Malatesta and Syndicalism

By Emilio López Arango

A note from the translator: “This is a never before translated piece by Lopez Arango, one of the main theorists of the pre-1930 FORA, that goes against Malatesta’s ideas on the unions. The prose is filled with flourish and it not straight forward at all. I tried to take liberties to make it more readable in English… It has some really interesting elements in it: focus on the method of struggle, rejection of unions in post-rev society, rejection of anarcho-syndicalism as a concept, clarity of the dynamic of struggle between pre-revolutionary periods and ruptures, etc. The FORA was way ahead of their time.”

From the weekly supplement of La Protesta, July 13, 1925

Emilio López Arango

In a translation of “Pensiero e Volonte” from Rome, an article by Malatesta was published about the relation in theory and fact between anarchism and syndicalism. The aforementioned comrade raised a point of contradiction between those two terms, and explains how the role of the labor movement and activity of anarchists outside and inside of the unions, and in a final note subtlety gathered words written in La Protesta. The article of Malatesta generalizes a problem not yet sufficiently discussed and clarified. Read more

Posted on May 8, 2013

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General Strike 2013!

By Mike Kolhoff

There comes a point where you either fight back or you make peace with being a slave. I can’t make peace with being a slave, so I have to fight back. I am sick of smirking tea party republicans, I am sick of bosses who treat free working people like servants; I am sick of being forced to pay more while people who are filthy rich pay little or nothing. I’m sick of war for profit and homeless shelters full of veterans. I’m sick of men and women working 40 hours a week and still having to endure the embarrassment of applying for food benefits to feed their families. I’m sick of a prison system that is used as a substitute for decent education and good jobs.

I don’t know how general strikes work, but I do know we need one. When the republican scum rammed through “Right to Freeload” in Michigan, the words were on the lips of many of the workers on the capitol lawn, as well as: “the leaders will never go for it”. But the leaders aren’t the ones who go on strike; WE are. Union, non-union, full-time, part-time, permanent, temporary, we are the working class. We are the people who do what needs to be done.

I know one person can’t “call” a general strike; but let’s strike anyway.

DEMANDS:

Nationwide Right-to Organize law with card-count recognition

Nationwide living wage law

30 hour work week with hourly rate adjustment (30 hours work for 40 hours pay)

Nationwide public works program aimed at young workers

Posted on April 14, 2013

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Freedom Betrayed

 

Freedm betrayed1 (2)

Review of:

Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War of Independence, Alan Gilbert, 2012, University of Chicago Press

By Mike Kolhoff

The participation of African Americans in the War of Independence is widely known but only vaguely understood. Almost everyone knows that Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave and sailor, took an active part in the 1770 fight in Boston that became known as the Boston Massacre, reportedly being the first to fall to British gunfire.  In the sketchy picture of American history offered to most students in primary school the impression might be understandable that Attucks was indeed the ONLY Black man with a notable role in the war.

More interested students of history are aware of lord Dunsmore’s proclamations of 1774, which offered freedom for any slave of a rebel master who came to join the British (in Virginia only) and joined his army. But sadly, other than knowing that this occurred, most people have no knowledge of the results of this act and the dual nature of the American Revolution that it created. Read more

Posted on April 3, 2013

Review of Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle

Klas Batalo Pic

by Klas Batalo

Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle tries to move in the direction of providing a framework and questions that can help the contemporary class struggle anarchist movement move past its’ current impasses, and fight back against the austerity crisis, as well as take the initiative against state capitalism. It sets out to share strategy suggestions for our present conditions by the Solidarity Federation, SolFed for short, the UK section of the International Workers’ Association (IWA). Below will be some of my own comments on the text, with the hope of providing a comradely critique as well as general summary of what I feel is important to bring out in their arguments. Read more

Posted on April 2, 2013

Solidarity With The Prisoners in Oakland!

WSA statement

The Workers Solidarity Alliance stands in solidarity with all of the people brutalized, kidnapped, and put in cages by the police in Oakland, California—and around the world—as more and more people defy the sanctity of private property and capital and put human life before the profit margins of the people who own and operate our world.

On January 28, 2012, people from Oakland and beyond bravely attempted to take an abandoned building to build a community center for living space, organizing infrastructure, medical facilities, and so on. It is absurd that huge buildings lay empty while families live in the streets and are denied basic access to shelter, food, and the necessities of human life. But such is the logic of capitalism.

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Posted on January 31st, 2012

Two Reviews of Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel

By Nathan Jun; Al Tucker

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos’ Christian Anarchism is a meticulously researched but readily accessible survey of an often overlooked and frequently misunderstood anarchist tradition. As he explains in the introduction, “Anarchism is not all there is to Christianity. The point which some describe as the overlap of the two separate traditions, however, seems to be precisely where others argue that Christianity logically leads to some form of anarchism… The aim of this book is to focus on this overlap, and therefore solely on the anarchist political implications of Christianity. That is, this book focuses solely on the view that Christianity implies a (peculiarly Christian) type of anarchism” (7). There is no question that Christian Anarchism meets its stated aim, and this in two ways: first, by offering a richly detailed overview of Christian anarchist theory vis-à-vis its key thinkers and schools of thought; and second, by vividly demonstrating how Christian anarchists have attempted, and continue to attempt, to live their ideas in practice.

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Posted on December 25th, 2011

International Libertarian Statement of Solidarity with the Egyptian popular Struggle

By many

On the weekend 19-20th a new wave of mass protest all over Egypt broke out because of the systematic violence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) against the Egyptian masses. People are tired of its dictatorial behaviour, the use of extreme force against protesters, the military trials that in 10 months have ended up with 12,000 comrades rotting in jail, their censorship, the torture, kidnappings and selective murder of activists. People are tired of the military council hijacking the banners of our revolution to continue the same old dictatorship through other means. People are tired of the sectarianism they promote to divert us from our real fight for justice, equality and freedom.Imperialism has dictated an “orderly transition” to democracy in Egypt. The military have shown themselves obedient in implementing this design. The people in Egypt demand an end to dictatorship and the uprooting of all the remnants of the hated Mubarak regime. People in Egypt want to feel, at last, that they have a country run by themselves for themselves.

The anarchists in Egypt, and the international solidarity movement with the libertarian revolutionaries, wholeheartedly support the just struggle of the Egyptian people to continue their revolution and deplore the massacre of protesters that shows that the SCAF is no different to Mubarak.

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Posted on November 28th, 2011

From Occupation to the General Strike

By a CT-WSA member

With several months of preparation and one month of action, Occupy Wall Street has accomplished what years of conventional activism has failed to do–spark a populist political awakening against the ruling class. The 99ers have captured the imagination of regular Americans from every background and point of view, unified by a general disgust with the upper 1% who have run our economic, political and social areas of life into the ground. The defiant occupation of public space in the heart of the capitalist system has not only inspired us, but challenged our sense of complacency in the age of crisis.

Some of us will remember a similar awakening in August 2005 when Cindy Sheehan and a handful of visionaries formed Camp Casey, another occupation outside the Texas ranch of George W. Bush, named for her son killed in combat during his tour of duty in Iraq. The story was picked-up by the alternative press with little mention in the mainstream, until it could ignore it no longer, due to the widespread support Sheehan and the occupants received. Solidarity demonstrations and encampments were organized internationally, and the previously dead antiwar movement found new life at the height of the dark Bush years.

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Posted on October 16th, 2011