CONTENTS ---- Editorial: What's in the latest Organise!? Read it below ---- History: The
Anarchist Federation - In Thought and Struggle. ---- Greece: Let?s go one step further --
Hungary: the far right menaces -- The Luddites bicentenary --- Statement of international
solidarity with those in Cuba: You Are Not Alone ---- Southern Europe: Austerity- Agony
and Antagonism ---- Special section on Turkey and Syria ---- Response to: Prostitution is
Not Compatible with Anarchism ---- Culture: Steinlen and Delannoy - the anarchist
illustrators -- Letters --- Editorial: What's in the latest Organise!? ---- This issue of
Organise! has been put together very much with an eye on the Saint-Imier international
gathering in August 2012. This assembly in Switzerland celebrates the 140th anniversary of
the founding of the antiauthoritarian international in 1872, where the movement that was
to become the class struggle anarchist movement was revitalised and found new direction
after the horrors of the crushing of the Paris Commune and the travesty that the first
international workers? organisation - the First International - had become.
More importantly, Saint-Imier 2012 it is where those committed to building an
anarchist-communist, or ?social anarchist? society, will also take stock and re-orientate
itself in an international context. In addition, our own international ? the International
of Anarchist Federations ? will be holding its Congress in Saint-Imier, parallel to the
main event, and Organise! fans are most welcome at its open sessions. This issue therefore
contains a perspective on the Anarchist Federation drafted by some of those who will be
attending saint-Imier. The article will be the starting point for our intervention there,
although you will find us on many panels and in meetings on everything from the arts to
nationalism. And expect us to be very vocal in helping the movement work out what its
future direction should be.
This issue has an international flavour, therefore. It comments on the situation in arenas
of struggle affected by the ?Long Arab Spring?, specifically Syria and Turkey, as well as
in on parts of Europe which western anarchists could engage with more: Romania and
Hungary, and on countries about which anarchists in the West have more established
approaches: Cuba, Greece, Portugal and Spain. We also included a considered response to an
unhelpful intervention made at the last London Anarchist Bookfair at our meeting on the
struggle of sex-workers to self-organise. In addition, we offer another anniversary
article, critically marking the significance of a very much misunderstood early industrial
movement: Luddism.
First, some thoughts on where we find ourselves in the rapidly evolving struggle against
austerity and for a free and equal society. Organise! editors recently received a little
zine about the anarchist movement called The Scoundrel. It?s a cheeky title, like The
Idler, and is just as useless for engendering meaningful change, also unashamedly
advocating ?doing nothing?. This is because ideology is an ?infection? and there is ?not a
lot? that we can do about capitalism except wait. Presumably we are waiting for an
insurrection which will happen spontaneously, without any groundwork? The Scoundrel
doesn?t address that. But in the meantime, ?Given my sincere pessimism about the
possibilities of actively destroying capitalism?, the only thing for it is ?Rather like
the medical profession?s Hypocratic (sic.) Oath, we should do no harm?. We quote it to
scoff at its anarchomiserabalism, obviously. But it might strike a chord. Who has not
thought at some point in the last couple of years, ?What?s the point trying to change
anything. It doesn?t make any difference?? On one level, such despondency at the moment is
understandable. It?s not as though the recession(s) and rising levels of poverty and
inequality are making the working class flock to our banners. The most recent resurgence
of anarchism was not a response to the current economic crisis but to a variety of more
positive factors slightly longer ago, when it felt like there was enough anger and vision
to fight war, neo-liberal ideology and environmental disaster successfully. Maybe the
student protests were the last phase of that feeling of social power and potential. They
were an affront to both inequality and passivity.
Now we are almost entirely on the defensive. We still have to fight those things, but seem
further from being effective. The world has been plunged into a situation in which even in
western Europe, people cannot feed their families. Households are plunged into fuel
poverty and have to choose between food and heating. Food banks are opening all over. This
would have been unthinkable a few years ago for people with British passports. It was
destitute asylum seekers that used them. ?Skipping? for food was a lifestyle choice for
activists making a point about surplus production and waste. Now people with jobs do it.
We have no security in social housing and many more are homeless. Some people with jobs
are paying in rent what people who own their houses pay as a mortgage; but the former have
no chance of saving for a deposit and will be at the mercy of landlords for decades to
come. How many people can say that they have job security? Recent university graduates are
as likely to work via a job agency as to be embarking on a ?career?. Migrants who came
here legally to work are living on the streets, too poor to return home.
The result of such insecurity is that people are increasingly needing to rely on the
state, and the state ? we hardly need to say it ? could but won?t support them. The
state?s answer to the crisis is to ditch its responsibility to spend workers? taxes
supporting people who can?t support themselves economically. Now Atos &co. ensure that
people with disabilities or mental health problems that mean they cannot do sustained paid
work are being kicked off the sorts of benefits that once made their longterm situation
manageable. They now join people in the other benefit categories, which in themselves are
being diminished and withdrawn, with people are being forced to work for free for big
companies. Taxation policies actively attack the lowest earners and pensioners, but the
press laughs at it, treating it like a joke by referring to the ?pasty tax? and ?granny
tax?, when it is naked class warfare.
So what should we do, and is there any point doing it? The first wave of resistance to the
new economic reality has passed. Occupy and Uncut spread the word effectively that there
was a groundswell of awareness of and opposition to the excesses of capitalism. Also, that
the ConDems lied, and lied again, and are still lying. These movements have probably done
more to spread those two specific messages to the wider public than anarchists have. But
there is nowhere to go from that critique of bad capitalism and bad politicians except
into the political process at one level or another, because the logic of replacing them
with fair capitalism and truthful politicians stays intact. But there are no such things!
This is a logic that is hermetically sealed off from what is really wrong, and from what
is possible as an alternative. Of course many people in Occupy and UnCut know this, but
they didn?t say it when they had the world?s attention. And so another mode of resistance
came and went without fundamentally changing anything, or carried on for the sake of
carrying on, not knowing what else to do.
This realisation easily leads people ? activists included - to be tired and despondent
about their potential and to feel powerless. What can they do? Unlike the people of the
Arab Spring, who have moved from being ruled by dictators towards representative
democracy, we have that ?democracy? already. This is why people feel they cannot change
things; because the system we have seems to be the only process open to us. Vast numbers
of people don?t ?not vote? because they are anarchists, but because they know there is
little point. After years of Labour ? and the more generalised international collaboration
of the parliamentary left with neo-liberalism - we are in a worse position that we were
under the Tories. We really are! But this is exactly the point where we have to make an
intervention, in ideas and action. We can provide an analysis that explains both why our
dreams and aspirations will always be thwarted by the system, but that there is a way out.
The bottom line is, they can?t stop us if we all rise up. But we are still a long way from
that happening, because exposing the system and offering a free and equal future is not
enough. To potential revolutionaries, anarchism is a nice idea, but how could we get
there? The material reality of people?s experience makes it seem insane to risk what
little security you have on a Utopian dream.
So it is not just important to tell the truth about what is going on. It is necessary to
show how Revolution is attainable; that is, step-by-step and through hard work. There are
many stages, including set-backs. But a set-back doesn?t mean that all is lost. In fact
set-backs are part of the process, because we learn by getting past them.
So, the process towards Revolution is not a case of all or nothing. That is to
misunderstand it. It is not the case that if we spread the word enough and get enough
people together with the right analysis, that there will be a sort of snowball effect and
everyone will take to the streets. It isn?t so much a tipping point in class anger that we
need, as a tipping point in class confidence.
But there is another essential ingredient needed to get to that point in the revolutionary
process: Solidarity! If we admit that there will be setbacks on the way to a free and
equal society, that is to admit that some people will suffer, and apparently more so than
if they had settled for a quiet life. So it is essential to demonstrate that we are in
this for and with other people, and with a conscious understanding of the significance of
one struggle in relation to the rest. There is no ?quiet life? to be had anymore for most
people. So we need to spread the doctrine of active Solidarity as an anarchist strategy,
as well as that of anarchism as a goal.
Anarchists, more than any other revolutionary movement, have been at the forefront of
solidarity historically, in the workplace, the community, and with prisoners. We have a
lot to learn from historical examples, but here let?s note a more recent form that is not
only exposing capitalism and class war and symbolically opposing them, as Occupy and UnCut
have, but actively undermining them in a way that everyone, whatever their level of
confidence, can take part in.
Solidarity networks are becoming slowly but surely more widespread. They are an exciting
form of struggle because they bring together individuals enacting key tenets of anarchism;
self-help and mutual aid, solidarity on a class basis, collective direct action, and
de-centralised and highly flexible organisation. These networks form around key
ideological principles and support individuals and group ?cases? where it is realistically
possible to win the case through sustained solidarity and direct action. Very importantly,
the ?victim?s grievance becomes generalised and they switch from being victims to becoming
owners of their own case, and then becoming experienced actors in resolving cases more
generally. In this way, winning a case is not a matter of championing one person but
demonstrating that a victory is a victory for all, that this strategy works and, it must
be said, showing the class enemy what we are capable of and that we can force its submission.
In terms of who the ?enemy? is, it is worth noting that in the UK, it is often someone in
the new economic sector that ?brokers? capitalism ? for example job agencies (such as in
the case of the Office Angels victory in 2011) and ?letting agencies? (as in the, already
successful, case against illegal fees being charged in Scotland). Such campaigns also
target specific bosses and landlords themselves, of course, and are effective where
tenants would otherwise have to take landlords to court but not be able to afford to, and
in cases that trades unions wouldn?t trouble themselves with. Such campaigns include
Glasgow Solidarity Network and Nottingham Solidarity Network, as well as the inspirational
Seattle Solidarity (SeaSol) in the U.S. They owe much to campaigns such as Edinburgh
Coalition Against Poverty and London Coalition Against Poverty, which likewise take up
issues on a case-by-case basis where the state fails to protect the people it is supposed
to serve and facilitates our exploitation instead. How successful they will be remains to
be seen, and organisational structures within them need to be carefully considered and
subject to on-going critique, to eliminate informal hierarchies and ensure individual
accountability to the group. But reading about them and being involved in them feels like
the western working class is trying something potentially very significant.
But anarchism is about personal and individual responsibility too. Campaigning at this
micro-level is time consuming and tiring. Campaigners give up elements of their family and
social life to show practical solidarity for people they hardly know. Anarchists see this
as sowing the seeds of something bigger that can operate without us needing to be the
?leadership of ideas? anymore. So it is vital, if such initiatives are to continue to be
successful, that the people whose cases are taken up remain part of the network, as an
advertisement for it and to give active mutual aid in their turn: from Isolation, to
Activism, to Anarchism! This is why anarchism is both a goal and a strategy for achieving
it. It is not simply a philosophy or a utopian structuring of ideas.
But this is not to say that any and all action is effective. We need to evaluate what we
do at each stage, because what we do will be opposed and mistakes are costly. The first
stage is propaganda that helps explain what is going on. Is it effective in making our
message and ideals clear and relevant? The next is gathering together in groups, campaigns
and organisations, temporary or long-term, best structured to spreading these ideas and
taking action. For one thing, this has to be in ways that can draw in exactly those people
who have been reached by our propaganda and must not consist in the main of anarcho ?
dilettantes and tourists (who won?t put down roots ideologically or in terms of sustained
work and accountability to other people where they live, work and struggle, but see
anarchism as a fashionable pond to dip in and out of). For another thing, as well as
attracting people, they have to know that we will stand by them. If we have good systems
of solidarity in place, it becomes more realistic to try to persuade people that anarchism
is attainable in the longer term.
If we do this, then the other side of the coin is that it is more damaging to discourage
taking action than it is to fail in that action. We have to get it right and win next
time, not retreat into a pointless rejection of purpose or conviction. Attempts to
demobilise anarchists are worse than ?doing nothing?. We are at a low ebb, it?s true, but
the struggle can?t be read just in the here and now but in the context of what has been
done and what could be done. Let?s re-group and re-vitalise at Saint-Imier, being inspired
by the actions and achievements of comrades from other countries (often doing far more
than us and in far worse situations), develop a newly-informed international perspective,
and come home with new positivism: Unashamedly.
To read more, download the entire issue as a PDF http://www.afed.org.uk/org/org78.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk
Bron : a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten