Contents ---- Editorial - What?s in the latest Organise!? ---- Features: ---- The Fire
Next Time? ---- Crisis on the left, crisis within the British Anarchist movement. --- The
Political Thought of Errico Malatesta ---- About Platformism, synthesism and the ?Fontenis
affair? ---- The Life and Work of Anarchist Omar Oziz ---- To what extent are Nozick?s
notions of self-ownership, inviolable liberty and capitalism valid? ---- The Zoot Suit As
Rebellion. ---- Culture Article: The Anarchist Woodcuts of Alexandre Mairet ---- Reviews:
---- Review: Decolonizing Anarchism by Maia Ramnath. AK Press & Institute for Anarchist
Studies, 2011. ---- Review: Anarchism in Galicia: Organisation, Resistance and Women in
the Underground. ---- Essays by Eliseo Fernandez, Anton Briallos and Carmen BIanco. Edited
and translated by Paul Sharkey, Kate Sharpley Library.
Editorial: What's in the latest Organise!?
In this issue of Organise! we take a cold-blooded look at the scale of attacks that we are
facing as a class. The mounting frenzy of attacks is a real class Blitzkrieg, a shock and
awe offensive that is stripping away many of the benefits we have fought for and gained
over the last century. Not only are our health services and education, pay and conditions
and pensions in grave danger but the scale of the housing crisis is reaching frightening
proportions. In tandem with this is a frantic campaign in the media against the homeless,
claimants, and immigrants in an attempt to find scapegoats and distract us from the real
culprits for the state we are in - the boss class.
In anticipation of any fightback, some of the other things we fought for and gained over
the last few centuries are under increasing threat. Free speech, free assemblyand the
right to demonstrate, all of these are under pressure and the police continue to reveal
how corrupt and brutal they are. The most recent examples have been their attacks on
student demonstrators and their campaign of intimidation against anti-fracking activists.
In addition to this we are more and more aware of how far states have gone in a massive
surveillance of our phone calls and emails. We are also made more aware of the police
infiltration of different political groups, with the aim of provoking, disrupting and
gathering information on activists.
One would think that these conditions would have created a mass movement by now in
Britain. We look at why this challenge has certainly not been initiated or helped by the
traditional left. We know that opposition will break out at some point, but it won?t be
the decaying left that has a key role in this. However, we don?t gloat over the decline of
the left when we see that our own anarchist scene suffers from a profound malaise. We
examine these questions in some details and offer some solutions whilst at the same time
wanting to provoke a debate within British anarchism.
We look at the ideas of an important anarchist, the Italian, Errico Malatesta, continuing
a survey of his thought and practice started in issue 82. Malatesta is an extremely
pragmatic thinker and his ideas should once again be re-discovered and appraised and he
has much to offer us when we look at how we can build an anarchist movement that is
effective and can begin to attract wider support.
Malatesta was a fervent supporter of effective anarchist organisation. In an article on
Platformism and Synthesism we look at ways anarchists have organised and are organising
and the problems that they have faced in the past. How we organise as anarchists remains
acutely pressing and this article is an important contribution to that debate.
We also look at the ideas of someone we don?t think we should emulate, the fake
?libertarian? Robert Nozick, who under the cover of a discourse about freedom offers us an
unadulterated 110 % proof raw capitalism.
We continue our series of occasional articles on rebel youth cultures with a look at the
zootsuiters of the United States who brought down upon themselves a nasty media campaign
and orchestrated violence because of their challenging of the norms of American society
during World War Two.
We also continue our series on anarchist artists and writers with a look at the work of
the anarchist wood cut specialist Alexandre Mairet, whose artwork war-time (this time the
First World War) gave his support to anti-militarist and anti-capitalist propaganda.
Plus our usual reviews of books and pamphlets and you have yet another scintillating issue
of Organise! from the Anarchist Federation.
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» (en) Britain, AFED Organise! #82 winter 2014 - Contents + Editorial