within the limits of substitute actions for the strike. And often without the efficiency of being built by the
strikers' delegates, even less by the mass of the strikers.

Read also: "  Rail: Basta of the" Christmas truce "  " , Alternative libertarian, January 2020.
In case of failure, bitterness, corporate withdrawal, and disillusioned renouncements will occur. And yet it seems that the rage, the joy
and the pride of having fought will remain the defining feature for the strikers, who will also learn from non-extension, just like
non-strikers who will find that only the professions in struggle will have preserved gains.

In short, this movement gives reason to the militants of the general strike, and that will shake up in the structures. How to imagine that
the direction of Unsa is not hit by its base in education and transport ? How can we imagine that the most combative sectors in Solidaires
do not come out strengthened ? And in the CGT, the debates are open, and they are quite different than ten years ago, if we compare the
federal management of Thibault in 2010, explicitly refusing to accelerate towards generalization, and the calls of Martinez in 2020, who
unfortunately find it difficult to be followed. The reconstruction of a combat unionism begins today !

Jean-Yves (UCL Limousin),
Christian (UCL Paris Banlieue Sud-Est),
January 20, 2020

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Les-premieres-lecons-d-une-greve-historique

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Message: 2






For some, a "week of anger" began in Lebanon, for others it was the "Tuesday of anger." In the Hamra district of Beirut, numerous bank
branches were attacked Tuesday night in clashes between protesters and police. ---- The main objective was the Lebanese Central Bank, which
had been hermetically sealed by security forces. During hours of street fighting, protesters destroyed windows, doors and ATMs, using stones
and iron bars. The walls of the banks were full of slogans like "People want to overthrow the banks." ---- Communist youth groups,
anarchists and other leftist organizations declared themselves responsible for the banking storm. Numerous non-governmental organizations
criticized the violence. Police responded with batons and tear gas. 59 people were arrested. According to the Lebanese Red Cross, 65 people
suffered minor injuries in part.

There were also demonstrations and clashes with security forces in the Lebanese city of northern Tripoli and in the Lebanese port city of
southern Saida. Major major streets were blocked with seat blocks, trash bins or burning tires. From a tire fire in the Aschrafiye district
of Beirut, a column of black smoke rose in the sky over Beirut.

The protests that began in October due to an economic and financial crisis had diminished during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Now he
is back with all his strength, a protester who was not mentioned by name told reporters. If there was no new government in 48 hours, the
actions would be expanded.

University professor Hassan Diab currently has the task of forming the government. He wants to form a government composed of technocrats,
which has the support of the vast majority of the population. It is questionable how the political power blocs that have been divided in
Lebanon since the civil war (1975-1990) react according to religious affiliation.

The last parliamentary elections in May 2018 had won an alliance around Hezbollah, in the previous government there were four ministers near
Hezbollah. To preserve the religious proportion among Christians, Sunnis and Shiites, as well as peace within Lebanon, the Sunni Muslim Saad
Hariri was re-elected prime minister despite high electoral losses. With the beginning of the protests, Hariri resigned, now acts as a
supporter of the protest movement.

The population accuses the political leadership, which corresponds mainly to the financial elite of the country, of having enriched
themselves with the people's money. By order of the central bank, banks blocked private accounts with foreign currency (US dollars, euros)
and account holders can only withdraw a small amount in foreign currency per week. Transfers abroad are prohibited, transactions from abroad
to Lebanon are also subject to payment blockage. The Lebanese pound, which was previously linked to the US dollar at 1,500 pounds, has
fallen to 2,400 pounds against the US dollar.

On Wednesday morning, Hamra was calm. The stores opened as usual. Broken windows in the banks were removed, new surveillance cameras were
installed and damage was suffered. New protests were expected at night. Source: https://aitrus.info/ KRAS -AIT,

http://elmilicianocnt-aitchiclana.blogspot.com/2020/01/libano-los-manifestantes-asaltan-los.html

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Message: 3






South African miner strike in 2007 involving workers from 60 different companies.
The question of the left and electoralism looms large in South Africa. The "tripartite alliance" emerged in the transition from apartheid to
multi-racial democracy in the 1990's as a political alliance between the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's largest trade union
federation, COSATU, and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In power the ruling ANC quickly shifted from a program of redistribution
and state-led development to a practice of neoliberal privatization, state looting, and repression. After two decades of the ANC in power,
the country continues to remain the most economically unequal in the world.
With many growing "increasingly disillusioned" with the ANC and tripartite alliance, this has in turn spurned political rifts. In 2014 the
largest union in COSATU, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), was expelled from the federation over it's vocal
criticism of the alliance after the "Marikana massacre" where police killed 34 striking miners in collaboration with ANC officials. On the
electoral level NUMSA went on to sponsor the formation of a new Marxist-Leninist party in 2018, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party,
though the fledgling effort failed to win a single elected office in the 2019 provincial elections. As well in 2013, a former ANC youth
leader led a split to form the Economic Freedom Fighters, a top down electoral party with a vague program mixing pan-Africanism, Marxism,
and populism, which is the third largest party in parliament.

What follows is a lightly edited transcription of a panel talk given by Lucien van der Walt on the eve of the South African national
elections in 2019 hosted by the International Labour Research and Information Group. Van der Walt is a professor of sociology at Rhodes
University in Cape Town, South Africa and the author of numerous works relating to working class history and anarchism.

-Introduction by Adam Weaver

By Lucien van der Walt

Thank you comrades for the points that you have made. Should anti-capitalists vote? The quick answer is "no." Let's be clear, the right to
vote is important. It is better to be under a state where you can vote, where there are some basic civil and political rights, than under,
for example, the apartheid state that we had. It is not that there is no difference - it is big victory for the working class that we're
under a bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

Having said that, using the state and using elections is not something that is going to take the working class forward, it is not something
that is going to enable the working class to build the capacity to take power directly by itself, through bottom-up organs of working class
democracy.

Let's be clear: this isn't an argument about whether comrades are sincere in their programmes when forming parties, it is not an argument
that genuine comrades who believe in the party model secretly have malicious plans to get rich. We know that there are many politicians who
are in it to get money, but not all.

So this is a message to the sincere comrades, of the left.

Fundamentally the state is not an organization that is able to ensure the deeper change, the creation of social and economic equality which
we need in our country and in our society. The state is a top-down, centralised pyramid in the hands of a political elite of politicians,
and of top government officials, who work with an economic elite, of big business people. Together this is the ruling class, a powerful
minority that controls society, and monopolizes power and wealth through states and corporations.

We can have formal political and civil rights, but in the context of deep, profound, immiserating inequality in power and wealth, those
rights are very limited. We all have the right to free speech but one person, sleeping under a bridge, and another person, the editor of a
newspaper - well, one person's right to free speech and another person's right to free speech, can be completely different in reality. If
you are desperately dependent on an employer to survive, to get a small amount of money, so that you can feed your kids, you are not likely
to cause trouble and invoke your formal rights as a worker.

So, for the proper exercise of rights, you need equality in society - not just to be equal on paper. To that end we need a massive
redistribution of power and wealth in society: we need to move away from a society in which run by, and for, a small ruling class of
politicians, officials and capitalists.

As a simple example, to get decent housing in South Africa, we would have to spend billions of rands, we would have to redirect the
construction industry away from producing shopping malls, from suburban houses, gentrified coffee shops and craft beer saloons. We would
have to control the resources - the labour, the materials, the infrastructure - and we would have to have the power to decide that those
resources go into housing - rather than something else.

Then we can start to talk about the large-scale delivery of decent housing for ordinary people. I don't mean a little shacks, I don't mean
the tiny two room houses the state provides when pressured.

FROM FLOOR: Viva!

I am talking about housing where you can live in dignity, where, essentially we abolish the township system of large, segregated,
impoverished working class districts, under-serviced, badly maintained, ill-treated, and sharply distinct from the suburbs. A massive
redistribution of power and wealth enables us to move away from that system, and create unified towns - not bigger townships, but the end of
townships by making the townships suburbs.

Now, that requires some massive redistribution of wealth and power - and direct control by ordinary people. And you will never get that by
getting a piece of paper in a box every five years and hoping some politician will carry out their promises.

Comrade Zama Timbela, on my left, of the Progressive Civic Movement, was quite clear and totally correct: we have tried, and we are not the
only ones who have tried. Many, many people have tried this. People much better than me have tried. If someone like Nelson Mandela couldn't
change the system, if pretty much anyone you care to name ended up producing that same inequality in society, why is it going to be
different this time? How many more times do we have to form and support parties, and watch them fail the working class?

You cannot with the best will in the world make a car fly. It is the nature of the thing. You cannot make a dog go "meow." You cannot take a
state, which has got a very specific purpose in society - keeping the ruling class on top - and make it do something different.

I understand comrades' argument that we want to use the state, and parliament, and elections, to make propaganda - and there we agree. But
we disagree on how.

This comes down to how we analyse the state. The nature of the state is twofold. One, it is about the defence of inequality in society. Adam
Smith, the famous liberal economist said, the wealthy, could not sleep peacefully at night unless there was an armed body, which could
protect them: the state. The state's role is to maintain the status quo.

FROM FLOOR: Thank you!

Watch the video of this talk

Second, the state serves is controlled directly by that ruling class, and the ruling class is not just capitalists in the private sector.
The ruling class includes those people who control the army, the police, the parliamentarians, the mayor, the vice chancellor -those are all
part of the ruling class and they have some disagreements, how much cattle or cash must this one pay to this one in a bribe, who gets a
contract from ESKOM for coal, how much tax must be paid, how best to control and exploit the working class.

But all these differences fall aside when it comes to basic things. If you want to occupy some land for a shack, you are going to face
evictions, jail. The union comrades will know that when you go on strike, the police will be there - not to arrest the bosses, but to police
you. On strike you can be beaten, you will not get paid, you will get killed in some cases. On the other side, you could be like Marcus
Jooste, and defraud people of nearly R40 billion, or like Jacob Zuma and be involved in "state capture" scams that amount to an estimated
R100 billion, and you will not be arrested, evicted, or jailed. You will have to testify in parliament, maybe, and then you can go home to
your mansion. You can loot ESKOM so much, that South Africa now has less electricity than it did in 2009, and all you will face is a
toothless commission.

So, on one side, simply by maintaining the status quo of inequality, powerful monopoly corporations, deeply entrenched inequality in
decision-making and income and resources across society, including in the state - the household of the former president, Zuma, cost tax
payers up to R500 million, while people in expanded public works earn less than R20 an hour - the state ensures the current system goes on.

And, on the other side, the state is an apparatus for the direct accumulation of wealth and power. Senior state office, whether national,
provincial or local, gives access to state resources. High salaries and perks - more than a million rand a year, a house, flights, free
airtime just to sit in parliament - and even more - access to big money through the Public Investment Corporation (PIC)and state banks,
giant state capitalist firms like ESKOM, and thousands of opportunities for graft through state contracts and outsourcing, all the way down.
The Eastern Cape province has tens of thousands of "procurement points"; a municipality can have up to a thousand contracts with the private
sector. State power means you can give those contracts to family, friends, fronts: then you, the politician, are sorted. And this is, sadly,
what a lot of political party activity in South Africa is all about. Not the people, the politicians.

Votes are not going to change the system. Voting is not going to change the system. Major decisions are completely outside of the control of
ordinary people on a day-to-day basis. It is better to have a non-racial parliament than P.W, Botha, but parliament is not democracy. It is
a shell covering something else. Look on TV at parliament, watch the shenanigans of overpaid politicians, earning a million rand a year,
wearing overalls or Gucci suits - I don't care which - as they posture, parade and make speeches! These are rich, powerful people; they are
not there for you, they are doing a job where you do not even get fined if you never come to work.

If you think they really represent you, then think about what they really do. At elections they talk to you and promise the world, but you
will see, sooner or later, what world you will get. We never voted for privatization in 1994, but we got it. We never voted for police to be
sent onto our campuses, we got it. We never voted for a job-loss bloodbath, we got it. We never voted for the "state capture" project, we
got it.

And this isn't a question of which particular party - I want to be clear - this is not a question of the ruling African National Congress
(ANC), or the rival, conservative Democratic Alliance (DA, which rules here in Cape Town) or the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), an ANC
breakaway that talks about socialism but has allied with DA all over the country. The DA evicts people, the ANC complains. The ANC evicts
people, the DA complains. EFF, well it will evict people all on its own, if it ever had direct control of a municipality - and in fact it
has served for years in municipal coalition governments with the DA, and so, been party to DA evicting people.

It is not a question of which party. We also need to get away from the thing that the problem is a few bad apples, a few bad people that we
solve it if we replace Mbeki with Zuma, and Zuma with Ramaphosa, in the ANC, or Malema from EFF, or Maimane from DA - it does not matter.

This is where the idea of running a party to use elections for tactical reasons is a mistake. Yes, the masses do look at elections: but why
not give them a different message? Why tell people to vote for a party, to expose the system, as if that does not teach people to trust the
system? Yes, the political temperature of the working class rises at elections, but why give the message "vote" if know voting is based on
an illusion in the state? That is creating illusions.

Yes, comrades, I recognize the new Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party, linked to the left-wing National Union of Metalworkers of South
Africa (NUMSA), wants a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and so on - and states that it does not believe in a parliamentary road to
socialism. I know the party says it's running in elections for tactical reasons, mainly to make propaganda. But the reality is that most
people outside the party cadre will and do think the party is promising to deliver more and better, and that the issues is just that the
state is run by the wrong party.

Yes, you can use parliament for propaganda, the EFF showed it brilliantly - brilliantly! They made parliament interesting to watch. In the
old days it wasn't interesting to watch, unless you were having trouble sleeping and then you could take tips from the people in parliament.

But fundamentally that does nothing to build a bottom-up movement, it makes people into spectators at a show, politics into a performance by
a few leaders. And, fundamentally the use of parties in elections, whatever the aims, is a method that sows illusions in the state. The idea
that the masses must be encouraged to vote, so they can learn the hard lessons, is irresponsible. If you have a child and they burn their
hand, they learn a lesson. But you don't encourage them to burn their hand so they can be learn the lesson: you say "don't burn your hand,
don't touch the fire!" The same thing with elections.

To sum up: you are not going to change the system with a piece of paper; if you want to vote, vote, that is your right; but it's not going
to change things. If people want to set up a party, good for them. And I respect the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party for at least
putting a radical platform out there. But it is still not going to solve the problems.

First, political parties don't change the state, the state changes political parties; people change. High salaries, access to contracts, and
the exercise of power - these things change people. We cannot pretend someone from the working class, now suddenly rich, and busy running
the state, is still working class in interest, experience or outlook.

Rather than political parties being the power of the people inside the state, they actually become the power of the state inside the working
class, using networks of patronage, providing access for a select few to escape the working class and move into the elite, corrupting and
capturing the leadership of working class movements including unions, and teaching the masses to have faith in the state - an organisation
that oppresses them.

The party system generates divisions in the working class, as politicians chase votes: in South Africa, it's perfectly clear that race
tensions are inflamed by the parties. The party system creates a culture of dependency on the state: "we want the state to deliver, give us
this, give us that." People are left passive, disempowered from decisions, only briefly emerging in voting and -sometimes - in protests. The
rest of the time, they have no control over their daily lives. The party system promotes a Moses syndrome: people are taught to wait for a
Moses to bring freedom to take them to the land of Canaan. But none of these politicians is Moses, and there is no Canaan to be found in
following them. In electing them, you are putting them in a land of milk and honey you will never enter.

If no state can really make a difference, and I include the so-called socialist states, which were class societies based on
state-capitalism, if no state has put the working class, the poor, the peasants in power, then we need to think of a way that ordinary
people can take power without the state. We need a politics at a distance from the state, we need to build organs of people's power and of
workers' control, that in the current period can defend the working class - and that can develop the capacities for the people to take over,
directly, themselves, without the state.

Second, rejecting the use of the vote is not rejecting democracy, but fighting for democracy: parliament is not democracy, so if you want
democracy you need to build it outside the state.

Comrade Mandisi Vatu, from the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party: we have had this discussion before, so I am happy to meet you on this
panel again. And I still ask: why does NUMSA want to put their faith into a party? What does a party add? Why doesn't NUMSA prepare its
members to seize and occupy and run the metal industry? You have 350 000 people, you have structures of workers' control, so expand the
workers' democracy, from your structures outwards. The older unions, in the 1980s, argued that workers' control of the unions should be
expanded into workers' control of the economy and we should get back to that. A large section of the anti-apartheid movement aimed to
replace apartheid state structures with organs of people's power, where civic organisations would take power in the townships. We should get
back to that. Why outsource to a party, when a party cannot do these jobs, and when the state is the enemy?

What we have to do is organize and educate people and what that means is organizing people bottom up, to struggle, bottom-up to empower
their daily lives, bottom up so they can actually have democracy. You will not have democracy with the state, but you can get it with your
neighbours. You can get it with your workmates. And you can build in that a seed of a democracy where people redistribute wealth and power
downwards - that is exactly what I mean. Society based on assemblies, community and worker councils that can plan the economy democratic.

FROM FLOOR: Viva!

Iconic image of striking Marikana platinum miners from August 2012.
Organise outside the state. The state is part of the problem. It is not the solution! The problem is not the capitalists, somewhere out
there, that the state will sort out, that the state will serve the people. The state and the capitalists are two parts of the same, basic
system.

We cannot get away from theory and ideology here. The comrade from the floor who raised the question of the importance of a programme is
correct: yes, we need to have ideas and we need to think about how we link struggles today to deeper changes tomorrow, we need to think
practically without getting stuck in reformism. And this is where theory comes in.

Struggle just isn't enough. We saw this with the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, where people rebelled to demand
parliamentary democracy. Just that. And what we saw is that, if we don't have direction, you get pushed back or moved aside, and lose out.
In Egypt, the masses overthrew the military regime, and got elections to parliament. A far-right party, the Muslim Brotherhood, was the main
force ready to take the gap. It won the elections and was so reactionary, killing opponents, terrorising minorities like the Christians,
that millions of people breathed a sigh of relief when the military seized power again. They were back to square one. It is nonsense to
think that struggle alone is enough, or even to pretend that struggle automatically takes us towards socialism and democracy. It does not
and it cannot.

So, it is not enough just to struggle: we need to link daily struggle systematically towards a larger program of changing society. This is
why I am glad that the comrades here, from the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party, are raising the issues of a bigger project that builds
on, but goes way beyond, immediate struggles, Because, ultimately, we need to be clear about what is wrong in society now, what our end goal
of a new type of society is, and how we get from one to the other.

Comrade Ebrahim Fourie, on the panel, representing the Housing Assembly, is right that we need to be clear on words. Just to say that our
end goal is "socialism" is too vague, as he notes. What does that mean? How do we get there? We need to engage theory, and history does
matter; we cannot just say we're now in the 21st century, everything is new, and the past is dead. We need - as different socialist currents
- to look at what we did wrong in the past and right as well.

Comrades have labelled me an "anarchist" ...

CROWD: Laughter.

But it's a label I embrace! I am arguing for exactly that, anarchism and syndicalism: at the end of the day we need to be thinking about how
the working class, and the popular classes more generally, can take power directly, and not keeping handing power over to others. If we
reject capitalism, and if we reject the state, if we agree that handing power to politicians and parties has failed - and failed it has,
comrades, make no mistake, there is not one successful example of this freeing the masses - then we need to build mass organisations that
can fight in the present and replace capital and state in the future. So we must always draw a clear class-based distinction between the
people of a country, and its ruling classes, and stay steadfast in being politically independent of the state, just as we are separate from
the private corporations.

I appreciate that many comrades here feel solidarity with Venezuela, and so do I, since I oppose imperialist interventions. But I feel
solidarity with the popular classes of Venezuela, not its regime. I feel solidarity with the people against both the United States
government, and the Venezuelan government, both of which oppress the people. I do not choose between enemies and call this strategy.
Likewise, I feel solidarity the people of Cuba, against the United States embargo, but I have no solidarity with the Cuban regime or the not
Castro family.

A free society is one without social and economic inequality - a society in which ordinary people are in charge. In fact "ordinary people"
in such a society are no longer "ordinary people" at all, since there is no elite against which we contrast the masses, the grassroots.
There are no classes. We are all collectively owners of means of production, and we all collectively decide on how we use administrative,
coercive and economic resources. We are in charge of schools, work and the community, and we can live lives of dignity and equality. We
govern through assemblies, committees and councils, from the bottom up, with no ruling class minority. We have freedom of speech and
association and belief, and we have equality through cooperation and community.

That means the abolition of the state. None of this is possible through, or under, a state structure. That also means the capitalism. While
we live under systems which are pyramids, where a small ruling class holds the power and wealth, we will never be free. The masses cannot
control a pyramid which is a way for a minority to centralise resources and decisions. You can vote how you like, but you do not control the
MPs or the president, you can have a bank account but you do not control the bank. You can tweet President Ramaphosa, or write him an open
letter, but he does not have the read it, and he does not have to do anything about it. That is the nature of the empty democracy we have.

You have to have substantial direct control. And that means that at the end of the day we have got to think how the working class can get
some power today, and prepare for taking power directly in the future. We need permanent mass organizations in which we can debate the
various perspectives, such as unions, neighbourhood groups, and unemployed organisations. I am against putting our faith in parties, but
let's have political pluralism in mass organisations, and hammer out the issues. Let's test our different perspectives. Let's be willing to
change our minds and learn from one another. Let us not pretend there aren't differences; differences matter. It should not be a
precondition of joining a mass organisation that we support a particular party. And let us not exclude any party either.

This is part of building a counter-power, of mass-based organs of counter-power to resist in the present, and build capacities to take over
in the future. We need to rebuild an alternative media and radical education. Today union investment firms hold major shares in Power FM,
eTV and other broadcasters, yet these do nothing to promote working class hegemony or socialism or anarchism. We need to have a discussion
on how to relink Unions and community. We need to think about ways that unions, and communities, have created alternatives in the past.
Unions used the run, here in Cape Town, the Ray Alexander Workers Clinic. Why not revive such things? If the state has failed with public
health, let's start asking the state to deliver public health, let's have our own clinics. Let's get workers' radio and TV going - not just
a slot here and there, but as part of a systematic alternative. Let's get the big battalions of the working class onto building alternative
institutions.

Let's rebuild worker/ community alliances and fundamentally let's find ways to unite the exploited and oppressed, who are pitted against
each other, every day: Coloured versus black versus white, South African versus foreign. And to unite people we have to fight the oppression
amongst ourselves. Not as something after the revolution but as a precondition to unity now. But, we also have to understand that without a
fundamental change in society, and a new system of equality and freedom, we are not going to tear up the roots of women's oppression, of
racism, of anti-immigrant ideas.

So, build alternative institutions that educate, organize people and build an alternative at a distance from the state. If you want
democracy, make it. Build it now. Parliament is not democracy, the party road has failed, we need to build organs of counter-power and a
project of revolutionary counter-culture. Thanks!

APPLAUSE

https://blackrosefed.org/should-anti-capitalists-contest-elections/

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Message: 4






Founded in 2015 defining itself as "  sovereignist, deeply Gaullist  ", the Student Cockade is the new showcase, on some campuses, of the
supporters of a gathering of reactionary rights. The small group takes advantage of social movements to infiltrate the GA or to punch. ----
In October 2015, the anti-fascist information site La Horde announced the birth of the Student Cockade, the umpteenth avatar of far-right
student "  unionism  ". His creed, in the tradition of a Zemmour or a Marion Maréchal-Le Pen: the gathering of the right to the far right.
---- As usual, the Cocarde defends values proper to the so-called classic right: increased selection, rejection of "  egalitarianism  ",
etc., but assumes very directly, which the UNI (Union Nationale Inter) did not do. -university, student union of the hard right close to LR)
its connections with the extreme right. Several of its members are also members or close to RN or Philippot. It is therefore not surprising
that we found in the anti-PMA demonstration on October 6, a procession of the Cockade which gathered a number of small reactions behind a
blue-white-red banner " Students of France against PMA ". But this tiny group is not content with peaceful Sunday marches.

Fachos, out of our facs !
Slowly this tiny group is being established in different schools. Thus, following the elections of October 17, 2019, the student cockade
obtains two elected officials (and two alternates) in two instances of the University of Paris-Nanterre. The social movement underway
against the pension reform project unfortunately offers a new field of expression for these fascist apprentices. This is how they have shown
themselves in several GAs in different ways in recent weeks taking advantage of the number to try to disrupt their proper functioning.

If they create trouble by their mere presence, the members of La Cocarde try to present a moderate image. In a reversal of norms, actions
against them would thus even be proof of their censorship by left-wing "  good-thinking  ".

But in good little reactions members of the Cockade only seek to physically do battle with those who oppose their nauseating values. In May
2018, members of La Cocarde and Action Française (royalist group) attacked the Malesherbes and Clignancourt sites of Paris-IV University,
then in a struggle.

This attack followed those perpetrated in Montpellier, Strasbourg and Lille, which were then directly encouraged by one of the RN's
executives, Louis Alliot. On December 12, it was again alongside the AF that they violently attacked students mobilized against the pension
reform project and the deterioration of students' living conditions. Let us remain vigilant and mobilized against all attempts by the far
right to establish and destroy social movements in our places of study and our workplaces. Antifascists as long as it takes !

UCL Antifascist Commission

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sur-les-campus-La-Cocarde-etudiante-veut-faire-son-trou

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Message: 5






The well-known oppositionist Alexei Navalny is talented and regularly exposing government officials and government officials. But, why
doesn't he talk about WHAT social class and WHICH production relations form this political superstructure in the form of a
corruption-bureaucratic Putin regime? Because Navalny, whatever one may say, is fighting for the improvement of capitalism, for the
preservation of its economic basis and the modernization of its political superstructure. ---- Navalny, selflessly and tirelessly, is
fighting to reduce corruption to a level acceptable to the bourgeoisie and expresses the interests of the competitive struggle of its
various units. But the fact is that corruption is an integral part of any capitalist state and, while maintaining the capitalist system, it
is impossible to defeat it. In a bourgeois state, the fight against corruption is always aimed only at reducing corruption to an acceptable
level for small and medium-sized businesses. The oligarchs, of course, corruption - is a "mother native", because it gives them the
opportunity to control senior officials. If Putin's policy runs counter to their interests, then, having at hand the facts of corruption
among senior officials, dismissing him with the help of the "Swamp Maidan" will be a matter of technology. Bulk is a "short leash" on which
the oligarchy holds Putin's government. And the active propaganda of the fight against corruption among workers is aimed, first of all, at
distracting wage workers from the class struggle.

Does it make sense to reform capitalism? Maybe it's time to raise the question of a more substantial restructuring of society? Maybe it's
time to recognize the obvious truth that capitalism is an economic system based on the humiliation of workers and constant crises, which in
itself, with any political course, makes human life unbearable?

In terms of wage labor, every plant and every company is a prison in which everything is allowed to overseers (managers) and owners. And
with concrete examples from the life of our Russian society, we will try to justify this.

Economics of Oil and Traders

Forbes magazine has published a ranking of the largest private "employers" in Russia. The list did not include a single company that would
not be associated with the extraction and primary processing of minerals or with the retail sale of goods and services. The first place in
the ranking is occupied by the retailer Magnit. The retailer also has second place - X5 Retail Group (Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, and Karusel
networks). Closes the three leaders of Surgutneftegaz. The top ten also included Lukoil, the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, Norilsk
Nickel, Evraz, MTS, Dixy, UC Rusal. In eleventh place is the Siberian Coal Energy Company. According to Forbes, the richest private Russian
company was Lukoil. The five leaders also include Surgutneftegas, X5 Retail Group, Magnit and Tatneft.

Poverty limits the needs of Russians

The decline in real incomes, which has been continuing for the sixth year in a row, is forcing Russian workers to limit their needs in all
areas. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, for 2014-2018, the real disposable income of Russians fell by 8.5%. In the first
half of 2019, people became even poorer by 1.3%. The Ministry of Economic Development at the end of August lowered the forecast for the
growth of real disposable incomes of the Russian population for 2019 to 0.1% from 1%, and the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina
recognized the dynamics of real incomes of Russians as unsatisfactory.

Russians reduce food consumption

At the end of 2018, Russian citizens in physical volume (kilograms) consumed 11% fewer foods than in the last pre-crisis 2013, according to
Finanz, citing experts from the Development Center of the Higher School of Economics. Compared to 2013, Russians reduced their fish
consumption by 0.6 kilograms per person per year. Fruits and berries people began to eat less by 3.9 kilograms per person per year. The
consumption of dairy products decreased on average by 1.8%, or 4.8 kilograms per person per year, sugar - by 300 g, potatoes - by 1.9 kg. To
preserve the energy value of food while reducing real costs for it, people optimize their consumer behavior, for example, buying goods on
stocks and at discounts. In 2018, the share of Russians buying goods with discounts reached 50.6%,

Fertility in Russia drops to a twenty-year low

At the end of 2018, the value of the key indicator of fertility - the birth rate of the first child per woman in Russia - 0.66 - became the
minimum for 20 years, the publication Finanz reports with reference to the data of the Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting (INSAP)
of the RANEPA in September "Monitoring Socially -economic status and well-being of the population. " Such a low rate of first births was
observed in Russia only in 1999, at the peak of the economic crisis. At the same time, the birth rate of the second child is reduced.
Families postpone the birth of first-born first of all because of the continuous decline in real incomes since 2014. The Russians naturally
remain indifferent to the idiotic calls of officials to give birth to more children. According to the results of January-July 2019, the
number of births in Russia decreased by 68.5 thousand children, or 7.4%. As a result, the natural population decline accelerated by 20% - up
to 209.7 thousand people. 69 regions of the Russian Federation continue to die out of 85. Faster than others, the population of Pskov (880
people per 100 thousand inhabitants), Tula (840), Tverskaya (800), Ivanovo (790), Oryol (700), Smolenskaya, Tambov and Novgorod regions (770) )

Russian billionaires have become even richer

The total wealth of the richest Russians in the first eight months of 2019 increased by $ 28.316 billion, according to the Expert
publication, citing the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI) rating. In total, the BBI rating includes 500 of the richest people in the world,
of which 24 people are currently included in the Russian rating.

As before, the first lines of the rating of Russian billionaires are occupied by representatives of industries related to the extraction and
primary processing of natural resources. In the first place in the ranking is one of the main owners of Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Potanin. His
fortune has increased since the beginning of the year by 3.88 billion dollars, up to 23.5 billion. It is followed by Leonid Mikhelson,
co-owner of the second largest natural gas company in Russia, Novatek; his wealth grew by 2.85 billion dollars and reached 22.3 billion
dollars. Third place went to Vladimir Lisin, the main beneficiary of the NLMK steel company, with a fortune of $ 20.5 billion (an increase
of $ 2.64 billion). In fourth place is the main owner of Severstal Alexei Mordashov with a fortune of $ 18.8 billion,

According to Rosstat, the real disposable income of Russians in the first half of 2019 decreased by 1.3% compared to the same period last
year. In the II quarter of 2019, the income of Russians decreased by 0.2% (data year to year). Rosstat also revised its estimate for the
first quarter: their decline turned out to be more significant - 2.5% instead of the previously announced 2.3%. The median salary in Russia
is 34.4 thousand rubles, and the modal salary - that is, the one that the majority of the population receives - is only 23.5 thousand
rubles. The share of Russians with incomes below the subsistence level in the second quarter of this year increased by 0.2% compared to the
same period last year and amounted to 12.7%, or 18.6 million people.

What's next?

The class of Russian oligarchs lives like the Russian aristocracy under the tsars has never lived before. This parasitic class has formed a
corresponding political superstructure in the form of a corruption-bureaucratic regime to suit its needs.

Capitalism is fundamentally incapable of doing without corruption, competition and the chaos of the struggle of entrepreneurs create fertile
ground for corruption corruption. The present is the time of capitalist agony. Competitive consumerism, the driving capitalist development
of the productive forces, has exhausted its progressive role. The immense bourgeois exploitation is combined with the direct destruction of
the productive forces. In the Krasnoyarsk industrial region alone, over the past 18 years, more than 20 large, powerful enterprises have
closed. The Krasnoyarsk economy is almost destroyed. The land is desolate and exists only at the expense of several commodity corporations.
All that Krasnoyarsk citizens consume (with the exception of Biryusa refrigerators) is all imported. And this is happening all over the country.

The leading countries of imperialism, mired in crises of "overproduction" and finances, are also noticeably degrading. Again in Europe, the
United States and Latin America fascism raises its head. And everyone holds on to the market element. Everything "works" on the
self-destruction of mankind. But an objective prerequisite for the world socialist revolution and directly communist development is already
clearly forming. Relations of private property, private appropriation, use and disposal can be really replaced by relations of general
appropriation, possession and use. But so far there is no subjective premise: the world working class has not yet realized its class
interests and political tasks. Maybe it's time to live not according to spontaneous, market capital, but humanly, according to rational
needs? Maybe it makes sense to start working for the good, on the development of all mankind, and not a handful of oligarchs? Is it not time
for workers to think about the struggle for a classless society based on the principles of labor self-government, in which workers
themselves will decide how and what they produce and according to what rules they live? It is up to you, dear comrades, hired workers of
mental and physical labor!

As for Navalny, his slogan of anti-corruption democratic struggle is, first of all, a convenient populist slogan for attracting both
entrepreneurs and the working masses. But while for some detachments of the entrepreneurial class there is some sense in becoming under the
banner of Navalny, for the class of wage earners the support of the bourgeois populist politician makes no sense.

Ivan Myasnikov (Krasnoyarsk Workers Union)

https://aitrus.info/node/5401

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Message: 6






This surprisingly early and profoundly critical rejection of Marxist theory as well as its first stem, social democracy, by the
much-forgotten anarchist revolutionary and humanist Pierre Ramos - philological nickname of Austro-Roumanu Pau'roukou Enrico Rouenou 1916,
and was published three years later. ---- This astonishingly early and radical criticism of Marxist theory as well as its first stem, Social
Democracy, by the long-forgotten anarchist revolutionary and humanist Pierre Ramilofilm Pierre Ramillo in the midst of World War I, 1916,
and was published three years later. ---- The establishment of the Leninist and Mussolini dictatorships prompted Ramus to re-publish his
work in 1926 - this Greek translation is based on this second edition - supplementing it with criticism of the other two shoots of Marxism,
Bolshevism and Fascism, who, however, he says, "are simply different names in the stages of the relentless self-dissolution of Marxism, a
self-dissolution aimed at both the salvation of socialism and the proletariat and the liberation of of holiness. "

(From the back cover of the book)

Contents

Biography
Introduction: Marxism and the Labor Movement, Social Democracy and Bolshevism
Part One: The Rotten Philosophical Foundation of Marxism
Part Two: The Materialist Perception of History
Part Three: The Anti-Socialist Element in the "Communist Manifesto" and Marxism
Part Four: The Wrong
National Economic Theories of Marxism I. National Economy and Marxism
II. The fundamental error in Chapter
III. Marxian metaphysics for the "free" worker
IV. The Problem of Value
V. The Theory of Goodwill
VI. Marx's self-contradictions in his presentation of the legal reduction of the working day
Fifth Part: The Marxist Factors of the Collapse of the Capitalist Way of Production
I. The Last Stands of the Marxist Ideas Building
II. The essence of capitalist accumulation
III. The trend of concentration and concentration
IV. The collapse of the middle class and the war of overthrow of the capitalists
V. The failure of Marxism in the agricultural sector of production
VI. The crises
Sixth part: Marxism, fascism and the proletarian class struggle
Seventh part: The radical rejection of Marxism as a precondition for the socialist liberation struggle
I. The anarchist self-denial of Marxist political economy
II. Moving away from Marxism: The first precondition for a new beginning of socialism

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31735

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