Every first of May we commemorate the Chicago Strike of 1886 that
culminated in the so called Haymarket Riots. The strike ended withthousands of workers being fired and many injured, the vast majority of
them immigrants from Europe. This mass mobilisation was fought extremely
hard by the authorities, who subsequently executed the five "Chicago
Martyrs", trade unionists and anarchists militants.
Chicago was the starting point of a worldwide movement to win the 8-hour
working day that lasted for decades. The working class achieved this
goal thanks to the struggle, not thanks to the decisions of parliaments.
Most of our rights are won through the offensive of the popular forces.
It is when the struggle stops, that the correlation of forces changes,
and the ruling class starts to cut rights.
For decades the ruling class of Europe as part of the imperialist core
was able to secure basic standards of living for 'their' working class
by colonial and imperialist exploitation of the global south with the
aim to undermine resistance in their own backyard. Altough this
exploitation and oppression continues to exist, we can see that even
those standards of living are more and more under attack: Having to work
more and more to get the same pay, seeing our living standards decrease
through inflation or seeing our pensions cut or the retirement age
increased. For some years now, we have been experiencing a process of
dispossession of the working class that is accelerating due to the
various crises that feed back on each other.
We have the post-pandemic production crisis, the energy crisis, the
housing crisis, the crisis of increasing resource scarcity and the
climate crisis. All of them will mark a time of change towards another
kind of civilisation and all of them bring us new conflicts that can
develop in the field of geopolitics. In this sense, we do not want to
forget the terrible war in Ukraine, where the great world powers have
been at each others throats for more than a year, producing death and
devastation en masse.
Social anarchism understands that empowered peoples cannot expect
substantial improvements in their lives through parliamentary struggle.
On the contrary, in times of scarcity authoritarian monsters grow.
Right-wing ideology pretends to use the diversity of the working class
to single out groups to hate: immigrants, the LGTBI community, Romani
and Sinto people or even feminism or environmentalism.
We cannot fail to point out that the libertarian communist movement will
always be with oppressed people and social groups and that we believe
that collective self-defence against authoritarianism is a means of
building a better world, which necessarily involves diversity,
fraternity between peoples and the construction of a free and socialist
society. Anarchism is a permanent effort to generate emancipation from
mass direct action, from diverse but federated and cohesive social
struggles, building the correlation of forces that allows the radical
changes we need.
We, the European libertarian communist organisations signing this
communiqué, wish all the working class of Europe and the world a happy
and militant May Day.
For the construction of popular power
Long live anarchy
Long live libertarian communism
Long live May Day
* Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) - Great Britain
* Alternativa Libertaria (AL) - Italy
* Die Platform - Germany
* Embat, Organització Llibertària de Catalunya - Catalonia, Spanish State
* Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (OSL) - Switzerland
* Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) - France, Belgium and Switzerland
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32764
https://anarchiste.org/komunike-evropskych-anarchistickych-organizaci-k-prvnimu-maji/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten