Anarchic update news all over the world - 7.8.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #288 - The Bund
      (1897-1949): Jewish and universalist workers' party (fr, it,
      pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  anarkismo.net: The Anarchism of Blackness--Review of Zoe
      Samudzi & William C. Anderson, "As Black as Resistance; Finding
      the Conditions for Liberation." by Wayne Price 
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Poland, Workers' Initiative: Unjust transformation. Ecology
      versus mining [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Bangladesh Anarcho Syndicalist Federation: Donald Trump,
      White Nationalism and America's Colonial Legacy 
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  US, black rose fed: SOCIALIST FACES IN HIGH PLACES:
      ELECTIONS & THE LEFT (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





Born on 7 October 1897 in Vilnius, Tsarist Russia with its anti-Jewish laws, the Bund 
leads the fight for social emancipation and cultural autonomy. Refusing any Jewish 
separatism, the Bund rejects Zionism and is an integral part of the Marxist socialist 
movement, without accepting a cultural assimilation of Jewish populations. ---- Around 
1900, the Ashkenazi Jewish writer [1]Sholem Aleichem depicts Jews Kasrilevka, fictional 
town of Yiddishland [2]. In one of his stories, this defender of the Yiddish language 
tells the story of a Jew from Kasrilevka who sold the secret of eternal life to Rothschild 
for a staggering amount of money. construction of the Trans-Siberian: " Come and live with 
us in Kasrilevka, for never has a rich Jew died there ! "

With the exception of the very wealthy Russian Jews and Jews, authorized since Alexander 
II to settle all over Russia, the majority of the Tsar's Jewish subjects live the same 
atrocious social misery as the Russian workers and peasants, but with the racist laws in 
addition, antisemitic hatred and pogroms [3]. They are thus exposed to a double 
oppression, social and antisemitic.

Autonomy or assimilation
Many Jews and Jews are trying to change their lives and defend their culture by joining 
revolutionary organizations, primarily anarchists or Marxists. It is in this atmosphere 
that the Bund [4], which will be an integral part of the Social Democratic Workers Party 
of Russia [5]from its creation in 1897, is born in Vilnius. As one of its founders, Arkadi 
Kremer, " the Jewish Socialist Party can not be in contradiction with the internationalist 
principles of socialism since there is no national and revolutionary party within the Jews. "

The Bund was in Russia until the revolution of 1917 and Poland until World War II, both a 
great party worker and one of the most powerful secular Jewish organizations left [6]. His 
influence has been dominant in trade unions and the entire Jewish working world, thanks to 
his Yiddish language schools with avant-garde pedagogy (especially in Poland), his youth 
organizations, his holiday camps, his works and even his sanatorium Vladimir Medem, named 
after one of the first Bundist leaders. [7]

Marxist and convinced of the necessity of overthrowing the tsar, the bourgeoisie - 
including Jewish - and capitalism, the Bund pleaded for the recognition of an " 
extraterritorial cultural autonomy ". The concept was borrowed from the Austro-Hungarian 
socialists who themselves sought a solution to the oppression of minorities as part of a 
multi-ethnic empire.

 From 1898 to 1903, the Bund is fully integrated into the Social-Democratic Labor Party of 
Russia (RSDLP), affiliated to the II th International. But leaders like Lenin, Trotsky and 
Rosa Luxemburg blame the Bund for its claims of " extraterritorial cultural autonomy " 
[8]and its defense of the Yiddish language, considered as a jargon typical of a ghetto 
spirit, contrary to proletarian internationalism.

Like Marx and Engels, they consider Jewish cultural claims as the dream of a " chimerical 
nationality ". Jews and Jews will emancipate themselves with socialism, of course, but by 
assimilating to the people they live in, that is, by ceasing to be Jewish. These leaders 
accept the ideas of national liberation for a people colonized on its territory, with its 
language, but not that of cultural autonomy for the " diasporic " Jewish populations , 
without their own territory and with languages such as Yiddish Ashkenazim and Ladino or 
Judeo-Arab Sephardim.

What to do with antisemitism ?
The Bundists dislike the attacks against Tsarist personalities practiced by some 
anarchists or revolutionary socialists. On the one hand, the condition of the 
Russian-Polish Jews has worsened dramatically after the assassination of Alexander II [9], 
and on the other hand, human life is sacred. Among the Jews of antiquity in the Middle 
East, the death penalty certainly existed in the texts, but a series of provisions made it 
already inapplicable [10].

In 1899, the Bund declares " The workers' struggle must be directed against absolutism and 
not against gendarmes, governors, or even against Tsar Nicholas II as an individual. But 
when the Czar, in 1902, aggravated anti-Semitism and pogroms, and especially after the 
terrible pogrom of Kishinev [11]organized in 1903 by the very antisemitic Minister of the 
Interior Von Plehve, the Bund undertakes to formation of armed self-defense groups (with 
firearms). It has gained an extraordinary popularity throughout the Jewish community, up 
to certain religious backgrounds.

In 1897, Theodore Herzl, thinking that Jews would never be accepted anywhere, launched 
Zionism to build a Jewish nation-state, if possible in Palestine. For the Bund, Russian 
and Polish workers and peasants will eventually heal anti-Semitism thanks to class 
solidarity and anti-capitalist struggle. He therefore refuses Zionism, this humiliating 
flight forward, under the cries of the worst anti-Semites: " dirty Jews, in Palestine!"

The Bund opposes its motto: " Doy kayt " (" We stay here "). He analyzes Zionism as a 
future inevitable and unacceptable oppression on the part of Jews against indigenous 
Palestinians. Likewise, he has defended Yiddish spoken by the people for centuries with 
rich literature, against the majority of Zionists, who want to wipe out Yiddish and other 
languages of the diaspora to the 2,000-year-old culture, to the benefit of Hebrew, then 
used only in religious texts and ceremonies.

As for the Poale Zion, by the Marxist Ben Borochov [12], this worker Zionism with the 
perspective of a Jewish socialist state in the Middle East, the Bund analyzes it only as a 
movement in tow of the bourgeois Zionism of Theodore Herzl. However, this does not prevent 
him from concluding occasional alliances with the poale-zionists who also participate in 
self-defense groups and who will fight later with the Bundists in the 1936-1939 Spanish 
anti-fascist war, then in the resistance against the Nazis.

Quarterly between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bund, like the RSDLP, was the scene of intense 
debate between promencheviks and probolcheviks. But, contrary to the French or German 
socialists, who rank mostly in the Sacred Union for war with their own bourgeoisies, the 
Bundists are almost all pacifists since 1914.

In February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. The resulting Democratic Government 
abolished all discriminatory laws against Jews in April 1917. These egalitarian 
arrangements for Jews were consolidated by the Bolsheviks after the October 1917 revolution.

While the Bund was enthusiastic about the February revolution, many of its activists 
condemned the overly authoritarian attitudes of the Lenin and Trotsky Bolshevik Party, and 
thus remained attached to the Menshevik trend. maintaining anti-capitalist convictions. 
However, the Bundesprofilist Bundists are very close to Lenin's party, which became the 
Communist Party in 1918.

They formed the Kombund in 1919, ie the communist Bund, thinking they had a right of 
tendency to express their ideas of Jewish cultural and organizational autonomy ... refused 
in 1921. And of course, with the rise of Stalinism, the majority of Jewish-Russian Bundist 
militants will end their lives in the Stalinist camps alongside anarchists, the old 
Bolshevik Guard, the former Bolsheviks of the Workers' Opposition [13], the Trotskyists 
[14]or other brave Soviet citizens arrested for anything.

In Poland, which became independent again in 1918, the Bund expanded. The Polish head of 
state, the Socialist and Nationalist Marshal Pilsudski, is well regarded in Jewish circles 
for his benevolence towards them, in a country plagued by quasi-endemic anti-Semitism. 
Faced with fierce anti-Semitism powerful right party " National Democratic " said Emdek, 
Polish Bund remained in the II th Socialist International, built anyway its network of 
schools in Yiddish language, admittedly controlled by the state Polish, and leads 
important social, union and electoral struggles, even after the death of Pilsudski in 
1935, replaced by the very fascinating Colonel Beck.

Uprising of the Warsaw ghetto
During the Second World War, the Bund fought actively and heroically with Polish 
resistance organizations. He organized solidarity and rescue actions in the ghettos, even 
as Stalin had two leaders, Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, officially invited to Moscow to 
form a so-called " Jewish anti-fascist committee ". The great revolt of the Warsaw ghetto 
in 1943 was led by Zionist Mordechaj Anielewicz of Hashomer Hatzair [15]and by Bundist 
doctor Marek Edelman, who kept his anti-Zionist and Bundist beliefs until his death in 
2009, after to have been elected Member of Parliament for Solidarnosc in 1989.

After the war, the Polish Bund still had to fight a wave of pogroms, the worst of which, 
Kielce's, in 1946, killed 42 people with the help of the army and the police, following 
rumors of ritual murder. practiced by Jews, as in Tsarist times. As early as 1949, the 
Polish Bund was liquidated by the ruling Stalinists in Poland. Some Bundist organizations 
survive for some time in France, Israel, and the United States. But the Bund no longer 
exists as such.

On the other hand, history has proved him right about Zionism, which oppresses 
Palestinians and Palestinians, and its main values are found today among Israeli 
rebuzniks, or the French Jewish Union for Peace [16], who like the Bund, fights fascism, 
Zionism and racism.

Armand Gorentin (AL Paris South)

[1] The Ashkenazi are Germanic-speaking Jews, speaking mainly Yiddish, close to German but 
with Hebrew letters.

[2] Yiddishland is the area of residence permitted for Jews by the tsar, mainly in western 
Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Bessarabia. The majority of Jews speaking Yiddish were 
therefore in this area.

[3] Pogroms are anti-Jewish massacres committed by crowds but organized by authorities.

[4] Its real name is the General Union of Jewish Workers of Russia, Poland and Lithuania.

[5] The Marxist and Internationalist POSDR was divided in 1903 between Mensheviks 
(minority) and Bolsheviks (majority) on party organization issues.

[6] See Henri Minczeles, General History of the Bund , Denoël, 1999.

[7] This dispersion has long been presented as a consequence of Roman rule in ancient 
Judea, but it would be older and come mainly from religious proselytism.

[8] Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, The Great Challenge. Bolsheciks and Nations (1917-1930) , 
Flammarion, 1987.

[9] Assassinated in 1881 by anarchists, Alexander II had relaxed the anti-Jewish laws.

[10] See Lynn Gottlieb, Journey to the Torah of Nonviolence , Earth of Hope, 2012.

[11] This pogrom left 49 dead, 500 wounded, 700 homes and 600 shops destroyed, 2,000 
homeless families.

[12] Borochov saw in Yiddishland a proportion of social classes opposite to other 
societies: too many intellectuals, craftsmen, hawkers and unemployed, not enough workers 
and peasants (theory of the inverted pyramid) . Finding a territory for the Jews, he 
wanted to put this pyramid in the right direction to be able to develop the class 
struggle. He spoke very little about indigenous Palestinians.

[13] Left wing of the Bolshevik party, led notably by Alexandra Kollontaï, engaged against 
the rising bureaucracy.

[14] At that time, in the face of Nazism, Trotsky nuanced his youthful stance on the 
Jewish labor movement. See Leon Trotsky, Jewish Question, Black Question, 2011.

[15] Founded in 1920, this Hashomer Hatzair (young guard) is then influenced by anarchist 
ideas and sees the kibbutz, self-managed farming communities, embryos of a future Israeli 
anarcho-communist society.

[16] The Toulouse association Pitchkepoï is said to be anarcho-Bundist, the Medem library 
in Paris provides historical archives and the UJFP devotes a full page to the history of 
the Bund in A Jewish word against racism , Syllepse, reissue 2018.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Le-Bund-1897-1949-parti-ouvrier-juif-et-universaliste

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Message: 2





Review of Zoe Samudzi & William C. Anderson, "As Black as Resistance; Finding the 
Conditions for Liberation." ---- There are almost no books on anarchism and 
African-American liberation, which makes this an exceptional work. It places racial 
oppression at the center of U.S. society, interacting and overlapping with all other forms 
of oppression and exploitation. The strengths and weaknesses of the work are reviewed. 
---- There are almost no books on anarchism and African-American liberation, which makes 
this an exceptional work. In the last period of radicalization (the "sixties"), very few 
radicals, African-American or white, were anarchists or other types of libertarian 
socialist. Almost all radicals were attracted by the apparent anti-imperialism of Mao, Ho 
Chi Minh, and Castro, and the leaders of liberation struggles in Africa. Therefore those 
who organized and theorized about revolutionary African-American liberation were 
overwhelmingly Marxist-Leninists and/or statist nationalists. If I had to think of someone 
who did not fit this category, I would have to go back to the Black revolutionary, C.L.R. 
James, who was a libertarian (autonomist) Marxist (James 1948). (Anarchists were involved 
in the U.S. Civil Rights movement, but mainly as anarchist-pacifists. They were perceived 
as nonrevolutionary pacifists.)

After the height of this period, there were a number of African-American militants who had 
been members of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. When in prison a small 
number reconsidered their politics and philosophies. Mostly unconnected to each other, 
they turned to revolutionary anarchism. (See Black Rose Federation 2016.) Meanwhile, there 
had been a general failure and conservatism of the "Communist" states, from the Soviet 
Union to China to Vietnam and Cuba. Among those who rejected the oppressive, racist, and 
exploitative status quo, there was now a rejection of Marxism-Leninism. There was a 
revived interest in the other revolutionary tradition, that of anarchism.

This short book is a product of the new period. It is an expansion of the authors' essay, 
"The Anarchism of Blackness." They quote repeatedly from one of the Black anarchists, 
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin (but, surprisingly, not from any of the others). Their main point is 
that African-Americans are not and cannot be fully merged into U.S. society, a white 
supremacist state established as a colonial-settler society. Black people remain 
essentially outside of and oppressed by this society. Despite the end of legal Jim Crow, 
the passage of anti-discrimination laws, and various forms of "affirmative action," 
African-Americans remain primarily on the bottom of society, among the most oppressed and 
exploited parts of the population. Meanwhile there are on-going attacks on whatever gains 
have been won (such as the right to vote). Therefore the struggles of African-Americans, 
pushing upon established order from below, continue to fundamentally threaten the whole 
system of "law and order," of established politics, and the normal electoral alternatives. 
They point in a different direction altogether.

"We are Black because we are oppressed by the state; we are oppressed by the state because 
we are Black." (Samudzi & Anderson 2018; 9) "Black people's place in the fight against 
white supremacist capitalism is unique since so much of structural violence entails 
anti-blackness....Blackness is the anti-state just as the state is anti-Black....Black 
Americans[are]a group of people upon whose suffering the state is constructed.... 
Understanding the anarchistic condition of blackness and the impossibility of its 
assimilation into the U.S. social contract, however, could be empowering." (112-113) This 
points to a goal of "a complete dismantling of the American state as it presently 
exists...." (3) and "creating an alternate system of governance that is not based on 
domination, hierarchy, and control." (xvii)

This rejection of "assimilation" as a goal does not lead Samudzi and Anderson to adopt 
Black nationalism. Partly because they believe that "Black nationalism in the United 
States can sometimes entail these quasi-settler claims to the land...." (25) This raises 
"the question of the fate of the Native American communities in those states" (26) "We are 
not settlers. But championing the creation of a Black majoritarian nation-state, where the 
fate of Indigenous people is ambiguous at best, is an idea rooted in settler logic." (28) 
They also doubt that a nationalist approach is adequate to deal with the dire threat of 
world-wide environmental catastrophe caused by the system. And they point out that the 
upholders of Black oppression are not only European-Americans. "There are many politicians 
and state operatives of color, Black and otherwise, working for white supremacy." (13)

Samudzi and Anderson especially object to "Black nationalism's frequent exclusion of" 
Black and other women and LGBTQ people (70-71). "We must also explicitly name different 
gendered and sexual identities within blackness. Any truly liberatory politics must speak 
to the unique needs and vulnerabilities of Black women and girls, especially Black queer 
and transgender women and girls." (68)

Others have rejected both total assimilation ("integration") and Black nationalism, such 
as C.L.R. James and Malcolm X in his last year. Probably most African-Americans do not 
want to separate from the U.S.A. They mostly want to win the democratic rights promised by 
the U.S. tradition==but without giving up their Black identity and pride and their special 
organizations (such as the Black church and communities).

However, under the great pressures and upheavals which might lead to a revolution, it is 
possible that many African-Americans might come to want their own separate country 
(whether with its own state or as an anarchist community). If this should develop, surely 
anarchists should support their right to have this if that is what they want. We believe 
in freedom. This is not discussed in the book.

Samudzi and Anderson advocate "a truly intersectional framework and multifaceted approach 
to Black liberation." (28) "Our work to end the deterioration of nature must be understood 
as a necessary and inseparable component of a global anticapitalist movement." (35) They 
call for a more united U.S. Left. "There is not a unified Left in this country...If we do 
not build that functionally cohesive Left...the rights of all people oppressed by 
capitalist white supremacy will inevitably continue to erode." (17) But the book is weak 
in terms of how to build that unified Left as part of a global anticapitalist 
movement--nor does it distinguish between the statist, authoritarian, Left and a 
libertarian, anti-statist, Left. They are undoubtedly right to raise a pro-Black, 
pro-feminist, pro-LGBTQ, and pro-ecology orientation. (They have a discussion of armed 
self-defense and gun control which I found rather confused.) But how can these be 
integrated into an "intersectional and multifaceted framework"?

African-American Liberation and Class

The weakest part of the book is its lack of analysis of why African-Americans are 
oppressed, and what functions this oppression performs for the system. This should lead to 
an analysis of the economic role of white supremacy in producing a surplus of wealth to 
maintain the ruling class, the corporations, the state, and all other capitalist 
institutions-a surplus of wealth which is squeezed out of the working population. They 
refer frequently to "capitalism" and sometimes to "classism," but do not see that the 
capitalist class system is a system of exploitation, of draining wealth from working people.

Africans were not brought to the Americas in order for white people to have someone to 
look down on. They were kidnapped and enslaved to become a form of worker (chattel 
slaves). They were bought and sold on a market so they could be used to produce 
commodities (tobacco, cotton, etc.) to be sold on the world market.

With the end of slavery, African-Americans continued to be oppressed, serving two 
functions. First, they were kept as a vulnerable group which could be super-exploited. 
They were paid less than the rest of the working class and given the worst jobs, therefore 
producing a large amount of profit. Second, they were used to keep the working class as a 
whole divided and weak, so long as the white workers accepted the "psychological wages of 
whiteness," namely feeling superior to someone. While the white workers got some small 
benefits (more job security, slightly better pay, etc.), they paid a high price in 
economic and political weakness. (Their inability, to this day, to win universal health 
care, unlike in every other Western imperialist country, is only one example.) The hopeful 
aspect of this situation is that it is in the immediate material interest of white workers 
to oppose racism-as well as being morally right. This gives anti-racists something to 
appeal to.

On the second function of racism: In the 1800s, the great Black abolitionist, Frederick 
Douglass, wrote about his experiences as a rented-out slave on the Baltimore shipyards, 
surrounded by racist white workers. While well aware of the difference between chattel 
slavery and wage slavery, "Douglass keenly grasped the plight of the white poor. In their 
‘craftiness,' wrote Douglass, urban slaveholders and shipyard owners forged an ‘enmity of 
the poor, laboring white man against the blacks,' forcing an embittered scramble for 
diminished wages, and rendering the white worker ‘as much a slave as the black slave 
himself.' Both were ‘plundered and by the same plunderer.' The ‘white slave' and the 
‘black slave' were both robbed, one by a single master, and the other by the entire slave 
system. The slaveholding class exploited the lethal tools of racism to convince the 
burgeoning immigrant poor, said Douglass, that ‘slavery is the only power that can prevent 
the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave's poverty and degradation'." 
(Blight 2018; 77) To this day, the "crafty" capitalists continue this game of 
divide-and-conquer, between white workers and African-American workers, and also among 
Latino, Asian, and immigrant workers.

While not referring to this key aspect of capitalist racism, the authors do discuss the 
relationship between the oppression of African-American women and exploitative labor. 
There has been, and is, a "raced and gendered labor extraction[in]...the functioning of 
capitalism...Black women's labor was central to the development of the capitalist state 
and the American slaveocracy....Gendered anti-blackness formed the cornerstone of Jim Crow 
modernity...." (71) African-American women faced a "triple labor (domestic, industrial, 
and sexual...)." (72)

This is entirely true and very insightful. It is odd that the authors do not further 
discuss the "raced labor extraction" from Black workers (of all genders and orientations) 
which plays a central role in the "labor extraction" from the entire, multiracial, 
multiethnic, multinational, and multigenderred, working class. Historically, Black 
workers, female and male, have played key roles in U.S. working class struggles, as well 
as in broader African-American struggles. An intersectional working class strategy should 
focus on this (which was the point of James 1948).

The Revolutionary Goal?

The book lacks a strategy for African-American liberation, beyond broad insights. "People 
may ask for answers as though there are distinct formulas....The solution to capitalism is 
anticapitalism. The solution to white supremacy is the active rejection of it and the dual 
affirmation of Indigenous sovereignty and Black humanity." (114) This is not good enough.

It is not clear whether their rejection of the U.S. state and white supremacist capitalism 
implies a revolution to them. I do not mean a popular insurrection as an immediate goal, 
but as a strategic end-in-view, a guiding goal of eventually overturning the state and all 
forms of oppression. "It is possible that a people's liberation is a perpetual project and 
must constantly be renewed and updated." (114) Samudzi and Anderson write of "a long 
struggle[in which]meaningful steps toward liberation do not have to be dramatic." (115) 
Fair enough, but they do not speak of how to get to an eventual destruction of the 
institutions of racist-sexist-antiecological-capitalism. A revolution may be a "long 
struggle" but not "a perpetual project."

It is not clear whether they are anarchists. I do not mean that I doubt their sincerity, 
since I take them at their word. But they themselves waffle on whether to call themselves 
anarchists. They took "anarchism" out of the title of their book (from the original 
essay), and write, "We may choose not to limit or misrepresent the diversity of our 
struggle by explicitly naming ourselves as anarchists..."(66) Their values and 
perspectives seem to be consistent with anarchism. They were clearly influenced by Black 
anarchists. I do not raise this point to condemn them-they may call themselves whatever 
they like. But this wishy-washy attitude toward owning the "anarchist" label weakens their 
revolutionary perspective. Similarly, while they repeatedly refer to "anticapitalism," 
they never write of "socialism" (let alone "communism").

Conclusion

There are very few writings on anarchism and African-American liberation, which makes this 
an interesting work. It clearly places racial oppression at the center of U.S. society, 
interacting and overlapping with all other forms of oppression and exploitation. It 
insists that Black liberation will mean the destruction of the present U.S. state and 
sexist-racist capitalism. Its main weaknesses are a lack of a strategy and a failure to 
integrate a class analysis of capitalism into its program and perspective. They fail to 
see the special role of African-Americans in the working class and in the U.S. revolution.

References

Black Rose Federation (2016). Black Anarchism: A Reader.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-anar...eader

Blight, David W. (2018). Frederick Douglass; Prophet of Freedom. NY: Simon & Schuster.

James, C.L.R. (1948). "The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the U.S." 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1948/0...r.htm

Samudzi, Zoe, & Anderson, William C. (2018). As Black as Resistance; Finding the 
Conditions for Liberation. Chico CA: AK Press.

*written for www.Anarkismo.net

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31213

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Message: 3





Demonstration organized as part of the Climate Camp (July 2018) ---- The article appeared 
in the 49th issue of the Employee Initiative Newsletter ---- Some ecological environments 
present at this year's "Camp for Climate" perceived Konin miners as beneficiaries of the 
system. Meanwhile, both local miners, inhabitants of the region and the whole country were 
used by big business. The privatized Konin Basin became a real gold coin for capital. At 
the same time, the environmental and social costs of large outcrops are shifting to the 
shoulders of society. ---- East and west ---- Hundreds of people came to this year's 
"Climate Camp", although communication took place at the proverbial "end of the world" - 
in the Wilczyn commune. Although it is only 35 km north of Konin, this region is extremely 
poorly connected with the rest of the country. Once, across the Powidzkie and Suszewskie 
Lake, there was a border separating the Prussian and Russian partitions, consolidating the 
division into western and eastern Wielkopolska. Wilczyn was on the side of the Russian 
partition. As I remember, in the 1970s there was an opinion that it is not difficult to 
guess which side of the border you are on. The type of buildings indicated this. On the 
eastern side it was not uncommon to find wooden buildings and thatched cottages in the 
villages when brick and tile dominated on the west.

The economic differences between the two parts of the region were to be, albeit partially, 
offset by the launch of the Konin Basin based on the brown coal mining industry and the 
power industry after the Second World War. In industrialization, it was seen as an 
opportunity to raise the economic part of the country, dominated by small and barely 
binding end to agriculture. The Konin mine was opened in 1947 (the beginning of coal 
extraction), and the Adamów mine (Turkish district), now closed, in 1964. Zaglebie 
Koninskie is also the Patnów-Adamów-Konin Power Plant (ZE PAK). The emergence of the 
extractive and energy industries has actually changed the situation in this part of 
Wielkopolska. Among other things, it caused that the effects of the political 
transformation from 1989 were not initially so severe. Many people in the first period 
maintained both their employment,

Crisis of the Konin mining industry

The brown coal mining industry has been experiencing a crisis for some time now, and 
everything indicates that only holes in the ground will remain after it. The reason is not 
only the pressure and formal requirements related to the reduction of carbon dioxide 
emissions (due to global warming), but simply the depletion of deposits. In the first 
place it will affect the Konin Basin, which will probably cease to function in a few or 
several years' time. Nevertheless, capital and the state, or at least some interest 
groups, look for the possibility of sustaining this type of industry, considering the 
issues of expanding existing outposts, or launching new ones. Several locations are 
considered.

Although the fees for exceeding the CO2 emission limit (the gas considered the main 
culprit of global warming) are about to increase from 7 to 30, 50, and even 100 euro per 
ton, the solutions are sought not to renounce this type of fuel, but to increase the 
productivity of the power plant using brown coal. Currently, it is 33%, and it is assumed 
that it will be possible to obtain productivity at the level of 45-50%, which would save 
the "Polish brown coal mining industry" and guarantee access to this "cheapest source of 
energy". "Optimistic" and "developmental" scenarios drawn with the hands of supporters of 
this type of energy predict even an increase in lignite mining in Poland by 2050 and 
burning it in the amount of 75 million tons per year, instead of today's approx. 65 
million tons.

Ecological and class trail

Is brown coal the cheapest fuel? Especially for the natural environment? Environmentalists 
have no doubt that the best solution for the climate is to keep the coal in the ground. 
Freed from every burnt ton of gas (CO2), getting into the atmosphere, worsens the 
situation. In total, coal is more harmful in this respect than burning of oil or natural gas.

Not so long ago, opinions about the negative effects of global warming were considered 
exaggerated and even doubtful. However, subsequent official governmental and international 
reports (eg IPCC) are increasingly showing that the threat is real. The jump of average 
temperature on earth by a few degrees Celsius means a catastrophe, although not all 
countries would feel it equally. The consequences for poorer regions of the world would be 
much more serious. They are already felt today, although this is just the beginning. 
Therefore, many people argue that the so-called developed countries have to bear the main 
cost of combating global warming.

The societies of "developed countries" are not, however, a monolith. For example, would 
higher costs also affect immigrants who constitute in Europe - depending on the state - 
from 10 to even 20% of the workforce? Employees and employees of the economic sectors 
Always less-paid women, additionally burdened with care and educational functions as part 
of the family? Thus, the following question arose at the "Camp for Climate": what about 
the unemployed people (and their families) employed in this industry? It is all the more 
important that the so-called just transformation seems to be just a slogan. In fact, the 
costs of crises (in this case the climate) the state and capital usually shift to the 
working and the poorest. This was clearly seen on the example of the Walbrzyskie Basin, 
where the closure of all hard coal mines in the 1990s

A fairly large group of activists and activists of the Workers' Initiative reached the 
"Camp for Climate". We noticed that among the speakers as well as the participants and 
participants of the Camp, the conviction appears that in Poland the miners are 
beneficiaries of the system indifferent to degradation of the natural environment. That is 
why - in our opinion - nobody seriously wants to defend them. It is true that the slogans 
prepared for the demonstration (which took place on July 20) were also: "Solidarity with 
miners, but never with opencasts", but rather a "fig leaf". There were also those who 
simply claimed that they disagreed with him.

Who bears the costs of the crisis?

Meanwhile, statistical data confirm that the restructuring costs of the industry in the 
Koninkie Basin are borne primarily by the employed. Take two indicators: average wage in 
the economy and unemployment (based on the Central Statistical Office). Well, in 2002, the 
average monthly wage in the Konin poviat was on average considerably higher than the 
national average (by over 12%); in 2016 it was definitely lower (by over 22%!). 
Significant change, which is absolutely associated with a decline in employment in the 
mining and energy industries. In the city of Konin and the Turkish poviat, the relative 
decline in the average salary (relative to the national average) also can be clearly 
observed over the course of a dozen or so years.

The same applies to the registered unemployment rate in the Konin poviat and the city of 
Konin. Despite periodic changes in the number of unemployed, in relation to the average 
unemployment rate in the country, the Konin region is getting worse. Although it must be 
added because of the accuracy that in Turku and the surrounding area the situation of the 
unemployed has improved relatively relatively.

The above data shows that the deterioration of the situation in the industry reflects 
directly on the income of the entire population. Their relative decline means that the 
region lags behind the rest of the country in this aspect. It is difficult to call it a 
"just transformation". Even more objectionable is the fact that profitable Konin mines and 
power plants (although at the Camp the opinion is that "the state is subsidizing coal") 
are "milked" by private business.

billionaires

The profitability of the local power industry meant that it quickly passed into the hands 
of capitalist tycoons. The profits generated were reinvested in new technologies rather 
than in environmental protection. In the second half of the 1990s, 38.5% of shares in ZE 
PAK belonged to Elektrim, who was also the owner of one of the three mobile telephony 
networks in Poland - Era GSM (today T-Mobile). As it was boasted, Elektrim, already listed 
at the time, intended to use "significant synergy between its energy and 
telecommunications resources". There were also many controversies around the company, 
including with the participation of the then richest Pole - Jan Kulczyk. Ultimately, ZE 
PAK passed into the hands of another Polish billionaire, Zygmunt Solorz - to remind: at 
the same time, the owner of Polsat - which currently holds over 50% of shares in this fuel 
and energy conglomerate. Over the last 10 years, ZE PAK has contributed nearly PLN 2.6 
billion to net income to shareholders! (Although in the holding's accounting documents in 
2015, there was an estimated 1.8 billion loss, but it was only "on paper", it was 
non-financial). Last year, ZE PAK gave over PLN 183 million of net profit.

Synergies were therefore derived from the synergies between the energy and 
telecommunications resources possessed by the capitalists, not the employees of the mines 
and power plants or inhabitants of the region whose incomes were falling. Not only did 
they not have a larger share in their profits, but of course also in profits, eg T-Mobile, 
which regularly reach even more than PLN 1 billion net each year. In this context, the 
perception of the miners as beneficiaries of the coal-fired energy system by some 
environmentalists is simply bizarre. Both miners, inhabitants of the region and the whole 
country were used by big business, and today we have to deal with the environmental 
consequences of great opencasts.

Workers and farmers

On Konin's Internet forums, many entries about the Camp appeared and they were not - as 
you might guess - words of support. Employees and many residents of the region do not 
share the logic represented by the ecological movement. One of the activists argued during 
the discussion at the Camp that after all, "there will be no jobs on the" dead planet "- 
trade unions must understand this. The problem is that it is not only a matter of jobs, 
but also the level of wages, working conditions, social security or even mining culture, 
etc. Restructuring of coal mining means precarization of employment in the whole region. 
It also hits trade unions, without which there would be no democratic freedoms, workers' 
rights and such gains as an 8-hour working day.

"Hejt" on Konin Internet forums directed towards campers did not mean that the camp was 
taking place in a social vacuum. He had the support of a large part of the inhabitants of 
the village. It is also a sign of economic change. After Poland's accession to the EU and 
the launch of funds for agriculture (subsidies and subsidies), the economic situation in 
the country improved, but also - on the other hand - its structure changed. Currently, 
medium and small farms (5-20 ha) disappear, which have been the support of the Polish 
peasant class, and large commodity farms are becoming dominant. Many farmers have 
reinvested money in tourism in the countryside. Especially here, in the Gniezno Lake 
District, conditions are favorable. The bungalows are successfully rented to tourists by 
tourists. There is also a small gastronomy and various other types of attractions.

Stolen water

Tourism develops, and energy and outposts bring danger to it. In the eastern part of the 
Lake District, the level of water in the reservoirs has dropped by as much as 3-5 meters, 
which of course evokes anxiety. With the naked eye you can see that the lakes are drying 
up. The coastline goes backwards, the fish are losing, you can not bathe safely because it 
is too shallow. That is why a considerable part of local farmers are determined opponents 
of the open-pit, which they blame for "theft of water" and the outflow of tourists.

The mines are defending themselves, claiming that there is no evidence linking the drop in 
the level of waters with its activities. They are obstructing scientific opinions about 
the negative impact on the Gniezno Lakeland of natural geological processes and the 
stephenisation of Wielkopolska as a result of climate change. They try to instill doubts 
in people - the old way of big industry and business - and that's enough to successfully 
fight their battle for growth. From the perspective of local farmers (and probably the 
majority of scientists) the culprit is a mine, responsible not only for the state of 
water, but also - ultimately - for climate change and stepping.

However, one should not draw too far-reaching political conclusions from ecologists and 
farmers, especially if they look at the chances for rural development more favorable to 
nature. Changes in Polish agriculture go in the direction of large-scale, industrial and 
commercial. The Polish countryside is also proletarianized. A smaller and smaller 
percentage of its inhabitants and residents are maintained by farming; the majority 
already work in services, trade and industry. Quite a lot lives thanks to not so much own 
work as property and rent from the ground.

Protest

After all these conversations and disputes, I went to the protest action under the Konin 
power plant, but with a lack of conviction about its validity. Not the content itself. I 
believe that, especially on a global scale, the effects of global warming are clearly 
visible and catastrophic. In many regions of the world, for example, drought and lack of 
water has already led to crop failure, an explosion of ranks of social and armed 
conflicts, and have begun migration to an unprecedented scale since the Second World War. 
Europe slammed the door against these immigrants. The answer to the crisis is a shift 
towards national particularism, authoritarianism and the repression of ecological problems 
from the official discourse.

I did not like the form of the action - the choice of place. I set myself up, however, 
jointly and severally at the end of a long series of protesters, in a place where, behind 
a fence, in a power plant, some construction or renovation took place. Workers on 
scaffolding shouted something about workplaces. Our drums and loudspeakers thundered 
louder, so you could not hear what they were talking about. Detriment.

Jaroslaw Urbanski

Bibliography:

Damian Slomski, Przemyslaw Ciszak, "Elektrownia Solorza-Zaka is running out of time." 
Billionaire sells Adamów? ", Www.money.pl dn. 27/04/2017,[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2018)

"The liquidation of the Adamów coal-fired power plant is starting", swiatoze.pl dated 
02/01/2018,[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2018)

Andrzej Stec, "History of Elektrim", http://wyborcza.biz, dated 
16.12.2001,[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2018)

Tomasz Józwik, "How much has been left of the biggest vote of the Third Republic?" The 
history of the growth and fall of Elektrim ",[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2018)

Jacek Szczepinski, "The current situation of the brown coal mining industry in Poland", 
materials from the meeting of the Parliamentary Mining and Energy Team,[PDF](accessed: 
22/07/2018)

"Brown world",[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2018)

Zbigniew Kasztelewicz, "Report on the condition of the brown coal industry in Poland and 
Germany together with a diagnosis of activities for the development of this industry in 
the first half of the 21st century", Energy Market Information Center, Kraków 
2018,[PDF](accessed: 22/07/2018)

Witold Ziomek, "Where the water from the lake went, the Gniezno Lake District dries up", 
www.money.pl dn. 06.06.2019,[LINK](accessed: 22/07/2019)

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/publicystyka/strategie-zwiazkowe/item/2430-niesprawiedliwa-transformacja-ekologia-kontra-gornictwo

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Message: 4





Rosa Soros discusses the colonial legacy of America, how it is still felt deeply today, 
and why we need a grassroots, revolutionary working class movement to fight - not just the 
forces of reaction brought about by the Trump administration - but the tide of liberalism 
that secured his power. ---- Since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United 
States and the international public's response to it, you'd think America has suddenly 
become a hive of racists and fascists. This is not to suggest that Trump's presidential 
campaign and subsequent victory hasn't emboldened the far-right and white supremacists in 
the States: we've seen white nationalists attempt to intimidate Black Lives Matter 
protesters at Trump rallies; a sharp rise in armed anti-Muslim protests by right-wing 
extremists in places like Arizona, Atlanta, and elsewhere across America; and an 
anti-fascist protester shot and in critical condition by a Trump supporter at an alt-right 
Milo Yiannopoulos event on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. While we are correct to 
respond and respond fiercely to this wave of reaction, we need to be careful not to get 
swept up in the tide of liberal discourse that would have you think that Donald Trump is 
the Devil and if he is defeated then the people will be free! It goes without saying, 
Donald Trump is a vile, racist, misogynist, shit-stain and an authoritarian: but racism 
and white supremacy in America is nothing new - when Trump falls, who will replace him?

The United States was literally built on the savage onslaught and pillaging of its 
indigenous people and on the backs of black slavery. The United States has a shameful 
legacy of public lynchings, racial segregation, and criminalisation of black people and 
non-black people of colour - and neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton did or could do 
anything to challenge the structurally racist foundations on which the USA was built, and 
continues to sustain itself. Institutional racism from the top down begins with racist 
legislation, such as the infamous Jim Crow Laws enforced up until 1965, and is enacted 
sharply at the bottom with attacks on black, Brown, Jewish and Muslim communities, such as 
the horrific Charleston church shooting by white supremacist Dylan Roof. In a sobering 
documentary, ‘13th' the mass incarceration of black people in America is considered the 
modern day slavery, and demonstrates how since its abolition a clause known as The 
Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery 
and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. This conveniently coincided 
with the State's campaign to criminalise and prosecute black people in huge numbers, 
making them a legitimate and expendable source of free labour. Racism and the prison 
industrial complex continues to uphold capitalist production and represent the interest of 
the State.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the States are an ultra-violent white supremacist organisation 
that spans 150 years (established first in 1865) whose membership is about 30,000 strong. 
They are one of the only far-right extremist groups who have a collective knowledge and 
history of organising that has been passed on from generation to generation. They've never 
been smashed the way most other far-right and fascist groups have. We need to understand 
this in the context of the legacy of racism, colonialism and imperialism that the United 
States is built upon and stop this sudden panic as if things were getting better until 
Trump came along.

Racism and colonialism is sewn into the very fabric of the Red, White and Blue, and we 
need to look beyond the more explicit manifestations of white supremacy and nationalism in 
order to defeat them. It's easy to destroy the Devil if it wears its horns so gaudily: but 
if it's hidden behind a pearl necklace, a rehearsed smile, and speaks of feminism while 
simultaneously supporting a war which kills hundreds and thousands of brown women in the 
Middle East, the Devil will continue to walk among us. Hillary Clinton, the 'lesser of two 
evils' candidate supported the 1994 Crime Bill by her husband and then President, Bill 
Clinton, which saw extraordinarily harsh sentences for low-level crime, targeting 
predominantly black people and destroying thousands of working class ethnic minority 
families. Hillary Clinton would not have been the answer to America's problems. Hillary 
Clinton would not have stopped the mass murder of working class black people at the hands 
of police. Barack Obama did not stop the mass detention and deportation of undocumented 
migrants under his administration (in fact, Obama deported more immigrants than any other 
US President!).

Trump and his supporters are not the cause of the problem, but a sharp reactionary symptom 
of liberalism and capitalism in crisis.

This isn't to say that we should ignore the swell of fascist and far-right support Trump 
has fostered: there is a reason over 800 polling stations in the Southern states were 
closed and people were being intimidated outside polling stations by Trump supporters. 
There has to be a militant and organised working class movement in the States to resist 
this. For example, Black Lives Matter, American Antifa groups, and Standing Rock 
protesters are doing incredible and inspirational things. Former Republican working class 
communities are now mass organising in their workplaces and neighbourhoods because they've 
seen that the elite do not represent their class interests. But there needs to be a joined 
up resistance: not just in the States but internationally.

As revolutionaries we need to build international working class solidarity and resistance 
to this onslaught by the reactionary elite. We need to move beyond parliamentary tactics 
because they're defunct. We need to stop resorting to single issue struggles where we 
fight simply for equality. I don't want to win equal rights to that of my white, male 
counterpart because I don't think what he has is good enough! We need to fight for class 
emancipation and real liberation. We need to stop using identity politics and the language 
of privilege as sticks to beat each other with, and the Left needs to challenge the 
sexism, racism and academic elitism that exists within it. We don't need allies - we need 
comrades. When Trump falls and we're asked, who will replace him? Let's fight so the 
answer is us.

http://www.bangladeshasf.org/news/donald-trump-white-nationalism-and-americas-colonial-legacy/

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Message: 5





A critical collection of writings looking at left electoralism and strategy in the US and 
internationally. ---- DOWNLOAD A FREE COPY: PDF | ibook ---- (Introduction Below) ---- 
Contents ---- Introduction, Black Rose/Rosa Negra Social Media Team ---- The Lure Of 
Elections: From Political Power To Popular Power by Frank Ascaso, Enrique Guerrero-López, 
Patrick Berkman, and Adam Weaver ---- Why Elections Fail To Bring About Real Change, 
Andrew Flood ---- "Campaign In Poetry, Govern In Prose": Interview With A Former Campaign 
Consultant ---- Boots Riley: Power Is Not In Elected Office ---- A Socialist On City 
Council A Look At The Career Of Kshama Sawant Sawant, by Michael Reagan ---- "Wild, 
Unprecedented" Reformism: The Case Of Larry Krasner, Tim Horris ---- Power To The People, 
Not Politicians! A Critique Of Socialist Electoralism by First of May Anarchist Alliance
"Electoral Pursuits Have Veered Us Away" Kali Akuno On Movement Lessons From Jackson, 
Mississippi, Introduction Adam Weaver
Why Presidential Elections Are Detrimental To Movement Building , Arun Gupta
Socialist Faces In High Places Syriza's Fall From Grace And The Elusive Electoral Road, 
Enrique Guerrero-López & Adam Weaver
Assessing The Pink Tide, Jefferey R. Webber
What Would Corbyn Do?, Gabriel Levy
The Party Is Haunting Us Again, Shawn Hattingh

INTRODUCTION

As the 2018 midterms now move into our rearview and the 2020 presidential race appears on 
the political horizon, the permanent election cycle of American politics will soon pull at 
the US left once again. In the last several years calls for left participation in 
electoralism have continued to grow louder as the traditional political center hollows and 
the popularity of socialism rises.

Our allies on the left often argue it is imperative to engage and take up electoral 
politics, whether out of a short term strategy of harm reduction or as part of a long term 
project of social change through wielding state power. But important questions should be 
posed around whether left engagement in electoralism constitutes an effective strategy for 
socialist transformation. Indeed, when we live in a political reality where fundamental 
disparities in wealth and power are stronger than ever, where white nationalists leave our 
most vulnerable communities in constant fear and where the ravages of climate change are 
an existential threat to humanity and the earth itself, we should also be asking whether 
this is a strategy that speaks to the urgency of our times and more importantly whether it 
is the right tool to begin with.

When 1960s Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin called for the movement to turn "from protest 
to politics" - a phrase often repeated in contemporary times - he likely did not envision 
the actual outcomes of this shift. As efforts towards electoral power became "one of the 
principal strategies that emerged from the Black Power era" as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor 
outlined in chapter 3, "Black Faces in High Places" of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black 
Liberation, one could draw a line between the development of the strategy and 
disappointment in the results with MLK advisor Andrew Young being elected as the Atlanta 
mayor in 1982 to the 2015 Baltimore uprising around the police murder of Freddie Gray in a 
major city with overwhelmingly Black leadership. Ultimately these efforts have 
fundamentally not changed the systemic conditions of white supremacy and police violence 
experienced by working class Blacks.

Despite good intentions, elections siphon energy and resources from social movements while 
simultaneously limiting their power by shifting the terrain of struggle from our daily 
lives - where we live, work, study, play and pray - to the marble halls of power. When 
leftists commit to electoral campaigns in the name of building movements they are in fact, 
we argue, undermining the very power and strength that we all work towards.

When we organize populations as voters instead of along the lines of common interests of 
class and shared experiences of oppression we abandon autonomy and responsibility to 
struggle for social change for the ballot box and hope that the next supposed movement 
champion will be our savior. In the event that socialists are elected in a game rigged 
against them, the nature of self-reproducing state violence, political machinations and 
threats from international capital limit their ability to implement even basic changes: 
these forces infamously defeated Syriza and countless socialist parties around the world. 
Social movements, on the other hand, can effect change in seemingly hopeless conditions, 
by allowing communities to fight where they stand at work, in their communities, and on 
their land, arenas where popular power holds the possibility of victory.

In fact, popular movements such as Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the more 
recent #RedForEd teacher strike wave fundamentally changed both conversations and the 
political terrain around white supremacy, anti-blackness, state violence, capitalism, 
unionism and the utility of worker strikes - something even the most radical candidates 
could not have accomplished in the same amount of time. Candidates like Bernie Sanders, 
while being important symbols of shifts in consciousness, step into the doors opened by 
the momentous cultural shifts forced by movements and work to channel their grievances 
back into the electoral arena.

Another aspect of electoral organizing is that much of the left both deeply overestimates 
the power of change through the state, and equally underestimates the potential of popular 
power to force changes. The question isn't if it is ethical to vote or abstain, it's what 
we must do the other 364 days of the year. Now more than ever it is clear that movements 
must find other vehicles to generate new forms of self-governance and popular power while 
striving for visions of autonomy and solidarity that won't fit in their ballot boxes.

We selected the enclosed essential readings to contextualize, analyze, and critique 
electoralism with the goal of challenging assumptions and contributing to a more robust 
ongoing conversation among socialists. We begin with several articles that present broad 
critical overviews of left electoralism, ranging from a former a campaign consultant to 
rapper and filmmaker Boots Riley. Then we move to specific examples within the 
US,including the 2016 presidential campaign, local city councils and Jackson, MI. We end 
with a selection of articles looking at left electoralism globally, from Latin America's 
pink tide to the UK's Jeremy Corbyn to South Africa.

To all those struggling outside, against, and beyond the state, capital, and social 
domination!

-Black Rose/Rosa Negra Social Media Team

For feedback and thoughts contact us at: eec@blackrosefed.org

We would like to thank libcom.org for agreeing to host the reader files.

http://blackrosefed.org/socialist-faces-in-high-places-reader/

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