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While the global capitalist system is dragging the world into ever more war and misery, those who refuse to take sides in these wars and fight to end the system that causes them, are still few and far between. So it is a promising sign that this summer several extended meetings of internationalist revolutionaries from many different countries were organized in Europe. in early June, on the last day of the anti-war congress in Prague, we agreed on the need of a short statement on capitalism and war that expresses our common positions and can serve as a base for further networking and common action. This statement was drafted after the congress ended. It was discussed, amended and approved at the internationalist meeting in Arezzo where the hope was expressed that it will be further discussed by the participants of the Prague congress and those who will gather in Poznan later this month.  

AN INTERNATIONALIST STATEMENT ON CAPITALISM AND WAR  

1. In our times, all wars are capitalist wars. While the specific circumstances in which they break out may be quite different, all are rooted in the capitalist system, which is based on competition and exploitation.

2. While imperialism has been a constant feature of capitalism since its beginning, the systemic crisis which capitalism faces today and the instability it engenders  both push economic competition to military conflict and create opportunities to do so. This crisis will only deepen, making it inevitable that the continuing existence of capitalism would imply the prospect of generalizing wars.

3. The working class, the vast majority of humankind, has nothing to win and everything to lose in war. It is always its main victim. National defense and national liberation means fighting and dying for the interests of one faction of the capitalist class against another. It means killing (and being killed by) other working class people for the power and profit of the class that exploits and oppresses us.

4. We reject both nationalism and democracy, which are the principal ideological tools by which the capitalist class creates the illusion that its interests and those of the working class within its borders are the same, and by which it mobilizes for war and justifies the militarization of society.

5. There are no separate solutions for the many existential threats to humankind. A peaceful capitalism, a green capitalism, a socially just capitalism are all just pipe dreams to hide the growing horror that is real. War, ethnic cleansing, genocide, ecocide, climate disasters, pandemics, poverty, insecurity, forced migration, homelessness, stress and mental breakdown will continue to worsen, together with the crisis of capitalism which causes them all. Therefore there is but one solution to all of them: closing the capitalist chapter of human history.  

6. We are not pacifists. We do not call for negotiations or UN interventions, parliamentary resolutions, disinvestments, etc. We do not appeal to the ruling class to act “reasonably”, because we understand that it can’t. Instead we count on autonomous, class based resistance to capitalism. The global working class is the only social force capable of ending capitalism and establishing a human community based on the fulfillment of needs instead of the compulsion of making profit.

7. But it has a long way to go. Its struggle cannot be merely economic, it has to be political as well and confront the state. It has to refuse to submit to capitalism’s war drive. We support proletarians on both sides of any war who refuse to fight, who desert, who fraternize instead of killing each other. We support sabotage of the war machine and collective resistance against conscription, mobilization and the militarization of society.

8. But the oxygen on which the war-machine depends is the exploitation of the proletariat, the extraction of surplus value. It would be paralyzed without it. So war can’t be stopped without ending exploitation. Furthermore, to make room for the war efforts, the ruling class has to attack the social wage, impose austerity. In fighting against it, workers fight against the war, consciously or not. The more they wage this fight autonomously, without any collaboration with the capitalist class and its state, the more it can blossom into a struggle against exploitation, a revolution which puts an end to capitalism, to its wars and its miserable ‘peace’.

“Together Against Capitalist Wars and Against Capitalist Peace!”

To the comrades of ‘Beach Communism’ assembled in Poznan, Poland, 8th-14th July. Internationalist greetings and love, fun and solidarity!
A year since Varna and over 2 years since the bloody ignition of war along the fault line of nuclear imperialism!
We hope for and need your decisive class commitment to revolutionary internationalist opposition to all capitalist war, and all partisan combatant forces.
We look forward to moving beyond the conciliatory ambivalence of Varna to a decisive choice of internationalist realignment.
Procrastination is the thief of time and time is not on our side!

No war between peoples no peace between classes – No War But The Class War!

Taken from a recent reprint by Tyneside Anarchist Archive

The following piece is from the rather excellent ‘TYNESIDE SYNDICALIST‘ No 15 June/July 1987 and was written in the face of yet another looming general election fiasco, quite apt with the current farce in our faces yet again…enjoy, like, care, give a share….

“As we approach another General Election the media circus is regurgitating the usual sickening clichés and nonsense about the difference it will all make. We are not going to go along with this by criticising the parties, policies or manifestos. Instead, we prefer to question the whole idea of parliamentary democracy, and to broaden the argument by talking about the underlying issues of authority, power and control.

Our system of government is geared to fitting in with the needs of capitalism. The small differences there are between the major parties concern how best to accommodate to the quest for profit of the multinationals and financial institutions. As voters we are presented with apparent choices of style, but we have no realistic opportunity to reject the whole sordid assumptions and practices of capitalism. So, our power to wield our votes to change things is mainly an illusion.

But that’s not all. The structure of any political party means that we are made even more passive by supporting or joining it. Parties consist of massive overbearing hierarchies where even straightforward and sensible change is virtually impossible to achieve unless the leadership already desire it. Changes that would imply removing control from the top obviously get nowhere.

Some people enter the party hierarchy with the intention of improving things from within. They very quickly get swallowed up by the dead weight of bureaucracy and neutralised by the control of those at the top, and it’s irrelevant how much support from the base they have.

The only other alternative is to get to the top themselves, but by the time they’ve managed it, the distortions and perverting effects of the hierarchy have inevitably taken their toll – so that the old status quo is now accepted. We can see this very clearly in one-time radical labour politicians or broad-left trade union officials who become more and more reactionary as they climb the ladder and leave the base behind. Meanwhile those at the bottom are left passive and powerless, and maybe worse off because of the time and effort wasted on keeping the faith in a “better leadership”.

Clearly this type of analysis applies to supposedly revolutionary parties and to trade unions just as much as to the big parties. If decision making isn’t placed squarely at the base, then the mass of ordinary member’s maybe active, but only in doing what they are told, what is permissible, and they are in no position at all to challenge the status quo. These days most organisations involving politics make a big show of internal democracy, but when it comes down to it those at the top have to agree before anything gets done.

But we have to take the analysis a bit further than this. Most people seem fully aware that they have no control, but still manage to muster up enough motivation to support the big parties and to make no effort to challenge bureaucratic and authoritarian control. We can present alternatives to hierarchies and powerless membership – in this paper we consistently offer ideas and examples of rank-and-file control, assembly – based decision making, mandated and re-callable delegates and so on. Such ideas are acceptable; people agree that they would be better. But there’s a tendency to say, “it won’t work” (even when given cast iron evidence of it working), and to not really want or be able to apply the ideas in their own real lives. It looks as though people feel more comfortable being passive, don’t want the bother of being responsible, in fact desire to be dominated. Why is this?

‘The desire to be dominated’

People aren’t completely logical; we all behave irrationally quite a lot of the time. So while working class people want freedom, struggle to make our lives better and recognise the injustices of society, other parts of us also desire to be controlled to let others make our decisions for us. That is why it is possible for Thatcher to attract so many of our votes. All of the other parties have massive blind spots to the problems of power and authority too and can’t afford to examine these areas because it would expose their own (equally large) shortcomings.

In this society virtually all of our lives are lived under the shadow of forms of authority that are completely out of our control. It is built into us to be subservient. It’s a difficult pattern to break down, but the best path is in active struggle. Real lived experience of battling against authority begins to give us confidence in our own collective power.

Experience of the double-dealing, betrayal and manipulation of politicians and trade union officials clinging onto their positions in the hierarchy tests our faith in their influence, whilst we know we can trust one another. So, rank and file control is not enough – we need also to be conscious of why we need it. Because otherwise we will find ourselves trusting the next plausible dominator who comes along, and the gains of our experience of collective self-control will be lost.”

Pamphlet available £3.50 each plus post and packing

Hull Radical Bookfair – 10th August 2024. If you would like a stall or to do a talk/presentation please get in touch ASAP.

https://www.facebook.com/events/259282350403234/

On the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave, we re-publish an article by the revolutionary group ‘Wildcat’ from the time on the central role of women to the success and extension of the strike towards its wider generalisation.  A lesson that still inspires us.

Miners! Learn from your wives!

Thousands of women are playing a vital supporting role in mining areas. Without this involvement initiated by the women themselves miners would have been in a far weaker position to fight.   As a woman canteen worker at Parkside pit said:   “it mustn’t be forgotten that this strike wouldn’t have lasted more than three months without the self sacrifice of the miners wives and the participation  of thousands of women in support groups”.

However, many NUM branches have refused to give money to the kitchens. Women from Fitzwilliam in Yorkshire say that they haven’t had a penny from the union.

Other branches have tried to impose strict conditions on the way money is used in the kitchens, to make sure the women know who’s boss.  Women from Upton Miners support Group refused NUM money. They said “they wanted to give a donation on condition that they had to say in the menu!  But we are answerable to nobody!”.  At Tower Lodge in Hirwaun, Wales, NUM officials insisted that £100 collected by the women had to go to them instead.  A miners wife told how “it’s like working with the Mafia. Terry Thomas (Vice President of South Wales NUM) came chasing after the money, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Neil Kinnock wasn’t far behind”.

When women want to go beyond the kitchen sink and go picketing, they have had an even harder time of it.  At Wistow colliery miners themselves organised a picket of the local power station, inviting all their supporters along.  A miner described what happened: “The NUM officials came down and told us to leave because the pickets had not been organised by the NUM and not all the pickets were NUM members.  They also told the female pickets to get back to the soup kitchens ‘where they belonged’.  One official went over to the police lines, inviting them to deal with us as they wished, because we were nothing to do with the NUM”. This shows which side the NUM is on!

Militant women want more than to be allowed on the picket line. They want a say in running the strike. But despite their support and involvement the wives and families of miners are not allowed into meetings to discuss the strikes strategy and tactics. It is vital that everyone who is actively supporting the strike is treated as equal in taking decisions about what to do and how to conduct it.  Women from a Welsh pit village were told why they were banned from strike committee meetings – they had criticised the running of the strike, whereas the men were afraid to criticise “their own” leaders. 

Why are union officials so hostile to women becoming more actively involved in the strike? This demand challenges the very heart of trade unionism. For once you let the miners wives into the branch meetings, and elect them onto strike committees, a precedent is established. Once non-miners are allowed to fully participate in the strike, the way is open for more and more people to be drawn into the struggle until what you have is no longer a trade union dispute but a mass strike! In this situation, union leaders would lose any special claim to authority. They recognise this threat to their power. They are afraid of women activists who bluntly refuse to do what they tell them. No wonder they tell the women to “get back to the kitchens”.

Women’s Pickets

Women who want to go picketing have met other problems. If they are the wives of militant miners who have already been arrested, they are reluctant to risk arrest as well, especially with children to look after. There is no reason why this should be organised by women , men on strike should take their share of caring for the children and let the women go picketing. Not just because everyone should be involved, but also women make very good pickets. For many it is their first experience of apicket line but they know what to do.

A women’s picket of Sutton Manor pit in Lancashire where I was present, stood out in contrast to the usual picket line ritual of a few shouts and people generally not knowing what’s going on. We discussed beforehand what we wanted to do and despite being heavily outnumbered by the police we did give them a run for their money. And they hated it! They just couldn’t think of enough sexist insults to fling at us there was a feeling of solidarity and collectivity that comes from struggling together. Without the union leaders and union traditions to tell them how to behave, which the men have, women are able to simply do what they decide to be done.

Wildcat does not support the aims of the Greenham movement, but pickets can learn from their organisation.  The women at Greenham Common in 1982 and 1983 had no officials to say what they could do. They organised several hundred people around an 11 mile perimeter fence at night keeping one stop ahead of the police by using walkie-talkie radios, organising actions through group delegates to small central planning meetings making sure that all participants knew what was going on and everyone playing their part, however small.

What people involved in the miners strike have learnt, that the Greenham women never did, is the need to respond to state violence with our own violence.  As one miners wife puts it: “I’ve always respected the police, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll watch a Bobby being kicked to death in the street in the future and I’ll walk across to the other side. They show their true colours now.”

Far from being the weakest section of the working class, unable to fight back against the bosses onslaught because they are marginalised, women have shown time and again that it is their very lack of involvement in the organisations which hold men back, that enables them to organise themselves and carry out their own decisions and actions.  This puts them at the forefront of working class struggle. If miners are to win, they must learn from their wives and mothers, girlfriends and daughters.

Wildcat, Autumn 1984

Prague Declaration June 2024

List of Groups who signed the declaration:

• ACN [AnarCom Network] (UK)

• CAS (Czechia and Slovakian)

• KRAS – AIT (Russian)

• AMI [Anti Militarist Initiative] (International Network)

• AXA (Hungary)

• IWW Poland ROC {RKC} (Poland)

• Don’t be silent – Odessa (Ukraine)

• FACB (Bulgaria)

• CNT- AIT France

• ASI – AIT (Serbia)

• ATENEO LIBERTARIO DE CARABANCHEL LATINA (Spain)

• Konflict (Bulgaria)

• ACG (UK)

“Together Against Capitalist Wars and Against Capitalist Peace!”  May 2024.

After a promising start on Wednesday 22nd, things appeared to fall apart on Thursday.  After an event hosted by Kites not Drones, news of cancellations came as the original Congress Centre, secured, and paid for in February withdrew at the last minute to the consternation of delegates,

It was at this point the various visiting comrades decided to proceed with a parallel program in the absence of confirmation of alternatives.  This group of around 50 secured spaces on the Friday to initiate discussion and debate.

59 predominately anarchist groups were invited to the ‘official’ Congress.  10 decided to work with the parallel group (for easy ref calling itself the ‘Self Organised Assembly’ or SOA.), 8 of them exclusively.  Whilst not all the invitees were able to attend, the remainder that did continued to focus on the Congress weekend.

The context was hard for outsiders to grasp, but threats and provocations had preceded any events compelling the organisers to issue the following statement:

“The organizing team …has been facing provocations and sabotages for a long time, which are supposed to complicate the organization of the anti-war activities… we are watching the attacks of our opponents grow in intensity.” 

AnarCom made the decision to devote its limited resources to meeting and discussing with specific groups who had approached us while waiting for further news on the Congress venue. 

We remained in contact throughout with both the Organising Committee and comrades from the Czechoslovak Anarchist Society (CAS), gaining insights from their experience. From them we learned:

“The anarchist movement in the Czech Republic has been in crisis and in retreat for several years now, including the split over the war in Ukraine. Afed has few members, but it has strong media coverage and background (autonomous centres, contacts to ex-anarchists, nowadays left liberals at universities).

So, when they started to preach pro-war propaganda, the anti-militarist voice was not heard, and they poisoned the thinking of many people – especially the youth.”

There was general consensus the loss of the first venue was attributable to sectarian (or rather pro war partisan) sabotage.

Additionally:  “…there was an anarchist bookfair in Prague this weekend. It’s very well attended, last year about 2000 people passed through. We, as anti-militarists, were not invited, as it was co-organised by Afed and the Ukrainian Solidarity Collective were performing there with their pro war propaganda.”

There may have been a lot more going on for them than we were privy to.  It is worth remembering as context that Czechia is a firm supporter of Ukraine in the middle of an election, next to a country (Sovakia) which just had an assassination attempt on its PM.

We were able in part to attend the relocated Congress on Saturday and participate in some discussion.   There were around 50 people there at any one time and litterature stalls.  It took place in an ecology training centre with lunch provided and amenities for other refreshments.  We had not seen the majority of attendees before.

Amongst key topics were the splits in the so-called movement, the division of our class through the exploitation of culture-wars and the centrality of the action of our class rather than our own efforts to change the forces on the ground. 

Though good examples of blockade actions at some Italian ports in conjunction with unionised workers were shared – acknowledging the implied limits of ideology and bureaucracy on the potential for more.

A recurring question from the Wednesday to the Saturday had been “what can we do?”.   We suggested this question be turned around to ask ourselves “what are we doing?” 

Only we can answer this ourselves on the ground and our defining geographies and political and social circumstances will inform us of resources and potential.

Continuing security concerns had led to request for mobile phones not to be used to communicate for the Sunday session which we were unable to attend as unfortunately we couldn’t access the email links notifying us.

Other comrades continued their parallel program throughout and elements of the SOA were working on some form of communiqué by the time we left.  We look forward to seeing the outcome of the work of that group. 

We have continued to liaise with   comrades – perhaps a coalition of the willing – to draw learning from this and to find common ground for a joint statement, primarily relating to the wars and the veritable split in our movement.  We will report more on progress on this in the coming days.

Report by Dreyfus

Why vote?  Look at the person you are thinking of voting for, what makes them not look sound, or feel like any politician you’ve ever seen strutting and lying on your TV screens?

What makes them so excel in virtues you don’t have that you should hand your power and autonomy over to them?

Would you hand the contents of your home so easily over to a burglar, or your family without a murmur to a kidnapper?  Of course not! That would be ridiculous, yet it’s the same principle they don’t want us to see in the carnival of election time.

The idea that we willingly handover all agency over our neighbourhoods, our welfare and our futures to professionals who excel in some of the worst human arts of manipulation, deceit, lies and corruption is the stuff of nightmares and dark graphic novels. That they want to have power in the first place should be clue enough.

For all the lies that pervade election times, perhaps the biggest is that the ballot box makes us equal, that Rishi with his million-pound swimming pool and the shop worker with a paddling pool have the same rights and responsibilities as each other.   Except that what we give Starmer or Rishi is theirs for the duration, while we wait for our right to place an X in five years-time on another piece of paper.  

And how precious that X is made to feel given that you probably only have 10 of them to use in your lifetime. 10 moments of feeling equal is your lifetime ration of influence or participation.

In the process, its dull familiarity creates the attitude in most of us summed up as “I don’t believe in politics” or “what has politics got to do with me?”  And that is exactly what they want us to feel.   Distanced and docile.

However, always pushing back against this is our innate humanity and our struggle for a dignified existence. Our own lives are social, economic, and emotional all of which combine to make our existence deeply political.  We care massively about our friends, our loved ones, our neighbourhoods and environment, our welfare, and our futures. 

On a day-to-day level we demonstrate this actively with our colleagues, communities, and the kinds of social family we consciously choose to construct.  We come together all the time in free, and yes, political association. 

To combat litter, to look after our vulnerable neighbours, to volunteer, to assist and to commune with others like us in football teams, choirs, for feeding people, hospital transports or knitting circles.  And to strike against them!

It’s often said that we must vote because people fought and gave their lives for that right.  How odd then that we vote in elections only put in power those who want us to continue fighting and dying to protect their power!  Nice try, but even the most dedicated voter can recognise the army of ‘mini me’s’ starting to climb the greasy pole.

Political parties, election campaigns whether national or local are not the community in action! They are the definition of our blindsided manipulation and exclusion from anything meaningful that looks like change.

They want our participation in this staged event – it looks good for them.  It encourages them and allows them to claim their greed is in our name.  Look at the last time you used your X, what did it change?  We feel sure if they thought it could really change anything they would make it illegal.

Wouldn’t it be great if these elections receive the contempt they deserve.  Let’s have an election strike!

Voting leaves them feeling empowered and subjects us to passivity at best, state sanctioned brutality at worst.  Refusing to vote in favour of community mobilisation is not apathy, on the contrary, if you vote you may feel you’ve no right to complain.

If we live long enough to complain that is!  What makes this election different is that it is happening in a time war!  We are rearming towards a generalised war as Ukraine/Russia; Gaza/Israel, Britain, Yemen, Iran, China, and the US all coalesce along front lines of capitalist rivalry.

Whoever you vote for will not end the war but pursue its escalation in the ‘national interest’.  That is in fact the interests of the capitalists, their local state operatives and the imperialist blocks whose boots on the ground they are. 

Both parties promise to maintain war austerity and increase military spending, one is openly committed to conscription, and we have seen where the Tories go labour goes.  Vote labour and still die horribly!

Taking us beyond these points, the question arises what can we do instead?  Practically, individually, and collectively.  Locally and nationally, at home and abroad?

On the most basic level, as individuals, thinking globally but acting locally, refuse the imposed consensus and say what we see. 

Call out the hypocrisy and advocate for ourselves and our class across frontiers.  Collectively, refuse to subsume our needs to any so called ‘national interest’.

Link our needs and demands to the austerity of war profiteering and profiteering wars.  Everything we do at home, here for ourselves and our class, hinders the operation of the warfare state.

Talk, communicate, share our own struggles and insights – individual, community, workplace, environmental – in solidarity across locality and trade.  A victory on the home front is a victory and example abroad.

Make demands opposed the charades of their violent ‘social peace’, linked to opposition to their wars.  Workers in the field of arms manufacture or supply, energy, shipping, chemicals, iron and steel, ports, aviation, and docks can all be instrumental in slowing or blocking the supply lines of war.  Include these as centres of propagating our own demands and against militarisation.

In direct action choose targets that challenge power and build solidarity. Activists everywhere should target the centres of power, production and decision making instead of paint bombing musicals or obstructing other workers battling to meet our daily needs.

Build hubs of coordination, discussion, communication bringing community and labour together.  Develop our own methods of accountable and actionable decision making.

Own these decisions and actions, publicise and promote them.  Disseminate in multimedia formats and let others see that resistance is possible.  The longest journey, a single step.

We may always ask when and where should I start?  Two nuclear armed powers are warring in a capitalist power block crisis on our frontiers.  Our state is involved in both!  The danger is real, the danger is now. 

Instead of voting, let’s organise to change something!

Article by Dreyfus