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.
Topic: Anarchist movement
Internationally there is a long and close historical relationship between anarchism and what in English is often referred to as syndicalism or revolutionary unionism. Such unions have no bureaucracy, all decisions being made by their membership and include among their aims the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with libertarian communism. Recently we received details of one of the newer syndicalist unions, the Siberian Confederation of Labour (SKT).
AS ANARCHISTS believe the bosses will resist a revolution, it follows that we accept the need for armed force to defend the revolution. But anarchists also oppose militarism, that includes standing armies controlled by the state with officers who have special privileges like extra rations, better quarters, saluting, etc. So what alternative do anarchists propose? [ Greek translation ]
One measure of the success of the Class War Federation is that so many of the readers of this article will immediately recognise the name as belonging to a British revolutionary group. Well officially Class War is no more and what’s more they produced a final issue of there paper to prove it, No 73 headlined ‘Class War is Dead…long live the Class War’.
‘Unfinished Business’ is 186 pages of Class War explaining its political outlook. What’s more it does seem to represent a real if unacknowledged break with their past. The book is divided into sections which include capitalism, the state and revolutionary organisation. It provides a good, if sometimes flawed, introduction to the topics it covers
At the last Workers Solidarity Movement conference we took the decision to join a new international anarchist network, International Libertarian Solidarity, which is most often referred to by its Spanish acronym of SIL.
The last year or so has seen a hectic period for activists in Ireland. From the May 6th Gardai attack on Reclaim the Streets in Dublin, through the anti-war campaigns, people have been coming into conflict with the state. In Dublin, we are now in the middle of a struggle with local anti-bin tax groups across the city taking action to defeat the councils refusal to collect rubbish.
An anarchist analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871, showing how it was influenced by anarchism and what lessons anarchists drew from it. It also discusses the Marxist and Leninist analyses of the Commune, showing how alien Leninism is to the spirit of the Commune and to the genuine Marxist theory of the state.
This thread was created for my North American speaking tour to make it easier for people who attended meetings to find more information about the struggles and organizations I covered. It consists of links to the various struggles and organizations I talked about during the tour. The tour covered 44 North American cities in 2007 and early 2008.
The two articles ‘Anarchism, insurrections and insurrectionalism’ and ‘Notes on the article ‘Anarchism, Insurrections and Insurrectionalism’ are now available to download as a PDF pamphlet in a number of formats.