Today's Topics:
1. France, Union Communiste Libertaire - International press
release, The colonial power plays the tension in Kanaky
release, The colonial power plays the tension in Kanaky
(ca, de,
it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL AL #311 - Culture,
Music: Les Meufs "The glissando of the dead rabbit" (de, it, fr,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Music: Les Meufs "The glissando of the dead rabbit" (de, it, fr,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Collettivo Anarchico Libertario - Livorno: Presidium against
male violence against women and gender
male violence against women and gender
(ca, de, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. CNT Fraga: Book Release - Dec. 18. Online presentation of
'Toxic Happiness' The dark side of positive thinking (ca)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
'Toxic Happiness' The dark side of positive thinking (ca)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. zabalaza.net: The Political Party System: No Friend of the
Working Class - SIFUNA ZONKE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Here we are relaying the press release from the Solidarité Kanaky collective
published on the site: https://solidaritekanaky.fr ---- For several weeks, a
massive mobilization has been underway in Kanaky New Caledonia to defend the
sovereignty of the people over its mineral resources, to prevent the looting of
these resources by multinationals and, ultimately, to fight against the
colonization still underway. ---- In December 2019, the company Vale
Nouvelle-Calédonie, which operates one of the country's largest nickel deposits
and an ore processing plant, in the southern province, announced that it wanted
to leave the country and resell its shares. The opportunity for the separatists
to bring some of the mining resources back into the public fold, in order to keep
control over company policy, like the Koniambo massif, of which the North
province is a 51% shareholder.
But Vale NC (led by Frenchman Antonin Beurrier), the state and the
anti-independence parties have decided otherwise.
The takeover offer submitted by Sofinor (a financing company for the North
Province) and by a South Korean industrial partner, with a Caledonian public
shareholding project at 56%, was purely and simply rejected, in favor of the
'offer from the "Prony Resources" consortium , set up by Antonin Beurrier
himself, supported by the State, and largely financed by the international trader
Trafigura (infamous for having dumped toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire, poisoning
tens of thousands of people)and by private Caledonian investors (probably from
the great colonial fortunes still well established in the Caledonian economy). A
minority share of the shareholding would certainly go to the southern province,
but the anti-independence parties that lead it are not known to defend a nickel
policy benefiting the general interest.
The mobilization in support of the "country factory" project and in opposition to
the takeover by Trafigura has taken on an unprecedented scale since September.
"Trafigura outside", "No to the sale of our land heritage" are among the slogans
of the collective "Usine du sud = Usine pays Which brings together customary
institutions, independence political parties and unions and several environmental
associations. In recent days, faced with the total refusal of Vale, the Southern
Province and the State to seriously study the project of taking over the plant by
public shareholders, then following the announcement of the signing of a firm
agreement between Vale and the Trafigura consortium, general strikes, blockades,
roadblocks, demonstrations, have multiplied. This case of takeover has become
emblematic of the colonial domination of the State and of foreign investors and
it is against this, and for their sovereignty, that the Kanaks and their allies
are fighting.
Henceforth, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Overseas Minister Sébastien Lecornu
seek to place the responsibility for the "violence" on the separatist activists,
denying the fact that it is the State which feeds these mobilizations, by its
support for the strategy of Vale and the southern province and its refusal to
negotiate a local and public takeover of the plant. In addition, it is the
partisans of French Caledonia, having mounted counter-barriers and displaying
tricolor flags , who brandish guns, without the nearby gendarmes reacting.
Likewise, it was the French gendarmes who fired live ammunition at militants
seeking to enter the Vale factory to block production.
What could henceforth be called "the case of the takeover of Vale" is in reality
yet another attempt by the state and the anti-independence activists to obstruct
the process of decolonization of New Caledonia. Since the independence project is
strengthening in the ballot box, with a progression of 3 points in the second
referendum on October 4, 2020, the colonists' strategy is therefore to counter it
on the ground, by preventing a project that could promote the construction of a
future Independent state.
Because the control of resources, whether mining or otherwise, is an essential
element of a country's sovereignty.
Many African countries have paid the price, seeing their raw materials looted and
sold off by foreign states and multinationals, exported raw without being valued
locally, and without their populations having any say and seeing the shadows. of
the benefits of this wealth.
The Solidarité Kanaky collective and the AISDPK therefore fully support the fight
led by the Kanaks and their allies against the plundering of their resources and
for their sovereignty.
We denounce the position of the State which, while it should be engaged in the
process of decolonization by the Matignon and Nouméa agreements, supports a
project which goes totally against this process and remains deaf to independence
claims [1], pushing Kanaky Nouvelle-Calédonie into a situation of great tension.
We call for a mobilization this Wednesday December 16 at 6 p.m. in front of the
French overseas ministry in Paris
Validate
[1] This attitude follows on from other violations of its commitments .
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Le-pouvoir-colonial-joue-la-tension-en-Kanaky
------------------------------
Message: 2
The first recording of Les Meufs was released in December 2019, the opportunity
for this 100% female group to take stock after almost seven years of existence
and concerts in support of various struggles. ---- The Meufs have slowly made a
name for themselves on the Parisian scene. Since 2013, they have been roaming the
bars and supporting concerts where they swing their songs tinged with
Gothic-anarchist poetry between two punk groups such as their friends from Bad
Reputation or other Rock'N'Bones. Far from decibels, it is in a vein of realistic
songs that the Meufs have chosen to express their rage in the face of this system
which crushes the exploited. This first opus of nine tracks, including a cover of
the classic La Ballata del anarchico Pinelli, condensed with rage to make any
streetpunk band pale, hits the mark.
Opening on the bucolic Chouette bocage, composed during the fight on the Zad of
Notre-Dame-des-Landes, the titles alternate falsely light words and compositions
with darker titles. The group, now in a trio (accordion, bass, keyboard and
percussion on occasion), skilfully plays the atmospheres and voices of its two
singers to install without letting it appear a radical statement that takes turns
killing bosses, cops and violent husbands (the false naive Oh ben damn!) or the
prison system (the arid Death penalty).
Les Meufs sing about the violent lives of those who were not born on the side of
Neuilly or Saint-Trop ', the offbeat, the incarcerated, the divergent, those who
have not other alternative than revolt again and again (Violence and dread or the
chilling Divergence).
"Long live beer, my love and anarchy"
Les Meufs expose their lives as women unvarnished. For a long time for them the
periods are no longer a taboo subject and they announce the color, "fuck her
father the proc 'I'm still going to screw" and warn the guys not to try their
hand at humor (The rules). While on the bag Mon p'tit chéri, they don't give a
damn about romantic plans with two balls: "Montmartre and the Sacré-Couille oh
well thank you!They are the Paris of the Commune that connects them. Another
nugget finally, The blues of good women, feminist hymn which mocks contradictory
injunctions of femininity, sexist behavior of everyday life and calls for the
emancipation of all "with any weapon », As long as they chose it!
Having chosen to walk in the company of Gaston Couté or Anne Sylvrestre (which
they perform in concert), the Meufs nonetheless remain a Keupon group at heart.
Their compositions, refined over the years, have reached a maturity while being
stripped down and only leave listening to this skeud one regret... nine tracks is
too short! And we start to shout with Les Meufs, "Long live beer, my love and
anarchy"!
David (UCL Grand-Paris sud)
Les Meufs, The Glissando of the Dead Rabbit , Eat Shit Records, December 2019.
Contact address: les.meufs@free.fr
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Musique-Les-Meufs-Le-glissando-du-lapin-mort
------------------------------
Message: 3
we publish the convocation of the NUDM Liv orno square initiative for the day
against male violence against women and gender ---- SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER 16-17.30
---- PRESIDIO in PIAZZA XX Settembre ---- in the square because: ---- * The
health emergency has exacerbated sexual violence, an expression of a patriarchal
and sexist society ---- * If violence is present in our lives We are present
against violence. ---- * Against a violence that acts daily and concretely on our
bodies we respond with the physical presence of our bodies in the square. ---- *
We do not want to be victims, nor a statistic on new forms of poverty, nor carers
of a society that oppresses and exploits us. ---- * We want to raise our voice
against the violence of a sexist and patriarchal society, which must not be
looked after but taken from its foundations
For this we will be in the square. We want to be there together, with extreme
attention to the protection of everyone *.
We are the lofty and fierce cry
of all those women who no longer have a voice!
SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER 4 pm PIAZZA XX SEPTEMBER
Today, more than ever, violence attacks our lives and our genders, whether it is
directly enacted violence or that carried out by discriminatory policies
- exponential increase in domestic violence, exacerbated by confinement in homes
and families
- increase in emergencies managed by anti
- violence centers - increase in homolesbobitransphobic violence
- increase in exploitation and economic violence especially against women,
migrants and non-compliant subjects: further insecurity, unemployment, the burden
of smartworking and care work, exposure to the contagion of care, cleaning,
sanitation, etc.
- increased social fragility and dependence on the family unit
- increased difficulty in accessing abortion and free contraception, as well as
hormone therapies for trans people and all sexual health support services
Today more than ever it is necessary to practice transfeminist solidarity!
IF IT STOPS WE STOPS THE WORLD
NonUnaDimeno - Livorno
https://collettivoanarchico.noblogs.org/post/2020/11/26/presidio-contro-la-violenza-maschile-sulle-donne-e-di-genere/
------------------------------
Message: 4
Conversations between: ---- Rafa Pardo, author of the book, Graduated in History
and Doctor in Theology. ---- Martín Correa-Urquiza, professor of the postgraduate
course in Collective Mental Health at the Rovira I Virgili University and Doctor
in Medical Anthropology and International Health and researcher. ---- From the
CNT Fraga, we communicate that next Friday, December 18 at 6:30 p.m.,we will
carry out the presentation of the bookToxic Happiness. The dark side of positive
thinking , in the room that CNT Fraga has on the jitsi platform, very easy to
use. https://meet.jit.si/cntfraga ---- With this presentation we want to continue
in the dynamic of deep reflection on the context that the capitalist model of
conflict resolution wants to impose once again, fraudulently and misleadingly
bringing individual solutions when they should be -and now more than ever-
community, addressing among others, the labor and trade union issue that concerns
us all in these times.
For some years now, many psychologists have warned about the danger of positive
thinking, understood here as an ideological movement that produces cups of coffee
with friendly slogans, apps that measure happiness through mobile phones,
self-help books that promise emotional well-being, omnipresence of happy
emoticons, abundance of coach, etc. As we can see in the presentation of this
book, this movement that sells happiness and generates optimism, has nothing
innocent, it would only be a kind of sympathetic magic if it were not because,
frequently, it has serious risks for our physical and psychological health and
for the rupture of our community and organizational fabric, from a humanist
perspective.
With the help of Martín Correa Urquiza, Doctor in Medical Anthropology and
International Health and researcher, member of the Medical Anhtopology Research
Center and Rafael Pardo, author of the book and Bachelor of History and Doctor of
Theology, we will carry out a collective commitment in what is refers to
emotional health, with a community approach, putting in value the organizational
and human fabric of our societies, more necessary than ever, denouncing the weak
roots of the scientific method of positive thinking and warning about the dangers
of naive optimism.
Through this note, we would like to support the "Support your bookstores"
campaign, through which we will try to ensure that the purchase of the book to be
presented can be carried out as a priority in the bookstores of our towns.
https://www.cnt.es/noticias/18-de-diciembre-presentacion-online-de-felicidad-toxica/
------------------------------
Message: 5
The question of state government elections and running a workers or socialist
political party continues to be raised in the working-class movement and the Left
globally. As we may know, there was excitement about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in
the Labour Party in Britain, about the successes of left political parties in
certain parts of Europe and Latin America and, more recently, certain shifts to
more centrist positions in the United States amongst a section of the Democratic
Party calling themselves "Democratic Socialists." In South Africa, many workers
and some activists seem cautiously optimistic about NUMSA's formation of the
Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that participated in the 2019 general
elections, but did not manage to get a seat in Parliament.
Which Means for which Ends?
With this in mind, we need to look at issues of social transformation within the
framework of what we want to achieve and the relationship between the means and
ends of struggle in pursuit of these aims. The historic and ultimate socialist
end is a society characterised by collective democratic control of the political
and economic systems and one without class divisions and oppression of any kind -
in real terms, a society without the state and capitalism in particular.
If this is so, is this revolutionary transformation possible by means of state
power and political parties that aim to capture this form of power?
The question is not only one of ideological orientation, but also impacts on
strategic and tactical considerations, associated with adherence to a chosen
ideology. Before we get into it, I want to stress that we are participating in
and waging a battle of ideas. This is not just between an embattled working class
- broadly understood as workers, the unemployed and their families - and the
opposing ruling class. It is also a battle of competing tendencies, or ideologies
within the working class itself, e.g. nationalism, populism, various
Marxist-Leninist tendencies, anarchism/syndicalism, etc.
The Balance of Power and Working-Class Strategy
The question of elections and political parties has to be interrogated within the
dual contexts of this battle of ideas (inter and intra class) and the relative
weakness of union movements in relation to the forces of the ruling class - the
state and the corporation. Whereas corporations and their capitalist philosophies
have become ubiquitous throughout the world, the influence of unions and the
ideas of collective organisation as combative and transformative forces are
relatively quite weak.
There may be large numbers of workers unionised, but this does not necessarily
translate into socioeconomic transformative action through the unions. This
general weakness is not only characteristic of unions - many other working class
social and Left movements are unable to continue struggles against the oppressive
nature of modern-day capitalism beyond protests and petitions. As such, much
action is defensive in nature (e.g. for wage increases above inflation, for
access to affordable energy in poor townships, etc.), and rarely are there
attempts at changing the relations of ownership and expanding working class
control and power into the economy and society.
The Case for a Left Political Party
It is therefore understandable, in a conjuncture of generally weak workers' and
Left formations, that the idea of a Workers Party is appealing for many people
and sections of the Left. However, the need to capture state power is also a
long-standing idea held and developed by the statist Left ideologies guiding
these people. The claim of the need for such a party asserts a new locus for
struggle, the voice for socialist ideas and an entity that can bring together
working and popular class movements across a range of sectors. The claim rests on
the idea that unions can only ever be economic organisations that aim at
day-to-day improvements in the lives of members and workers.
There are three main versions of the party project:
Nationalism: the idea is that all classes of an oppressed nationality should be
united into a popular front, forming a party that can take state power. The state
will then carry out the supposed "will" of the nation. In this model, the working
class is just one part of a broad church, and must compromise to keep bourgeois
allies in the nation on board. Nationalists sometimes use revolutionary methods,
sometimes reformist methods.
Social democracy: this is the idea that the working class can win the existing
state, using means like parliament, corporatism and expanded state control of the
economy to shift society towards socialism through a series of reforms. A social
democratic party is usually a mass party, as it needs maximum numbers to win
elections. Social democracy is always reformist.
Marxism-Leninism, or communism: unlike the other two, the aim is always
revolutionary. There should a revolutionary seizure of state power and the
creation of a new revolutionary state, which will nationalise the economy and run
it under a central government plan. There will be a violent suppression of the
capitalist class. Here, the socio-political realm is to be centrally engaged by a
political party that best represents the wishes of the working class as a whole.
This they call the vanguard party, uniting the working-class vanguard - the most
conscious and revolutionary layers of the class - giving it overall direction
through party leadership. The vanguard party, which leads the revolution, is a
minority party much of the time, as much of the working class is not conscious
and revolutionary. It may support nationalists for strategic reasons, but the
ultimate aim is a state along the lines of the old USSR.
Clearly many people on the Left think the real goal is to achieve state power to
realise the promises of the future. In reality this means building a political
party and pouring a substantial amount of resources - human and financial - into
its development. Many also believe that a Left party, however problematic, would
be better than the existing parties, particularly those of the radical right and
populists promoting race essentialism and xenophobia, who foment fear of and
between different social groupings. History is not too kind, however, to the
belief that political parties are vehicles of radical, progressive, socialist
transformation.
The Case against: the Nature of States and the Track Record of Parties
Within this framework, the idea of state power is wholly under-scrutinised from a
critical perspective. Few discussions, if any, exist within working class
organisational circles as to the nature and impact of state power on political
organisations and mass formations linked to parties in power.
When we compare the thousands of speeches and documents and resolutions on the
nature of capitalism, we cannot help but notice that the state is simply not
seriously analysed. The problems in the state are seen as largely lying with the
policies of ruling parties; the state as a structure of minority class rule is
barely noted. Hardly any debates take place regarding the state's role as an
institution of ruling class power and whether or not the state, with its
hierarchical structures of centralised, individual control, can ever be
accountable to a mass working class base.
Also missing in the discussions about elections, parties and the labour movement,
is a serious evaluation of the track record of parties - whether in power or in
opposition. In this conceptual vacuum, many continue to argue that the problem is
existing parties have failed because they have had bad leaders. This may account
for the excitement about Corbyn's influence in the UK's Labour Party, Cyril
Ramaphosa ascending the ANC throne in South Africa, or Bernie Sanders' popularity
in the USA.For others, the problem is bad ideas, with the solution being a better
party manifesto.
However, little attention is paid to structural issues - of organisation,
decision-making and control. At the extreme, some of these Left lines of thought
propose a better Communist or Socialist Party because of the failure of the
historical incumbent. However, there is little interrogation of what these
failures were, why they occurred (beyond bad leadership and alliances) and
whether or not these failures are inherent to the very idea and hierarchical
structure of a self-declared "vanguard" party.
When we focus attention on these and other such questions, perhaps we can account
for what happened to the ANC in South Africa, particularly in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries. It suggests more than just the impact of key personalities
or even programmes. Once in power, the ANC - hierarchically structured and
founded on an unprincipled mishmash of neoliberal capitalist principles
trumpeting faith in free markets, on the one hand, and Developmental State
leanings, on the other - rapidly developed into a party characterised by state
looting, corruption and social repression.
There are many similarities shared with liberation movements that came to power
elsewhere in the former colonial world, as well as with the old Labour, workers'
and socialist parties in other parts. Once they got into office and despite many
promising early initiatives, the new ruling party proved incapable of fostering
substantive, transformative socio-economic development.
There are also shared histories amongst trade union movements that chose similar
political pathways, particularly of alliance to political parties who claimed to
speak on behalf of the working class, or, as in many cases in Africa, Asia and
Latin America, the "oppressed nation." In the South African case, an official
alliance between the ANC and COSATU has, for various reasons, had a devastating
impact on the union movement. Amongst a host of other issues, it has caused the
fragmentation of the workers' movement and its organisations, a decline of union
democracy, individual jockeying for union position to access wealth and future
political power via the ANC (leading to assassinations in many cases), and the
spread of corruption. Many of these issues stem from the alliance, with union
position seen as a ladder for personal political and economic gain.
What Explains a Century of Failure?
We need to look at the trajectory of rot, failure and perhaps even betrayal here
in South Africa to understand the similarities between events in post-colonial
Africa and elsewhere. This can be a basis for a more informed discussion about
ideas for the way forward for the working class - away from mere rhetorical
flourishes, sloganeering and rehashing of old ideas that have failed our class
again and again. The reality is that a project of building political parties to
capture state power to free the popular classes - through elections or force -
has been a colossal failure in relation to its initial socialist aims.
Once elected, political parties are incorporated into the institutional life of
the state machine.
However, not only is the state always an institution of ruling class power, run
by and for exploitative economic and political elites; one of its primary goals
is to secure its power as an institution over society and its politics. This
self-sustaining approach is the very design and function of the state. It exists
primarily to secure its control over the means of coercion and administration. It
is this key form of control that positions top state managers as key members of
the ruling class alongside owners of means of production (as an aside, all states
also control substantial productive economic means, such as land, property and
corporations like Eskom, Petrobras, the Emirates airline, etc.).
Parliament or Democracy?
All states are structured as hierarchies of control and privilege - structures
that centralise more and more power in fewer and fewer individuals as you go up
the chain of command. This very structure is contradictory and opposed, in form
and content, to a democratic, emancipatory working-class project. Once a party is
involved in the self-sustaining state machinery, its leaders are drawn into the
day-to-day necessities of the interests of competing parties and politicians. The
party and individual representative's mandate must then change from one that may
have sought to serve broad social interests, to a primary focus on remaining in
political power.
Thus, the state, party and politician serve the primary purpose of maintaining
their social, economic and political positions of power, control and privilege.
The party and its servants are warped to serve this elitist interest, and its
leaders, now working and residing in the halls, offices and residences of ruling
class political power, become the very problem they may have sought to rid
society of. They now have become part of the ruling class.
Power over daily life, the neighbourhood, policing, education (let's call it the
means of administration and coercion) when rested in the hands of the state and
its institutions does not and cannot trickle down to the masses; it merely shifts
between sections of the ruling class. Let us be clear: the state is a
fundamentally undemocratic institution that we have vested with social, political
and economic power. Although you may vote for certain representatives in
government, government is but ONE arm of the state machine. You do not and
cannot, by law, vote to elect leaders of the other arms of the state: the
judiciary, the police, the army and state-owned enterprises. Not very democratic,
it seems!
If the ANC under Nelson Mandela, the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and the SACP under
Joe Slovo could not break the pattern - and in many ways reinforced the
authoritarian power of the new state institutions they came to control - it will
in no way be different the next time one chooses to vote, no matter the
personalities and programmes involved. The desire for state power, and to hold
onto it, supersedes all others. There is no basis at all for the faith that new
or reformed Left or national liberation political parties will somehow succeed in
creating the kind of order that serves the interests (individual and collective)
of the working class. This seems a faith based more on ideological dogma, a
selective reading of the past, an unscientific analysis, or even just a belief in
pursuing a "lesser evil" hoping life would be more tolerable under different
rulers. This hope is fair and not to be sneered at, but is not aligned to a
vision for a socialist future.
The very act of voting in government elections is, in and of itself, a
dereliction of one's personal political obligation. The act places your power of
decision-making in the hands of representatives, and thus is referred to as
representative democracy. This is the power to make decisions on your behalf and,
usually, without you. Voting in government elections is not done by citizens
informed by any knowledge of the outcome of their vote, but in the hope that
those they elect would actually meet their election promises.
This particular form of voting, therefore, reduces society to atomised individual
actors alone in the vast political world, reinforces the misplaced idea that it
is a meaningful political act, and further undermines the transformative
collective political action of the working class and poor. Over time and after
years of ruling class propaganda, we place more faith in this handover of
political power than the potential capabilities of our organisations - the trade
union and community-based social movement, the realms of economic and political
life where working class people can exercise actual control.
Developing an Alternative: Working-Class Counter-Power
An uncritical approach to discussing the state, parties, unions, organisational
structure and the role of voting, prevents the development of an adequate
ideological and strategic set of conclusions about what has gone wrong in the
past. It also may blind one to what has and continues to achieve real victories.
We need to focus less on the overall ideological and strategic orientations of
parties and the tactical choices that follow.
As I have argued, parties and state power are incapable of creating substantive
socialist socioeconomic transformation. We should focus more on the process that
wins real change - working class struggle by itself, for itself. Even to achieve
reforms, we need mass-based struggle from below - at the workplace and in
communities. For deeper systemic change, a revolutionary change, we need
particular struggles from below - workplace and community struggles for reform
that aim at constantly broadening working class organisational control over the
immediate means of production, coercion and administration, i.e. everyday life.
Both forms of struggle, for reforms and revolution, are indelibly linked. These
require building working class counter-power - organisations, especially unions,
fomenting a revolutionary front of the oppressed classes.
These organisations must also be informed by a new worldview that is
socialist/anti-capitalist, anti-statist and non-hierarchical, in other words,
anarchist/syndicalist. As such, anarchism/syndicalism argues for a political
organisation specific to the goals of developing and promoting anarchist
ideology, strategy and tactics within the working class and society broadly. The
aim is to win the popular classes to its ideas and methods of struggle,
resistance and social reconstruction. It is not an anti-organisational approach,
but one that argues for an organised, collective and directly-democratic response
to the issues posed by the battle of ideas. Anarchism and its trade union
strategy, syndicalism, do, however, vehemently oppose the participation of these
political organisations in the mechanisms of state rule, including state
government elections.
Outside and against the State
This we can call a counter-hegemonic view, or more precisely a revolutionary
counter-culture; the leadership of a revolutionary mind-set won in the day-to-day
battle of ideas inside this movement by the political organisation promoting
these ideas. This movement of working-class organisations, therefore, is to be
built on the twin tracks of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture,
focused outside and against the state, and is forged in struggle, considering the
following:
The anti-statist position is not one that ignores the state, but realises it as
an organ of ruling class power that we are unable to reform in our favour.
The aim is a self-managed, egalitarian form of reconstruction - of our
organisations and world - and a future society based on these principles.
This is a call for a prefigurative politics grounded and shaped in working class
realities - a politics that marries means of struggle to the social, political
and economic ends collectively agreed to.
This means revisiting anarchism and syndicalism, and the libertarian left, and
leaving the party-state project behind. It means drawing from the deep well of
working-class history, organisation, theory and practice, moving from a politics
of recycling failed statist projects to one that develops confidence in our own
initiatives, one that valorises working class unity, ingenuity and independence.
Unions can and should play a key role in this process, including in building
counter-power and revolutionary counter-culture.
This pamphlet is an extract from the book Strategy: Debating Politics Within and
at a Distance from the State - Eds. John Reynolds & Lucien van der Walt published
by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda,
South Africa
Front cover graphic: Women workers on strike are both defiant and joyful. Photo
by I. Bissell, South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union Records.
Source:The future is in the hands of the workers': A History of FOSATU by
Michelle Friedman
Download PDF here
https://zabalazabooks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/the-political-party-system-no-friend-of-the-working-class-warren-mcgregor.pdf
https://zabalaza.net/2020/12/17/the-political-party-system-no-friend-of-the-working-class/
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Working Class - SIFUNA ZONKE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Here we are relaying the press release from the Solidarité Kanaky collective
published on the site: https://solidaritekanaky.fr ---- For several weeks, a
massive mobilization has been underway in Kanaky New Caledonia to defend the
sovereignty of the people over its mineral resources, to prevent the looting of
these resources by multinationals and, ultimately, to fight against the
colonization still underway. ---- In December 2019, the company Vale
Nouvelle-Calédonie, which operates one of the country's largest nickel deposits
and an ore processing plant, in the southern province, announced that it wanted
to leave the country and resell its shares. The opportunity for the separatists
to bring some of the mining resources back into the public fold, in order to keep
control over company policy, like the Koniambo massif, of which the North
province is a 51% shareholder.
But Vale NC (led by Frenchman Antonin Beurrier), the state and the
anti-independence parties have decided otherwise.
The takeover offer submitted by Sofinor (a financing company for the North
Province) and by a South Korean industrial partner, with a Caledonian public
shareholding project at 56%, was purely and simply rejected, in favor of the
'offer from the "Prony Resources" consortium , set up by Antonin Beurrier
himself, supported by the State, and largely financed by the international trader
Trafigura (infamous for having dumped toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire, poisoning
tens of thousands of people)and by private Caledonian investors (probably from
the great colonial fortunes still well established in the Caledonian economy). A
minority share of the shareholding would certainly go to the southern province,
but the anti-independence parties that lead it are not known to defend a nickel
policy benefiting the general interest.
The mobilization in support of the "country factory" project and in opposition to
the takeover by Trafigura has taken on an unprecedented scale since September.
"Trafigura outside", "No to the sale of our land heritage" are among the slogans
of the collective "Usine du sud = Usine pays Which brings together customary
institutions, independence political parties and unions and several environmental
associations. In recent days, faced with the total refusal of Vale, the Southern
Province and the State to seriously study the project of taking over the plant by
public shareholders, then following the announcement of the signing of a firm
agreement between Vale and the Trafigura consortium, general strikes, blockades,
roadblocks, demonstrations, have multiplied. This case of takeover has become
emblematic of the colonial domination of the State and of foreign investors and
it is against this, and for their sovereignty, that the Kanaks and their allies
are fighting.
Henceforth, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Overseas Minister Sébastien Lecornu
seek to place the responsibility for the "violence" on the separatist activists,
denying the fact that it is the State which feeds these mobilizations, by its
support for the strategy of Vale and the southern province and its refusal to
negotiate a local and public takeover of the plant. In addition, it is the
partisans of French Caledonia, having mounted counter-barriers and displaying
tricolor flags , who brandish guns, without the nearby gendarmes reacting.
Likewise, it was the French gendarmes who fired live ammunition at militants
seeking to enter the Vale factory to block production.
What could henceforth be called "the case of the takeover of Vale" is in reality
yet another attempt by the state and the anti-independence activists to obstruct
the process of decolonization of New Caledonia. Since the independence project is
strengthening in the ballot box, with a progression of 3 points in the second
referendum on October 4, 2020, the colonists' strategy is therefore to counter it
on the ground, by preventing a project that could promote the construction of a
future Independent state.
Because the control of resources, whether mining or otherwise, is an essential
element of a country's sovereignty.
Many African countries have paid the price, seeing their raw materials looted and
sold off by foreign states and multinationals, exported raw without being valued
locally, and without their populations having any say and seeing the shadows. of
the benefits of this wealth.
The Solidarité Kanaky collective and the AISDPK therefore fully support the fight
led by the Kanaks and their allies against the plundering of their resources and
for their sovereignty.
We denounce the position of the State which, while it should be engaged in the
process of decolonization by the Matignon and Nouméa agreements, supports a
project which goes totally against this process and remains deaf to independence
claims [1], pushing Kanaky Nouvelle-Calédonie into a situation of great tension.
We call for a mobilization this Wednesday December 16 at 6 p.m. in front of the
French overseas ministry in Paris
Validate
[1] This attitude follows on from other violations of its commitments .
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Le-pouvoir-colonial-joue-la-tension-en-Kanaky
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Message: 2
The first recording of Les Meufs was released in December 2019, the opportunity
for this 100% female group to take stock after almost seven years of existence
and concerts in support of various struggles. ---- The Meufs have slowly made a
name for themselves on the Parisian scene. Since 2013, they have been roaming the
bars and supporting concerts where they swing their songs tinged with
Gothic-anarchist poetry between two punk groups such as their friends from Bad
Reputation or other Rock'N'Bones. Far from decibels, it is in a vein of realistic
songs that the Meufs have chosen to express their rage in the face of this system
which crushes the exploited. This first opus of nine tracks, including a cover of
the classic La Ballata del anarchico Pinelli, condensed with rage to make any
streetpunk band pale, hits the mark.
Opening on the bucolic Chouette bocage, composed during the fight on the Zad of
Notre-Dame-des-Landes, the titles alternate falsely light words and compositions
with darker titles. The group, now in a trio (accordion, bass, keyboard and
percussion on occasion), skilfully plays the atmospheres and voices of its two
singers to install without letting it appear a radical statement that takes turns
killing bosses, cops and violent husbands (the false naive Oh ben damn!) or the
prison system (the arid Death penalty).
Les Meufs sing about the violent lives of those who were not born on the side of
Neuilly or Saint-Trop ', the offbeat, the incarcerated, the divergent, those who
have not other alternative than revolt again and again (Violence and dread or the
chilling Divergence).
"Long live beer, my love and anarchy"
Les Meufs expose their lives as women unvarnished. For a long time for them the
periods are no longer a taboo subject and they announce the color, "fuck her
father the proc 'I'm still going to screw" and warn the guys not to try their
hand at humor (The rules). While on the bag Mon p'tit chéri, they don't give a
damn about romantic plans with two balls: "Montmartre and the Sacré-Couille oh
well thank you!They are the Paris of the Commune that connects them. Another
nugget finally, The blues of good women, feminist hymn which mocks contradictory
injunctions of femininity, sexist behavior of everyday life and calls for the
emancipation of all "with any weapon », As long as they chose it!
Having chosen to walk in the company of Gaston Couté or Anne Sylvrestre (which
they perform in concert), the Meufs nonetheless remain a Keupon group at heart.
Their compositions, refined over the years, have reached a maturity while being
stripped down and only leave listening to this skeud one regret... nine tracks is
too short! And we start to shout with Les Meufs, "Long live beer, my love and
anarchy"!
David (UCL Grand-Paris sud)
Les Meufs, The Glissando of the Dead Rabbit , Eat Shit Records, December 2019.
Contact address: les.meufs@free.fr
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Musique-Les-Meufs-Le-glissando-du-lapin-mort
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Message: 3
we publish the convocation of the NUDM Liv orno square initiative for the day
against male violence against women and gender ---- SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER 16-17.30
---- PRESIDIO in PIAZZA XX Settembre ---- in the square because: ---- * The
health emergency has exacerbated sexual violence, an expression of a patriarchal
and sexist society ---- * If violence is present in our lives We are present
against violence. ---- * Against a violence that acts daily and concretely on our
bodies we respond with the physical presence of our bodies in the square. ---- *
We do not want to be victims, nor a statistic on new forms of poverty, nor carers
of a society that oppresses and exploits us. ---- * We want to raise our voice
against the violence of a sexist and patriarchal society, which must not be
looked after but taken from its foundations
For this we will be in the square. We want to be there together, with extreme
attention to the protection of everyone *.
We are the lofty and fierce cry
of all those women who no longer have a voice!
SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER 4 pm PIAZZA XX SEPTEMBER
Today, more than ever, violence attacks our lives and our genders, whether it is
directly enacted violence or that carried out by discriminatory policies
- exponential increase in domestic violence, exacerbated by confinement in homes
and families
- increase in emergencies managed by anti
- violence centers - increase in homolesbobitransphobic violence
- increase in exploitation and economic violence especially against women,
migrants and non-compliant subjects: further insecurity, unemployment, the burden
of smartworking and care work, exposure to the contagion of care, cleaning,
sanitation, etc.
- increased social fragility and dependence on the family unit
- increased difficulty in accessing abortion and free contraception, as well as
hormone therapies for trans people and all sexual health support services
Today more than ever it is necessary to practice transfeminist solidarity!
IF IT STOPS WE STOPS THE WORLD
NonUnaDimeno - Livorno
https://collettivoanarchico.noblogs.org/post/2020/11/26/presidio-contro-la-violenza-maschile-sulle-donne-e-di-genere/
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Message: 4
Conversations between: ---- Rafa Pardo, author of the book, Graduated in History
and Doctor in Theology. ---- Martín Correa-Urquiza, professor of the postgraduate
course in Collective Mental Health at the Rovira I Virgili University and Doctor
in Medical Anthropology and International Health and researcher. ---- From the
CNT Fraga, we communicate that next Friday, December 18 at 6:30 p.m.,we will
carry out the presentation of the bookToxic Happiness. The dark side of positive
thinking , in the room that CNT Fraga has on the jitsi platform, very easy to
use. https://meet.jit.si/cntfraga ---- With this presentation we want to continue
in the dynamic of deep reflection on the context that the capitalist model of
conflict resolution wants to impose once again, fraudulently and misleadingly
bringing individual solutions when they should be -and now more than ever-
community, addressing among others, the labor and trade union issue that concerns
us all in these times.
For some years now, many psychologists have warned about the danger of positive
thinking, understood here as an ideological movement that produces cups of coffee
with friendly slogans, apps that measure happiness through mobile phones,
self-help books that promise emotional well-being, omnipresence of happy
emoticons, abundance of coach, etc. As we can see in the presentation of this
book, this movement that sells happiness and generates optimism, has nothing
innocent, it would only be a kind of sympathetic magic if it were not because,
frequently, it has serious risks for our physical and psychological health and
for the rupture of our community and organizational fabric, from a humanist
perspective.
With the help of Martín Correa Urquiza, Doctor in Medical Anthropology and
International Health and researcher, member of the Medical Anhtopology Research
Center and Rafael Pardo, author of the book and Bachelor of History and Doctor of
Theology, we will carry out a collective commitment in what is refers to
emotional health, with a community approach, putting in value the organizational
and human fabric of our societies, more necessary than ever, denouncing the weak
roots of the scientific method of positive thinking and warning about the dangers
of naive optimism.
Through this note, we would like to support the "Support your bookstores"
campaign, through which we will try to ensure that the purchase of the book to be
presented can be carried out as a priority in the bookstores of our towns.
https://www.cnt.es/noticias/18-de-diciembre-presentacion-online-de-felicidad-toxica/
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Message: 5
The question of state government elections and running a workers or socialist
political party continues to be raised in the working-class movement and the Left
globally. As we may know, there was excitement about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in
the Labour Party in Britain, about the successes of left political parties in
certain parts of Europe and Latin America and, more recently, certain shifts to
more centrist positions in the United States amongst a section of the Democratic
Party calling themselves "Democratic Socialists." In South Africa, many workers
and some activists seem cautiously optimistic about NUMSA's formation of the
Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that participated in the 2019 general
elections, but did not manage to get a seat in Parliament.
Which Means for which Ends?
With this in mind, we need to look at issues of social transformation within the
framework of what we want to achieve and the relationship between the means and
ends of struggle in pursuit of these aims. The historic and ultimate socialist
end is a society characterised by collective democratic control of the political
and economic systems and one without class divisions and oppression of any kind -
in real terms, a society without the state and capitalism in particular.
If this is so, is this revolutionary transformation possible by means of state
power and political parties that aim to capture this form of power?
The question is not only one of ideological orientation, but also impacts on
strategic and tactical considerations, associated with adherence to a chosen
ideology. Before we get into it, I want to stress that we are participating in
and waging a battle of ideas. This is not just between an embattled working class
- broadly understood as workers, the unemployed and their families - and the
opposing ruling class. It is also a battle of competing tendencies, or ideologies
within the working class itself, e.g. nationalism, populism, various
Marxist-Leninist tendencies, anarchism/syndicalism, etc.
The Balance of Power and Working-Class Strategy
The question of elections and political parties has to be interrogated within the
dual contexts of this battle of ideas (inter and intra class) and the relative
weakness of union movements in relation to the forces of the ruling class - the
state and the corporation. Whereas corporations and their capitalist philosophies
have become ubiquitous throughout the world, the influence of unions and the
ideas of collective organisation as combative and transformative forces are
relatively quite weak.
There may be large numbers of workers unionised, but this does not necessarily
translate into socioeconomic transformative action through the unions. This
general weakness is not only characteristic of unions - many other working class
social and Left movements are unable to continue struggles against the oppressive
nature of modern-day capitalism beyond protests and petitions. As such, much
action is defensive in nature (e.g. for wage increases above inflation, for
access to affordable energy in poor townships, etc.), and rarely are there
attempts at changing the relations of ownership and expanding working class
control and power into the economy and society.
The Case for a Left Political Party
It is therefore understandable, in a conjuncture of generally weak workers' and
Left formations, that the idea of a Workers Party is appealing for many people
and sections of the Left. However, the need to capture state power is also a
long-standing idea held and developed by the statist Left ideologies guiding
these people. The claim of the need for such a party asserts a new locus for
struggle, the voice for socialist ideas and an entity that can bring together
working and popular class movements across a range of sectors. The claim rests on
the idea that unions can only ever be economic organisations that aim at
day-to-day improvements in the lives of members and workers.
There are three main versions of the party project:
Nationalism: the idea is that all classes of an oppressed nationality should be
united into a popular front, forming a party that can take state power. The state
will then carry out the supposed "will" of the nation. In this model, the working
class is just one part of a broad church, and must compromise to keep bourgeois
allies in the nation on board. Nationalists sometimes use revolutionary methods,
sometimes reformist methods.
Social democracy: this is the idea that the working class can win the existing
state, using means like parliament, corporatism and expanded state control of the
economy to shift society towards socialism through a series of reforms. A social
democratic party is usually a mass party, as it needs maximum numbers to win
elections. Social democracy is always reformist.
Marxism-Leninism, or communism: unlike the other two, the aim is always
revolutionary. There should a revolutionary seizure of state power and the
creation of a new revolutionary state, which will nationalise the economy and run
it under a central government plan. There will be a violent suppression of the
capitalist class. Here, the socio-political realm is to be centrally engaged by a
political party that best represents the wishes of the working class as a whole.
This they call the vanguard party, uniting the working-class vanguard - the most
conscious and revolutionary layers of the class - giving it overall direction
through party leadership. The vanguard party, which leads the revolution, is a
minority party much of the time, as much of the working class is not conscious
and revolutionary. It may support nationalists for strategic reasons, but the
ultimate aim is a state along the lines of the old USSR.
Clearly many people on the Left think the real goal is to achieve state power to
realise the promises of the future. In reality this means building a political
party and pouring a substantial amount of resources - human and financial - into
its development. Many also believe that a Left party, however problematic, would
be better than the existing parties, particularly those of the radical right and
populists promoting race essentialism and xenophobia, who foment fear of and
between different social groupings. History is not too kind, however, to the
belief that political parties are vehicles of radical, progressive, socialist
transformation.
The Case against: the Nature of States and the Track Record of Parties
Within this framework, the idea of state power is wholly under-scrutinised from a
critical perspective. Few discussions, if any, exist within working class
organisational circles as to the nature and impact of state power on political
organisations and mass formations linked to parties in power.
When we compare the thousands of speeches and documents and resolutions on the
nature of capitalism, we cannot help but notice that the state is simply not
seriously analysed. The problems in the state are seen as largely lying with the
policies of ruling parties; the state as a structure of minority class rule is
barely noted. Hardly any debates take place regarding the state's role as an
institution of ruling class power and whether or not the state, with its
hierarchical structures of centralised, individual control, can ever be
accountable to a mass working class base.
Also missing in the discussions about elections, parties and the labour movement,
is a serious evaluation of the track record of parties - whether in power or in
opposition. In this conceptual vacuum, many continue to argue that the problem is
existing parties have failed because they have had bad leaders. This may account
for the excitement about Corbyn's influence in the UK's Labour Party, Cyril
Ramaphosa ascending the ANC throne in South Africa, or Bernie Sanders' popularity
in the USA.For others, the problem is bad ideas, with the solution being a better
party manifesto.
However, little attention is paid to structural issues - of organisation,
decision-making and control. At the extreme, some of these Left lines of thought
propose a better Communist or Socialist Party because of the failure of the
historical incumbent. However, there is little interrogation of what these
failures were, why they occurred (beyond bad leadership and alliances) and
whether or not these failures are inherent to the very idea and hierarchical
structure of a self-declared "vanguard" party.
When we focus attention on these and other such questions, perhaps we can account
for what happened to the ANC in South Africa, particularly in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries. It suggests more than just the impact of key personalities
or even programmes. Once in power, the ANC - hierarchically structured and
founded on an unprincipled mishmash of neoliberal capitalist principles
trumpeting faith in free markets, on the one hand, and Developmental State
leanings, on the other - rapidly developed into a party characterised by state
looting, corruption and social repression.
There are many similarities shared with liberation movements that came to power
elsewhere in the former colonial world, as well as with the old Labour, workers'
and socialist parties in other parts. Once they got into office and despite many
promising early initiatives, the new ruling party proved incapable of fostering
substantive, transformative socio-economic development.
There are also shared histories amongst trade union movements that chose similar
political pathways, particularly of alliance to political parties who claimed to
speak on behalf of the working class, or, as in many cases in Africa, Asia and
Latin America, the "oppressed nation." In the South African case, an official
alliance between the ANC and COSATU has, for various reasons, had a devastating
impact on the union movement. Amongst a host of other issues, it has caused the
fragmentation of the workers' movement and its organisations, a decline of union
democracy, individual jockeying for union position to access wealth and future
political power via the ANC (leading to assassinations in many cases), and the
spread of corruption. Many of these issues stem from the alliance, with union
position seen as a ladder for personal political and economic gain.
What Explains a Century of Failure?
We need to look at the trajectory of rot, failure and perhaps even betrayal here
in South Africa to understand the similarities between events in post-colonial
Africa and elsewhere. This can be a basis for a more informed discussion about
ideas for the way forward for the working class - away from mere rhetorical
flourishes, sloganeering and rehashing of old ideas that have failed our class
again and again. The reality is that a project of building political parties to
capture state power to free the popular classes - through elections or force -
has been a colossal failure in relation to its initial socialist aims.
Once elected, political parties are incorporated into the institutional life of
the state machine.
However, not only is the state always an institution of ruling class power, run
by and for exploitative economic and political elites; one of its primary goals
is to secure its power as an institution over society and its politics. This
self-sustaining approach is the very design and function of the state. It exists
primarily to secure its control over the means of coercion and administration. It
is this key form of control that positions top state managers as key members of
the ruling class alongside owners of means of production (as an aside, all states
also control substantial productive economic means, such as land, property and
corporations like Eskom, Petrobras, the Emirates airline, etc.).
Parliament or Democracy?
All states are structured as hierarchies of control and privilege - structures
that centralise more and more power in fewer and fewer individuals as you go up
the chain of command. This very structure is contradictory and opposed, in form
and content, to a democratic, emancipatory working-class project. Once a party is
involved in the self-sustaining state machinery, its leaders are drawn into the
day-to-day necessities of the interests of competing parties and politicians. The
party and individual representative's mandate must then change from one that may
have sought to serve broad social interests, to a primary focus on remaining in
political power.
Thus, the state, party and politician serve the primary purpose of maintaining
their social, economic and political positions of power, control and privilege.
The party and its servants are warped to serve this elitist interest, and its
leaders, now working and residing in the halls, offices and residences of ruling
class political power, become the very problem they may have sought to rid
society of. They now have become part of the ruling class.
Power over daily life, the neighbourhood, policing, education (let's call it the
means of administration and coercion) when rested in the hands of the state and
its institutions does not and cannot trickle down to the masses; it merely shifts
between sections of the ruling class. Let us be clear: the state is a
fundamentally undemocratic institution that we have vested with social, political
and economic power. Although you may vote for certain representatives in
government, government is but ONE arm of the state machine. You do not and
cannot, by law, vote to elect leaders of the other arms of the state: the
judiciary, the police, the army and state-owned enterprises. Not very democratic,
it seems!
If the ANC under Nelson Mandela, the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and the SACP under
Joe Slovo could not break the pattern - and in many ways reinforced the
authoritarian power of the new state institutions they came to control - it will
in no way be different the next time one chooses to vote, no matter the
personalities and programmes involved. The desire for state power, and to hold
onto it, supersedes all others. There is no basis at all for the faith that new
or reformed Left or national liberation political parties will somehow succeed in
creating the kind of order that serves the interests (individual and collective)
of the working class. This seems a faith based more on ideological dogma, a
selective reading of the past, an unscientific analysis, or even just a belief in
pursuing a "lesser evil" hoping life would be more tolerable under different
rulers. This hope is fair and not to be sneered at, but is not aligned to a
vision for a socialist future.
The very act of voting in government elections is, in and of itself, a
dereliction of one's personal political obligation. The act places your power of
decision-making in the hands of representatives, and thus is referred to as
representative democracy. This is the power to make decisions on your behalf and,
usually, without you. Voting in government elections is not done by citizens
informed by any knowledge of the outcome of their vote, but in the hope that
those they elect would actually meet their election promises.
This particular form of voting, therefore, reduces society to atomised individual
actors alone in the vast political world, reinforces the misplaced idea that it
is a meaningful political act, and further undermines the transformative
collective political action of the working class and poor. Over time and after
years of ruling class propaganda, we place more faith in this handover of
political power than the potential capabilities of our organisations - the trade
union and community-based social movement, the realms of economic and political
life where working class people can exercise actual control.
Developing an Alternative: Working-Class Counter-Power
An uncritical approach to discussing the state, parties, unions, organisational
structure and the role of voting, prevents the development of an adequate
ideological and strategic set of conclusions about what has gone wrong in the
past. It also may blind one to what has and continues to achieve real victories.
We need to focus less on the overall ideological and strategic orientations of
parties and the tactical choices that follow.
As I have argued, parties and state power are incapable of creating substantive
socialist socioeconomic transformation. We should focus more on the process that
wins real change - working class struggle by itself, for itself. Even to achieve
reforms, we need mass-based struggle from below - at the workplace and in
communities. For deeper systemic change, a revolutionary change, we need
particular struggles from below - workplace and community struggles for reform
that aim at constantly broadening working class organisational control over the
immediate means of production, coercion and administration, i.e. everyday life.
Both forms of struggle, for reforms and revolution, are indelibly linked. These
require building working class counter-power - organisations, especially unions,
fomenting a revolutionary front of the oppressed classes.
These organisations must also be informed by a new worldview that is
socialist/anti-capitalist, anti-statist and non-hierarchical, in other words,
anarchist/syndicalist. As such, anarchism/syndicalism argues for a political
organisation specific to the goals of developing and promoting anarchist
ideology, strategy and tactics within the working class and society broadly. The
aim is to win the popular classes to its ideas and methods of struggle,
resistance and social reconstruction. It is not an anti-organisational approach,
but one that argues for an organised, collective and directly-democratic response
to the issues posed by the battle of ideas. Anarchism and its trade union
strategy, syndicalism, do, however, vehemently oppose the participation of these
political organisations in the mechanisms of state rule, including state
government elections.
Outside and against the State
This we can call a counter-hegemonic view, or more precisely a revolutionary
counter-culture; the leadership of a revolutionary mind-set won in the day-to-day
battle of ideas inside this movement by the political organisation promoting
these ideas. This movement of working-class organisations, therefore, is to be
built on the twin tracks of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture,
focused outside and against the state, and is forged in struggle, considering the
following:
The anti-statist position is not one that ignores the state, but realises it as
an organ of ruling class power that we are unable to reform in our favour.
The aim is a self-managed, egalitarian form of reconstruction - of our
organisations and world - and a future society based on these principles.
This is a call for a prefigurative politics grounded and shaped in working class
realities - a politics that marries means of struggle to the social, political
and economic ends collectively agreed to.
This means revisiting anarchism and syndicalism, and the libertarian left, and
leaving the party-state project behind. It means drawing from the deep well of
working-class history, organisation, theory and practice, moving from a politics
of recycling failed statist projects to one that develops confidence in our own
initiatives, one that valorises working class unity, ingenuity and independence.
Unions can and should play a key role in this process, including in building
counter-power and revolutionary counter-culture.
This pamphlet is an extract from the book Strategy: Debating Politics Within and
at a Distance from the State - Eds. John Reynolds & Lucien van der Walt published
by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda,
South Africa
Front cover graphic: Women workers on strike are both defiant and joyful. Photo
by I. Bissell, South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union Records.
Source:The future is in the hands of the workers': A History of FOSATU by
Michelle Friedman
Download PDF here
https://zabalazabooks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/the-political-party-system-no-friend-of-the-working-class-warren-mcgregor.pdf
https://zabalaza.net/2020/12/17/the-political-party-system-no-friend-of-the-working-class/
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