“…insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” –  Albert Einstein.

2023 turns into 2024, just as 2020 did into 2021.   Let’s not even go there with 2022!

“Smile..” they said, “..it could be worse!”  We did, and so did ‘it’!   The only difference now is that smiles are even harder to find.  What are we expecting to change?

That we become less ‘austere’ than we have been for 15 years?  That our debt be more addressable than our health needs?  That painless dentistry will one day be available when you need it?

That the next roof over our heads is more affordable or lasts longer than the last one?  Or that we even get a roof at all?  Perhaps that our lungs will finally draw fresh breath, or that we are marched no closer to the edge of extinction through nuclear oblivion? 

To coin an old Welsh working class idiom:  “Wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which fills up first!”  We all know which one, we’ve always really known and see the proof of it as night follows day – as ’23 turns to ’24.

Expectations, wishes and change are not givens.  At some point we have to decide, choose and act!  To cast out the hamster wheel along with the cage. 

No one reading this, unless you are on the wrong side (you know who you are), has heartfelt belief that we are on the right track, that this is the best humanity can be, or deserves.

We the working class create all wealth and produce all things.  We dominate the world in vast numbers and through that energy to create we can destroy the world of war and exploitation. 

We deserve better and can create a truly human community through choice, organisation and action.   And resolution!

If you have one New Years Revolution to make, make it…the clock is ticking.  Happy Revolution everyone, don’t miss out…the offer is for an increasingly short time only!

AnarCom Net ’23/’24

“All of a sudden, lights appeared along the German trench. And I thought this is a funny thing. And then the Germans started singing ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’. And I woke up, and all the sentries did the same thing, all woke up the other people to come along and see this and what the Earth is going on…They finished their carol and we applauded them and we thought we should retaliate in some way. So, we replied with The First Noel.

And along that line we were suddenly able to see Germans doing exactly the same thing all out in the open. And we just looked at each other for some time and then one or two soldiers went towards them. They met, they shook hands, they swapped cigarettes. They got talking. The war, for that moment, came to a standstill.”   Rifleman Graham Williams, 5th London Rifle Brigade

“Suddenly a Tommy came with a football… And then began a football match. We marked our goals with our caps. Tommy did also. And we had much kicking. And then, after all, the Germans won the football game 3-2.”  Johannes Niemann, 2nd lieutenant, 33rd Saxon Regiment.

“Several of them spoke English. They rather expressed their dislike… for the whole war in fact. They weren’t aggressive at all. Some of them said they had been to London, been to England, in fact, they gave every indication of being glad to meet.”  Col. Scott Shepherd.

From our comrades at Tridna Valka – Class War

“The histories of whole peoples were wiped out for precisely the same reason that the history of the working class movement in recent times is wiped out: it does not suit the conquerors for it to be known, because traditions keep alive the spirit of revolt.”   Albert Meltzer

Who remembers the “Christmas Truce”?  As 1,200,000 soldiers from both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict face each other across a 600-mile-long frozen line of no-man’s land in dugouts and trenches, we scream at the manipulation and violence against our class!

We recall the spontaneous ‘refusal’ truce that broke out in similar circumstances 109 years ago along the Western Front in the First World War.

Spanning the borders of Belgium and France, this ‘Christmas Truce’ as it became known, saw 100,000 or more combatants from the opposing armies making the decision to connect and not fight. 

A fifth of the front line ceased to function because of the instinctive mutual solidarity of workers, not yet fully militarised or traumatised by the warfare-state.

Some of us will remember the firsthand stories of our grandparents. Others, the tales of their family. For most it will be unheard off, and if it is, with little acknowledgement. The memory of peace and solidarity is subversive.

Those precious two days are largely hidden from us by official censorship and denial. In reality, given the betrayal of the organised Labour Movement at the outbreak of the First World War, choosing bosses and states over our class, real workers face-to-face making peace was our last best chance. 

Finally, ordered and even shelled back to their trenches, at least 22,000,000 workers were to die in the next seven years until the bloodletting of the capitalist meat grinder tired itself out.

Ukraine has called for another 500,000 men under arms. admitting that that is doubling its current force.  What is not admitted is the growing lack of public support for the conflict, and the attempt by many to avoid conscription by one means or another.  Including fleeing or buying their way out.  Over 40,000 are now documented.

Russia, despite its advantage in numbers. is so desperate to avoid the obvious impact of mass mobilisation on its society, that having run out of prisoners to force into combat, it is now resorting to pressing into service migrants and asylum seekers taken from the border with Finland and Ukrainian prisoners of war.  For the refugees, if they survive the higher casualty rate than the Ukrainians, after six months they win residency in a militarised autocracy.

In a paradoxical irony, the Gaza- Israel war is turning the lands where the mythology that originated the concept of Christmas was born, into a blood bathed Armageddon.  In 3 months twice as many civilians have died and four times the civilian infrastructure destroyed than in the Ukraine after two years.

Truce here at best is a violent pause that continues the starvation and immiseration of our class.  The working-class have no borders, but nor does the pitiless butchery carried out under the banners of nation states and their proxies. 

In all cases, refusing to fight, desertion, protestation or demanding peace against the goals of capitalisms agents is greeted by states first as cowardly disloyalty and second as seditious treason. Yet how else can war be stopped in a combatant zone?

In the latter half of the First World War in the absence of truce, mutinies became more widespread and more frequent culminating ultimately in revolutionary upheaval in an attempt to change the world. A desperate and divided capitalism managed then to unite long enough to defeat it. 

And here we are again. The path to world war has been described as a conglomeration of numerous conflicts.  With an eye on history, opposition to war now is more than needed but urgent if our class Is not to be consumed again by the millions in another global conflagration.  One that this time could end all wars through our extinction!

The call for ceasefires, the demand for peace is rejected because if it doesn’t meet the goals of the capitalist class, it is subversive, seditious, and a threat to their power.  We should not delude ourselves that peace is the opposite of the active struggle against war.

Refusal or annihilation, war or revolution? This is the existential question our class faces. That is why we say the class war is the peace movement. No war between peoples, no peace between classes, that is what we mean by No War But The Class War!

By Dreyfus

 

2023 has been the first full calendar year of AnarCom Net being formally constituted as an anarchist communist organisation. We came together as activists who recognise the reality and strategy of the social class struggle, and despite our small size and wide geographic spread in these islands, we seem at least to have made some mark.

Looking at the statistics for our website as a year end exercise was both interesting and encouraging. We have had views from all over the world, and our reach has exceeded our expectations.

The following is our Top Twenty web pages this year, as voted for by your clicks. We think it’s a pretty good representation of us as an organisation, and covers many of our concerns. We might have chosen others, but the choice wasn’t ours, dear reader, it was yours.

If you are new to us, we think the following is a fair representation of us; if you are familiar with our output, it’s a reminder of the year that’s passed; or if you are simply an interested visitor, it’s a selection of what our readers come to us for, decided by their clicks.

Have a revolutionary Festive Season!

Why We Should NEVER Vote For ANYONE

“Neither one State nor two
States! No ‘State’ will end the slaughter of our Class!”

War – the faces of Capitalism unmasked.

Internationalist Solidarity against the slaughter of capitalist war!

When a flood is not a flood

Have a Revolutionary 2023!

Pathologising Resistance

On the Anti-Refugee Protests

Why is being against war so hard?

Lead Belly, the Scottsboro Boys, Staying Woke, and Class

The Tanks Roll East

Brianna Ghey: The Tragic Victim of a Culture War

Capitalism’s war without end or
Class War?

War for Peace is the Orwellian logic of genocide

Sunak, Lies and Planetary Rape

Constructive Self-Activity and Community Self-Empowerment

Neither Hamas Nor Israel

Class Report ’23

On The Eve of Invasion

Ukraine’s Two Floods

AnarCom Network

Note from AnarCom Net: we are reproducing in full this IFA statement.

IFA Statement from CRIFA Athens 5 Nov 2023

No war among peoples, no peace among classes

Commission of relations of the International of Anarchist Federations – IFA, Athens 5 November 2023

Translations:

COMMUNIQUÉ IFA issu du CRIFA Athènes du 5 Novembre 2023

Nessuna guerra tra i popoli, nessuna pace tra le classi – Comunicato CRIFA

DECLARAÇÃO DA INTERNACIONAL DE FEDERAÇÕES ANARQUISTAS – ATENAS, 5 DE NOVEMBRO DE 2023

Призив за действие срещу войната и милитаризма

Kurdî/Sorani: IFA-Statement-from-CRIFA-Athens-5-Nov-2023_kurdish_Sorsni.pdf

Persian: IFA-Statement-from-CRIFA-Athens-5-Nov-2023_persian.pdf

Atény: Prohlášení Internacionály anarchistických federací

The Commission of Relations of the International of Anarchist Federations gathered in Athens on 4-5 November 2023 to discuss and share thoughts and practices of our Federations. Currently, we are particularly active in antimilitarist activities, in a period that is characterised by the intensification of wars, of which the most known, such as the conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine or Sudan should not make forget the globality of the problem.

War is never a solution, but a way for capitalism and the state to reproduce forms of domination, exploitation, patriarchy and oppression. War is the exacerbation of the violence of power and hierarchy. Many people discuss war crimes, we say that war is always a crime. All wars are against the people and use arguments such as nationalism, putting oppressed people the ones against the others, trying to create illusions of common interests of all classes to undermine social conflicts through war propaganda.

We anarchists oppose all borders, states, armies and the very principle of territorial sovereignty. We propose our ideas of international solidarity, actively supporting all the victims of wars, and all those who refuse wars from all sides: objectors, deserters, saboteurs and people who escape the wars.

We support all antimilitarist actions that are in agreement with our anarchist principles, as well as those groups, individuals and collectives who resist the war making social work, helping people, promoting social struggles and continuing to spread anti-authoritarian cultures despite the war.

In addition of making international diffusion of these antimilitarist activities as a work of counter-information before war propaganda though their journals, radios and medias, our federations are promoting activities such as: 

The ‘Worldwide days of action against any war and militarism’ from 17-25 November 2023 https://de.indymedia.org/node/306630

The antimilitarist fortnight of Publico in Paris from 5 to 26 November 2023 http://www.librairie-publico.info/?p=8835 

and the Antimilitarist Assembly in Italy. https://umanitanova.org/event/milano-assemblea-antimilitarista-4/ 

to give just a few examples.

No war among peoples, no peace among classes.

Commission of relations of the International of Anarchist Federations – IFA, Athens 5 November 2023

Capitalism has been described as a ‘war of all against all’.  This is how they would like us to feel. 

In reality it is a war of the rich and powerful, the world of corporate Capitalist exploitation and oppression against the rest of us. The producers, the working class! They need to exploit our labour to rob us and to control us.

This begins with our division.

Our communities have been atomised into ‘penny packets’ of humanity.  A few individuals here, a couple there.  A small nuclear family there, a few intimates as a friendship network here, and neighbours and colleagues, as alienated and atomised as us.

It is hard not to feel alone and powerless as we mentally struggle with our alienation, trying to express our individuality through consuming what they allow us to afford to buy and our independence by managing our debt.

Millions of us, billions of us, on tiny islands of connection where human communities once stood firm.  If we are old enough, our parents remember. Our grandparents remember even better, though today, the idea of belonging now feels like fantasy.

Here enters the capitalist state and its wars. Creating consumable images of community in an ‘us versus them’ conflict based on nation, or culture wars against individual identity.

But this experience shrouds a reality. We are billions.  We produce the worlds wealth even if, hidden behind smoke and mirrors, we struggle to see it stolen from us.  Our numbers and our role as the sole creators of wealth give us powers we have yet to learn to utilise. 

Not to benefit the bosses and their states, but to take control of rebuilding our communities through struggle and solidarity and abolishing their wealth and power.  But where do we start?

First, we need to be around long enough to do this! That means finding a way to oppose their control and repression at home and their wars abroad threatening our annihilation.

Secondly, we need to break through the fabric of lies and ground ourselves in our compassion and empathy and recognise that the Palestinian screaming in the street, and the Israeli lamenting in a public square are people like us. They are neither the state of Israel nor its rival state-in-waiting Hamas. 

The latter, as are the oligarchs of Ukraine and the Kleptocrats of Russia, play the same game of domination and robbery against our class as our bosses on the home front!

Thirdly we need to challenge the Western paradigm.  Not accept the cultural ‘purdah’, our silencing on the grounds that we know nothing.  In our humanity we see it all and understand what inhumanity is!  Beyond language, faith, colour or borders!

Fourthly we can look beyond the shallow glamour of horror so familiarly portrayed on our media, dulling our senses to what has happened.  In Gaza 2/3rds of all the housing has been destroyed; nearly 90% of the population has been displaced, 3% of the population is either dead or wounded in just two months – including 1% of the children.

In Israel scores of the dead were raped and mutilated before they were killed; dozens of others were forced to watch their loved ones murdered in front of them, the elderly and infirm were taken away on their mobility vehicles while babies were carried through baying mobs.

In Russia and Ukraine, kids have state security enforcers behind their backs to force them, to ensure they die rather than retreat, while those who run to avoid conscription, 40,000 alone in Ukraine, face prison as traitors for years.

Mesmerising us in a stage-managed horror movie of goodies versus baddies is designed to channel us to support our ‘side’, or state, as paragon of order and our protector.  Failing that just burn out our attention span through shame and discomfort.

Behind this paralysing fog, capitalist barbarism accelerates the unacceptable that it could not get away with in times of greater peace and strength for our class.

While we are diverted or numbed by the spectacle, Iran ramps up its judicial murder of dissidents executing 130 since October 7th; Russia effectively recriminalises homosexuality, raiding and closing down gay venues; Israel arms settlers to ethnically cleans the illegally occupied West Bank.

In Europe the British government restricts migration and protests, defining dissent as sedition. while the Dutch follow Italy in electing a fascist government.  The US alone vetoed a UN stop to genocide, abandoning its own mythical high ground.

Taking us beyond these points, the question arises what can we do 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 linked to war opposition.  Workers in the field of 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.

As a delegate from the climate doomed islands of Tuvalu said in frustration at the 2023 COP 28 climate conference in the oil rich UAE: “How many more stories must you listen to before you take action”. The time is now!

By Dreyfus

December marks the 1st anniversary of our formal constitution as the AnarCom Network, an organisation of internationalist revolutionary class-struggle anarchist-communists. 

Despite having been in discussion and doing some joint work with numerous individuals since August 2022, we took several months to get to what we felt was a fundamental agreement on organisational aims and principles.

Our goal was to create a structurally flexible network around a concise and coherent set of agreed revolutionary positions we would define as Anarchist Communist.

A flexible network to enable comrades from other traditions, local groups and non-aligned, to manage their route to engagement with us.

Coherent because lessons from centuries of revolutionary class struggle are not open to endless debate or unlearning with fleeting fads or expedience.

Anarchist Communist because our consensus lies firmly within this tradition while recognising members bring their own rich experience from the traditions of other anarchist movements, council, left and libertarian communism.

We continue to argue that a new, if historically familiar, tendency is emerging – an internationalist revolutionary class struggle realignment, as a response to the reality of war and its existential threat. 

Our response is to share our struggles in solidarity with our class, develop and share our analysis with like-minded class militants and continue building good relationships with revolutionary internationalists. 

War will not cease without it.

We are not academics nor researchers but are a dispersed assembly of predominantly veteran working-class militants from a range of traditions and none.

Our activity is within our class, not outside it, and develops our analysis in real time. We are delighted to say in consequence we have had a busy first year!

As activists in our own Unions, communities, workplaces and networks, we have organised, discussed and shared our perspectives. 

In our own localities throughout the last strike wave, we have been on marches, to meetings and demonstrations. We have attended picket lines as strikers or in solidarity primarily in post, rail, health or education.

In the process producing a range of resources including banners, badges and stickers to share and engage the wider struggles of our class.

We have been to May Day rallies and participated in solidarity actions particularly against the oppression of workers and comrades on trial in France.

In ideas and communication, we have produced 5 issues of our magazine Rebel Rose, 3 leaflets and 3 pamphlets: on the recent strikes, against terrorism, and against bloodletting of the current wars (another will be out before the years end).

We have distributed our resources on the streets, demos and at 6 radical and anarchist bookfairs across the UK.

Internationally we have developed a good range of contacts and connections, particularly in France, Central and Eastern Europe. As part of this we have attended 2 internationalist gatherings in Switzerland and the Black Sea coast, focusing on realignment of forces of the basis of No War but the Class War!

We have been particularly busy developing our presence across social media and on our website, posting around 60 of our own articles and an equal number of contributions from comrades and contacts at home and abroad.

Many of our articles have been widely shared and translated into half a dozen other languages. 

Additionally, we have coordinated an internationalist statement against the Russia-Ukraine war with several NWBTCW projects amongst our European comrades.

We continue energetically to contribute to internationalist opposition to capitalist wars and have written extensively on events currently taking place in Middle East.

All of this is now clearly a matter of public record and available to see through our webpage and other posting sites. Including our new contemporary in-house memes for regular observation and commentary.

We are however still a small group spread across the length of these islands, with all the limitations that inevitably imposes. Despite this, we celebrate what we have achieved in our first year and look forward to the next.

To those who have come to see us; communicated with us and shared their struggles with us, we say thank you!

To our class we say strength through solidarity!

To our critics we say welcome to the debate, engage with us. 

To our fellow revolutionists, we say love and comradeship. To the cynics, detractors and enemies of our class, we never expected you to be on our side

By the Anarchist Communist Network