The strength of this movement is that it has come from many places, that it is a network without a head or a central committee that has successfully united many issues in a combined opposition to what we have been told was unopposable. If the demonstrations of the last years have achieved anything it is that they seized the neo liberal slogan ‘there is no alternative’ by the throat and dashed it into the ground.
This is the second of three talks I delivered at the Prague S26 counter summit.
When I left school in Ireland the first job I applied for was in McDonalds. They didn’t advertise jobs, there was no need but instead whenever they needed people they mailed out to a list of those who had called into the joint in the last couple of weeks. They interviewed about 60 people for four or five jobs. I didn’t get one! On Friday as I got the bus to the airport in Dublin I noticed a bus shelter where McDonalds were advertising for workers and boasting they were paying over the minimum wage. Like all low paid service sector employments they now have massive problems finding enough people to work for them.
We understand that we are not going to bring down the world order headed by the World Bank on Tuesday or by blockading any of their meetings. Instead we send out a clear message that there is an alternative. This alternative is not merely a question of policies but also of a new world in which for the first time the ordinary people of the world will take direct control over how our societies are run, not simply by occasionally choosing between professional politicians but by self management in the workplaces and the communities.
These are two audio interviews with US anarchist Ashanti Alston who the WSM have brought to Ireland to speak at the Anarchist bookfair. Ashanti describes himself as a former member of the Black Panther Party and a former soldier in the Black Liberation Army, in connection with which he served 14 years in prison in the US. Today he is an active US anarchist who speaks at events all over North America, giving him a valuable persepective on the state of the movement today.
Former Black Panther Ashanti Alston in conversation with Andrew Flood in Ireland by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud
An account of the first anarchist-feminist group in Argentina in the 1890s.
A review of the film Charlie Wilson’s War, discussing what the film did not mention and how the activities of the USA in Afghanistan started before the Soviet invasion and its unintended consequences.
An article on anarchism and unions, written in an attempt to build support for the Anarchist Workers Network (AWN). The AWN aimed to create a libertarian presence in the trade unions, but after a period of interest it disappeared. An article written to learn some lessons from the AWN is attached at the end.
Three letters to the US-based Anarchy magazine in response to an issue it did on "Platformism" pointing out the mistakes made — as well as the irony of Bob Black attacking the Platformists as vanguardists while repeating some of Lenin’s arguments from What is to Be Done?
A few years back Freedom let the primitivists of Wildfire have a page to discuss their ideas. These letters were written in response to their articles. Wildfire, as far as I am aware, is no more — it’s two members went their separate ways quite soon after they stopped writting for Freedom.
A couple of letters in reply to an "anarcho"-capitalist who wrote to Freedom. Sadly, the person in question used to consider himself a mutualist, before leaving anarchism for propertarianism. As can be expected, he fails to consider the authoritarian aspects of private property, something anarchists have been pointing out since (at least) 1840.