Black-Flag-Quarterly-Vol-7-No-7-1984
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Volume Vll No.7 Black Flag/BIack Cross, BM Hurricane, Distribution by A Distribution, B4b Autumn 1984 Quarterly London WCI 3XX. Whitechapel High Street, London E1. Published, typeset and layout by Discounb 1/3 to Bookshops and Black Flag Collective. Bulk orders. Printed by Aldgate Pres, 84b White- STATE OF PLAY chapel High Street, London E1. Balance sheet to August 31 1984 plack Flag quarterly and fortnightly Printing (prid up to date) 1759.00 Strtionery (envelopes and photocopying) 50.34 CONTENTS Postage 470.28 2279.62 AS WE GO TO PRESS' 4 Sales and subs 1898.27 DIRECT ACTION INTENSI FI ES 6 Donrtions* 496.76 PREPARING FOR CIVILWAR 8 23S5.03 CIVILWAR PART 1,2&3 I 2279.62 G ER MANY 16 LIBERTAR IAN PR ISON ERS. 19 We ectually finished up in the peilod HOW NEAB WERE WE TO BEVOLUTION? 20 April 1984-Aug lS84 fll5.46 in the black. MEXICAN INDIANS 23 Overal! deficit on whole ER ICH MUHSAM 24 83-&t c/fwd 1146.36 FREEDOM AS A SOCIAL PBINCIPLE 28 Les 115.46 VANCOUVER 5 32 DECENTRALISED TOTALITAR IAN ISM New u delicit on 83-BC WHAT period r630.s5 IS THE ANARCHIST MOVEMENT 36 REVIEWS & LETTERS 37 Having turned out so many issues in NEW The 6 monthly rate our fortnightly series as well as embark- SUBSCRIPTION RATES hopefully will encourage more readers to subscribe ing on the expensive quarterly, it is a Combined Subscription : and so help us pay pleasant surprise to realise that so far Quarterly Magazine & fortnightly our bills. Prisoners, upon request receive from increasing our massive imbalance . News Bulletin: incurred 'l Black Flag free. I{e exchange with during 983/84, we have l2 months:012 Inland ;t. & Surface, other Anarchist movement papers. dented What can we say but keep f,l9 Air. up the good work? Usual nii Donations are always gratefully contribut- 6 months: f,6.50 Inland & ion from Moscow, World Surface, accepted, and don't forget the Black Council of S10 Air. Churches, CIA and GLC Working Cross too! for London grant. usual nil pay- We have had to increase the subs ment for salaries. (the first time for 2/z leats) because of increase postage *Donations in costs and the Derbyshire MC f5; Devon cover price. Current subscribers f 10 Minn, US D0 f 19.71 Briston A's whose sub has not yet run out will f40; KP .75; LP f 10; Leics PM f 11; get their copies of Black Flas sent Lanc CP fl; SW London JG f80; as usual, without having to send on the extra money. N. London LF f6; Shipley TG f3.50; Cam.bs PN f 17.50; London PP f5; ANARCHO- QUIZ M & P f40; AM fl00; TH fl00; LP 1. What the nationality and religous enterprise f 1, G H f 15; FAU comrade f 1.30; was at birth - but what Canada PD f30; T0TAL f496.76 of Francois Villon and Napoleon was its business? Bonaparte? 5. In which countries could MUTUAL AID/SOLIDARITY 2. Of what impossible crime was animals once be tried by a judge Carried forward f23.18; Guam Anarchist'Chicago Martyr' Albert and condemned to death; and in SS f37.01; Cambridge A's f6; London Parsons accused of, long before which country can they still be PR f 1.06; Total in Hand f67.25. (Also the Haymarket Trial, and how did legally sentenced to prison? still in hand f 10 for Vancouver prison- Lucy Parsons cover up for him? ers - any more donations before we 6. All Cunard liners had names send? - and f45 for CNT Prisoners). 3. What atrocity, alleged by Con- ending in'...ia' (Berengaria, Lusitania Very quiet on this f ront no doubt servatives to have been committed etc) - why did they suddenly because of the large donations from by the Bolsheviks in Russia, and change their policy and call the every quarter going direct to miners' later by the Anarchists in Spain, Mary by that name? families. Queen Don't forget that for Spanish is now a regular feature of British veterans we intend t0 make an annual life? Answers on page end-of-year-habit of sending off remittances (see last issue). 4. The Uscoques were a sort of NOTE: - A misprint in our last Italian co-operative trust in the issue Quiz had Paderewski dving rROIII PAGE. top: Scrb Cdch cilpey, ltCpaon 16th century, blessed by the Church in his native Poland it w,as in TolE of T.cnthu, attackGd by frbotclE, - c.Eing tl5ormo rorul of ,l-gr. Church, in which the public of fact Portugal. Poland was under Botto: Blmt @t c.n (Dd.upcNkct troLli.c.l Ecd by plckcts u r bBi,crde rt Segna took shares and were paid Nazi occupation. Sj,lvcr@d Collicry. dividends. It was esteemed a public Answers on page 39 turn to individual violence or undisciplined unionism (either of the type seen in the the sase miners' strike todaY! - through EDITORIAI: capital ist co ncentratio n, were f rustrated, independent, and undisciplined; they would turn to individual violence or undisciplined unionism (either of the type seen in the agalnst Anarchlsm miners strike today! - though not self- employed, they have got used to more leisure, and includlng the possessionsand so on. in good times)' paper's editorial the mass picket up to It is rare that an Anarchist creation of lts own workers' state to combat None of this makes ordinarY common a is a criticism of Anarchism from Marxist cou n ter-revo lution. sense if by petty-bourgeois is meant what it Worker. That the organ of It is this last point which arouses the solicit' iournal, Sociatist the means today, chartered accountants, publish 'The Darticular ire of the anarchists who echo itre SWp feels it necessary to arquments that revolutionary ors, bank managers etc. Marx wasn't that as Lourqeols Case Against Anarchism' may be regarded oowdr leaos lnevitably to tyranny (that stupid! His followers are stupid or perhaps etc)' an acknowledgement of a growing interest Leninism leads inevltably to stalinism has failed to come up crafty. it obviously has to make However, anarchism has also altered in Anarchism and *itn any serious alternative way of resist- The term individualism unfavourable reference. But beforo accepting anie of-the capltalists and their efforts to its meaning - since it has been appropriated the tributes to our magnamimity and obiect- restore-- the old order. by the bowler-hatted,.striped-su ited attache- regard the article as fair So fir we have been discussing 'pure' But if one looks ivity, let us say we soclal basis in the cise carrying Conservative. Marxist circles' anarchism which has its - something rare indeed in iaoical petty bourgeoisie which feels alien- sav, at the story of the American IWW organis' however'humanist Marxist'. trorn both the power of big capital and ing the hoboes, farm workers, railway workerc. the"i.o power of the working class. one can see how MARXISM has alwaYs had to comPete miners; catering workers, with rival theories in its struggle for MERGE ind ividualistic revolutionary synd ical ism can over the working class and ln so far as anarchism has attempted to be! lf Boxcar Bertha or Joe H ill weren't infiuence class, it has had oooressed. lts main rivals, apart from qain a base in the wbrking individuatists but Olga Maitland and io ioanOon some of its individualist princip' sdriiqhtforward capitalist ideology' les and accept the need Ior collective John Junor arg, the term has iust bscome have- been social dCmocratic reform' oroanisation. Thus it has tended to merge gobbledegook. (discussed ism last week) and Stalin' wiin synoicalism, ie revolutionary trade Oddly, it is hard to fault the statement ism idealt with a few weeks ago)' unionism which rejects participation ln form' been an alter' and the role of the that 'anarchism, even in iF syndicalist but there has usually 'bourgeois'politics anarchism has na{ive standing, appaiently, to the left revolutionary partY. - that is, working class - It is as anarcho'syndicalism that anar- proved'inadequate' for the working-class' of Marxism, namelY anarchism. and in chijm has come closest to Marxism, a better word is'inappropriate')' A narch ism clearly is not an important Russian Revolution many iPerhaps Britain today, but at the wake of the working class who want things political force in anarcho-syndicalistS were dfawn to the Those of the vario rs ,times in the history of the revolut- its and who accept things as they the communist lnternational. Nevertheless, done for them ionar y movement (most notably in absenteeism from politica organisat' Civil War) it has exercised some taii or tneory, its are, and those who have built up Spanish *ttictt tear"t- ine tieto to the refotmists' pushed out of their own cons,derable influence. Even now it has think through the realities ions alike, have been younq and ina-its f"itrt" to and as a mass ctefin ite attractions for the of workers' power, continue to make anarch' movement, anarchist or socialist, rebel I iou s, i.m even in its svndicalist form inadequate hail Hitler or vote Tory. The reason for this ABSURD for the working class. has been the triumph of the'educated class' qeneral anarch ism remains a c )nsequently it is quite likely that at Thus in placed such store. But the negative and marginal doctrine' lt condemns on which Marx som,' point socialist worker readers will and is that where anarchism is arguments' Cu5itutir-, condlmns the reforrnists, important thing uD against some anarchist Marxists.