Anarchist Writers

The WSM has always said socialists should not support any intervention by the UN anywhere. What is currently happening in Bosnia and Rwanda demonstrates the reasons why we should not call on the UN to intervene.

Although you wouldn't know it from the media, anti-war demonstrations have been growing in size right across the world. But the number attending the demonstrations are still only a fraction of those who oppose the war, perhaps because many believe there is nothing we can do. This is because the history of successful resistance to war has been deeply buried by the ruling class.

Polls show most people in Ireland oppose the war, and refuelling at Shannon, yet the government continue to provide support for the US and British war drive. This is yet another demonstration of how meaningless parliamentary democracy is. Unless we are talking of marches of tens or hundreds of thousands we won't frighten the government into a change of policy. If the Iraq war is like other recent imperialist ones - where the actual fighting happens over a period of weeks rather then years - then its unlikely we will see tens of thousands mobilised. There is one way we can stop the war - this is mass direct action.

The September 11 attacks, the Afghan war that followed from it and the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine have once again raised the issue of Islam in the minds of many anarchists in Ireland and Britain. Not just because of the role Islam has in shaping those conflicts but also because militant Islam has become a far more noticeable presence on solidarity demonstrations.

Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is usually, and rightly, called his masterpiece. While the high quality of all his work makes it hard to say whether this classic can be considered his best, it is fair to say that it is probably his most famous and one of his most widely read. Suffice to say, that it is rarely out of print testifies to its importance as well as the quality and timelessness of its message.

The fundamental idea of anarchism is that as long as a minority make decisions on our behalf then we cannot be free. The decision making and enforcing apparatus this minority uses is the state; in Ireland it is the Dáil, local councils, the judiciary, the police force and a hundred other bodies, some visible, some invisible. While every other political current seeks to become part of the apparatus of decision making, the anarchists suggest something quite different. We want to smash the whole apparatus.

Over the weekend of March 31st an international libertarian/anarchist gathering was held in Madrid. It was hosted by the largest anarchist union in the world, the Spanish CGT, which has around 50,000 members. A number of other large libertarian unions attended including the SAC of Sweden and the Italian UNICOBAS.

In the left from Ashes to Phoenix? it was argued that the left as it had come to be known has collapsed. The new left that is arising from the ashes carries much of the baggage and many of the mistakes of its predecessors. It is without clear direction, knowing it wants to build something new, but not sure what this will be or how to do it. It bases itself on a hodgepodge of different traditions or on none. These criticisms are easy to make, what is more difficult is to pinpoint a way forwards.

This article indicates the direction that needs to be taken.

It has become something of a cliché to refer to the death or collapse of the left. What's still missing however is an analysis of what went wrong with the left.

These two articles from the first issue of Red & Black Revolution published in 1994 look at the reasons for the collapse of the left at the end of the 1980's and put forward an argument for the sort of organization(s) that now need to be built.