Today's Topics:
1. US, WSA, ideas and action: Murray Bookchin's Legacy: A
Syndicalist Critique By Tom Wetzel (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Syndicalist Critique By Tom Wetzel (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL AL #312 -
Antipatriarchy, Health: Endometriosis, suffering in silence (ca,
de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Antipatriarchy, Health: Endometriosis, suffering in silence (ca,
de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Greece, BLOCK IN EDUCATIONAL RESTRUCTURING |
DO NOT PASS THE
NEW BILL FOR EDUCATIO By libertarian initiative of
NEW BILL FOR EDUCATIO By libertarian initiative of
the University
of Patras [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
of Patras [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Anarchist Group Amsterdam AGA: Pre-presentation for
Precaristas documentary (nl) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
Precaristas documentary (nl) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Czech, OAF activities in 2020 [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. UK, Anarchist Communist Group: Stormy Petrel -
ACG magazine
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Petr Kropotkin - geographer, anarchist and revolutionary
From neklid.org: [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
January 14th is the 100th anniversary of Murray Bookchin's birth. Perhaps it is
worth looking at his contribution to radical politics. ---- Bookchin had been
involved in the communist youth movement in the 1930s. He eventually abandoned
official Marxist organizations for a turn to libertarian socialism. A central
feature of Bookchin's politics from the Sixties to the end of his life was his
opposition to the worker struggle orientation that was central to syndicalism and
many anarchists - as well as Marxists - in the late 19th century and early 20th
century. ---- After World War 2, the general strikes and pitched street battles
of workers in the Thirties were a fading memory. The post-war years saw a
consolidation of a conservative bureaucracy in the unions. The American working
class by the 1960s no longer had the large "militant minority" of radical workers
that had been a feature of American workplaces from the early 1900s through World
War 2. This led certain radicals to seek out a new "agent" of revolutionary
change. Bookchin was an example of this way of thinking:
"Contrary to Marx's expectations, the industrial working class is now dwindling
in numbers and is steadily losing its traditional identity as a
class....Present-day culture[and]...modes of production...have remade the
proletarian into a largely petty bourgeois stratum....The proletarian ...will be
completely replaced by automated and even miniaturized means of
production....Class categories are now intermingled with hierarchical categories
based on race, gender, sexual preference, and certainly national or regional
differences."
This quote is from Bookchin's last book, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies
and the Promise of Direct Democracy. This shows a certain lack of understanding
of how syndicalists - and other socialists - view the working class. The basis
for the revolutionary potential of the working class lies in its position as both
the majority of the population and its objectively oppressed and exploited
situation. Workers do not have their own means to obtain a livelihood. Thus we
are forced to seek jobs from employers, to obtain the wages we need to live. And
this arrangement forces workers to submit to autocratic managerial regimes where
workers are denied control over the decisions that directly affect them day to
day in the labor process and the running of the workplaces. Employers own the
products of our labor and use this to suck down profits - an inherently
exploitative situation.
The working class is heterogeneous and has various layers. The core of the
working class are manual workers who must submit to management control in work
and are not themselves part of the system's managerial control over workers.
According to The Working Class Majority by Michael Zweig, this is about 60
percent of the population (when you include their dependents and people who've
retired from working class jobs). Moreover, another 15 percent of the workforce
are employed as lower-level "professional" employees with a similar subordination
to management - school teachers, ordinary writers, librarians, programmers, and
so on. This layer has college degrees and is often paid better than manual
workers, but often forms unions and is a potential element in a working class
coalition. The working class is not declining but is a majority of the population.
The "industrial proletariat" consists of workers in "basic industry" - not only
manufacturing but also transport, utilities, construction and extractive
industries (quarries, oil and gas fields, logging). Workers in America's highly
industrialized agriculture should be included here as this is basic goods
production. The workers in these various sectors make up about 25 percent of the
workforce in USA. The decline of jobs in manufacturing is mostly due to the way
capitalists constantly seek out new technologies and work changes to reduce the
number of worker hours per unit of output. This is not new but has been going on
since at least the 1920s. The work intensification schemes under "lean
production" over the past 40 years - a form of speed up - is the latest twist.
Nonetheless, USA still produces about 17 percent of world manufactured output,
even though only 12 percent of the workforce works in this area. But jobs in
other "basic industries" such as transport and construction have not declined to
the same extent. And basic industry is still very central to the American economy
- accounting for about half of the country's GDP. Thus development of a militant
worker movement in this sector of the economy would have major social clout.
Syndicalism does look to the emergence of a worker controlled unionism that does
have disruptive power - as demonstrated in strikes that shutdown the flow of
profits to the owning class. With an increasingly globalized and far-flung
production system, the logistics or transport and warehouse systems become
increasingly important. Thus the workers in large workplaces - in manufacturing
and utility and transport systems - do have a potential power that can be used to
advance working class interests with the development of a higher level of
class-wide solidarity. Moreover, the workforce have potentially the power to
evict the capitalists from control of the system of social production - taking
over the workplaces and re-organizing production on the basis of worker
self-management of the industries. Bookchin completely ignores this reason for
the syndicalist emphasis on worker struggle and self-organization in the world of
work. If the working class is to take over collective management of production,
there must be a movement of workers in these industries to carry this out. How
are they to liberate themselves from the oppression of the capitalist work regime
otherwise?
Although syndicalists recognize the importance of "basic industry" for the
reasons I've referred to here, syndicalists do not reduce the working class to
"the industrial proletariat," but have often engaged in organizing in other
industries such as retail, health care and other services. The goal of
syndicalism is re-organization of the whole economy under worker self-management.
Bookchin argues that the lower level of worker struggle since World War 2 is due
to the fact that people no longer have a living memory of the pre-capitalist era
when small farmers ran their own farm or artisans ran their own workshop. The
theory here is that the aspiration for "worker control" was based on familiarity
with a previous era when producers did control their work. Bookchin maintains
that the radical workers in the era of large syndicalist unions...
"were most often craftspeople for whom the factory system was a culturally new
phenomenon. Many others had an immediate peasant background and were only a
generation or two removed from a rural way of life. Among these "proletarians,'
industrial discipline as well as confinement in factory buildings produced very
unsettling cultural and psychological tensions. They lived in a force-field
between a preindustrial, seasonally determined, largely relaxed craft or agrarian
way of life on the one hand, and the factory or workshop system that stressed the
maximum, highly rationalized exploitation, the inhuman rhythms of machinery, the
barracks-like world of congested cities, and exceptionally brutal working
conditions, on the other. Hence it is not at all surprising that this kind of
working class was extremely incendiary, and that its riots could easily explode
into near-insurrections."
This theory, to begin with, is an implausible form of economic determinism - as
if economic structure directly "causes" people to believe certain things.
Secondly, the theory's assumption isn't true. Back in the 1930s many radical
workers had no background in the long-gone pre-capitalist era of self-employed
artisans and farmers. Often their parents and grandparents had been wage-workers.
Moreover, control struggles are still a part of worker struggle today. When
nurses fight to defend staffing levels, this is a control struggle. Just recently
refinery workers conducted a national strike for the right to shut down
maintenance operations they regard as unsafe. That's a control struggle. When
teachers fight for smaller class sizes and the resources their students need,
that's a control struggle.
To understand the relatively low level of worker struggle in recent decades, it's
necessary to look at the way that working class insurgency emerges and develops
in an episodic way - in periods of strike waves and widespread struggle. Periods
of this sort follow on a protracted period of organizing, efforts at popular
education, learning from earlier failed struggles - and with increasing numbers
of active workers becoming radicalized and learning organizing skills and so on.
Thus a high level of worker struggle and the development of "solidarity
consciousness" isn't simply an "automatic" product of the working class condition.
Bookchin never did find a new "agent" of revolution...in USA. And his strategy
based on local electoral politics - "libertarian municipalism" - makes little
sense and never caught on. Bookchin did influence the radical Kurdish movement in
Turkey and northern Syria to adopt directly democratic ideas about governance.
But the Kurds had a different strategy. Bookchin was not wrong in emphasizing the
potential of neighborhood assemblies as a part of libertarian socialist
governance - as a part of community self-management. And assemblies of residents
have sometimes taken place in recent times in the course of various kinds of
struggles. Thus assemblies of urban residents do have a role to play. As a
strategy for change, however, this can't substitute for the importance of mass
organizations and struggles in the sphere of production, where working people
face the oppressive power of capital in a direct way.
Bookchin was correct that struggles around the fault lines of race and gender and
ecological destruction came increasingly front and center by the 1960s and ‘70s.
The struggles of the black freedom movement to break segregation and attack other
aspects of racial inequality - and the women's movement and movement of gays and
lesbians in that era - influenced the whole Left to come to a deeper
understanding of non-class aspects of the social structure that trample freedom.
And this has also influenced libertarian syndicalist activists and their
organizations. Moreover, our thinking about strategy has to look at the ways that
the system changes over time - how new issues come to the fore, new segments of
the population have moved into action, and new social movements arise. Our
strategic thinking has to take these things into account. But the capitalist
regime has always had a racialized and gendered character in the USA, and these
aspects of oppression are present in workplaces and in the way institutions of
the system operate. The various aspects of oppression work directly on various
segments of the diverse working class population. Class solidarity is
encapsulated in the slogan, "An Injury to One Is an Injury to All." If a
sub-group of the class is subject to a particular injury - such as race
discrimination, sexual harassment, racist police killings, or attacks on
immigrants - it is a denial of solidarity to not develop practices of support to
struggles around grievances of these groups.
The working class can't liberate itself unless it can "form" itself into a
movement that aims at general social liberation - addressing issues like the
oppressive character of the state, the patterns of racialized and gendered
inequality, and the ecologically ruinous character of capitalist dynamics.
Working people can't be successful in struggle against the dominating classes
without getting diverse groups of people together and building increasing levels
of mutual support to each other's struggles.
Tom Wetzel is the author of Overcoming Capitalism, forthcoming from AK Press.
http://ideasandaction.info/2021/01/murray-bookchins-legacy-syndicalist-critique/
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Message: 2
While taboos and patriarchal instrumentalisation around rules and female
sexualization persist, it is estimated that one in ten women suffers from
endometriosis. This disease can cause sometimes debilitating pain and infertility
problems. ---- It is often considered "normal" for a woman to suffer during her
period. Thus socially accepted, this pain is minimized, which hinders research on
endometriosis. ---- It is a pathology with various manifestations: from disabling
and continuous pain to discomfort and digestive disorders, which requires
diagnostic devices and heavy treatments (surgery and MRI). This disease is
characterized by an abnormal presence of uterine tissue outside the uterine cavities.
Other pathologies (irritable bowel syndrome) may be associated with it, as the
migrating tissues damage different organs. The causes and expressions of the
disease are multiple: there are as many endometriosis as there are people
affected. Contrary to popular belief, endometriosis is not new. Discovered in
ancient times, it has been recognized since the late XIX th century.
Yet research on his diagnosis and treatment remains recent and dull. The
normalization of pain associated with menstruation (hence their invisibilization)
and the lack of awareness of endometriosis cause delays in diagnosis of eight
years on average.
In a patriarchal society, this lack of interest on the part of the medical
profession is explained: particularly when it affects the gynecological sphere,
women's pain is not the subject of in-depth research, because they would be
subject to it by nature. Instead of treating their bodies and their minds, the
sick are psychiatrized and returned to their assigned status as women. We
theorize endometriosis as we did yesterday for hysteria.
A medical course for the fighter
These deeply sexist beliefs lead to harsh realities for trans women and men who
find themselves pushed into years of medical wandering: denial of pain,
humiliation or violence in doctor's offices, even when the disease is diagnosed.
In addition, the treatments and management of this disease are mainly linked to
fertility, forgetting the other possible symptoms. Clearly the issue of women's
health is of no interest apart from their ability to procreate. One way to
continually return them to their role of mother. The lack of training of doctors
in the diagnosis of endometriosis leads some of them to favor a medication based
on powerful painkillers, hormones, even antidepressants without ever being
interested in the base of the problem.
It is about silencing the symptoms rather than curing the disease. Suffering from
crippling pain but not recognized as such by institutions, people who suffer from
this disease have difficulty adapting to the criteria of the labor market
machine. In addition to the sexism linked to endometriosis, there is validism,
which pushes people with social and economic precariousness. If the men who
govern us, hire us and take care of us suffered from endometriosis, it would be a
long time since we had menstrual holidays, and our disease would be recognized as
such.
Luz (UCL Toulouse and Surroundings)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-L-endometriose-la-souffrance-sous-silence
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Message: 3
Recently, following the educational restructuring that has taken place in recent
years, the new bill on education has been tabled, which, among other things,
provides for changes in the way of admission to higher education, introduces a
student limit and establishes the creation of a university police corps. These
changes are aimed at strengthening class barriers, further restricting the
admission to higher education, intensifying studies, disciplining, controlling
and suppressing student struggles. All this is happening in the midst of a
pandemic and a traffic ban, with universities being completely wiped out as they
operate through distance learning and the resistances that spring from there are
quite reduced. Of course, passing bills in dead time,
The way of admission to higher education is changing radically, as now the
minimum admission base will be defined by the average performance of all
candidates in the courses of each scientific field and by a factor that will be
determined by the university department and will result from this average. This
will create a different entry base for each section, which will vary from year to
year. The computer programs will now be done in two phases, where in the second
one those who failed to catch the minimum admission base of the limited faculties
that had the opportunity to declare in the first phase (10% of the total
faculties and departments of the relevant scientific field). On the one hand,
this leads to the exclusion of many students from higher education and, on the
other hand, it turns schools into examination centers, the feeling of competition
between the students is cultivated but also the stress, as they are called to
constantly prove their "value" and "ability". The exclusion of so many students
from access to public higher education will force many of them to turn to private
vocational schools, thus enhancing private education and profitability.
Regarding the changes in the higher education, the attendance limit is n + 2 for
the fourth-year schools and n + 3 for those that require more years of study,
which will result in the mass dropout of students. It is a clear revenge measure
that comes to the already intensified pace of study, with declaration limits,
course chains and aims to discipline students and turn the university into an
incubator of graduates - workers who will be productive to ensure greater
profitability. of bosses and submissive to their commands and appetites. In fact,
any student who finds it difficult to cope with the increasingly intensified pace
of studies is punished through expulsions, any student in this class-structured
society is punished by belonging to the lower social strata and cannot cover the
ever-increasing tuition costs. Any student who considers it his inalienable right
to set the pace at which he will study and the years it will take to receive his
degree is punished, since their own system is what pushes many of us into the
blackmailing condition of black. , uninsured work to make a living so that we can
study at the same time.
The bill that is being put to consultation has as a central point the issue of
"safety and protection" of universities. This plan includes the controlled entry
of university premises, the surveillance by cameras of both the interior and
exterior of the institutions, the establishment of a "Security and Protection
Committee" and a number of other reactionary provisions. The university
protection group (OPPI) that is being set up, will be part of the Hellenic Post
and will have as its main responsibilities the fight against "lawlessness and
delinquency" within the universities as well as the execution of patrols. At the
same time, the disciplinary code concerning criminal acts within the institutions
is being upgraded (copies, obstruction of the proper functioning of the
institution, use of unlicensed facilities, etc.). The penalties provided in case
of performing the above acts include from a simple reprimand to a ban on
participation in the exams and even a final deletion. It is obvious that the
rulers seek to transform the open and public character of the university into a
closed, guarded space in which any activity not directly related to the academic
function will be criminalized and banned.
The establishment of university police, face control, surveillance and control in
schools, disciplinary proceedings, the abolition of asylum express the ultimate
goal of the rulers which is none other than the disarmament, fortification and
retreat of the student movement, so that to launch their attacks on our acquis
and interests with the best possible terms and correlations. They seek to form a
university sterile from every trace of political fermentation, friction and
discussion among students about their problems. A university where class student
unionism and any attempt to organize collective resistance as well as any attempt
to challenge state and capital plans will be fully supervised and criminalized.
The presence of the police in the universities and the upgrading of the sentences
have as a clear goal the breaking of student squats, imposing a condition where
"law and order reigns". Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability,
all kinds of arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline,
intensification and control. They crave a university fully aligned with the
requirements of the state and capital, a university of larger class barriers,
where attendance is the prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with
student benefits evaporating and basic needs for food, housing and transportation
relocated. fully. Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability, all
kinds of arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline, intensification
and control. They crave a university fully aligned with the demands of the state
and capital, a university of larger class barriers, where attendance is the
prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with student benefits
evaporating and basic necessities for food, housing and transportation relocated.
fully. Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability, all kinds of
arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline, intensification and
control. They crave a university fully aligned with the requirements of the state
and capital, a university of larger class barriers, where attendance is the
prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with student benefits
evaporating and basic necessities for food, housing and transportation relocated.
fully.
Against this dystopian reality, against the sterilization of universities and the
denervation of struggles inside and outside schools, against the criminalization
of social and class resistance and the suppression of demonstrations, let us be
inspired by the struggles of the past and catch the thread. of resistance and
struggle. From the Polytechnic of 73 ', the dynamic mobilizations in 06'-07' with
the law of Giannakou, and in '11 with the law of Diamantopoulou to remember that
nothing was given to us, everything is won through struggles. Against the culture
of defeatism, individualization and assignment to promote faith in collective
struggle, solidarity and self-organization. To turn the schools into living
centers of struggle, into places of collective discussion, fermentation,
challenge and resistance.
Against all ANTIEKPAIDEFTIKO state planning
EXO cops FROM SCHOOLS
NO BASED ADMISSION
NO disciplinary DELETION STUDENT
SINGLE SOLUTION THE WAY OF MACHITIKIS RESISTANCE AND MATCH
COMMON GAMES School - STUDENT - EDUCATIONAL
LAWS REPEALED barricades
libertarian initiative of the University of Patras
https://eleftheriakosxhmapatras.wordpress.com/2021/01/13/
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Message: 4
After some weeks of work, we are happy to announce the availability of the
documentary "Precaristas" with (English subtitles). This documentary from 2018
and recorded by "Inercia Docs" explores the housing struggle in the Canary
Islands. Our expectations is to arrange an info night for this documentary at the
moment is possible again. Such thing does not seem possible at this moment due to
the current corona situation. So, for the time being, we are releasing this
material in the hope of providing some meaningful counter-cultural material to
watch and think about while this lock-down keeps us trapped at home. ---- The
synopsis of the documentary: ---- "A documentary about the struggle of the
Anarchist Federation and the Tenant Union of Gran Canaria. One of the pioneering
experiences of the state. The first of the many self-organized unions that are
born from below, in neighborhoods and towns throughout the state, from the
struggle for access to housing, stopping evictions, with massive squats,
relocation of families or on farms acquired through cessions semi-informal with
property (hence the term precarious). But always defended with the neighborhood
union action. Anarchist housing experiments that have responded to the limited
role of island administrations, trying to unite and expand a popular movement
through the coverage of basic needs. With a hybrid audiovisual language, between
the journalistic, documentary and experimental genres, the central story is
constructed through an intimate approach to families and is complemented by
voices from different political, business, academic and legal actors on the
island. In the narrative there is also room for an incursion into the tourist
dimension of Gran Canaria (34% of GDP), exploring the impact and relationship
that this economic monoculture has on housing. A self-managed documentary that
has had the collaboration of communication collectives such as La Directa or
Bauma and with a soundtrack by artists such as Silvia Tomas Trio, the rap group
Resiliencia and the DJs Mash Masters"
The link: https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/21e32246-2afa-42d9-a70a-c5d16c7cc9ba
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Message: 5
We bring you an overview of activities in the past year. Download, print, glue
and distribute. Help spread anarchy, equality and solidarity on the streets! ----
The Ostrava Anarchist Federation (OAF) was established in the autumn of 2016 on
the initiative of North Moravian anarchists (especially from Ostrava,
Frýdek-Místek, Ceský Tešín and Orlová). The main impetus for the establishment of
the OAF was the repression against the anarchist movement, which grew into
political processes through the Phoenix case. This created a platform for better
coordination of anarchist activities in the region. Even in 2020, when the world
was hit by a coronavirus pandemic, OAF did not lag behind.
OAF in the streets
In January, activists from Kolektiv 161 once again honored the memory of the
murdered anti-fascist Honza Kucera with a memorial picket. Following the outbreak
of the coronavirus pandemic, public activity slowed, but anarchists were active
in solidarity initiatives. Many thanks are especially due to the Food not bombs
groups, which distributed food to the homeless even at the time of the curfew.
Otherwise, they would be completely without resources. During the autumn
lockdown, activists and activists in the center of Ostrava supported the Polish
anti-government and feminist movement through pickets. Autonomous and anarchist
groups also took part in two demonstrations that took place in the summer. One
was directed against the incinerator, the other supported the Black Lives Matter
movement, which was born in the USA after a police murder.
Publishing activities
We also regularly updated our website during 2020. In addition to several reviews
of new publications by Subverze, there were also three exclusive interviews.
Petra Dvoráková and I talked about the riots in Poland, we introduced a new
group, the Workers' Initiative, and we talked with the Belarusian anarchists from
the Revolutionary Action about the protests against Alexander Lukashenko. We also
informed about the insurgent commune, which was established in the summer in
Seattle, USA. We have also added a commentary on the disgusting media
manipulations and hoaxes that flooded the Czech mass media as part of an
anarchist experiment in the USA.
Looking back
We also do not forget about events from the past. Exactly twenty years ago in
Prague, tens of thousands of people opposed a meeting of the International
Monetary Fund, which we recalled with contemporary articles on the torture of
demonstrators at police stations and the subsequent censorship of these events in
the media. We also commemorated the anniversary of the assassination of the Greek
rapper Pavlos Fyssas and looked back at the 2003 leaflet event of the
Organization of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarity in Ostrava. However,
memories of past struggles must not lead to entanglement in nostalgia - they
should become an inspiration for the next ones.
Join us
If the ideas of anarchism are close to you and you want to support us in direct
events, publishing activities, cooking food for the homeless, putting up posters,
organizing lectures and concerts, setting up solidarity groups or any other
bottom-up activities, do not hesitate to contact us. Anarchist initiatives are
important at a time when screws are being tightened under the pretext of fighting
coronavirus.
https://oafed.noblogs.org/post/2021/01/13/cinnost-oaf-v-roce-2020/#more-819
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Message: 6
Stormy Petrel is the Anarchist Communist Group's theoretical. The latest issue is
a bumper 60 pages of revolutionary anarchist communist thought and ideas. It
contains the following: ---- Building Resilient Communities: The Challenges of
Organising Locally ---- Community Activism in South Essex ---- Mutual Aid during
the Pandemic ---- Charity or Solidarity? ---- Covid Mutual Aid: A Revolutionary
Critique ---- ACORN - no mighty oak! ---- Anarchist Communists, anti-fascism and
Anti-Fascism ---- Women: Working and Organising ---- What is Anarchist Communism?
(excerpt from Brian Morris's forthcoming book) ---- Poll Tax Rebellion - Danny
Burns ---- Book Reviews - Putting the poll tax rebellion in perspective ---- e
Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain ----
Class Power on Zero Hours ---- McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New
Capitalist Spirituality
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2021/01/14/stormy-petrel-journal-of-the-acg/
------------------------------
Message: 7
Short url: https://squ.at/r/866v ---- With political scientist Ondrej Slacálek
about the life and work of Petr Kropotkin, 100 years after his death on February
9, 1921. Kropotkin was a geographer, revolutionary and anarchist who
significantly influenced the anarchist movement as well as the workers' movement.
His thinking, especially his concept of mutual assistance as an important factor
in society, has recently become increasingly relevant. ---- The name of Petr
Kropotkin thus appears more and more even where we would not have expected it
until recently: in the mainstream world media and to his texts, people outside
the classic "usual suspects" of the anarchist movement search for his name on the
Internet. ---- Because in times when another world is no longer possible but
directly necessary, Petr Kropotkin's ideas are gaining in relevance and can
stimulate our imagination about the organization and functioning of society.
In Neklid, we published one book about Kropotkin at the end of last year and we
are preparing his book "Mutual Assistance" for this spring and you can also
support it financially:
https://www.darujme.cz/projekt/1204093
The discussion will take place on the platform https://call.nolog.cz/
Date & Time:
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 - 18:00
https://www.afed.cz/text/7279/kropotkin-2021
------------------------------
From neklid.org: [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
January 14th is the 100th anniversary of Murray Bookchin's birth. Perhaps it is
worth looking at his contribution to radical politics. ---- Bookchin had been
involved in the communist youth movement in the 1930s. He eventually abandoned
official Marxist organizations for a turn to libertarian socialism. A central
feature of Bookchin's politics from the Sixties to the end of his life was his
opposition to the worker struggle orientation that was central to syndicalism and
many anarchists - as well as Marxists - in the late 19th century and early 20th
century. ---- After World War 2, the general strikes and pitched street battles
of workers in the Thirties were a fading memory. The post-war years saw a
consolidation of a conservative bureaucracy in the unions. The American working
class by the 1960s no longer had the large "militant minority" of radical workers
that had been a feature of American workplaces from the early 1900s through World
War 2. This led certain radicals to seek out a new "agent" of revolutionary
change. Bookchin was an example of this way of thinking:
"Contrary to Marx's expectations, the industrial working class is now dwindling
in numbers and is steadily losing its traditional identity as a
class....Present-day culture[and]...modes of production...have remade the
proletarian into a largely petty bourgeois stratum....The proletarian ...will be
completely replaced by automated and even miniaturized means of
production....Class categories are now intermingled with hierarchical categories
based on race, gender, sexual preference, and certainly national or regional
differences."
This quote is from Bookchin's last book, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies
and the Promise of Direct Democracy. This shows a certain lack of understanding
of how syndicalists - and other socialists - view the working class. The basis
for the revolutionary potential of the working class lies in its position as both
the majority of the population and its objectively oppressed and exploited
situation. Workers do not have their own means to obtain a livelihood. Thus we
are forced to seek jobs from employers, to obtain the wages we need to live. And
this arrangement forces workers to submit to autocratic managerial regimes where
workers are denied control over the decisions that directly affect them day to
day in the labor process and the running of the workplaces. Employers own the
products of our labor and use this to suck down profits - an inherently
exploitative situation.
The working class is heterogeneous and has various layers. The core of the
working class are manual workers who must submit to management control in work
and are not themselves part of the system's managerial control over workers.
According to The Working Class Majority by Michael Zweig, this is about 60
percent of the population (when you include their dependents and people who've
retired from working class jobs). Moreover, another 15 percent of the workforce
are employed as lower-level "professional" employees with a similar subordination
to management - school teachers, ordinary writers, librarians, programmers, and
so on. This layer has college degrees and is often paid better than manual
workers, but often forms unions and is a potential element in a working class
coalition. The working class is not declining but is a majority of the population.
The "industrial proletariat" consists of workers in "basic industry" - not only
manufacturing but also transport, utilities, construction and extractive
industries (quarries, oil and gas fields, logging). Workers in America's highly
industrialized agriculture should be included here as this is basic goods
production. The workers in these various sectors make up about 25 percent of the
workforce in USA. The decline of jobs in manufacturing is mostly due to the way
capitalists constantly seek out new technologies and work changes to reduce the
number of worker hours per unit of output. This is not new but has been going on
since at least the 1920s. The work intensification schemes under "lean
production" over the past 40 years - a form of speed up - is the latest twist.
Nonetheless, USA still produces about 17 percent of world manufactured output,
even though only 12 percent of the workforce works in this area. But jobs in
other "basic industries" such as transport and construction have not declined to
the same extent. And basic industry is still very central to the American economy
- accounting for about half of the country's GDP. Thus development of a militant
worker movement in this sector of the economy would have major social clout.
Syndicalism does look to the emergence of a worker controlled unionism that does
have disruptive power - as demonstrated in strikes that shutdown the flow of
profits to the owning class. With an increasingly globalized and far-flung
production system, the logistics or transport and warehouse systems become
increasingly important. Thus the workers in large workplaces - in manufacturing
and utility and transport systems - do have a potential power that can be used to
advance working class interests with the development of a higher level of
class-wide solidarity. Moreover, the workforce have potentially the power to
evict the capitalists from control of the system of social production - taking
over the workplaces and re-organizing production on the basis of worker
self-management of the industries. Bookchin completely ignores this reason for
the syndicalist emphasis on worker struggle and self-organization in the world of
work. If the working class is to take over collective management of production,
there must be a movement of workers in these industries to carry this out. How
are they to liberate themselves from the oppression of the capitalist work regime
otherwise?
Although syndicalists recognize the importance of "basic industry" for the
reasons I've referred to here, syndicalists do not reduce the working class to
"the industrial proletariat," but have often engaged in organizing in other
industries such as retail, health care and other services. The goal of
syndicalism is re-organization of the whole economy under worker self-management.
Bookchin argues that the lower level of worker struggle since World War 2 is due
to the fact that people no longer have a living memory of the pre-capitalist era
when small farmers ran their own farm or artisans ran their own workshop. The
theory here is that the aspiration for "worker control" was based on familiarity
with a previous era when producers did control their work. Bookchin maintains
that the radical workers in the era of large syndicalist unions...
"were most often craftspeople for whom the factory system was a culturally new
phenomenon. Many others had an immediate peasant background and were only a
generation or two removed from a rural way of life. Among these "proletarians,'
industrial discipline as well as confinement in factory buildings produced very
unsettling cultural and psychological tensions. They lived in a force-field
between a preindustrial, seasonally determined, largely relaxed craft or agrarian
way of life on the one hand, and the factory or workshop system that stressed the
maximum, highly rationalized exploitation, the inhuman rhythms of machinery, the
barracks-like world of congested cities, and exceptionally brutal working
conditions, on the other. Hence it is not at all surprising that this kind of
working class was extremely incendiary, and that its riots could easily explode
into near-insurrections."
This theory, to begin with, is an implausible form of economic determinism - as
if economic structure directly "causes" people to believe certain things.
Secondly, the theory's assumption isn't true. Back in the 1930s many radical
workers had no background in the long-gone pre-capitalist era of self-employed
artisans and farmers. Often their parents and grandparents had been wage-workers.
Moreover, control struggles are still a part of worker struggle today. When
nurses fight to defend staffing levels, this is a control struggle. Just recently
refinery workers conducted a national strike for the right to shut down
maintenance operations they regard as unsafe. That's a control struggle. When
teachers fight for smaller class sizes and the resources their students need,
that's a control struggle.
To understand the relatively low level of worker struggle in recent decades, it's
necessary to look at the way that working class insurgency emerges and develops
in an episodic way - in periods of strike waves and widespread struggle. Periods
of this sort follow on a protracted period of organizing, efforts at popular
education, learning from earlier failed struggles - and with increasing numbers
of active workers becoming radicalized and learning organizing skills and so on.
Thus a high level of worker struggle and the development of "solidarity
consciousness" isn't simply an "automatic" product of the working class condition.
Bookchin never did find a new "agent" of revolution...in USA. And his strategy
based on local electoral politics - "libertarian municipalism" - makes little
sense and never caught on. Bookchin did influence the radical Kurdish movement in
Turkey and northern Syria to adopt directly democratic ideas about governance.
But the Kurds had a different strategy. Bookchin was not wrong in emphasizing the
potential of neighborhood assemblies as a part of libertarian socialist
governance - as a part of community self-management. And assemblies of residents
have sometimes taken place in recent times in the course of various kinds of
struggles. Thus assemblies of urban residents do have a role to play. As a
strategy for change, however, this can't substitute for the importance of mass
organizations and struggles in the sphere of production, where working people
face the oppressive power of capital in a direct way.
Bookchin was correct that struggles around the fault lines of race and gender and
ecological destruction came increasingly front and center by the 1960s and ‘70s.
The struggles of the black freedom movement to break segregation and attack other
aspects of racial inequality - and the women's movement and movement of gays and
lesbians in that era - influenced the whole Left to come to a deeper
understanding of non-class aspects of the social structure that trample freedom.
And this has also influenced libertarian syndicalist activists and their
organizations. Moreover, our thinking about strategy has to look at the ways that
the system changes over time - how new issues come to the fore, new segments of
the population have moved into action, and new social movements arise. Our
strategic thinking has to take these things into account. But the capitalist
regime has always had a racialized and gendered character in the USA, and these
aspects of oppression are present in workplaces and in the way institutions of
the system operate. The various aspects of oppression work directly on various
segments of the diverse working class population. Class solidarity is
encapsulated in the slogan, "An Injury to One Is an Injury to All." If a
sub-group of the class is subject to a particular injury - such as race
discrimination, sexual harassment, racist police killings, or attacks on
immigrants - it is a denial of solidarity to not develop practices of support to
struggles around grievances of these groups.
The working class can't liberate itself unless it can "form" itself into a
movement that aims at general social liberation - addressing issues like the
oppressive character of the state, the patterns of racialized and gendered
inequality, and the ecologically ruinous character of capitalist dynamics.
Working people can't be successful in struggle against the dominating classes
without getting diverse groups of people together and building increasing levels
of mutual support to each other's struggles.
Tom Wetzel is the author of Overcoming Capitalism, forthcoming from AK Press.
http://ideasandaction.info/2021/01/murray-bookchins-legacy-syndicalist-critique/
------------------------------
Message: 2
While taboos and patriarchal instrumentalisation around rules and female
sexualization persist, it is estimated that one in ten women suffers from
endometriosis. This disease can cause sometimes debilitating pain and infertility
problems. ---- It is often considered "normal" for a woman to suffer during her
period. Thus socially accepted, this pain is minimized, which hinders research on
endometriosis. ---- It is a pathology with various manifestations: from disabling
and continuous pain to discomfort and digestive disorders, which requires
diagnostic devices and heavy treatments (surgery and MRI). This disease is
characterized by an abnormal presence of uterine tissue outside the uterine cavities.
Other pathologies (irritable bowel syndrome) may be associated with it, as the
migrating tissues damage different organs. The causes and expressions of the
disease are multiple: there are as many endometriosis as there are people
affected. Contrary to popular belief, endometriosis is not new. Discovered in
ancient times, it has been recognized since the late XIX th century.
Yet research on his diagnosis and treatment remains recent and dull. The
normalization of pain associated with menstruation (hence their invisibilization)
and the lack of awareness of endometriosis cause delays in diagnosis of eight
years on average.
In a patriarchal society, this lack of interest on the part of the medical
profession is explained: particularly when it affects the gynecological sphere,
women's pain is not the subject of in-depth research, because they would be
subject to it by nature. Instead of treating their bodies and their minds, the
sick are psychiatrized and returned to their assigned status as women. We
theorize endometriosis as we did yesterday for hysteria.
A medical course for the fighter
These deeply sexist beliefs lead to harsh realities for trans women and men who
find themselves pushed into years of medical wandering: denial of pain,
humiliation or violence in doctor's offices, even when the disease is diagnosed.
In addition, the treatments and management of this disease are mainly linked to
fertility, forgetting the other possible symptoms. Clearly the issue of women's
health is of no interest apart from their ability to procreate. One way to
continually return them to their role of mother. The lack of training of doctors
in the diagnosis of endometriosis leads some of them to favor a medication based
on powerful painkillers, hormones, even antidepressants without ever being
interested in the base of the problem.
It is about silencing the symptoms rather than curing the disease. Suffering from
crippling pain but not recognized as such by institutions, people who suffer from
this disease have difficulty adapting to the criteria of the labor market
machine. In addition to the sexism linked to endometriosis, there is validism,
which pushes people with social and economic precariousness. If the men who
govern us, hire us and take care of us suffered from endometriosis, it would be a
long time since we had menstrual holidays, and our disease would be recognized as
such.
Luz (UCL Toulouse and Surroundings)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Sante-L-endometriose-la-souffrance-sous-silence
------------------------------
Message: 3
Recently, following the educational restructuring that has taken place in recent
years, the new bill on education has been tabled, which, among other things,
provides for changes in the way of admission to higher education, introduces a
student limit and establishes the creation of a university police corps. These
changes are aimed at strengthening class barriers, further restricting the
admission to higher education, intensifying studies, disciplining, controlling
and suppressing student struggles. All this is happening in the midst of a
pandemic and a traffic ban, with universities being completely wiped out as they
operate through distance learning and the resistances that spring from there are
quite reduced. Of course, passing bills in dead time,
The way of admission to higher education is changing radically, as now the
minimum admission base will be defined by the average performance of all
candidates in the courses of each scientific field and by a factor that will be
determined by the university department and will result from this average. This
will create a different entry base for each section, which will vary from year to
year. The computer programs will now be done in two phases, where in the second
one those who failed to catch the minimum admission base of the limited faculties
that had the opportunity to declare in the first phase (10% of the total
faculties and departments of the relevant scientific field). On the one hand,
this leads to the exclusion of many students from higher education and, on the
other hand, it turns schools into examination centers, the feeling of competition
between the students is cultivated but also the stress, as they are called to
constantly prove their "value" and "ability". The exclusion of so many students
from access to public higher education will force many of them to turn to private
vocational schools, thus enhancing private education and profitability.
Regarding the changes in the higher education, the attendance limit is n + 2 for
the fourth-year schools and n + 3 for those that require more years of study,
which will result in the mass dropout of students. It is a clear revenge measure
that comes to the already intensified pace of study, with declaration limits,
course chains and aims to discipline students and turn the university into an
incubator of graduates - workers who will be productive to ensure greater
profitability. of bosses and submissive to their commands and appetites. In fact,
any student who finds it difficult to cope with the increasingly intensified pace
of studies is punished through expulsions, any student in this class-structured
society is punished by belonging to the lower social strata and cannot cover the
ever-increasing tuition costs. Any student who considers it his inalienable right
to set the pace at which he will study and the years it will take to receive his
degree is punished, since their own system is what pushes many of us into the
blackmailing condition of black. , uninsured work to make a living so that we can
study at the same time.
The bill that is being put to consultation has as a central point the issue of
"safety and protection" of universities. This plan includes the controlled entry
of university premises, the surveillance by cameras of both the interior and
exterior of the institutions, the establishment of a "Security and Protection
Committee" and a number of other reactionary provisions. The university
protection group (OPPI) that is being set up, will be part of the Hellenic Post
and will have as its main responsibilities the fight against "lawlessness and
delinquency" within the universities as well as the execution of patrols. At the
same time, the disciplinary code concerning criminal acts within the institutions
is being upgraded (copies, obstruction of the proper functioning of the
institution, use of unlicensed facilities, etc.). The penalties provided in case
of performing the above acts include from a simple reprimand to a ban on
participation in the exams and even a final deletion. It is obvious that the
rulers seek to transform the open and public character of the university into a
closed, guarded space in which any activity not directly related to the academic
function will be criminalized and banned.
The establishment of university police, face control, surveillance and control in
schools, disciplinary proceedings, the abolition of asylum express the ultimate
goal of the rulers which is none other than the disarmament, fortification and
retreat of the student movement, so that to launch their attacks on our acquis
and interests with the best possible terms and correlations. They seek to form a
university sterile from every trace of political fermentation, friction and
discussion among students about their problems. A university where class student
unionism and any attempt to organize collective resistance as well as any attempt
to challenge state and capital plans will be fully supervised and criminalized.
The presence of the police in the universities and the upgrading of the sentences
have as a clear goal the breaking of student squats, imposing a condition where
"law and order reigns". Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability,
all kinds of arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline,
intensification and control. They crave a university fully aligned with the
requirements of the state and capital, a university of larger class barriers,
where attendance is the prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with
student benefits evaporating and basic needs for food, housing and transportation
relocated. fully. Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability, all
kinds of arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline, intensification
and control. They crave a university fully aligned with the demands of the state
and capital, a university of larger class barriers, where attendance is the
prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with student benefits
evaporating and basic necessities for food, housing and transportation relocated.
fully. Law and order of the market, capitalist profitability, all kinds of
arbitrariness (teachers and non-teachers), discipline, intensification and
control. They crave a university fully aligned with the requirements of the state
and capital, a university of larger class barriers, where attendance is the
prerogative of the few, the elite and the affluent, with student benefits
evaporating and basic necessities for food, housing and transportation relocated.
fully.
Against this dystopian reality, against the sterilization of universities and the
denervation of struggles inside and outside schools, against the criminalization
of social and class resistance and the suppression of demonstrations, let us be
inspired by the struggles of the past and catch the thread. of resistance and
struggle. From the Polytechnic of 73 ', the dynamic mobilizations in 06'-07' with
the law of Giannakou, and in '11 with the law of Diamantopoulou to remember that
nothing was given to us, everything is won through struggles. Against the culture
of defeatism, individualization and assignment to promote faith in collective
struggle, solidarity and self-organization. To turn the schools into living
centers of struggle, into places of collective discussion, fermentation,
challenge and resistance.
Against all ANTIEKPAIDEFTIKO state planning
EXO cops FROM SCHOOLS
NO BASED ADMISSION
NO disciplinary DELETION STUDENT
SINGLE SOLUTION THE WAY OF MACHITIKIS RESISTANCE AND MATCH
COMMON GAMES School - STUDENT - EDUCATIONAL
LAWS REPEALED barricades
libertarian initiative of the University of Patras
https://eleftheriakosxhmapatras.wordpress.com/2021/01/13/
------------------------------
Message: 4
After some weeks of work, we are happy to announce the availability of the
documentary "Precaristas" with (English subtitles). This documentary from 2018
and recorded by "Inercia Docs" explores the housing struggle in the Canary
Islands. Our expectations is to arrange an info night for this documentary at the
moment is possible again. Such thing does not seem possible at this moment due to
the current corona situation. So, for the time being, we are releasing this
material in the hope of providing some meaningful counter-cultural material to
watch and think about while this lock-down keeps us trapped at home. ---- The
synopsis of the documentary: ---- "A documentary about the struggle of the
Anarchist Federation and the Tenant Union of Gran Canaria. One of the pioneering
experiences of the state. The first of the many self-organized unions that are
born from below, in neighborhoods and towns throughout the state, from the
struggle for access to housing, stopping evictions, with massive squats,
relocation of families or on farms acquired through cessions semi-informal with
property (hence the term precarious). But always defended with the neighborhood
union action. Anarchist housing experiments that have responded to the limited
role of island administrations, trying to unite and expand a popular movement
through the coverage of basic needs. With a hybrid audiovisual language, between
the journalistic, documentary and experimental genres, the central story is
constructed through an intimate approach to families and is complemented by
voices from different political, business, academic and legal actors on the
island. In the narrative there is also room for an incursion into the tourist
dimension of Gran Canaria (34% of GDP), exploring the impact and relationship
that this economic monoculture has on housing. A self-managed documentary that
has had the collaboration of communication collectives such as La Directa or
Bauma and with a soundtrack by artists such as Silvia Tomas Trio, the rap group
Resiliencia and the DJs Mash Masters"
The link: https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/21e32246-2afa-42d9-a70a-c5d16c7cc9ba
------------------------------
Message: 5
We bring you an overview of activities in the past year. Download, print, glue
and distribute. Help spread anarchy, equality and solidarity on the streets! ----
The Ostrava Anarchist Federation (OAF) was established in the autumn of 2016 on
the initiative of North Moravian anarchists (especially from Ostrava,
Frýdek-Místek, Ceský Tešín and Orlová). The main impetus for the establishment of
the OAF was the repression against the anarchist movement, which grew into
political processes through the Phoenix case. This created a platform for better
coordination of anarchist activities in the region. Even in 2020, when the world
was hit by a coronavirus pandemic, OAF did not lag behind.
OAF in the streets
In January, activists from Kolektiv 161 once again honored the memory of the
murdered anti-fascist Honza Kucera with a memorial picket. Following the outbreak
of the coronavirus pandemic, public activity slowed, but anarchists were active
in solidarity initiatives. Many thanks are especially due to the Food not bombs
groups, which distributed food to the homeless even at the time of the curfew.
Otherwise, they would be completely without resources. During the autumn
lockdown, activists and activists in the center of Ostrava supported the Polish
anti-government and feminist movement through pickets. Autonomous and anarchist
groups also took part in two demonstrations that took place in the summer. One
was directed against the incinerator, the other supported the Black Lives Matter
movement, which was born in the USA after a police murder.
Publishing activities
We also regularly updated our website during 2020. In addition to several reviews
of new publications by Subverze, there were also three exclusive interviews.
Petra Dvoráková and I talked about the riots in Poland, we introduced a new
group, the Workers' Initiative, and we talked with the Belarusian anarchists from
the Revolutionary Action about the protests against Alexander Lukashenko. We also
informed about the insurgent commune, which was established in the summer in
Seattle, USA. We have also added a commentary on the disgusting media
manipulations and hoaxes that flooded the Czech mass media as part of an
anarchist experiment in the USA.
Looking back
We also do not forget about events from the past. Exactly twenty years ago in
Prague, tens of thousands of people opposed a meeting of the International
Monetary Fund, which we recalled with contemporary articles on the torture of
demonstrators at police stations and the subsequent censorship of these events in
the media. We also commemorated the anniversary of the assassination of the Greek
rapper Pavlos Fyssas and looked back at the 2003 leaflet event of the
Organization of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarity in Ostrava. However,
memories of past struggles must not lead to entanglement in nostalgia - they
should become an inspiration for the next ones.
Join us
If the ideas of anarchism are close to you and you want to support us in direct
events, publishing activities, cooking food for the homeless, putting up posters,
organizing lectures and concerts, setting up solidarity groups or any other
bottom-up activities, do not hesitate to contact us. Anarchist initiatives are
important at a time when screws are being tightened under the pretext of fighting
coronavirus.
https://oafed.noblogs.org/post/2021/01/13/cinnost-oaf-v-roce-2020/#more-819
------------------------------
Message: 6
Stormy Petrel is the Anarchist Communist Group's theoretical. The latest issue is
a bumper 60 pages of revolutionary anarchist communist thought and ideas. It
contains the following: ---- Building Resilient Communities: The Challenges of
Organising Locally ---- Community Activism in South Essex ---- Mutual Aid during
the Pandemic ---- Charity or Solidarity? ---- Covid Mutual Aid: A Revolutionary
Critique ---- ACORN - no mighty oak! ---- Anarchist Communists, anti-fascism and
Anti-Fascism ---- Women: Working and Organising ---- What is Anarchist Communism?
(excerpt from Brian Morris's forthcoming book) ---- Poll Tax Rebellion - Danny
Burns ---- Book Reviews - Putting the poll tax rebellion in perspective ---- e
Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain ----
Class Power on Zero Hours ---- McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New
Capitalist Spirituality
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2021/01/14/stormy-petrel-journal-of-the-acg/
------------------------------
Message: 7
Short url: https://squ.at/r/866v ---- With political scientist Ondrej Slacálek
about the life and work of Petr Kropotkin, 100 years after his death on February
9, 1921. Kropotkin was a geographer, revolutionary and anarchist who
significantly influenced the anarchist movement as well as the workers' movement.
His thinking, especially his concept of mutual assistance as an important factor
in society, has recently become increasingly relevant. ---- The name of Petr
Kropotkin thus appears more and more even where we would not have expected it
until recently: in the mainstream world media and to his texts, people outside
the classic "usual suspects" of the anarchist movement search for his name on the
Internet. ---- Because in times when another world is no longer possible but
directly necessary, Petr Kropotkin's ideas are gaining in relevance and can
stimulate our imagination about the organization and functioning of society.
In Neklid, we published one book about Kropotkin at the end of last year and we
are preparing his book "Mutual Assistance" for this spring and you can also
support it financially:
https://www.darujme.cz/projekt/1204093
The discussion will take place on the platform https://call.nolog.cz/
Date & Time:
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 - 18:00
https://www.afed.cz/text/7279/kropotkin-2021
------------------------------
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