Author: anarcomnet

In Gordon Brown’s last budget just before the 2008 financial crash, he declared that the state had effectively resolved the instability of capitalism promising “we will never return to the old boom and bust”.

Since then we have seen a banking collapse, 10 years of austerity, a flight from Europe, a pandemic, a war, a government inflicted fiscal catastrophe, a return to austerity and the promise of the longest recession in our history.  All against the backdrop of mounting climate emergency.

Far from being resolved, capitalist crisis and the depth of their cycles are intensifying.  The government tells the truth on one thing, it’s not just Britain.  Capitalism’s crisis is global and it’s war against us all intensifies in equal measure.

The latest emergency budget presents a bill of £50 billion in cuts and tax hikes to workers and the poor already facing a 10% real term cut in living standards due to supply-driven inflation.  This sum equals the combined war profits of UK gas and oil producers for this year leaving no doubt of the political and class nature of this choice.

That this is a war against our class, against all of us, is more evident day by day to people struggling to survive. 500,000 workers are actively in dispute or on strike at the moment with many more actions pending, not least amongst nurses and elsewhere in the NHS, the U.K.’s largest employer.

The need for resistance is clear but the need for planning and tactics clearer.  Unless we link our demands, be they wages, conditions, housing or bills, social care, environment or benefits, we will be pulled apart and defeated piecemeal.  Solidarity, unity and coordination are everything.

The slogan of the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign that “It’s time to turn anger into action” will be pissing in the wind if we abandon our own struggles at the first offer of talks as the RMT decided to do without consulting its members.  The role of such truces is to break momentum and spirit. 

If the RMT cave in now, it says ‘stuff you’ to the other transport workers, posties, nurses.  If the bosses pull the rug, they risk ‘crying wolf’ when they call their members out again.  This is why union leaderships and the Labour establishment TUC are a real and present danger to their rank and file members.

Strikers, activists and supporters should begin grassroots networking to develop alternative cooperation and decision centres away from union structural leadership to ensure solidarity is maintained and fragmentation avoided.  Where possible, electing delegated liaison committees or councils for coordination and mutual support to bypass bureaucratic maneuvering. 

It is clear that the Loyal Opposition Labour Party offers nothing but betrayal and commitment to more austerity.  Or worse, plain anti-working-class racism to divide and defeat the threat of class struggle to Labour’s pretensions.  Starmer say’s “…we’re recruiting too many people from overseas into…the health service.’  That’s why you won’t see him on a picket line then!

But it’s not about the Tories or Labour, it’s their rich greedy puppet master boss-class capitalists, managing their class war on the social, economic and military fronts across the globe. 

Likewise, it’s not about transport workers, nurses, renters or migrants, but about us all.  As an Albanian woman recently put it “They say there’s not war here, but there’s a big war.  The economy is weak and prices are too high…we cannot live.”. 

Article by Dreyfus

Belarus outlaws’ unions:

An entire trade union movement in a European country is now facing extinction as courts declare unions to be “extremist” or “Western agents” — simply for doing what unions do.  

That is the situation today in Belarus.  A national trade union centre and major unions have been made illegal.  Union leaders are in jail facing long prison terms.  The regime has unleashed defamation campaigns targeting unions and their allies. Pressure on the regime in Belarus is intensifying. We join them in demanding the immediate release of all the jailed activists and the restoration of independent, democratic trade unions in the country.

Marlboro workers continue protests at union busting factory in Turkey:

Workers at the Philip Morris factory in Izmir, Turkey, are paid less than the poverty threshold — despite the company earning massive profits. The workers’ incomes are dwindling as a result of the country’s economic turmoil. Furthermore, there is discrimination between permanent and subcontracted workers, though they perform the same tasks and use the same machines. 

Recently, almost all the workers joined the union — but the company then sacked 124 of them in a brazen attempt at union-busting.  While the workers conduct daily protests in front of the factory, the company refuses to negotiate.  

1. – Can we have a brief history of the Kate Sharpley Library?

A: The Kate Sharpley Library was established in 1979 by comrades connected with 121 Bookshop in Brixton. Originally it covered a broad range of subjects of interest to anarchists. After it moved out of London in 1992 the focus changed to be a collection of material by and about the anarchist movement. In 1999 the physical library moved to California, but with the same focus on preserving anarchist history and the stories of the people who made the movement.

2. – As with other archives, we share a passion for collecting and preserving past printed anarchist material. With (predominantly) instant online reading these days… are the days of physical literature numbered?

A: We are constantly getting newspapers/pamphlets/leaflets etc. that have been recently produced. These are coming from across the world and seem to me to evidence that anarchists are not moving to a (purely) digital movement but are staying loyal to printed matter and physical objects.

3. – I’ve seen previous online comments from some who say that now the KSL is mainly based in California, with much of the UK anarchist archive based there too, then why donate material (or even support) when such aforementioned literature ‘should be available/ accessible in the UK’ What do KSL say?

A: If people don’t want to donate that is fine. It is their material and they have every right to decide where it goes. I think/hope that scanning material which is available to all may appease some people’s worries. We’re very grateful to everyone who does support us, in particular the Friends of the KSL who have set up regular donations.

4. – There was discussion quite some time ago of making the KSL archive available online somehow, or a listing of what it holds, is this still planned?

A: I am not certain that we would need to scan our whole collection. Some of what we have is replicated online by other groups/libraries/archives etc. To scan what is already available wouldn’t serve much purpose. What we do scan, more often than not, can’t be found anywhere on the web and we see that as being a service that helps people. We could certainly do much more: papers like Iconoclast, Rational Review, The Syndicalist etc. etc. as well as historic personal correspondence certainly could do with being put on line. We could also, we sense, supplement what is already available. For example, we have a lot of 1940s Anarchist Federation correspondence that could supplement the Syndicalist Workers Federation material up at The Sparrows Nest; or a collection of Freedom Press leaflets from 1912 onwards that might be better placed on the Freedom Press website. That needs talking about with them and others, of course. Sometimes seeing scanned material sitting in isolation from any context doesn’t really help! We do have a catalogue and we are a little embarrassed by our earlier entries in it. To be fair to us we were a lot less experienced and far too casual with it in those long ago days. We want the catalogue to be an educational tool with as much detail as we can add for each item. We also want it on line.

5. – You have moved from producing regular pamphlets to (in conjunction with AK Press) releasing some great books. What forthcoming titles are planned? any future pamphlets?

A: Our next publication with AK is Agitated by Joni D., a translation of a great work on the Spanish Autonomous groups during the 1970s. Readable and thoughtful it adds to our knowledge as well as expanding our understanding of anarchism. We have a project underway on the writings of Camillo Berneri and one or two other topics and we are always on the lookout for interesting material that can be translated into English. We may also publish more on-line such as our work on the 1945 split in British-anarchism,   http://katesharpleylibrary.pbworks.com/w/page/139511268/The%201945%20split%20in%20British%20anarchism which makes available scans of contemporary documents and newspapers which people may find useful.

6. – We have previously talked about our ‘encroaching old age’ and lack of ‘younger comrades’ eager to ‘take over the reins of running an archive’ what can be done to encourage the next generation to realise the importance of ‘dusty old anarchist papers’?

A: There are young people who are interested in the KSL. They’re a bit like ourselves in the beginning: we were excited by the content and not so much by the means of conserving and protecting the material. And that still is very common. In the past students writing on anarchist history have helped us. That said, we are all volunteers and we understand that the problem has been maintaining the ability to regularly work with us, either on site or remotely. As we all know the throughput within anarchism is a distinct phenomenon and we suffer as much as anyone.

7. – With the last question in mind, what projects have the KSL planned, and what is the future for the KSL itself?

A: As outlined above, we do have lots of plans. As an ageing affinity group we are looking to add younger people and with ideas. Covid affected our work quite badly – especially in terms of people being able to work in the archive. Much of what we do isn’t necessarily public facing. It’s the ordering and cataloging of material together with constant work on the conservation of old newspapers, pamphlets and leaflets etc. We are still working on a sizeable backlog. We have mentioned plans for scanning and working on the catalogue for putting on line above. There is always the Bulletin which takes time to put together as well as individual bits of writing Collective members might want to do. Never mind the regular search for publications and the constant work on those we think are good! Please bear in mind that we are a small affinity group some of whom have full time jobs. Consequently, we are wary of promising what, in the end, we can’t deliver. The KSL plans to be here for a long, long time and as people can see from our replies there’s a lot for us to do. The public facing projects we will be working on will need some prioritizing. Some of these plans may change.

8. – Thank you for answering. Is there anything you would like to add / say?

A: If people want to know more about the KSL or explore what we have already put online, our website is www.katesharpleylibrary.net

The issue of migration and immigration has deliberately been with us for a considerable time, the climate around it getting evermore hysterical. There are currently around 37,000 asylum seekers in hotels in Britain and we are led to believe that there’s a so called ‘problem’ of ‘unprecedented migration’ leading to the so called ‘solutions’ to get evermore extreme. 

This has even resulted in an attempted terrorist attack by a fascist individual on a migrant processing centre and it is possible that asylum seekers will be targeted further and the possibility of hotels being a focus of protest etc by the far right. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has used the word ‘invasion’ and flown to Manston in a Chinook helicopter, which has fascistic connotations in itself.

Of course, this is a distraction and diversion by the ruling class as its always been. This originates from the bourgeois media which has shifted further to the right over the years and the ‘issue’ has  sidelined austerity from view and provided a useful scapegoat for the predicament of millions of ordinary working class people in Britain prior to the upcoming announcement of further misery related to the impending continuation of cuts, increasing inflation, low wages and crap work conditions, the housing crisis and rising energy bills accompanied by increased authoritarianism, including the attack on the right to protest and go on strike.

 The capitalist class controls the agenda with their media, education system etc and has managed to persistently convince a large section of ordinary people that the cause of their problems is those from overseas, rather than the very people who’ve sold them this lie. The ruling class divide, rule and fool – after all the entire society is set up by and for them, conditioning working class people from the cradle to the grave in various ways.

There are those who are racist and xenophobic but many people simply know not what they do, its not that they’re ‘thick and horrible’ (as asserted by the liberal left) but simply that the way they think and behave is cleverly manipulated, much money, time and work being put into that endeavour. They’ve simply not known another way and, in a sense, we can’t expect them to be any other way in this society where the parameters of debate are tightly controlled along with the prevalence of misinformation.

The game is rigged every which way and people will think and feel a certain way based on irrationalities that this society and those who control it propagate and strengthen. To unsuspecting people, it makes sense that what the newspapers and news channels are telling them is true, whether they be more respected sources or more shoddy and unorthodox ones. The false ‘reasons’ are readily provided for the very real nightmare of austerity and class inequality and injustice, the dire situation that working class people find themselves in.

The issue is distorted when in reality there is only really asylum applications, Britain being awful at actually accepting asylum seekers despite what we’re expected to believe, especially compared to other countries, something that is not even acknowledged.

‘Unprecedented migration’ is a myth, especially when we consider that according to the latest figures we are merely 16^th on the list of countries with a population born overseas, the country at the top of that list being Luxembourg, and with no alarming ‘problems’ to speak of.

 Its also important to remember that immigrants and refugees who leave the country are never mentioned, only those who have entered, a vital piece of information to leave out, as well as a falling birth rate and annual deaths which debunks all the stuff about ‘over-population’.

And the anti-overseas sentiment is not just a Tory or even right-wing phenomena really. The Labour Party, including the left of that party have a dire track record here.

Many are still unaware that the Atlee government favoured Eastern European Nazi collaborators and war criminals post-war to Jewish refugees and those from the British commonwealth and China who contributed to the war effort, and that’s just one anomalous example among many throughout the history of the Labour Party as well as their participation in British colonialism and imperialism, which includes the left of the party.

The Blair and Brown years also saw the harsh scapegoating of and cracking down on immigrants and asylum seekers, including the policies of Jack Straw as Home Secretary and of course there was the Iraq War and the rest of the War of Terror which created refugees and demonised and dehumanized people from the middle east.

In more recent years there’s been the fact of anti-immigration sold as Labour Party merchandise with the ‘Controls on Immigration’ mugs (with Ed Miliband as leader). Jeremy Corbyn also used the issue of EU immigration in his general election campaign when he was leader.

 And of late Keir Starmer has strived to compete with the tory vote by stating that he thinks that ‘too many of the NHS staff are from overseas’. This is something that Labour Party members and supporters have even defended and tried to make excuses for. It appears that with Starmer in charge Labour front benchers won’t be allowed support striking nurses or join them on the picket lines, but are allowed to claim that “there’s too many foreigners in the health service.” Another example of the similarity between the government and the ‘opposition’ as the rightwards drift continues.

Another missing part of the puzzle when it comes to immigration and asylum is of course the fact that our ruling class has meddled in affairs overseas with wars, bombing raids, corporate colonialism and relations with certain countries abroad, often propping up repressive regimes and dictators. Then there’s the contribution of western capitalism to worsening the climate crisis which in turn creates refugees.

This country is also favoured by immigrants and asylum seekers because it is seen as a place that is freer than where they’re from, something promoted by this country and in contrast to the dire tyranny experienced by asylum seekers etc. Asylum seekers etc also come here because they feel a common bond with this country,  already speak English or have family here already and many of the reasons they come here are normal, legitimate reasons which have been the cause of migration since the dawn of humanity. In fact, all populations migrated from somewhere else at some point.

The idea of a supposed ‘immorality’ is also employed here when it comes to immigrants and asylum seekers and its simply misplaced. We’re supposed to automatically think of asylum seekers as ‘dodgy people’ when this is not the case. But myths abound with this issue and emotions played on. Most people who fear asylum seekers don’t know any and have never been close to an asylum seeker, instead the societal conditioning from the bourgeoise is in play. It’s no coincidence that where there is most anti-migrant sentiment there are a low quantity of migrants and immigrants etc.

It’s also a common misconception that asylum seekers are here to ‘sponge off’ this country whereas the truth is that there are plenty able to do professional jobs and desire to contribute to society but are prevented and stifled from doing so when they get here and who will not be allowed to stay, many obstacles and problems being shoved in front of them before they are rejected. But the idea that we ‘give people a fair chance’ has always been false and that also applies to those poor people born here.

It’s also taken for granted in general in capitalist society that people simply use up resources whereas people actually are a resource that make a great contribution to society, both as individuals and as communities and this applies to both people born here and immigrants and asylum seekers. Viewing people as simply units that use up resources has disastrous historical results that we desperately need to move on from, as with much of this, which is reactionary and holds us back by design for the interests of the ruling class. The ‘useless eaters’ mentality is anti-human and mean-spirited.

It is also taken for granted that there is a so-called ‘carrying capacity’ for people entering a country and that if ‘too many’ people are allowed in there ‘will be destabilisation’. But again, this is an assumed negative view that dismisses the fact that large numbers have been accepted by some countries in certain circumstances (Afghan refugees being taken in by Iran, the same thing happening with Ukrainians and Poland and Syrians to Germany). If the will is there it can go well and if its not then the alternative will be much worse and will have a severe human cost. The so called ‘destabilisation’ is never specified either and is kept deliberately mysterious.

At the end of the day all these misconceptions are being pushed by the ruling class and their media and other institutions and this is because it’s the ruling class that are the parasites who are to blame for our woes. It is they who have the control over our society, who have so much of the space (land and property) and ownership rights. It is they who the whole system is set up for and it is run in their interests, by them. They dictate how the show is run and things like the use of land, which ensures that working class people (whether migrant or not) are crammed into towns and cities like we are. It is they who are hoarding all the wealth and resources and maintaining class and wealth inequality, it is they with the sickening amount of class privilege at our expense and at the expense of the environment and the climate.

All you need to do is compare your own situation and your own life to that of someone like Jacob Rees-Mogg, King Charles or Rishi Sunak and you are getting to the root of why the scaremongering and scapegoating of immigrants and asylum seekers is promoted and enacted. Both the people born here and overseas are being used, exploited, conned, robbed and put at a disadvantage by the rich people in the ruling class who are running off with the power and resources while the planet burns up and the situation gets increasingly dire for us.

And at the end of the day the bourgeoisie is international and we must acknowledge and remember that the proletariat, dispossessed and oppressed are also international and we have a shared humanity as part of an international class of people with shared interests. We have more in common than we do with the international ruling class, we share more in our situation and life experiences with each other than with them and it is only in their interests that we are divided and ruled and unnaturally split up and pitted against each other by borders into nation states. At the very least what we need is a return to a spirit of cooperation, hospitality and mutual endeavour and moving away from the inhuman barbarity that we are now left with and being goaded and engineered into by the ruling class.

And it is at the ruling class where our blame and anger should be aimed at, not at each other, whether born in this part of the world or elsewhere. We need to unite as a class against our class enemy, and the truth is that the interests of our class enemy is what the nation is set up for which is why we should be thinking in an international way – the last thing the ruling class want us to do, hence the divide and rule distraction of migration/immigration.

Article by Tom Hughes

Come and see us at the Manchester Bookfair today at the People’s History Museum (5th November)

Every Iranian knows that in 1988 the Islamic Republic murdered up to 30,000 political prisoners seen as the ‘enemy within’ during its war with Saddam Hussain’s Iraq.  Many had been in detention since the early days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.  

So horrific was the violent abuse wrought that even Ayatollah Komeini’s deputy, Ayatollah Montazeri, wrote to him protesting:

“A large number of prisoners have been killed under torture by interrogators … in some prisons of the Islamic Republic young girls are being raped … As a result of unruly torture, many prisoners have become deaf or paralyzed or afflicted with chronic diseases.”

The current Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, was a principal member of the “Judges of Death” committee who decided what fate would befall whom.   Every Iranian knows this too.  Ruthless brutality is the rock that every wave of resistance has broken on – until now.

The current wave of unrest has been growing and spreading since the police murder of 22 year old Mahsa(Jina) Amini on September 16th.  So far, despite 300 deaths, 14,000 arrests and 1,000 already charged with capital offences, rather than break, the wave has flooded from Iranian Kurdistan in the west to Baluchistan in the east, uniting the ethnic diversity of Iran’s youth besieging its urban centre’s with creative rebellious protests. 

The spontaneously unifying momentum of events presents a radically different challenge to the dictatorship than it has faced before.  Several spells have already been broken. 

The first is cultural racism.  Ethnically diverse Iran has effectively been a ‘greater Persia’ (first language Farsi speakers are just over 50% of the population).  It’s repressive domination of minorities has been through a ‘strategy of tension’ provoking revolt to harness xenophobic Persian nationalism. 

Now Kurds, Awaz Arabs, Baluchis and Azeris chant in solidarity with each other as well as Farsi speakers, sharing the unifying slogans of “Death to the Dictator” (Ayatollah Khamenei), and “Woman, Life, Freedom!” originating in the Kurdish resistance in Turkey and Rojava. 

The second is the ‘Islamic’ element of the republic.  Mahsa Amini was killed by a Guardian Patrol (morality police) for failing to cover her hair correctly with the hijab.  These patrols have largely been driven off the streets as thousands of women discard their hijabs and even cut their hair – an Islamic symbol of their immodesty – in public.  This is an uncompromising refusal of authority as the hijab is one of the 3 founding pillars of the Islamic Republic. 

The potency of this was first seen in the anti-austerity riots of 2017 when Vida Movahed raised herself up to wave her headscarf flag-like from a stick.  This protest act, not seen since the first days of the hijab’s imposition in ‘79, has continued on and off, primarily online until now, stepping boldly out into 3D. 

65% Iranians are young, still more have no living memory of the Shahs regime or the revolution and protesters show no sign of seeking concessions or compromise. 

The regime had that opportunity in 2009 when the election offered the choice between Ayatollah-u-so and Mullah lite.  A cosmetic tinkering at the edges of power seeking some institutional rebalancing.  The Dictator chose repression revealing an ideological edifice as seemingly immovable as fascism or Stalinism. 

The breaking point was the ending of state subsidies on fuel in winter 2019/20 and the 1500 deaths in the suppression of dissent.  Episodic eruptions of protest and violence have continued ever since, over water shortages; pay and conditions in the oil industry, in the regions and over inflation. 

All or nothing now appears the most unifying position against the regime in its history.  Students have occupied and genders mixing, school students have driven state propagandists off their grounds and industrial unrest is spreading with strikes at several oil refineries in October.  The slogans assert themselves in all of Iran’s languages and dialects: Death to the Dictator, Woman, Life, Freedom!

This is more than just challenge to the centrality to Islam of the subjugation of women, but a de facto challenge to its culture of patriarchy.  A central feature of the cellular organisation of capitalist reproductive social relations.  Iranian women are transcending feminism to the root of class power.

Article by Dreyfus

As the de facto homo-hating Tories cement their ‘new’ regime firmly on the right, the Foreign Minister responsible for the safety of UK citizens abroad, James Cleverly, tells LGBTQI+ football fans planning to go to the World Cup fiasco in the Emirati statelet of Qatar to show “a little bit of flex and compromise”

He went on to add that “These are Muslim countries (sic), they have a very different cultural starting point for us. I think it’s important when you’re a visitor to a country that you respect the culture of your host nation.” One wonders what advice he would have found acceptable to give black citizens visiting apartheid South Africa.

This follows the arrest of redoubtable human rights and queer activist Peter Tatchell there for protesting outside the National Museum of Qatar with a placard bearing “Qatar arrests, jails & subjects LGBTs to ‘conversion’ #QatarAntiGay.”

LGBT organisations engaging with FIFA have said “progress has been slow” in ensuring the safety of LGBT fans – and that reassurances from Qatar – where the death penalty applies – had “not been adequate”. 

Players wanting to protest the Islamic state’s ‘soccer washing’ of its appalling rights record (6,500 largely migrant workers died in this vanity project), are instructed by FIFA that players “..must not have any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images”. 

The loyal opposition Labour Party takes the high ground of refusing attendance, while Labour in power in the form of Wale’s First Minister Mark Drakeford, will still attend to support his national team. 

The collaboration of establishment elites left and right with international sporting institutions to promote their regional powerhouse over queer lives is a collusion in LGBTQI hate crimes that screams ‘Queer lives don’t matter’. 

The indulgence in culture wars in the west is a luxury in a region which has a perverse history of devising ways of murdering sexual and gender identity minorities in the name of faith tradition:  beheadings in Saudi; throwing off buildings under Islamic State; being crushed under bulldozed walls in Iran, stoning or just mob murder with impunity like the spate of killings by rectal filling with cement in Iraq. 

Appeasing the West means resorting more to hanging, lashing and hard labour.  Or, more modernly in Qatar now, a attested to by Tatchell, forced ‘conversion’

The UK’s ‘Queertar’ toleration becomes less hypocritical when one judges its own record and refusal to protect trans people at home from subjection to the brutal abuse of conversion. 

Conversion Therapy neither converts nor is it therapeutic.  It is both a misnomer and a red herring.  Condemned by all professional bodies of medical and psychotherapeutic practice as dangerous and unethical, it is not supportive help in changing your mind. 

It is directional reversing of where your instincts and insight are taking you.   Conversion therapy is no more a therapy than the whip and the branding Iron are gentle reminders of where a slave lives! 

Qatar will be a festival of the elites chumming it up on a mass grave of migrant workers, queers and dissidents.  We can hardly be surprised that elite soccer has chosen not to boycott it. 

We do however call foul, accusing those in power at home and abroad of the continuing abuse of our class and communities in all their forms. 

Article by Dreyfus

Labour, Tory, Liberal, Green or nationalist, whatever party is in charge, the fundamentals of the system are the same.

Whether we have the present electoral system, proportional representation, or whether many people vote or don’t vote, capitalism is the driving force for state policy. ANY vote is a vote for capitalism.

As working-class people, we are exploited whether we can take part in ‘free’ elections or live under an authoritarian regime. National and international capital continue to control the wealth that we create, and protect it through the police, legal system, and military.

Non-voters are told that, “If you don’t vote you have no right to complain”, but voting under these circumstances is just pretending that the system we have is credible, that voting gives us power. If that was true, the working class, the class that forms the vast majority of the population, would by now be living in comfortable material conditions, and have the functionaries of the state very clearly acting on our instructions to the benefit of all. This is obviously not the case though – we have next to no say in the decisions that get taken by the people we elect.

The system in the UK is called ‘representative democracy’, yet when have the interests of the working class ever been truly represented? Our standard of living has been consistently eroded for many decades under both the Tories and Labour. This is because the role of government is NOT to represent the interests of the people, but to represent the interests of capital. Whatever way you vote, you are voting for capitalism, you are voting to be exploited, and you are voting to be ruled over, bossed around and bullied by various institutions that can control you with violence or the threat of violence. When we vote we sell out our birthright to be free individuals that fully benefit from our own labour and our collaboration with other workers. This makes no sense and more and more people are beginning to realise it.

Ok, so what can we do instead of this impotent act of submission? Well, if we don’t want others to have power over us, then we shouldn’t willingly put our power in someone else’s hands! History tells us that those we give power to will betray us and abuse that power. Organising horizontally, using some form of direct democracy, where everyone affected by a decision gets a say in that decision, while not perfect, is infinitely more fair and practical than handing over decision making to individuals and institutions who’s class interests are absolutely opposed to our own. So…

DON’T VOTE, ORGANISE!!!

We should organise with our neighbours, workmates, other people we have shared interests with, and other working-class people who are subject to particular modes of oppression because of their identity, such as racism, homophobia, transphobia etc.  We are the experts on what we need, and on the best way to run things for the common good. We can use direct action to achieve this…

Direct action is where we individually or collectively (usually collectively) solve a problem without looking to someone else to solve it for us. By this we mean, not just protesting and asking for change, but things like occupying, sabotaging, working to rule, refusing to pay their prices or their rent, and striking when WE decide if it’s time to strike, not when union bureaucrats and the state give us permission to.  Plus of course, creating our own, horizontally organised groups and organisations, affinity groups, mutual aid groups and unofficial unions.

For example, when workers aren’t paid the wages owed them, rather than asking the government to give us better legal protection, we take action to force employers to pay. Such things have been achieved with only a few dozen people. Renters unions have had many successes such as getting repairs done and refusing to pay rent increases, sometimes with only a handful of people.

Imagine the power we could wield in our workplaces and our communities if thousands of us decided to refuse to be abused, oppressed and exploited any longer, and began to say NO!!!

Of course, in reality, people are understandably afraid of taking the state on. But direct action doesn’t have to mean an all-out fight to defeat capitalism in one go, but by confronting the system directly at any point we can start to take control. In fact, all the good things we think of as having been created by the state – free healthcare, free education, health & safety laws to protect us at work, housing regulations, sick pay, unemployment benefits, pensions – came about historically to put an end to organised campaigns of collective direct action that threatened their power. Mostly we do this collectively – where we would fail as individuals, together we can win. That doesn’t mean that individuals can never act on their own – sometimes an individual can take an action that can inspire thousands!

It’s time for us to stand up as individuals and as communities, and take our destinies into our own hands. It’s time to reject absolutely the legitimacy of the state and any top-down institutions that say they will represent our interests, such as political parties both large and small.

We, as a class, already produce everything required for our material needs. We, as a class, know very well how to operate and take advantage of the technology we already have, and how to innovate to create even greater technologies. The ruling class, and their illogical, dysfunctional capitalist system just obstruct optimal production of goods and services and prevent a fair, functional and practical distribution of the wealth we create.

This is now in plain sight and it’s time for us to act! It’s inevitable this will sometimes lead to confrontation on the streets and elsewhere.  This can be scary but ultimately, we have to stand up for ourselves and our class by whatever means are necessary, otherwise we will continue to be ground into the dirt with increasing austerity, increasing destruction of our communities by local government and their policies of social cleansing, and through increasing authoritarianism and state violence. We can lay down and let it happen, or we can come together, realise our power, and FIGHT BACK!

Article by a Comrade

There is no longer anything stealthy about the war currently being waged against our class.  Truss the clueless has gone and the gloves are off.  The extremists are taking control.

Outrageous figures concerning interest rate usury, income attack inflation, and debt enslavement are flying around all over the place. We don’t want to compete with the bourgeois press in simple reportage. We are commenting instead as revolutionists on the class nature of this assault.

The headline rate of inflation may have just topped 10%, but the inflation rate of staples for our survival, cereals, bread, pasta, dairy produce and vegetables etc. is already nearly double that.  And that’s not counting heating, finance and housing costs.  

The government is attacking our resistance on two fronts. One, by the lie that strikers are selfish by risking fuelling wage driven inflation. Two, by planning urgent legislation to limit our ability to fight back, using the traditional excuse of protecting ‘the public’.  Fear and force are being deployed against us.  We must prepare to respond in kind.

Wage fuelled inflation by a greedy minority with too much power threatening the well-being of the rest of ‘us’, has been peddled since the beginning of the year.  There is no evidence of this wage driven inflation and even experts on the government side are having to concede this.  

Price rises are being driven by falling margins of profit due to war, preventable global pandemics, climate crisis and the fundamental contradictions in the logic of capital.  The collapse of neoliberal globalisation.  

In making our class pay for their avarice they are in a sense partly telling the truth:  Our crisis is being driven by a greedy minority with too much power, threatening the well-being of the rest of us, THEM.

On the back of this plan they are clearly hoping to confine wage settlements to around 5% at most. This even in the current circumstances will amount to a real term cut of 10% minimum to workers and producers across all sectors. They talk of growth but the only growth is in absolute poverty, food banks and desperation.

The chaos we see in government is them working at desperately increasing speed to gather and unite their forces to win this battle. Tumbleweed Truss was always expendable, capitalism’s Horsemen of the Apocalypse (which includes the Labour Party who won’t dismount to join a picket but will police the frontier of austerity), are not, and that’s why she is yesterday’s toast.

Full employment and poverty wages have left our struggle weaker than it should be and they know it. They will try and divide, the worthy and deserving against the greedy and the militants. The strikers against the ‘public’.  A common cause against war and chaos.

Their miscalculation lies here. As they will argue austerity is our saviour, they will see that the striker and the public are the same. As they argue our resistance is a minority ideological class war, we will increasingly see that the majority will recognise it’s solidarity in shared struggle as more natural than their State and its ambition on behalf of the ruling class minority.  Our forces must unite in equal clarity and determination 

As the famous anarchist philosopher Noam Chomsky puts it: “Austerity is just a fancy word for Class War”.  This is becoming the obvious in intent and consequence.  Strike ballots and actions, official or otherwise are happening everywhere.   Coordinating this activity is now the recognised common sense and being planned in.  

Their gloves are off, our boots must be on.  The ambition of resistance so far has been too limited.  They won’t concede because they can’t concede without threatening their security in power.  Their demands are unacceptable to our class. We must escalate our struggle, our actions, our coordination and our demands, to the point where it is equally unacceptable to them. Where it is their system, not our communities in peril. 

Then is where our boots must triumph over their gloveless hands. 

Article by Dreyfus

The capacity to wage war is a measure of the weakness of the working class, or its defeat.  National patriotism, the identification with the interests of the local branch of the ruling elites rather than with the working class internationally, is a surrogate marker for that defeat.  Despite an encouraging rise in militancy in response to the economic crisis, few would argue that national patriotism anywhere in Europe is currently in decline.  So we begin to oppose war from this position of weakness. 

What then do revolutionists do? Abandon revolutionary positions in equal measure? Or hold out the maximalist banner so it doesn’t sink beneath the bourgeois wave of manipulation of sentiment and militarisation?  For us as anarchist communists today this is necessarily where we must start – even from the pinnacle of retreat we say that this is what victory for our class looks like:  No to war; No to this war, no war but the class war!

Revolutionary Defeatism is a primary principle for internationalists.  Acting locally and coordinating globally against imperialist war is the internationalist task and responsibility of social revolutionary militants and our class everywhere.  But what does it mean?  The term coined in the first world war in 1915 was a response to the capitulation and collapse of the Social Democratic (Second International) movement in the face of national chauvinism and defending their own nation states, despite their pre-war commitment to class unity and resistance.

Even some of the greatest revolutionaries struggled to be truly internationalist in conflict.  Some favoured conditional support for their participants as a ‘defencist’ need to resist the greater ‘evil’ of the other side, be that for Kropotkin, Prussian militarism, or for most of the German left, Slav autocratic barbarism.  In much of Western Europe (including the Labour Party) against both, in favour of the ‘progressive’ gains of democracy. 

Internationalists recognised the global conflict remained between our class and that of the ruling class squabbling to defend their respective capitalist empires. Initially as tiny persecuted minorities they were the clarion call in the wilderness.

The principle is once again being questioned in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and for similar reasons, sadly even by some claiming to be revolutionary internationalists.  Is there a bad side and a less bad side? Blatantly, but of no more significance to our view of the state than good cops and bad cops change our view on the police.

Russia’s tyranny and war crimes are increasingly well documented, often from the mouths of Russians themselves.  Recently The New York Times published Russian soldier’s letters home, one reading “Mum, there are bodies everywhere this is messed up.  They said it was a training exercise but they have told us to kill everyone. They lied to us – Putin is a fool”.  Should we not be arguing that Russian workers are being exploited and manipulated to kill their Ukrainian brothers and sisters? 

An article at the beginning of the conflict criticising ‘no war but the class war’ as “…not a very useful slogan.” argued that “The Ukrainian worker has made his or her decision, maybe to get out, maybe to stay and fight.” This misses the fundamental point, conned or coerced is not a choice.  The mitigation of ‘territorial defence’ doesn’t alter the fact that Ukraine now is an armed detention camp for 10,000,000 men aged 18-60. 

In 2018 Ukraine was labeled “Partly Free” by human rights organizations such as Freedom House. The 2014 Human Rights report accused It of not fully respecting diversity and excessively restricting media freedoms whilst being equally culpable in the violation of the laws of war in the Donbas – a conflict costing 14,000 lives.  In terms of good versus bad, it’s ‘Tuppence Ha’penny looking down on Tuppence’.

What makes the concept of defeatism so challenging?  For some it is a misunderstanding of the nature and importance of this as an Internationalist position; for others on the left, they are on the liberal wing of capitalist democracy and simply take sides, but for most it is the instinctive moral drive to tell good from bad leaving them open to the power of state propaganda.

The horror of war projected from afar inevitably produces waves of anger, sympathy, compassion, and a sense of helplessness which is itself exploited by our bosses and their states to channel any possible awakening resistance into the dead end of charity.   They manipulate us into false partisan choices in favour of one belligerent or the other. 

This is the true fog of war seeking to blind us from the what should be the obvious – The bosses on both sides are our enemy as the workers of both suffer and die awaiting our class solidarity in action.

Defeatism is not pacifism, it cannot afford to be whilst each rolling tank and falling bomb dismembers workers.  It is not, as Lenin described it, merely to “..desire the defeat of ‘your own’ government, wish defeat, favour nothing less than defeat” ushering in the victory of the most militarised and brutal power. 

Taking sides is the intuitive and easiest path to take.  We are taught from birth to do it and we inevitably draw on a nationalist instinct of the righteousness of our side when we do.  Whilst defeatism is not pacifist, neither is it neutral – we name the side ignored in the slaughter, our class on both sides and highlight that a capitalist peace is a defeat for our class and opens the road to the next war.

Revolutionary Defeatism is the active mobilisation of solidarity and defence of community against it’s forced militarisation and cooption, and resistance to the idea of a capitalist victory or a capitalist peace – the latter the bloody breathing space between blows. This includes blowing away the fog to see revolutionary defeatism in action.  In Ukraine and Russia, revolutionary comrades continue to recognise this as a conflict on the fault lines of global capital.  They continue to work together opposing nationalist propaganda, coercion and militarisation naming the conflict for what it is, an attack on our class.

Defeatism is not passive.  Makhno didn’t encourage passivity in the face of the Austro-German occupation.  Anarchists fought in Spain but neither for the monarchy nor the republic while more recently internationalists in northern Syria, whatever the subsequent compromise and decline from an imperialist imposed truce, fought not for state or caliphate, but for the Bookchinist experiment egalitarian (democratic) confederalism.  Defend yourselves, defend your communities but not your bosses or their state.  Organise for a revolutionary outcome.

Here we must hammer this message home, not just opposing the war but taking up our own class struggles enthusiastically refusing social peace and linking them in solidarity with our comrades in the global resistance.  Strikes are happening everywhere – soon will follow the accusations of ‘the enemy within’ and traitors.  Let them be right!  Class War IS the peace movement, the war against all wars.  There is no other non-binary solution, defeatism demands a single outcome, war or revolution!  Our choice is unequivocally clear!

Article by Dreyfus