Black Flag 2007
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Libertarian Marxism Mao-Spontex Open Marxism Popular Assembly Sovereign Citizen Movement Spontaneism Sui Iuris
Autonomist Marxist Theory and Practice in the Current Crisis Brian Marks1 University of Arizona School of Geography and Development [email protected] Abstract Autonomist Marxism is a political tendency premised on the autonomy of the proletariat. Working class autonomy is manifested in the self-activity of the working class independent of formal organizations and representations, the multiplicity of forms that struggles take, and the role of class composition in shaping the overall balance of power in capitalist societies, not least in the relationship of class struggles to the character of capitalist crises. Class composition analysis is applied here to narrate the recent history of capitalism leading up to the current crisis, giving particular attention to China and the United States. A global wave of struggles in the mid-2000s was constituitive of the kinds of working class responses to the crisis that unfolded in 2008-10. The circulation of those struggles and resultant trends of recomposition and/or decomposition are argued to be important factors in the balance of political forces across the varied geography of the present crisis. The whirlwind of crises and the autonomist perspective The whirlwind of crises (Marks, 2010) that swept the world in 2008, financial panic upon food crisis upon energy shock upon inflationary spiral, receded temporarily only to surge forward again, leaving us in a turbulent world, full of possibility and peril. Is this the end of Neoliberalism or its retrenchment? A new 1 Published under the Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Autonomist Marxist Theory and Practice in the Current Crisis 468 New Deal or a new Great Depression? The end of American hegemony or the rise of an “imperialism with Chinese characteristics?” Or all of those at once? This paper brings the political tendency known as autonomist Marxism (H. -
Class Wargames Class Class Wargames Ludic Ludic Subversion Against Spectacular Capitalism
class wargames Class Wargames ludic Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism subversion Why should radicals be interested in playing wargames? Surely the Left can have no interest in such militarist fantasies? Yet, Guy Debord – the leader of the Situationist International – placed such importance on his class invention of The Game of War that he described it as the most significant of against his accomplishments. wargames Intrigued by this claim, a multinational group of artists, activists and spectacular academics formed Class Wargames to investigate the political and strategic lessons that could be learnt from playing his ludic experiment. While the ideas of the Situationists continue to be highly influential in the development of subversive art and politics, relatively little attention has been paid to their strategic orientation. Determined to correct this deficiency, Class Wargames is committed to exploring how Debord used the capitalism metaphor of the Napoleonic battlefield to propagate a Situationist analysis of modern society. Inspired by his example, its members have also hacked other military simulations: H.G. Wells’ Little Wars; Chris Peers’ Reds versus Reds and Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors. Playing wargames is not a diversion from politics: it is the training ground of tomorrow’s cybernetic communist insurgents. Fusing together historical research on avant-garde artists, political revolutionaries and military theorists with narratives of five years of public performances, Class Wargames provides a strategic and tactical manual for overthrowing the economic, political and ideological hierarchies of early- 21st century neoliberal capitalism. The knowledge required to create a truly human civilisation is there to be discovered on the game board! richard ludic subversion against barbrook spectacular capitalism Minor Compositions An imprint of Autonomedia Front cover painting: Kimathi Donkor, Toussaint L’Ouverture at Bedourete (2004). -
Anarchists in the Late 1990S, Was Varied, Imaginative and Often Very Angry
Price £3.00 Issue 230 Late 2009 An end to the safety net Labour is stripping away the last of Britain’s social wage — is there anything left to stop them? Front page pictures: Garry Knight, Photos8.com, Libertinus Yomango, Theory: Reportage: Also inside After the How Oaxaca revolution, has learned this issue... what next? to wage war Editorial Welcome to issue 230 of Black Flag, the fifth published by the current Editorial Collective. Since our re-launch in October 2007 feedback has generally tended to be positive. Black Flag continues to be published twice a year, and we are still aiming to become quarterly. However, this is easier said than done as we are a small group. So at this juncture, we make our usual appeal for articles, more bodies to get physically involved, and yes, financial donations would be more than welcome! This issue also coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Anarchist Bookfair – arguably the longest running and largest in the world? It is certainly the biggest date in the UK anarchist calendar. To celebrate the event we have included an article written by organisers past and present, which it is hoped will form the kernel of a general history of the event from its beginnings in the Autonomy Club. Well done and thank you to all those who have made this event possible over the years, we all have Walk this way: The Black Flag ladybird finds it can be hard going to balance trying many fond memories. to organise while keeping yourself safe – but it’s worth it. -
This Mess We're In
scottishleftreviewIssue 55 November/December 2009 £2.00 This mess we’re in... scottishleftreviewIssue 55 November/December 2009 Contents Comment ........................................................2 Us swallowing their medicine ......................14 Root of this evil ...............................................6 Robin McAlpine Neil Davidson Fragments of truth .......................................16 Mark Hirst Work isn’t working ............................................8 Lessons for now ............................................18 Isobel Lindsay Bob Thomson Why we fight ..................................................10 Minimum isn’t enough ..................................20 Alan McKinnon Peter Kelly No such thing as failure ................................12 The English postman ....................................22 John Barker Tom Nairn stance (which is hard to argue with, other than that it appears to assume that the speculative bit is a necessary evil). There Comment is also the active state intervention approach which suggests t would be understandable if the regular Scottish Left Review that the retail banking bit should in fact be nationalised and Ireader gave a slight sign of resignation at the thought of yet run as a secure public service. And then there are those who another ‘what is to be done?’ issue. It’s not just that we’ve run a want to address some of the root causes of the whole thing few articles on the theme of ‘reforming the post-banking crash by tackling the way speculative financial capitalism works in world’. It’s not even that there have been enough column inches the first place (such as advocates of a Tobin Tax). What do we on the subject from which to build an airport rail link. It’s that you learn from all of this? Well, the majority of these proposals do may well feel that the totality of the suggestions you have heard not really appear to envisage a global financial system which and read in the last year may sound a little bit underwhelming. -
Archives Solidarity (London) 1960-1988 (-1993)1960-1988
Archives Solidarity (London) 1960-1988 (-1993)1960-1988 International Institute of Social History Cruquiusweg 31 1019 AT Amsterdam The Netherlands hdl:10622/ARCH01366 © IISH Amsterdam 2020 Archives Solidarity (London) 1960-1988 (-1993)1960-1988 Table of contents Archives Solidarity (London).............................................................................................................3 Context............................................................................................................................................... 3 Content and Structure........................................................................................................................3 Access and Use.................................................................................................................................4 PRELIMINARY LIST.........................................................................................................................4 Conferences................................................................................................................................ 4 Correspondence.......................................................................................................................... 5 Circulars...................................................................................................................................... 8 Groups and regional meetings................................................................................................... 9 Organisation............................................................................................................................... -
Accounts of Sitdown Strikes and Workplace Occupations in the UK and Around the World
OH SIT DOWN! Accounts of sitdown strikes and workplace occupations in the UK and around the world Compiled by libcom.org - a resource for discontented workers Table of contents 2001: Brighton bin men's strike and occupation............................. 3 2000: Cellatex chemical plant occupation, France ....................... 10 2007: Migrant workers' occupation wins, France.......................... 14 2004: Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics, France .......................................................................................... 15 2008: 23 day long occupation of major power-plant in northern Greece ends in police repression................................................. 18 1992-4: The incomplete story of the University College Hospital strikes and occupations................................................................ 20 1972: Under new management - Fisher-Bendix occupation ........ 62 2003: Zanon factory occupation - interview with workers, Argentina ..................................................................................................... 72 Editors’ notes This booklet was compiled very rapidly* 2008 following a series of workplace occupations which workers have launched in response to redundancies. As employers use the financial crisis to make layoffs, attacked pensions, pay, and working conditions, an increasing number of workers are beginning to resist. As we go to press, hundreds of workers sacked with no notice or redundancy pay are occupying Visteon car part plants in London and Belfast to demand treatment in line with their contracts with Ford. Workers at the Prisme plant in Dundee have been occupying their workplace for weeks, demanding redundancy pay. This booklet reproduces accounts and analysis, some very short, some very detailed, of some workplace occupations by other groups of workers in the UK and elsewhere over the past 40 years. We hope that the experiences and lessons gained by workers in the past can be a small contribution to help inform and inspire our fellow workers today. -
Anarch Fortnightly 131‘ Augzzst, 1 98.! Vol 42, No 15:7
anarch fortnightly 131‘ Augzzst, 1 98.! Vol 42, No 15:7 _ OK ER 160 years ago now, Black -an Dwarf, in a pers'pica.cious inissive to his friend the Yellow Bonze. ren1arl~;e cl that. "in England, the great art is not to avoid tyranny, but to disguise it"."i"""‘“ The wave of riots across Britain this nionth, however, bearing in their walte serious threats about the hitroduction of rubber bullets. water cannon, even taiiltsz the re- instatement of the Riot act and the t;'.5i&l)llSl1I11€I‘rI oi special riot courts arid arniy camps for convicted riot- ers and ioote rs, shows just how poor that disguise really is. l\.»-'largare: Thatcher admitted as much when she said "The veneer of civilisation is very thin. It has to be cherished if it is to continue.Whateve r Marg- aret Thatcher actually n1ea.ns, it is certain that she was ft-3l?£3I’I‘ll1.§?",' to a certain scale of values guaranteed by the police - or at least that large section of them who subscribe to the views of the chief constable of Man- chester, James Anderton. These have predictably adopted the attitude that the riots were not caused by any social factor, but militarily organ- ised by masked guerrillas on motor bike s, with London accents and CB radios. This is l~;nown as the cons- piracy theory, or what Je re my Bentham once described as the ‘Hobgoblin Argument’ - i.e. using the claim that we are ‘close to anarchy‘ in order to sit tight and do nothing. -
POINTS on YOUR FREEDOM Isquat MAYDAY!
80 pH A N A R C H I S T NEWS AND VIEWS www.froodomprofts.orft.uk 5 MAY 2 0 9 7 Private Equity’s rise and pall Freeport workers fight back Anarchist seeds in the snow Exclusive social centres g u id d INSIDE ►► page 3 page 4 page 5 p a g e s ASDA: PART OF WAL-MART SPY RING ollowing mi admission front US stewards in the GMB have been supermarket giant Wal-Mart that expressing increasing unease over. Fthe company ho* employed aomc Gaudie explained, “They have cameras of its estimated 400 Investigators to everywhere, They have cashless snack spy on groups who stand against them, machines where they give you a card enquiries by Vnwdiva have uncovered and can monitor what you buy and a similar story at UK subsidiary Asda. how long you are spending buying it. During the most recent major conflict They have recently brought in ‘RF Pick*, between Asda and on outside body* a where they have co-ordinates of where dispute between the company and the everything is and feed it through to you GMB led to bug detectors being deployed via a headset. They can monitor every by unionists during negotiations to avoid thing their workers do. They even surveillance by managers. track the 10% discount cards - they The clash, which last year saw n major have tried to sack people for giving conflict over whether Asda would them to family. recognise the unionisation of its ware **1 was in tt meeting of over 40 shop house sector, was one of the most stewards from around the country and acrimonious of 2006 and saw Asda it's all the same. -
Inside: an Antifascist's Memories of Internment; Book Reviews
Number 49 50 pence or one dollar Jan. 2007 John Taylor Caldwell 1911•2007 With the death of John Taylor Caldwell aged 95 we have lost continued to be published until, in 1962, the Press was forced the last significant link with an anarchist anti•parliamentary to remove to Montrose Street. The George Street premises form of socialism/communism which flourished in the first were the heart of this anarchist oasis in Glasgow, as a few decades of the last century, and was part of a tradition of meeting•place, bookshop, printing press and social centre for libertarian socialism going back to the days of William a whole generation of Glaswegians. John managed to capture Morris and the Socialist League – a socialism based on this in an epitaph for the group’s old HQ written after it had working•class self•activity manifest in workers’ councils and been bulldozed for a new University of Strathclyde building: direct action rather than in reliance on political parties, When the meeting was over the chairs were replaced and whether social democratic or revolutionary. the audience meandered upstairs where books were bought This kind of anarchism is assumed to have become and fresh arguments broke out amongst small groups. The extinct during the inter•War period, crushed between the old man was tired… but he was loth to hurry them away. pincers of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Commu• Some, he knew, went home to misery and loneliness. The nist Party. But in a few places, notably Glasgow, it continued evening in the old cellar was a rare feast of companionship to flourish, thanks to individuals like John and his mentor, for them. -
Logue / Steadman / Connolly / Another Vietnam Mccarthy / Poverty / Capitalism Kills / the Queen
Est. 1817 Vol. 13 Number 2 5 July 1968 FORTNIGHTLY 2s Logue / Steadman / Connolly / Another Vietnam McCarthy / Poverty / Capitalism Kills / The Queen Paris / Hull / RSSF / Tariq Ali 2 THE BLACK DWARF 1 3 . 2 The New Vanguard a n y a n a l y s is OF t h e s t u d e n t r e v o l t must start from one basic budget isn’t large enough to guarantee consideration: the university explosion. A new social grouping has all of you the university buildings, emerged from the very vitals of capitalism, from all that it considers professors and assistants, restaurants, dormitories and, above all, the high its essential ' achievement ’: the higher standard of living, the advances quality education you demand right in technology and the mass media, and the requirements of automation. away. You have to be satisfied with There are six million university students in the United States, two and gradually changing the existing situa a half in West Europe, and over a million in Japan. And it proved im tion, which we all agree is unsatisfac possible to integrate this grouping into the capitalist system as it tory. ’ And when the students are told this, they are a thousand times right functions in West Europe, the United States, or Japan. to answer: ‘ Stop this bilge about the The students have not found the rate among the youth in the black appropriation for education and the necessary material facilities for their ghettos of the United States exceeds resources of the public bodies. -
Brothers in Arms
The Anarchist Library (Mirror) Anti-Copyright Brothers in Arms Stuart Christie 2009 WRITING IN the preface to l’Espagne Libre, in 1946, the year of my birth, Albert Camus said of the Spanish struggle: “It is now nine years that men of my generation have had Spain within their hearts. Nine years that they have carried it with them like an evil wound. It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubt- less, which explains why so many men, the world over, regard the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy”. Stuart Christie On 1 April 2009 seventy years will have passed since General Brothers in Arms Franco declared victory in his three-year crusade against the Span- 2009 ish Republic. His victory was won with the military support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the moral support of the Roman Retrieved on 22nd September 2020 from Catholic Church and the covert diplomatic connivance of Britain https://libcom.org/history/brothers-arms and France, the prime movers in the Non-Intervention Agreement. Article by Stuart Christie in Scottish Review of Books, Volume 5, It brought not peace but the outbreak of a vengeful and prolonged Issue 1, 2009 forty-year war of vindictive terror, humiliation and suffering for the losers, the Spanish people. Apart from the victims of the war it- usa.anarchistlibraries.net self, between 1939 and 1951 at least 50,000 Spaniards paid with their lives for their support of the Republic while hundreds of thousands paid with their freedom. -
Anarchism in Glasgow (Interview)
Anarchist library Anti-Copyright Anarchism in Glasgow (Interview) Various Authors 14/8/87 In August 1987 the Raesides, who had been living in Australia for many years, returned to Glasgow for a visit. This provided a rare op- portunity to bring together some surviving members of anarchist groups in Glasgow during the 1940s for a public discussion on the history of that movement and the lesson which can be learned. Q: How did people come in contact with the movement and Various Authors how did the movement strike them at the time? Anarchism in Glasgow (Interview) JR: Well, the clothes have changed a bit! And the venue 14/8/87 — the anarchist movement would have had to grow Anarchy is Order CD quite a bit to get a room like this. Transcribed in November 1993 from a not-always-clear cassette MB: Yes… The “Hangman’s Rest”: when there wasa tape. A formerly inaudible section has now been transcribed with lull in the questions the rats used to come out‼ help from Charlie Baird Jnr. JR: Or street corners… en.anarchistlibraries.net JTC: The movement started in Glasgow in a way that’s buried in a certain amount of mystery because they haven’t been able to research it properly, but after the Paris Commune a number of Frenchmen came to Britain and one of these settled in Glasgow and be- came the companion of a woman called MacDonald who lived in Crown St. She had anarchist views and they organised the first anarchism movement in Glas- gow working from Crown St.