Editorial - What?s in the latest Organise!? ---- Features: ---- Utopian? Guilty your
honour -- Beyond perfection: What we can learn from science fiction utopias.---Anarchism:
Utopian or scientific? ---- Children of the Commune ---- Education in an anarchist society
---- In defence of Malatesta ---- Anarchism and organisation ---- Syria: The struggle
continues ---- Statement from the Libertarian Socialist Movement (Egypt) ---- Culture
Article: Henri Edmond Cross: Painter of Utopia ---- Reviews: ---- ?I come to you like the
beggar man...? - a review of Ursula Le Guin?s The Dispossessed. ---- Carlo Tresca:
portrait of a rebel. by Nunzio Pernicone. AK Press. ---- Spanish civil war tour, Barcelona
(review of walking tour) ---- Letter: ---- John P. Clark?s The Impossible Community:
Realising Communitarian Anarchism (Bloomsbury 2013).
Editorial: What's in the latest Organise!?
It might seem a bit peculiar to have as one of our main themes the idea of Utopia, at a
time when the situation both in Britain and around the world seems in many ways to be at
its grimmest for many decades. We have seen deteriorating economic conditions as the
ruling class and its governments impose massive austerity measures in many countries, we
have seen increasing moves to States increasing their repressive powers in response to
people daring to fight back against these attacks. We have seen the rise of far-right and
anti-immigrant and anti-minority parties throughout Europe. We have seen increasing racism
and homophobia, with homosexuality now criminalised in Russia by the Putin regime,
coupled with vicious attacks on gay people there by fascist groups.
We have seen the National Health Service under increasing attack in this country, along
with plans to privatise Royal Mail. Along with this are further attacks on the unemployed,
the imposition of the Bedroom Tax (Poll Tax Mark Two), and massively rising food and
energy prices. The increased State surveillance of our mails and phone calls has been
revealed and the United States is seen as Spy-Master in Chief, with the British government
as a willing accomplice.
The Arab Spring itself, which enthused many, is now turning to an Autumn of Repression;
the green shoots of revolt appear to be turning into the brown leaves of repression, with
the military regime installed in Egypt. Those old revolutionary hopes that re-emerged in
the late nineteen sixties and endured for many decades now seem like foolish fantasies.
Yes, that period was a time of great hope, and Utopia was invoked many times, but where
are these hopes now, swept away by the greyness of austerity, cuts and the growing power
of the police state.
But that is exactly why we have dedicated some of this issue to the idea of Utopia. Even
in the grimmest times we need a vision of What Could Be to sustain us. This was the
outlook of the revolutionary workers movement when it emerged in the nineteenth century.
Anarchists and socialists regularly referred to a future society, where life had been
radically transformed. We had works like William Morris?s News from Nowhere, Oscar
Wilde?s The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and How We Shall Bring About the Revolution by
Pouget and Pataud, as well as The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops by
Kropotkin and Anarchy by Malatesta.
Now all the socialists can offer us is either praise of the market, as with the
social-democrat and Labourite parties throughout the world, where it would be difficult to
tell the difference between their policies and outlook and those of the Conservative,
Republican and Christian-Democrat outfits; and the small Leninist groups, with their
vision of a repeat of the fiasco in the Soviet Union, where one repressive and autocratic
regime was replaced with another, and which are revealed in their internal practices
today- witness the appalling Gerry Healey, as well as the SWP. Only the social, class
struggle anarchists still offer the hope of a better world, where there are no wars, no
borders, and no inequality, where the fruits of the world are shared in common and
prejudice is a thing of the past. That is what should continue to make us fight on, even
in grim times. The vision of such a society, a Utopia if you will, should be seen as a
lighthouse sending out its beams in the darkness. They must enthuse us to strive for
something better, and they must be the inspiring vision of more and more of us as we look
for a way out of the social catastrophe that life on this planet now seems. We feel that
anarchism can renew itself and once again act as a challenge to the system. As the song
Les Anarchistes by the singer Leo Ferr? goes, anarchists ?Struck so hard, that they can
strike again?.
In this issue we talk about the possibilities of what education could look like in a
genuine free society basing them on social experiments in education in the past and
present. We look at the field of science fiction, a literary form often conducive to
showing us a different point of view and of different possibilities. We look at the work
of Henri Edmond Cross, one of the French post-impressionist painters enthused by the
anarchist idea, who sought to represent this new society on canvas. We reprint Wayne
Price?s article on the idea of Utopia itself, where he argues strongly for a
re-affirmation of a Utopian outlook.
Also in this issue we look at the ideas and lives of people who fought hard to bring about
the birth of this new society. Carlo Tresca was imprisoned and persecuted for his beliefs
before ending up being slain by a gunman. Errico Malatesta also suffered many years of
persecution, imprisonment and exile, ending up dying under house arrest in Mussolini?s
Italy. Neither of them saw this new society, but we hope in the long term that what they
dedicated their lives to, what inspired them in extremely difficult situations, can be
realised. Indeed it must be realised if we do not want to see a world of barbarism, of the
repressive strong state, of war after war, of famine, poverty, and ecological devastation.
We have included examinations of the state of the social movements in Egypt and Syria.
Despite the repression of the Assad regime in Syria and the newly installed rule of the
Army in Egypt , despite the Islamist threat, despite the strong arm of the police and the
Army, despite the carnage and barbarity, we can see that these movements still offer
hopes for the future, hopes for the masses in the Middle East and beyond. Remember, the
wave of the Arab Spring was unprecedented, and Egypt was seen as an extremely docile and
passive place by its neighbours. It took the determined and inspired action of a few, then
many, to change this and we saw masses of people on the street there and in neighbouring
Tunisia. New social movements attempting to fight the attacks on civil rights, on attacks
on pay and conditions, and a whole range of other issues, were to spring up in Turkey,
Greece, Brazil and Argentina. This is not the end of the struggle, it is just the beginning.
Did people believe that Louis XVI would be overthrown, that that symbol of ruling class
power, the Bastille, would be razed to the ground, even a few days before the
revolutionary events of 1789? And yet it happened. Did anyone envisage the end of Charles
I before the 1640s? And yet it happened. The fall of the Tsar, the fall of the regimes in
Eastern Europe, the fall of Morsi? Great revolutionary movements have emerged and fallen
back in the course of the last two centuries, but they all offer us a vision of a new
society through their original methods of organisation and their example that power can be
challenged. They fell victim to bloody repression and betrayal, but they still endure as
to What Can Be.
Recently the government was defeated over its war plans for Syria, with general distaste
among the population for such an adventure contributing to this defeat. This was reflected
among the general population in the USA and France, and the Allies, at least temporarily,
have backed off. What was revealed was the general weakness of the government. This was
already there, with the Conservatives, with a minority of votes, maintained in power by
their Liberal Democrat allies. Now we see signs of the Liberal Democrats attempting to
distance themselves from the Conservatives, in readiness to broker a deal with Labour at
the next election. But if the Coalition can be defeated over war plans, surely it can be
defeated over the Post Office, over the National Health Service. It only needs the
emergence of a mass movement on the streets and in the workplaces to make this come about.
We have seen examples of mass movements that were capable of overthrowing regimes emerge
around the world. Everywhere the ruling class has been terrified by these developments. It
has employed increasingly heavy police measures, not least in Britain, to stop this coming
about. Everywhere we have seen the police as brutal and willing servants of the boss
class. The union bureaucrats and Labour will attempt to sabotage any such developments,
but as we have seen, we need just the conscious will and determination of first fairly
small numbers, then many, to give birth to a movement that can stop the Coalition in its
tracks.
Finally in this issue, we have republished Malatesta?s article on the need for anarchists
to organise effectively. The Anarchist Federation has consistently argued for effective
organisation since 1986. We will continue to do so. Anarchists here and abroad must break
with their rejection of organisation and develop effective and efficient means of
spreading our ideas and examples of libertarian practice. We must involve ourselves in day
to day struggles in order to help with the self-confidence of the working class as a whole
and to popularise anarchist ideas and practice. as Malatesta has illustrated, this has to
be done through the building of a specific anarchist organisation, with effective
propaganda, and the growth of mass movements.
---
To order a printed copy see details above.
Organise! magazine, issue 81, Winter 2013.
http://www.afed.org.uk
Home »
» (en) Britan, Anarchist Federation Organise! magazine #81 winter 2013 - Content + Editorial